General Gaming The Witcher: Remake in UE5 announced, update: Remake won't release until after the next mainline game ("Polaris")

[Captain Pickle]

Second one was amazing. I believe I was a day one purchase 

[Keyser_Soze]

Yeah, the first game was really the only obtuse game. Witcher 2 was pretty much a modern game.

GTA 1 and 2 were almost their own thing but Farcry, the first one is still the best game so 🤷‍♀️

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

Witcher 2 wasn't Witcher 3 popular, but it did very, very well. The first is the one most didn't play. 

 

I love the second game.

Yeah the second game was really well received at the time and is a blast to play. Very replayable... also if I recall at the time it was one of the best looking games out back then particularly on P.C. I love the second and third games in the series but was never abloe to really get into the first despite trying to play it several times. This modern day remake is welcome news for me.

[Xbob42]

The Witcher 1 is a game I wish I spent more time on. I kinda rushed the second half to get to the Witcher 2, and in the end I think I liked the whole story and vibe of the first game more. The second definitely played better and was more cinematic/modern feeling, but I'm real excited for this.

Also let's be real, The Witcher 2 really spun its wheels for a real long time and didn't end up anywhere, it felt very much like a middle-game.

[Bacon]

I'm mostly fine with this remake going open world. Pretty much confirms no rhythm combat I my mind, but I never thought that would return either. 100% this is going to be The Witcher 3: The Witcher 1. I expect to see The Witcher 3: The Witcher 2 a few years down the line as well, but maybe not.  

 

I'd just prefer a new game and I really only care about remakes when it is something I didn't spend enough time with. Like the DeS remake. I've been playing it, and I have a lot of creative issues with it, but it is nice to be able to play DeS on a non-gimped console. Bluepoint 100% fucked shit up, but it still feels like, "Finally, another studio has made a Soulslike that actually feels like a Souls game," but that is also kinda fucked up to say when this IS a souls game. It does make me think tho, that maybe with their experience remaking DeS they actually could make their own Soulslike series and have it feel like it was made by from. But I don't really know I guess. 

 

Anyway, I spent plenty of time on TW1, but I also played it after I played TW2. While not open world, it does have big areas and unless they are going too big, I don't expect much will change. Still, TW1 is my favorite of the three. Never played the DLC for TW3, and while I liked the endings for TW3, I enjoyed the weirdness of TW1 a lot. From the day I played it, it felt nostalgic. It was a comfy game. 

[BloodyHell]

17 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I'm mostly fine with this remake going open world. Pretty much confirms no rhythm combat I my mind, but I never thought that would return either. 100% this is going to be The Witcher 3: The Witcher 1. I expect to see The Witcher 3: The Witcher 2 a few years down the line as well, but maybe not.  

 

I'd just prefer a new game and I really only care about remakes when it is something I didn't spend enough time with. Like the DeS remake. I've been playing it, and I have a lot of creative issues with it, but it is nice to be able to play DeS on a non-gimped console. Bluepoint 100% fucked shit up, but it still feels like, "Finally, another studio has made a Soulslike that actually feels like a Souls game," but that is also kinda fucked up to say when this IS a souls game. It does make me think tho, that maybe with their experience remaking DeS they actually could make their own Soulslike series and have it feel like it was made by from. But I don't really know I guess. 

 

Anyway, I spent plenty of time on TW1, but I also played it after I played TW2. While not open world, it does have big areas and unless they are going too big, I don't expect much will change. Still, TW1 is my favorite of the three. Never played the DLC for TW3, and while I liked the endings for TW3, I enjoyed the weirdness of TW1 a lot. From the day I played it, it felt nostalgic. It was a comfy game. 

What did bluepoint fuck up?

DeS remake isn’t fucked up, in fact it’s pretty beloved in the community.

 

I agree that W1 has a great story, I still think 2&3 blow it away. Witcher 3’s dlc is better than most rpg’s out there, in fact I think it’s better than the main quest, which is quite high praise. 
 

