The Witcher 3 official specs revealed.

Crytek must've been trolloling when they released the original Crysis. To this day it still hammers the living crap out of modern hardware, and this is a game that was released in November 2007, so more than 7 years old now. I still remember how this game brought the then venerable 8800 Ultra to its knees, and this was like with half the settings on medium, so nevermind AA.

For a quick lolz, check this old AnandTech piece on 3 way SLI with 8800 Ultra.

 

Looks good. I like how colorful it is, but not oversaturated/overbloomed like Witcher 2 is at max settings. Noticed some pretty obvious foliage pop-in at the beginning when Geralt is going fast on the horse, but I guess that'll get cleaned up with more Polish. Visuals, esp. some of the spells and effects, remind me a lot of Dragon Age: Inquistion, which is another great looking game.

However, I'm wasn't very pleased to see the return of the low-quality SSAO from Witcher 2. It's really easy to see in the thick black halo that surrounds the feet of Geralt or his horse when they're moving in the shadows. Hopefully, since Witcher 3 is a GameWorks title, there will be the option for HBAO+.

 

If Crysis was trolling hard, then what does that make Oblivion and World in Conflict? Oblivion came out the year before, when flagship GPUs were only 1/3 as fast as the 8800. Although to be fair, Oblivion was a Bugthesda game and improved greatly with mods, while WiC was CPU-bound like crazy.

However, I think you and I can both agree that Crysis was arguably the biggest leap forward in graphics and physics ever.

 

Crysis 1 still doesn't make proper use of a PC. Last time I played it it only used 40% of each GPU and gave me like 45fps. I no understand game.

 

Don't remember either actually. Crysis left an impression because it was such a big deal at the time, and seeing my gf's 8800 Ultra SLI rig get bogged down was also quite eye opening. It wasn't until 3 years later that single GPUs were powerful enough to hit around 60 FPS with everything maxed at 1200p.

 

Crysis is pretty CPU-bound with a sufficiently powerful GPU config like you have. The game is dual-core optimized and there's a lot of CPU work going on in terms of draw calls and physics calculations. It really likes high clocks.

AnandTech | NVIDIA's 3-way SLI: Can we finally play Crysis?

 

I don't even remember my CPU being owned like that. Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 held my CPU down and said "come here!", but Crysis 1 didn't seem to be so bad. I really should finish that game someday.

 

You and me both. I first tried playing Crysis on High with my GTS 350M, and it was reasonably playable at 30 FPS at 720p. Got about halfway through and stopped playing because instead of balls to the wall action I got a tactical shooter.

Second time tried playing on 780M SLI, every single setting cranked to max wit 32x CSAA (I think?) and got around 60-70 FPS at 1080p. Once again stopped playing halfway through because OMGIHATESTEALTH.

<del>Third time tried playing on 970 SLI, got to the part where you have to rescue Rosenthal and just said "phack it" and never touched it again LOL</del> I lied, it's not even installed on my desktop :laugh:

 

Dude, you could play the first half of Crysis (before the Ceph showed up) however you wanted. Tons of freedom. It was only the second half that turned into Crysis 2/3 like, that's the reason I've never finished more than half of the game. Original Far Cry was the same thing. Those damn mutant monkey Trigens showed up and ruined the game for me. Second half was a generic corridor shooter with an even cheesier plot.

Crysis Warhead didn't suffer from the same problem as Crysis, though. Did you enjoy that? I actually finished Warhead because of it.

 

I finished Warhead twice, I remember. But I couldn't bring myself to finish 1 for some reason. I just have no idea why but it started to really bore me after a particular point.

 

Yep, that's exactly what I was talking about. As soon as Crysis starts becoming super story-driven and linear instead of sandboxy and exploration/discovery/player agency driven is when it ceases being fun IMO. That's why I hated second half of Crysis and Crysis 2 & 3.

 

Perhaps tactical shooter wasn't the best choice of words, but what I was trying to get at is that the entire Crysis series focuses more on planning and well, tactics instead of the balls to the wall, run and gun style FPS that I prefer/been used to since the Doom era. Basically in Crysis if you tried to be a hero you were dead, doubly so when up against the Ceph. Open world or corridor shooter doesn't really matter too much in this regard. This is why I enjoyed Wolfenstein: The New Order a lot more -- dual wielding those assault rifles and going on a Nazi killing spree was just oh so satisfying. Hope that made sense.

 

I get you. You like old-school FPS. Shadow Warrior, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Serious Sam, Bulletstorm, Painkiller, Hard Reset, etc. Same here, but I also like to mix it up.

 

Pretty much. I do enough thinking at work so if I'm going to be playing a game (and a shooter no less) then I just want to relax and have some mindless fun. This is why I actually didn't enjoy Bulletstorm all that much, it was fun for the first few hours, and then the skillshots system started to seriously grind on me, especially when something as simple as resupplying ammo depended on it. A couple times I had to go out of my way to pull off some ridiculous skillshots just so I'd have enough skill points.

 

I took a couple screenshots of the low quality SSAO I mentioned earlier. Yes, I downloaded the entire 3GB HQ video.

Spoiler

Note the dark halo in the snow around Geralt's horse.


Note the black crush under Geralt's feet, under the duck, under the grass, and between the bush and house on the left.

