Witcher 3: So much better on PC than consoles? - GameSpot's The Lobby

Brought to you by The Witcher 3, Wild Hunt. Available now. Hello! And welcome to Lobby, Gamespot's weekly hangout every Tuesday at 2 PM Pacific, right here on Gamespot.com. I'm your host, Danny O'Dwyer. Joined as ever by Christopher Waters. Hi Danny! Fantastic shirt as ever. Thank you. I You can address me as the white wolf- Okay. From now on. After the promo art for this. Yeah. Shout out to Anthony. Every week. Every week. Look at that. That is fantastic. Did you see that? Look at my hair [INAUDIBLE] So the problem is that Anthony has to go with like five pictures of us that have been taken- Oh really? wearing the same clothes in the same position. Yeah same expressions. So his way around this. I always end up with a mad face. Because it;s more, you pout a mad face on video game characters more easily than So he straight up like [INAUDIBLE] personality as well. Yeah I'm simmering with rage underneath but I'm just real happy they didn't do the wild wolf on me cuz I'm a little bit self conscious about the grey hair thing. No Photoshop needed. No, it's true. Could've saved about an hour of thumbnail production time. Today we are very happy to be joined by Mr Jason A Striker. GiantBomb.com Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I have you here for one very very good reason. Cuz we're such good friends. Of course because we're wonderful friends and also because you've been playing The Witcher, all weekend. Yes! I've been playing a **** load of The Witcher. So it's finally out. It's out today for public consumption. PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4. All over the place. And what were you playing over the weekend? What version? Over the weekend we got Code 4 the Xbox One version and I was initially having some issues with it running. But as it turned out it was all on my side. There was a caching issue but once I got that sorted out it was still stuttering a little bit here and there. It definitely seems to be, my wife saw if for the first time, she's said are you playing on the 360? Oh no, don't say that. [CROSSTALK] Open world areas [CROSSTALK] where the foliage is a little flat and whatnot. But When you're in cut scenes and everything, Matt some of the texture is, like I don't like to throw out the word stunning. Yeah. But the game is pretty damn good looking. Especially on PC now. Oh, so I guess this is where we get in to, at the moment Rob is doing a graphics comparison, where he has it running at 60 frames a second of 2K I'm playing on Xbox One, and it looks great. It looks great on Xbox One, do you think it looks good on PS4? Yeah, I'm playing PS4. I played about two hours last night. It did that thing where you slow down and pan the camera around to just see the sunset. Even the interior of the first inn you go in to. Just the vibrant, like paintings on the wall and the little flower decorations hanging. Like that detail and that visual vibrancy, it's a looker. So I yeah, I'm right there with you. I think it looks really good on Xbox One. I was kind of surprised, happy but surprised about that. But I'm not going in to have a look at it on 60 frames a second. Is on PC. Have you seen a big difference? It went slowly, yeah. It was a night and day difference. Did you start it again? Yeah, I started again and I actually kinda went at my own pace, so like all those undiscovered locations that I found in my first playthrough, I discovered the hell out of those this time. [LAUGH] So yeah, I took my time. I'm not quite as far as I was. When I played over the weekend. Hm. But that was just like six hours of game play last night. Wow, so we talked a little bit last week about the game, and sort of the broad strokes, when we had Kevin on for our review. Of course, the nice ten out of ten on Gamespot.com's history. Hm, that's great. Let's talk about some of the quests, and stay away from the main quest stuff. Okay. Just some of the like interesting little stories, anecdotes that you've had playing the early part of this game. Is there any interesting stories that pop out to you over the past couple day? What's been amazing to me is how fleshed out and well written all of these side stories are. Mm-hm. In comparison to like the Witcher two, which really starts out with a bang. Yeah. Almost literally cuz you're in bed for the trip. [LAUGH] You know, they throw you in to big battles, there's a big dragon and everything. Yeah. But in this very subdued, you go through that initial Like tutorial section which ends up being a flashback but after that they're just like hey go find Jennifer. So I'm like all right we'll see how this goes and I started talking to more MPCs and I'm like these guys seem placeholder but I'm actually interested in what they're having to say so everything seems so well written that it's engrossed to me in a different way than Then Witcher 2 did. Yeah, I'm surprised by the question mark on things stuff you're talking about. It's probably one of the more, I've started to pick peninsulas and just say I'm gonna spend the next 15 minutes. [CROSSTALK] Yeah just like this area of the map looks like it doesn't have anything going on. I wonder if there's something happening there. And there's always a bunch of stuff