I’ve thought about them remaking 2 as an open world, but it seems hard with the way you work through the story in that game. It’s very much designed as a linear rpg with some pretty important and game changing choices. Would going open world require canonizing one of them? I don’t know I'd want the second remade that way.

 

 

 

[BloodyHell]

For anyone who hasn’t played it, Witcher 2 is like 2$ on Xbox store right now. 

[Brian]

9 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

 

Good picks but the early ones were fairly popular games in their own right (pretty sure Far Cry 2 at least sold several million). And just being console games by relatively well known devs they had some widespread awareness. Perhaps I'm biased because I personally was quite familiar with both series before they took off crazy. 

 

To me the Witcher was an unknown entity, and when the 3rd one was clearly going to be a thing it was difficult to even experience the other ones (at least 1, I don't know much about 2).

Witcher 1 was a cult classic and did pretty well commercially by selling 1M in the first year. Witcher 2 sold 1M in 3 months. Witcher 3 had 1M in preorders.  When I think of a third game exploding is a successful series, FC and GTA come to mind. 

 

[Jason]

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

The Witcher 1 is a game I wish I spent more time on. I kinda rushed the second half to get to the Witcher 2, and in the end I think I liked the whole story and vibe of the first game more. The second definitely played better and was more cinematic/modern feeling, but I'm real excited for this.

Also let's be real, The Witcher 2 really spun its wheels for a real long time and didn't end up anywhere, it felt very much like a middle-game.

 

The first game was running on (a heavily modified version of) the same engine KOTOR used and from what I recall it led to the gameplay feeling off to some people because it let you use a third person over the shoulder camera but the combat was still purely the same kind of hidden dice rolls you get in a KOTOR-like game and not the third person action combat that the camera mode primed people to expect.

 

If the first game hooked you it hooked you good, the combat was always eh but it was the kind of game Bioware thinks they're making in terms of sucking you into the decision-making. The fact that they didn't highlight "here's the good guy choice" and "here's the bad guy choice" and that the consequences of your decisions might not be apparent until many game hours later was a pretty big deal and revelatory experience at the time since it was the first game to really push the morally grey decision making that far. I remember at one decision point (I think in the forest and you're forced to choose between elves and humans) I actually got up and walked away from the game for a bit while thinking about what to do because I was that invested in not feeling like I made the morally wrong choice.

[Bacon]

2 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

What did bluepoint fuck up?

 

Mirdan hammer doesn't feel the same. Roll doesn't feel the same. Your character feels heavy. Your player character lacks the weirdly nimble movement that seems to persist in every From game since DeS.

 

The graphics are obviously far better, but it lacks style and doesn't look like a souls game by From. As I play it I am reminded of a UE5 techdemo remake. Boletarian Palace doesn't even look like the same level with all of this overgrown nonsense. While these types of levels usually aren't without bits of destruction and dilapidation, rarely do they fall to nature. You could say these are little changes and nitpicks but they add up into one overall issue and that is of the art style. The Remake very much feels like it was made by westerners, visually. Like, the game looks like it has an almost Diablo-esque skin applied. Even the armors are fucked with and lost their iconic looks. 

 

The camera is not great. Feels like there is mouse acceleration or something and it keeps doing this weird zoom-in shit. I tried every camera setting and nothing turns it off. I just want to be static. And it isn't just some camera shake setting either. Camera is also too close to your character most of the time, but it also adapts and zooms out in areas with more space.  Camera is also higher up than in the OG. 

 

Except for the mirdan hammer shit, you can actually clearly see what I am talking about in these sections of 3-1. 

 

Like look, I am not going to argue from a technical standpoint that the remake just looks so much better. I understand that, most people will just look at these video and go ew, old game look dull, and I get it. People see the pretty and are blinded by everything else, but holy shit if this were remade by From it would look totally different. Honestly, it would probably look worse from a technical standpoint. I mean, in pure graphics I think it looks better than ER, but ER has fuckin' style. 

