General Gaming News and Discussion

Burns said:

Damned weak willed nerds, it's all your fault!
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Dragon Age maestro says EA always spoke about a hypothetical 'nerd cave' full of diehard RPG fans who would "always show up," so you "didn't have to try and appeal to them"

Maybe they were right, but they shouldn't have said it

www.gamesradar.com

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This works for politics, when you only have two parties. But for gaming, where we have alternatives? What a dummy. Word of mouth works both ways.

Dr.Retarded said:

Just what I always wanted to play as, a Japanese school girl!

Seriously WTF. I think I played the first four on console back in the day, and love them but they all have their ups and downs, I'm definitely not the target audience for this one even though it looks good.

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Yeah, not too sold on the Japanese schoolgirl protagonist, but I'll give it a go anyway since I enjoyed the previous ones.

Eh, I'm of two minds with the Ciri stuff.

On one hand, she was trained by Geralt, whose entire demeanor is big badass with a soft voice and several big sticks. She's going to carry that arrogance (especially as a continuation of the same story) and it's likely she would act in a similar manner, but with her own quirks as evidenced by previous games. Hence, you get overly confident and "oh shit, I fucked up" kind of reactions from her to things she takes for granted, which is a lot because she was trained by Geralt, who fucked up a lot while still being a badass.

I get it.

On the other hand, without the entire "witchers are basically drug enhanced humans" angle behind it, her being a witcher is laughable at absolute best. It's a common problem with video game artists in the modern era. They try to make 120lb broads the equivalent of 240lb jacked dudes in most situations, and it rings (correctly) absolutely false for the majority of the playerbase. Not that I want a super butch lady as a protagonist, but she should be huge lesbian levels of jacked if she has been constantly swinging swords around for years. Her being built like a barista at a local coffee shop just comes off as... retarded. Who cares about her face; she's literally not physically descriptive for the role she is playing. Or for the backstory. Or for what she is being shoehorned into doing.

She's just not believable, even in a fantasy world.

Dr.Retarded said:

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Game looks like it got a speed boost.

Harshaw said:

Anyone else looked into this? Just came across it a few days ago and hhad never heard of it before. It looks like a cyberpunky GTA.

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its published by the hitman devs but not made by them. first impressions have been pretty bad but its hard to trust reviewers nowadays, game is out in 3 days so we'll see.

the game was expensive as hell apparently to dev ($200m+? ex rockstar devs) and has literally zero hype 3 days before launch. Some of the character models look rough as hell

Rezz said:

Eh, I'm of two minds with the Ciri stuff.

On one hand, she was trained by Geralt, whose entire demeanor is big badass with a soft voice and several big sticks. She's going to carry that arrogance (especially as a continuation of the same story) and it's likely she would act in a similar manner, but with her own quirks as evidenced by previous games. Hence, you get overly confident and "oh shit, I fucked up" kind of reactions from her to things she takes for granted, which is a lot because she was trained by Geralt, who fucked up a lot while still being a badass.

I get it.

On the other hand, without the entire "witchers are basically drug enhanced humans" angle behind it, her being a witcher is laughable at absolute best. It's a common problem with video game artists in the modern era. They try to make 120lb broads the equivalent of 240lb jacked dudes in most situations, and it rings (correctly) absolutely false for the majority of the playerbase. Not that I want a super butch lady as a protagonist, but she should be huge lesbian levels of jacked if she has been constantly swinging swords around for years. Her being built like a barista at a local coffee shop just comes off as... retarded. Who cares about her face; she's literally not physically descriptive for the role she is playing. Or for the backstory. Or for what she is being shoehorned into doing.

She's just not believable, even in a fantasy world.

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thats the big problem with female space marines that thge lefties are constantly screaming about. basically space marines have had puberty hijacked and it made them grotesquely overmuscled.

but if you did that to a woman you'd wind up with a horrific slab of muscle on a weird little frame and it would be utterly unfeminine. you basically would wind up with a wow dwarf, facial hair and all and nobody wants that.