In Witcher 2, it is possible to force HBAO+ on Nvidia cards using the Dark Souls II flag. HBAO+ is much more subtle and accurate than SSAO, plus no heavy-handed haloing around people (esp. Geralt) and furniture:

Spoiler

No AO


SSAO


HBAO+

Hopefully, that Witcher 3 video is of a console build or early PC build without all graphical features implemented yet. It would be weird for Witcher 2 to have better AO. Witcher 3 needs to have HBAO+ built-in since it is DX11-only and driver HBAO+ flags do not work in 99% of DX11 games.

 

I really enjoyed Crysis 1 and warhead. Crysis 2 & 3 went completely of tangent and while I finished them I didn't enjoy do much as warhead which was my favorite.

 

Yes, this looks great. Witcher 2 did seem to be oversaturated in comparison. A bit too much orange and teal everywhere, I think they took complementary color theory a little too far.

 

Desktop GTX 770 = 30fps.

http://www.game-debate.com/news/?ne...t 30 Frames Per Second With Recommended Specs

980M beats the desktop 770, so I'm expecting similar performance to Dragon Age Inquisition.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

A more complete article here The Witcher 3 Dev: Recommended PC Specs Will Run It At 30FPS, Not 60FPS, Details On Graphics Effects & More Out
There we learn that Ultra settings are not optimized yet, so i guess recommended is 30fps (for the moment, can be more at release) high settings. That's fine for me, as a 970m is nearly a 770

 

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Spoiler

• Breast physics

InB4 Polish jokes.

 

Ugh your joke made no sense to me lol///

 

GOG is now offering -20% on TW3 pre-order for TW1 and TW2 owners, and -15% for TW1 or TW2 owners.

 

I'm tempted to pre-order at 20% off.

 

The RRP for this game is £50!!! D:

Gah. Bring back the days when games were £30 at full RRP before retailer discount! It was only a few years ago. We'll be at the dreaded £60 = $60 in no time at this rate, the prices keep on shooting up with no end in sight!

Still a Day 1 purchase for me because CD Projekt RED seems like one of the few remaining developers that I can trust to make a functional PC version on release day.

EDIT: I now notice a further discount to compensate for the inflated regional pricing. With that discount it takes the game down to £31.79 - which is much more palatable. Now I have to choose between Steam for £34.99 or GOG for £31.79...

 

GOG of course. Cheaper and DRM-free, plus more extras.

Oh yeah, and you get a free copy of Neverwinter Nights: Diamond. Not sure the Steam pre-order gives you that.

 

*cough* Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 *cough*


They did get their crap together afterwards though.

 

Hnnggg

CD Projekt explains why The Witcher 3 has 16 hours of scene mo-cap data - PC Gamer

 

Pretty much. The only reason to go with Steam version is if you want to have it in your Steam library (will be still redeemable on GOG) and hassle free installation (GOG does have some client a la Steam, haven't tried it).
Otherwise yeah, I vote for GOG as well.

Take that, Bioware! We even mo-caped it!

 

I can't imagine how awkward that must've been for the mo-cap actors...

 

So now how could we not want this game? ^^

 

"We're gonna put this sensor on there and you, put this in there"
Not sure how detailed exactly they went with the whole "hot sauce", but there are special actors who gladly oblige with such extraordinary requests. Movies some times employ such people. But in this case maybe even "ordinary" actors were fine with that.

Right. It's not like there are no other sources for such things on the Internet? Am I right?

 

Yes sadly, internet is way too clean...

Joking apart, it's nice to see a video game not shy to show "the thing even censored here" while the others rated "M" hardly show some breast but excel in limitless graphic violence over time...

 

What do you think about this trailer The witcher 3 ?

 

Meh. Bad music, 360p, ugly as hell. So what if you know how to use basic video editing software.

 

That says "Gameplay". That's not gameplay, it's just a trailer of cutscenes.

 

It also isn't "pencil sketched", the effect was just added in video editing software.

I wasn't a big fan of those actual pencil sketched/comic book stylized cutscenes in TW2... Dunno, felt kinda out of place...

 

So a guy playing W3 at that public play says a 4790K and GTX 980 was around 30fps with dips to 15 at high settings... :S

 

4 months before release, plenty of time to optimize.

 

Sounds about right for the CDPR title .

 

I'm assuming this Ultra setting includes some form of SSAA, like TW2 did? Because that will cripple framerates and is easily turned off without sacrificing much in the way of visual fidelity at all.

I'm hoping I can run the game at ultra with a consistent minimum of 30fps once SSAA is disabled.

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

So maybe I missed this somewhere, but do the system requirements anywhere mention the minimum and recommended amounts of VRAM? I'm on the verge of ordering the Sager 8652 which has the 980M with 4GB VRAM. I wonder if this would be adequate for 1080p gaming at 60 fps and high (not ultra) settings?

 

CDPR confirmed that Ubersampling will be returning. No idea if the Ultra preset automatically has it enabled though.

You should be fine in regards to VRAM as the recommended GPUs, 770 and 290, have 2GB and 4GB respectively. However, apparently CDPR intends recommended spec to be adequate for only 1080p High 30 FPS.

 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Official PC Recommended Specs Are For Mid-High Settings At 1080p

 

This game sounds more and more unoptimized every day

 

FTFY.

 

I thought Assassin's Creed Unity was the next Crysis

 

You call those graphics worthy of the next Crysis???

 

At least Crysis was technically superior to other games at the time. Unity isn't even that technically impressive.

 

Desktop GTX 770 at medium gets 30fps? So the 980M is already doomed? WTF?! D:

 

The only thing technically impressive about AC Unity is its massively excessive number of NPC's. And pushing 50,000 draw calls through DX11, bringing even high-end rigs to their knees and causing all manner of graphical glitches at the beginning.