 

And I am happy as fuck to just get to play DeS even with these changes. Feels good go back. Feels good to play a game with this kind of tight level design. But what I really like about this game has almost nothing to do with Bluepoint. I mean, I am totally glad this doesn't looks like a PS3 game with shitty FPS. Pretty sure there isn't a quality of life change that I dislike. They did pretty good on that point. I'm not even going to say the old animations are better, but they lack quickness and sharpness. And hell, that might just be from the higher fps lol. A magic just looks so damn better, but it is a shame they totally changed the sound design. Magic sounds powerful for sure, but they didn't even bother to make it sound similar to the old stuff. It would have been great if they could have kept the chime-like quality but also added the oomph. 

 

Just sayin, if they pulled as lazy as fuck Dark Souls level remaster of Demon's Souls, I have a feeling I would like that more than what we got.  I mean, I pretty much knew about all of my complaints about the DeS remake before I ever got it, but the core of it is exactly the same as the PS3 version and so I can overlook what I do not prefer. If the changes were that bad I just wouldn't have gotten the game, like with FF7R. But all the important parts of DeS remain the same and that's what really matters. But I just know a remake from From would have had me bustin' a nut. I would have begging for a PS5 back then if that were the case. Bluepoint's decisions made what would have been a console seller (for me) into a "well, I guess I'll get it if I get a PS5."

 

 

 

[BloodyHell]

32 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Mirdan hammer doesn't feel the same. Roll doesn't feel the same. Your character feels heavy. Your player character lacks the weirdly nimble movement that seems to persist in every From game since DeS.

 

The graphics are obviously far better, but it lacks style and doesn't look like a souls game by From. As I play it I am reminded of a UE5 techdemo remake. Boletarian Palace doesn't even look like the same level with all of this overgrown nonsense. While these types of levels usually aren't without bits of destruction and dilapidation, rarely do they fall to nature. You could say these are little changes and nitpicks but they add up into one overall issue and that is of the art style. The Remake very much feels like it was made by westerners, visually. Like, the game looks like it has an almost Diablo-esque skin applied. Even the armors are fucked with and lost their iconic looks. 

 

The camera is not great. Feels like there is mouse acceleration or something and it keeps doing this weird zoom-in shit. I tried every camera setting and nothing turns it off. I just want to be static. And it isn't just some camera shake setting either. Camera is also too close to your character most of the time, but it also adapts and zooms out in areas with more space.  Camera is also higher up than in the OG. 

 

Except for the mirdan hammer shit, you can actually clearly see what I am talking about in these sections of 3-1. 

 

Like look, I am not going to argue from a technical standpoint that the remake just looks so much better. I understand that, most people will just look at these video and go ew, old game look dull, and I get it. People see the pretty and are blinded by everything else, but holy shit if this were remade by From it would look totally different. Honestly, it would probably look worse from a technical standpoint. I mean, in pure graphics I think it looks better than ER, but ER has fuckin' style. 

 

And I am happy as fuck to just get to play DeS even with these changes. Feels good go back. Feels good to play a game with this kind of tight level design. But what I really like about this game has almost nothing to do with Bluepoint. I mean, I am totally glad this doesn't looks like a PS3 game with shitty FPS. Pretty sure there isn't a quality of life change that I dislike. They did pretty good on that point. I'm not even going to say the old animations are better, but they lack quickness and sharpness. And hell, that might just be from the higher fps lol. A magic just looks so damn better, but it is a shame they totally changed the sound design. Magic sounds powerful for sure, but they didn't even bother to make it sound similar to the old stuff. It would have been great if they could have kept the chime-like quality but also added the oomph. 

 

Just sayin, if they pulled as lazy as fuck Dark Souls level remaster of Demon's Souls, I have a feeling I would like that more than what we got.  I mean, I pretty much knew about all of my complaints about the DeS remake before I ever got it, but the core of it is exactly the same as the PS3 version and so I can overlook what I do not prefer. If the changes were that bad I just wouldn't have gotten the game, like with FF7R. But all the important parts of DeS remain the same and that's what really matters. But I just know a remake from From would have had me bustin' a nut. I would have begging for a PS5 back then if that were the case. Bluepoint's decisions made what would have been a console seller (for me) into a "well, I guess I'll get it if I get a PS5."