happening in there. Yeah, I was on the quest for, I was looking for some root At the riverbed or something like that. Part of a side quest and there was an old lady with an exclamation point above her head and she's like peeking in the windows of this old hut. I'm like, alright lady what are you up to, and she's starts telling me about her night. How some creepy guy was trying to get her frying pan and ended up borrowing it and All right lady. She's like, the prank van's right there, let me go get it. So you go do it and you find out that there was like a grisly murder inside and there's like intrigue. There's like spy notes all over the place. And after every time that you look at something, she's like, did you find my frying pan yet? [LAUGH] At that moment is you go into a hut. Pick up a pen and bring it out to an old lady, who is like distraught she lost her pen- Right. Yeah. But it's so full of character and it's so interesting that it's like, Yup, I want to look at those [UNKNOWN]- And on Earth, yeah, a whole other side chain of events that you can dive into. I just had this part where I played hide-and-seek with a bunch of kids- To get information off them. And I was pretty sure I could have intimidated them but I was just like, whatever. Yeah, I've got Witcher Sense, this isn't going to take long. And then one of them had climbed up on the roof of the building and then I had to climb up and then down into a hay bale. And then I was like, there you are. I found you and you're like, yeah but you found me last. So she was like delighted because it was like, you got me last, I won hide and seek. That's a good line. How far [CROSSTALK] affect of the mental manipulation sign on children? Has that been documented? I had this one boy telling me that like, i'm looking Syrians and yet not this, if this is like baby Siri but I'm at one stage where I'm like asking this one kid where Siri is and he's like I don't know man, apparently all the girls with titties go into the woods. [LAUGH] And I was like, what? [LAUGH] He was like this is a little child. And he's like, yeah, my dad used to tell me that when the soldiers come, the girls with the nice titties go into the woods. And I'm like, okay. Yep. Do you wanna play hide and seek? Cause this is getting pretty awkward. Do you wanna try to reclaim some of your lost childhood right now? Oh yeah, this kid's totally an orphan by the way. So just Donzo. That part, that quest stuff as we get into like the bog. Later when you're looking for yeah, yeah. But I keep getting side tracked. It's easy to. I think so many open world games, like when I think about it Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry 4 is fun, but a lot of those side quests are like, yeah. Like also the course, you've kind of like, oh I've got 15 of these, collect the feather quest and 15 of these destroy the outpost and there is some of that stuff here like monster holes and what not but it tends to be a lot more berried and yeah, like that's like a lot more. ways like mechanically when you're in the missions that they're sort of like you said, like all you're doing is going and picking up a frying pan and bringing it back to her. But they just do stuff to like dress that way in a way that makes it entertaining. That's so true. I, like you know, we're looking [UNKNOWN] really early on. I went to the bounty board and I was like, alright I'll read what's going on. And lo and behold it's not just like a list of quests Random posts from people that are just fun to read. But I took one that was like I need to get to this well but it's haunted, kind of messed up. So you go and you talk to the guy and he tells you why he needs to get there. And you roll up to this little settlement that has a well and figure out pretty quickly it's guarded by a. You don't just go to that well, fight the race, and then go back to the dude. You search the houses, and all the while, Gerald is doing his investigation pattern, where he's kind of talking to himself about what a witcher is and what he does. Like it's informing you of that. And then, You end up doing some more stuff and then he's like, all right, I need to prepare for this fight. So it's almost like a little- Short tutorial. Yeah, it's tutorial. It has that in there. It doesn't feel like a tutorial at all. It doesn't feel like that and you're learning about Geralt in an authentic way, but the thing that struck me with that was These are quests, like this world is so full of grief. Yeah. And so full of, like with your orphan comment, like this world is full of people who's lives are torn apart by loss, even when there's not a war going on. Yeah, yeah. But because of all these creatures and these horrors, death and grief are such a part of people's lives. And that's what specifically, where. The rape is a physical manifest of just horrible grief echoing in the world that has this residence with me that just, yeah. I mean, that quest writing is just so, it's grabbing me right away. Yeah, it doesn't dive into the sort of melo drama you associate with a lot of high fantasy stuff. It's kind of more grounded. I remember there was one part, there's these like fight clubs that are in different towns and you can join in and you can bet on yourself and go into fight clubs. There