...and let us not forget in this day and age such things as paid reviews, both for the good, and the bad. I bet we have all read at least one review in the last year that was just someones paid opinion, and they never even touched the product.

they don't actually pay them, they do stuff like giving them early access, interviews with key design people and so forth. But at the end of the day, what really speaks louder, 20 million people plunking down a billion dollars for a game, or the opinion of a dozen pretentious magazine writers. And even if you want to put stock in it, every one I've seen has had the two games neck and neck. No one is intimating that the witcher 3 is a vastly superior game. Most have it as a toss up

Oh. So now it's a conspiracy

Yeah, I doubt CD Projekt is paying for reviews of their stuff, nor is Bethesda.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_Gb0bu2vsuA/maxresdefault.jpg

Paid reviews are quite real. Receiving goods is no different than cash. It's still being paid to do it.

I was not implying any one company/website is doing this in this case, I was trying to suggest one simply can not trust everything they read these days, including reviews due to this.

But yeah, lets jump on the "conspiracy" bandwagon...

Gotta love those numbers.

why your so amused by a statement nobody has made is beyond me. Your going to have to explain that one

I've got a 2 year old rig with a GTX 760 and get solid 60 fps everywhere in FO4, same in MGS V and Skyrim. Never seen the point to a console as I need a PC anyway. Never had a problem since I gave up on ATI cards a couple PCs ago.

DaYMN! Just take the kid gloves off there why dontcha!?

I had the feeling this was a thing. Thanks for confirming it *Applauds!*

#JetFuelCantMeltSteelBeams

Well I only use aggregates to back up my own thoughts of FO4 being not up to BGS standards.

Well, I will preface this with I haven't played any Witcher games, and really the only predefined PC game I have ever really played is ME, and I stopped halfway through 2. Say what you will about voiced PC and so on, I have never felt enough of a connection to predefined PC's to really consider them roleplaying games in the sense I enjoy them. Again, just my personal opinion, other people disagree and that is great.

But, if the flaming pile of drek that was DA:I can win a bunch of awards, then these designations lose a little weight.

Playing a character whose name, backstory and entire identity is "pre-defined" and handed to you is not "role-playing," it is "playing along." Yes you are playing a character and perhaps that character is far more complex and interesting than what you or your buddies could have imagined for your own creation; but I don't think this should receive the same label as games in which the player must create a character from scratch.

In truth, you NEVER create any of them completely from scratch. In every Roleplaying game ever, there are archetypes, guidelines and suggestions. But between that "relatively open" end of the continuum and the other end "highly-pre-defined characters" there is a lot of varying forms.

FO1, FO2, FO3, FONV, FO4 they all lie in more or less the same general vicinity, with FO4 being perhaps 1 or two notches (along a scale that is demarcated in the 1000ths) toward the "Witcher" end of the scale. A game like "Jagged Alliance" is considerably more toward the Witcher end of the scale, but a game like "Temple of Elemental Evil" is considerably more toward the truly open end of things. Baldur's Gate is probably around the same vicinity as the Fallout series.

There is a point between FO4 and Jagged Alliance (and far, FAR to the "more open" end of Witcher I suspect) where the game really shouldn't be called "role playing" I think. Jagged Alliance has characters, and you become attached to them. To the extent that you use the characters in particular roles in your squads, you "shape" them and you certainly determine their statistics changes as they gain experience and level up. But you are not really "role playing any of them." You have oversight over them and you use them as members of the team you control.

Reading Tom Sawyer, one certainly might come to identify with the protagonist in the same way they do in a game like Witcher, and like true role-playing games, the player gets to have control over some of the actions and patterns of growth in the protagonist in the game (but not in the book). Even though Tom Sawyer is a timeless character that is engaging maybe even life changing for millions, it isn't roleplaying. Even though Witcher may have much of what Tom Sawyer has, plus "decision" and "player guided change" it too lacks the full defining suite of roleplaying: all the preceding, plus player creativity, or as much as is allowed by the art form in question. One could argue that all role playing games place limits on the character you can create, but most give much more latitude than handing you a character whose entire identity and backstory is already created.

