Posted June 16, 2016
I though Hearts of Stone was the best DLC I have played ever. I was heavily invested in liking Blood and Wine just as much and early in the game it did seem every bit as compelling as HofS.
But after that the game just literally fell apart.
Why?
1) Was it the asset and worldspace designers? No …. Extraordinarily good worlspace and asset design and implementation.
2) Was it the monster design, animation and variety? No … Again fantastic
3) Was it the balance and combat design and variety? This needs a patch or 2 but still great
4) Costume design? No again fantastic
5) Microstory, dialog, writing and voice acting? No … Top quality
So where did the game fall apart?
Sadly this DLC fell apart at the very highest level …. Top level story design and implementation. This means that there is probably no way to fix it without doubling the effort put into this DLC.
In essence it was like 3 different teams wrote BandW and then the top level story designer tried to fit the three pieces together and noticed that they didn’t fit, but released the game anyway,.
The story overarching story dragged the whole DLC down so badly I couldn’t even finish it and I played almost to the finish on both storylines. I desperately tried to steer the main quest in some direction that wasn’t so profoundly ridiculous but there was no steering wheel.
I think it may be time for CDProjectRed to release full modding tools. The things someone with vision could do with those assets. If the devs wanted to keep W3 going as long as Skyrim they could clear out the witcher gameworld of quests and monsters, leave most of the population in place and give modders a blank palate to create in.
Feel free to insult me but I did happily finish HofS and named it the best DLC ever.
But after that the game just literally fell apart.
Why?
1) Was it the asset and worldspace designers? No …. Extraordinarily good worlspace and asset design and implementation.
2) Was it the monster design, animation and variety? No … Again fantastic
3) Was it the balance and combat design and variety? This needs a patch or 2 but still great
4) Costume design? No again fantastic
5) Microstory, dialog, writing and voice acting? No … Top quality
So where did the game fall apart?
Sadly this DLC fell apart at the very highest level …. Top level story design and implementation. This means that there is probably no way to fix it without doubling the effort put into this DLC.
In essence it was like 3 different teams wrote BandW and then the top level story designer tried to fit the three pieces together and noticed that they didn’t fit, but released the game anyway,.
The story overarching story dragged the whole DLC down so badly I couldn’t even finish it and I played almost to the finish on both storylines. I desperately tried to steer the main quest in some direction that wasn’t so profoundly ridiculous but there was no steering wheel.
I think it may be time for CDProjectRed to release full modding tools. The things someone with vision could do with those assets. If the devs wanted to keep W3 going as long as Skyrim they could clear out the witcher gameworld of quests and monsters, leave most of the population in place and give modders a blank palate to create in.
Feel free to insult me but I did happily finish HofS and named it the best DLC ever.