was one of them, and like if it was any other game it would just be like, oh fight that guy, fight that guy, fight that guy, like in a row. But I went to this one, I bet like 35 goals or whatever on me winning the fight and it was just some fisherman. And then he was like, oh please The winner of this gets a bag of flour and I'm starving. Just like the winner of this bout and I'm like, oh man are you **** kidding me? So I just went in that video gamey way I decided who knows, if I do something nice for him maybe I'll get something back. Sure.. So I did the fight, and I bat him within an inch of his life and then stopped blocking and he bat me up and. Sure enough he wins, and he gets the flower. And nothing, nothing. I was kind of like, okay. I don't mind. And then I come back two hours later, and he's still reigning champion. So I went in, and I know I could beat the crap out of him. So I bet twice as much, like the top limits. I just pounded the **** out of him. [LAUGH] I just made my money back so we're all. So we're all good. [LAUGH] There's a little swerve like that. There's a guy that needs help on the side of the road. Apparently, his carts had been driven off the road by these drowners or whatever. Yeah. Come to find out, there's some investigation that he's actually the guy that shot it down. When you confront him about it. He gets completely dimwitted. And he's like, look, look behind you! Trying to run away. He's like, run? Yeah. And he hops on a hoarse when he starts chasing after this, this idiot, right? And you knock him off the hoarse. And come to find out, that he's actually a spy for the rebels of the area. Oh, wow. The lock box that he wanted you to obtain actually has Medical supplies for his homies. Wow. So you have the choice of giving them back to him, or keeping it. Yeah, big swerve in that. [CROSSTALK] And there seems to be dozens- Oh, I kept that medicine. Oh, really? I was like, you go on your way with your life. But Witcher gets paid. Don't try to mess with me. [LAUGH] Okay, last one. Cuz I don't want to give away any more spoilery stuff. All right. Have any of you guys- This is all very early, by the way. Yeah, this is super early. Have any of you guys seen the gentleman outside of, was it, Crow's Perch? Who has to beat up a hundred knights to get the honor of this woman. I love it. [LAUGH] And he's on 99 [LAUGH] he's on 99 and he comes up to Garoth and you're like Nay. [LAUGH] So you know he pulls out his sword, I tried to convince him not and it wouldn't work. And, so now I didn't fight him. Because I was like I don't want to kill this guy because he seems like a nice dude. Every time I go back to [UNKNOWN] he's waiting for me. [LAUGH] He's already standing there, and he's like get off there. [CROSSTALK] And [UNKNOWN] automatically pulls out his sword and I'm like, nope, just keep going. Just keep going and don't take a swing. Let the guy live- God, I kind of want to see what happens when you kill him. Yeah, all right, so what? Here's the question though. You've got multiple save slots, you can manual saves. Very true. What are your personal philosophies about saving, sticking with your decisions? Where we at? I tend to stick with them. But last night, I had the fortunate opportunity to replay some of the stuff that I had done before. Oh yeah. Oh, right, yeah. So, I chose different things. Yeah, like, there's a gentleman that you talked to, the emperor, actually, and you can choose whether or not to bow to him. Oh, yeah So I chose the opposite and yeah he treated me completely differently Oh really? in the conversation, it was really interesting. Did you bow the second time? I did not bow the second time. I didn't bow both times I was on it. The first time I bowed down which was kind of a humorous thing the first time but. You literally have to learn to bow. You have to do the hand knee in. Right arm and you have to-. Oh really? Get super smart. The one thing I've seen on Xbox One, I'm not sure if it's the same for PS4, it's probably different on PC's. There's a maximum ace of manual safe slots. So you can't oblivion and have like 300. PC is the same seems to just keep 'em going. Keep going. Yup. I usually Leapfrogs when I have multiple saves. Yeah, sure. But personally I haven't. I think I'm gonna try to stick through with the decisions I made. Yep, I'm with you. I did the same for Mass Effect. On Mass Effect 2, and I was Lucky enough that I got everyone through that. But I was like, this is it. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. That's tough. Because there's what, 36 total endings or something like that? Yeah. And your choices carry so much weight that it's tough to make those, especially the split decision. We gave the Witcher ten out of ten. You guys think it's up there? I think it's up there. There's definitely some technical issues Yeah. But if CV projects if anything, is that they continue to support the game post release. So, I have no worry that they'll sort it out Excellent. So far so good to me. Cool. Looking forward to playing more with your three while [UNKNOWN] over the next couple of weeks, perhaps months. If you want to see more of our coverage, go over to gamespot.com and let us know in the comments what you think of your time with Garold of Arivia. [MUSIC]