It's been a tough year for delays, and despite not even having set foot in 2015 yet, another of next year's most anticipated games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has graciously asked for more development time through an open letter from CD Projekt RED.
The studio has cited the sheer size and ambition of their newest project, calling it the studio's "most important game" in its history.
Dear Gamers,
Ever since we started working on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we knew it would be an ambitious game. We wanted, and still aim, to give you an incredible experience, an epic adventure in a vast, completely open fantasy universe.
The sheer size and complexity of The Witcher, key features of the title, have had a decisive impact on production. Now, nearing the end of our work, we see many details that need to be corrected. When we release the most important game in our studio’s history, we must be absolutely sure that we did everything we could to limit any bugs to a level that will allow you to enjoy the game thoroughly.
With this in mind, we took another look at current workloads and what they mean for the team. Even though everyone is working at full speed, we concluded that we need another 12 weeks, so we are shifting the release date of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to May 19th, 2015.
We owe you an apology. We set the release date too hastily. It’s a hard lesson, one to take to heart for the future. We know what we want to do to make Wild Hunt one of the best RPGs you will ever play. And we continue to work hard to achieve just that. So, we apologize and ask for your trust.
Thank you for the all support you show us on a daily basis. We truly do appreciate it. It has fueled us in our passion since the start and will continue to do so.
The Board of CD PROJEKT SA
Take from the push back what you will, but in this day and age, more development time to get games of this magnitude right, can only (hopefully) produce a better (eventual) outcome for all.
What are your thoughts?
Posted 11:40am 09/12/14
However if it is to make the game better, and on this I trust CD Projekt RED, then go for it.
If it was EA or something I'd be dubious on their reasoning.
Go, CD Projekt RED, go and do what it takes to deliver the most epic of RPG's created thus far.... no pressure..
Posted 12:19pm 09/12/14
I just finished playing DA:I and it was the buggiest Bioware release I've ever played (not counting their MMO). It is Bethesda levels of bugs and needed a lot more time in development to smooth out the experience but having EA as your publisher obviously has draw backs like having to be released before Christmas no matter what. The problem with single player games like this being released so buggy isn't just that by the time they patch it I wont still be playing but there isn't much faith that they will patch it at all since they don't have a longer shelf life like multi-player games. I actually enjoyed the game a lot and forgave a lot of the bugs probably because I am happy to forgive Bethesda most of the time as well but I got hit with a story breaking bug right at the end which basically ruined my entire play through and will make it hard for me to want to continue onto the next installment if it isn't fixed.
From what I hear AC:Unity is almost unplayable and Ubisoft are already moving on to their next release so it is unlikely it will ever see a real patch. I used to get preorders a couple of days before release so I got all the preorder bonuses but now I don't think those bonuses are worth it compared to getting stuck with a game that wont be worth playing for months after release, if ever.
Posted 12:49pm 09/12/14
apparently there's a patch coming out for PC in the next day or two.
last edited by ravn0s at 12:49:42 09/Dec/14
Posted 01:30pm 09/12/14
Posted 04:09pm 09/12/14
Posted 05:32pm 09/12/14
There are a few other polish issues like no re-mappable mouse keys and party members roadblocking s*** all the time.
The bug that I got hit with is something called the divine bug which I wont go into due to spoilers but it's basically where the game makes a decision at the end of the game that is counter to the decision which you had selected. Some people are saying that it is due to an attempt by Bioware to make it a layered choice but the issue for me is they give you an option to make a direct decision and then seem to ignore that decision claiming that you made a different choice in the final dialogue.
It ended up having really disastrous results for my end story.
Posted 06:58pm 09/12/14
Posted 11:49pm 09/12/14
that sucks. i hope it doesn't happen to me.
i read a lot of people have experienced the banter bug where your party members don't speak when adventuring. thankfully mine have been chatting away the whole game.
haha. there's actually a couple of female dwarf characters that would have been interesting to romance imo.
last edited by ravn0s at 23:49:27 09/Dec/14
Posted 04:17pm 16/12/14