 

 

 

Ff7R doesn’t have changes, because it’s a sequel in another universe, not a remake of FF7. It’s also fantastic. 

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, BloodyHell said:

not a remake of FF7

Yet that is how it was sold. 

Remake is literally in the title of the game. 

[BloodyHell]

6 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Yet that is how it was sold. 

Remake is literally in the title of the game. 

Yes, the party is remaking the world because they have knowledge of fate and the past (Aerith’s connection to the lifestream).

I mean, they were extremely clear this was never a 1:1 remake of the original. Right from day one. Hell, even before they announced it, they said they would never do it unless it was unique. 
 

I mean, obviously up to you if you want to play it, but mostly it just sounds petty to miss an incredible game over it.

[Bacon]

8 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Yes, the party is remaking the world because they have knowledge of fate and the past (Aerith’s connection to the lifestream).

I mean, they were extremely clear this was never a 1:1 remake of the original. Right from day one. Hell, even before they announced it, they said they would never do it unless it was unique. 
 

I mean, obviously up to you if you want to play it, but mostly it just sounds petty to miss an incredible game over it.

I didn't get to edit my post in time but I don't want to talk about FF7R. No point you make will change anything nor will it change the remake in the title.

 

Fuckin' batshit that I mention FF7R and my entire wall of text is suddenly irrelevant. Feel free to talk about DeS with me, but don't even respond if you got more to say about FF7R. We've already been through this @TheGreatGamble

 

[Jason]

42 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I didn't get to edit my post in time but I don't want to talk about FF7R. No point you make will change anything nor will it change the remake in the title.

 

Fuckin' batshit that I mention FF7R and my entire wall of text is suddenly irrelevant. Feel free to talk about DeS with me, but don't even respond if you got more to say about FF7R. We've already been through this @TheGreatGamble

 

 

[stepee]

The Remake in FF7R is not for “remaking the world” lmao

 

like, I know what they did with the game and what the ending hints at but also just..no

[Jason]

25 minutes ago, stepee said:

The Remake in FF7R is not for “remaking the world” lmao

 

like, I know what they did with the game and what the ending hints at but also just..no

 

[Keyser_Soze]

17 minutes ago, stepee said:

The Remake in FF7R is not for “remaking the world” lmao

 

like, I know what they did with the game and what the ending hints at but also just..no

 

It is though. The title doesn't actually refer to the game being a remake  but Sephiroth literally remaking the world. Remake is an alternate timeline not FFVII remade.

[stepee]

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

It is though. The title doesn't actually refer to the game being a remake  but Sephiroth literally remaking the world. Remake is an alternate timeline not FFVII remade.

 

I don’t buy that is what the title means at all. I get that part of the story but that is not how it’s being sold.

[Keyser_Soze]

7 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I don’t buy that is what the title means at all. I get that part of the story but that is not how it’s being sold.

 

Yeah because they couldn't sell it like that or they would have spoiled the story that it's not actually a remake.

 

And how it's sold is different from how it's told.

[stepee]

Meh, I don’t buy it. The title Remake is what they are selling, so that is what we are talking about. They named it that way to say it’s a Remake and sell it that way. Anything else is just internally changing the meaning of the title in your head to fit the narrative. 

[Kal-El814]

Yeah, let’s not pretend that Square calling FFVII Remake exactly that was anything other than their attempt at some kind of MGS2 swerve; it obviously has another meaning once you start playing.

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

Yeah, let’s not pretend that Square calling FFVII Remake exactly that was anything other than their attempt at some kind of MGS2 swerve; it obviously has another meaning once you start playing.

 

This.