Rezz said:

Eh, I'm of two minds with the Ciri stuff.

On one hand, she was trained by Geralt, whose entire demeanor is big badass with a soft voice and several big sticks. She's going to carry that arrogance (especially as a continuation of the same story) and it's likely she would act in a similar manner, but with her own quirks as evidenced by previous games. Hence, you get overly confident and "oh shit, I fucked up" kind of reactions from her to things she takes for granted, which is a lot because she was trained by Geralt, who fucked up a lot while still being a badass.

I get it.

On the other hand, without the entire "witchers are basically drug enhanced humans" angle behind it, her being a witcher is laughable at absolute best. It's a common problem with video game artists in the modern era. They try to make 120lb broads the equivalent of 240lb jacked dudes in most situations, and it rings (correctly) absolutely false for the majority of the playerbase. Not that I want a super butch lady as a protagonist, but she should be huge lesbian levels of jacked if she has been constantly swinging swords around for years. Her being built like a barista at a local coffee shop just comes off as... retarded. Who cares about her face; she's literally not physically descriptive for the role she is playing. Or for the backstory. Or for what she is being shoehorned into doing.

She's just not believable, even in a fantasy world.

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For medieval fantasy Ciri wouldn't need to be changed all that much to get her more believable (make her taller). The biggest problem I have with it is the lore they have set up does not jive with a women being a Witcher. Retcons are always jarring and will take some getting used to, if you are a lorefag of an IP.

From a historical perspective, long swords with lengths like the ones Geralt wields are around 3 pounds, balanced to put the center of weight on the top hand. I don't remember what they did for the third game, but in the first two games they brought in HEMA (Historical European Martial Artists) sword experts to model Geralt's fighting. Now real HEMA is very short and brutal, so it would be boring for a game that is not built around it (like Ghost of Toshima), but they can still make it look more believable by using it as a base. Wielding the longsword sword, according to the HEMA guy I just watched (linked below), is more about skill, leverage, and the conditions where the fight take place, over strength.

The vast majority of historical knights would have been below 6ft tall and probably 170 to 180 pounds. Even today, a majority of our best warriors (special forces operators) are not hulking beasts, but normal looking dudes that are just in optimal shape for their size (probably 200lbs or less, not steroid body builders). So if they made her 6'2 or 6'3 they could bring her up to 150lbs+, which would make it more historical plausible (if that's your thing, increasing immersion).

Best examples I can think of are going to be, of course, Game of Thrones Bronn being a little taller than an average size of a knight and Brienne being the size of a more believable Ciri. I have seen plenty of more attractive woman than Gwendoline Christie around her height, so it's not like they would need to make Ciri the exact same build, just tall enough to give her more muscle weight. Both Geralt and Ciri use leather armor in the lore (afaik), so it's not like she needs the extra strength for plate.

That said, if it was real life, I would still bet that a man would have at least a 90% win rate over a woman, if both were highly trained, even with the setup above. Luckily this is a fantasy land with magic and that goes a long way in keeping up my suspension of disbelief. Which circles around to the lore. Making what the writing team comes up with crucial, for how immersive the Witcher 4 is.

Here is a HEMA guy talking about HEMA and going through some common misconceptions. I think the video is a bit mistitled as it's just him talking, so don't expect any sparring/demonstrations (like I did):

I get what you're saying, and I largely agree. But this is a fantasy world with her coming up against things that would realistically be blocking her hits, at full speed, occasionally. And her blocking other hits, at full speed, at least occasionally. If she's been doing this for years, she'd just be objectively a lot more jacked than Ciri is portrayed. Even drug enhanced - Geralt is a buff dude even ingame. To be equally effective, Ciri would largely need to be similar in size, which the model they are using is absolutely not. Geralt isn't spending time at the gym to get jacked; he's jacked because he's a combat guy doing combat things fairly frequently. That's just naturally going to buff someone up. Yeah the weapons themselves aren't like 20lb weights or anything, but if you're swinging them around, even just practicing, you're going to be substantially larger at least in the shoulders than Ciri is shown as. Which is also an extremely unfeminine look.