 

Spoiler

There is no fucking way that Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase and the crew were pulling some brilliant Hideo Kojima MGS2 type move. They aren't smart enough for that (see: Kingdom Hearts' ridiculous plotting). They billed the game and series as a straight remake to sell the game, simple as that. Saying it's a title referring to Sephiroth "remaking the world" is patently retroactive. Yes, was it a pretty crazy Kojima-type twist within the game? Yeah, definitely, hence the divisive response to the end of the game. But the word remake in the title a reference to that? No way.

 

And to be clear, I like the remake and the twist's implications. Do I have confidence Nomura and all can stick the landing? No. I hope they do, it's pretty interesting (though the Evangelion remake movies kind of did this already).

 

[Keyser_Soze]

23 minutes ago, stepee said:

Meh, I don’t buy it. The title Remake is what they are selling, so that is what we are talking about. They named it that way to say it’s a Remake and sell it that way. Anything else is just internally changing the meaning of the title in your head to fit the narrative. 

 

This is why they are bringing out the real remake, but it's only for mobile.

 

Nothing is internally changing in the console version. That is the narrative of the game.

 

AND this is why the second and third game are not called Remake part 2 and 3, because they aren't remakes.

[Bacon]

That last sentence has me bustin' a nut @Greatoneshere

 

Edit: well the last sentence before you had made an edit 

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Yeah because they couldn't sell it like that or they would have spoiled the story that it's not actually a remake.

Well it spoiled it for me... I'm assuming this is a major story point? Was planning on playing the game at some point and didn't expect a pretty big story point to be spoiled in another thread but whatever.

[BloodyHell]

12 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Well it spoiled it for me... I'm assuming this is a major story point? Was planning on playing the game at some point and didn't expect a pretty big story point to be spoiled in another thread but whatever.

I mean, no, it really doesn’t spoil anything, it’s completely obvious within the first two hours of the game (by the time you get back from the bombing mission that starts the game). It’s very, very clear it’s a separate game almost right away.

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, stepee said:

Meh, I don’t buy it. The title Remake is what they are selling, so that is what we are talking about. They named it that way to say it’s a Remake and sell it that way. Anything else is just internally changing the meaning of the title in your head to fit the narrative. 

No, they didn’t. They sold it that way to not ruin the surprise, but they said from day one it would not be a 1:1 remake. 
 

 

[Paperclyp]

13 hours ago, Brian said:

Witcher 1 was a cult classic and did pretty well commercially by selling 1M in the first year. Witcher 2 sold 1M in 3 months. Witcher 3 had 1M in preorders.  When I think of a third game exploding is a successful series, FC and GTA come to mind. 

 

Yeah totally, like I said I think I'm just painting it with my own experience too much. 

[stepee]

So on pc this is confirmed to have the full RT suite. Shadows, reflections, AO, GI. And basically every setting is pushed to a new higher Ultra+ quality. This is going to look like a remake and definitely be one of the best looking things out there.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

So on pc this is confirmed to have the full RT suite. Shadows, reflections, AO, GI. And basically every setting is pushed to a new higher Ultra+ quality. This is going to look like a remake and definitely be one of the best looking things out there.

 

I think posted this in the wrong thread

[stepee]

5 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

I think posted this in the wrong thread

 

While this is true, I’m almost positive most of what I said will still apply!

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The Witcher remake won't be out until sometime after The Witcher 4, and we have no idea when that will be | PC Gamer

WWW.PCGAMER.COM

---

CD Projekt confirmed the timeline in its most recent financial call.

 

Quote

"[The Witcher remake] will come after Polaris, which is a consequence of how we think about this project," CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński said in response to a question about the remake launch timing. "We think that [the] remake will be based in big part on technologies from Polaris. So, it will be developed partially parallel to Polaris, but once Polaris is launched, everything for Polaris will be then in the final shape and it will be, partially, be produced in [the] remake."

 

[Mr.Vic20]

I'm going to start measure big releases in GPUs. I think this game is 2-3 GPUs away! 

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I'm going to start measure big releases in GPUs. I think this game is 2-3 GPUs away! 

 

This seems accurate! Can’t wait to unlock the power of DLSS5 (generates frames from nothing but sheer willpower) and run it at 8k/240fps!