Rezz said:

Eh, I'm of two minds with the Ciri stuff.

On one hand, she was trained by Geralt, whose entire demeanor is big badass with a soft voice and several big sticks. She's going to carry that arrogance (especially as a continuation of the same story) and it's likely she would act in a similar manner, but with her own quirks as evidenced by previous games. Hence, you get overly confident and "oh shit, I fucked up" kind of reactions from her to things she takes for granted, which is a lot because she was trained by Geralt, who fucked up a lot while still being a badass.

I get it.

On the other hand, without the entire "witchers are basically drug enhanced humans" angle behind it, her being a witcher is laughable at absolute best. It's a common problem with video game artists in the modern era. They try to make 120lb broads the equivalent of 240lb jacked dudes in most situations, and it rings (correctly) absolutely false for the majority of the playerbase. Not that I want a super butch lady as a protagonist, but she should be huge lesbian levels of jacked if she has been constantly swinging swords around for years. Her being built like a barista at a local coffee shop just comes off as... retarded. Who cares about her face; she's literally not physically descriptive for the role she is playing. Or for the backstory. Or for what she is being shoehorned into doing.

She's just not believable, even in a fantasy world.

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I'm of one mind on the Ciri thing, firstly because of femboss fatigue, and secondly...


CDPR's been ideologically captured for a good while now, and the pattern is so well established that South Park officially coined it as, "put a chick in it and make her lame and gay." They can come up with all of the copium excuses that they want, but they put the trans in how transparent their decision to make Ciri the protagonist (which also invalidates two of her endings from The Witcher 3), and we can only imagine what they haven't let out of the gag-bag.

I would have been more open to the possibility of female Witchers had they gone with creating your own custom Witcher, down to the school and fighting style.

Furry said:

Pretty sure when a husband and wife got big mad enough that they were made to duel to the death in the middle ages, typical procedure was to put the man in a hole to his shoulders where he had a small area to move and tie his main hand behind his back, and force him to fight her with just his offhand. Woman could move around freely. Can't remember what weapon they both got. Probably clubs or axes of some sort.

Men probably still won most the time.

Long swords are not a great weapon for a lot of reasons. They look cool, but they actually kinda suck as a weapon. Halberds, lances, spears and the like were FAR more common. Swords were learned, and some sword dueling did occur, but often it was about as real as HEMA. They'd slap each other around with swords until the judge declared one a winner, and then whatever dispute they had would be settled in that man's favor. It's likely that most of the history around longswords was symbolic, or the fact peasants thought they were cool so people loved using long swords in theatrical productions.

Honestly, I'd rather have a Shield and a dagger than a longsword in a duel if there was full armor. Armor REALLY amplifies the problems with swords, and essentially turns the fight into a wrestling match, and once you're in close a long sword is entirely useless. And sure you could run around like a fag ala bronn and tire someone in full plate out, but the judge in medieval times would probably have you executed before that worked.

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Last I read, the story about putting a man in a hole, was actually an oddity recorded in some small area of Europe and not representative of anything widespread. Furthermore, only a nobleman would have been a trained fighter, so trying to compare a trained fighter, half buried against someone that has never swung a weapon at another person is hardly comparable to what we are talking about.

As for the duels specifically, I've never studied the sword, nor ever cared much about the dueling dandies that plagued Europe in different iterations through the ages, so I will take your word for it.

On the other hand, I have studied European wars and know how armies are set up. The reason polearms were so prevalent is mainly because they took far less training to use proficiently. Toss one into a peasant's hand and boom, you have the bulk of your army in short order. That doesn't mean they were better than a sword in a trained hand. The battlefield is nothing like a duel and the nobles that knew how to use a swords were usually cavalry based and much more valuable than a peasant with a polearm (in the battle). The main purpose of cavalry is to flank the opposing army and cause them to route. Routes were where the vast majority of casualties came from before gunpowder.