Maybe all of it is "role-playing" to some extent and what is needed are additional axes to be identified so that any particular works spot in a multi-dimensional space can be defined.

Only? Skyrim had over 5 million user logged in Steam on January 2, 2012....

This game will forever be in Skyrim's shadow, not to mention Witcher 3.

But the Witcher guys own GoG, so I am sure they really pushed the game via GoG to max awareness of their service. Ofcourse I dont know the GoG numbers so I could be way wrong.

I don't see what the big deal is. Fallout 4 is almost a unilateral improvement over Fallout 3, and none of the Elder Scrolls games would be "real" RPGs based on the standards people use to criticize Fallout 4. Bethesda's topped themselves, taken risks that upset a lot of people, improved on several aspects that were complained about in past games, and made the game they want to make... as they've been doing since Morrowind. If they decide to take anything away from The Witcher 3, it'll be the things they liked about the game that they might want to try incorporating into their games. Not something about "competition".

To be honest, though, at least a small part of this whole fuss was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've been hearing hype around The Witcher 3 since at least a year before it released (including a lot of people convinced it was going to be GotY before anyone ever played it), and people have crapped on every new Bethesda game since damn Morrowind. The big difference this time is the timing.

Got any proof of this? Sounds far fetched, like most wild theories being posted in this thread (and pretty much only this forum) in response to all the aggregates. Payed off reviewers, self fulfilling prophecies, codex/obsidian fans planting 99% of the internet, and ofcourse aliens taking over peoples bodies..

It's probably just that more people thought W3 was better?

some things to add:

conspiracy - not to get all tin foil hat, but with EA (mutli-billion dollar, publicly traded co.) doing everything but printed ads on toilet paper to sell copies of it's SWBF trash, i wouldn't be surprised in the least if they spent good money to bash Bethesda to increase holiday sales; and all the criticism of the game just doesn't make any logistical sense when you look at the content and the sales numbers

Witcher 3 vs FO4 - i hate it when people compare these two games because they are so different, and for some reason people over-glorify the heck out of Witcher 3; I have both games, and I strongly believe they are geared towards different types of players. Witcher 3 is very linear and just talking in terms of weapons, there's hardly any choice, you just choose the best sword for your level, the end. (to put simply) The complexity of the mechanics of the two games are not even comparable. It would take all day to really compare all the details, but the bottom line is that FO4 is WAY more complex in so many ways.

this article quotes Bethesda as saying they sold 12 million copies on launch day/pre order, and I'm not sure how many have sold since, but I would imagine it's in the millions...

this just reminds me of exit-polls in 3rd world nations where the President elect lost by 80% of the vote in the polls xD (then all citizens of the country go on strike and riot)

I really hope the Bethesda crew is just laughing all the way to the bank on this one and don't take all the garbage criticism to heart and just pay attention to the fans and the objective flaws (and fix them)

Witcher 3 = One run playthrough and then you're exhausted. And this is all because of how minor quests are integrated into the overall story arc. It still left a lasting impression because of how well crafted the story, characters and relationships were. My GOTY for sure.

But yes, a comparison can't be made. They are two very different games with very different focuses.

wrong post

You can't be serious. You just made an admission that the game is lacking. Fps and graphics are nothing compared to game play and content. Picture finding the most beautiful girl but she is a mute, a cluts, can't have a decent conversation she has aids and EA is slapping a 60 dollar price tag on her. "But wait there's more" if you buy EAs premium perfect girl they will give you an outfit for her to wair.... that is battlefront in a nutshell.

It's very odd to me that in this post (Post 66 of this very thread.) you say that popularity doesn't equal quality yet spend the entire thread trying to convince people F4 isn't up to standards because nobodies deemed that so.

I don't get the logic there.

Yes, this turned out to be quite the amusing thread

Remember how New Vegas was worse than Fallout 3 because of it's low metacritic score? Or how everyone hating Fallout 3's story was wrong because it got an award for it's writing? And now that Fallout 4 didn't get any, awards and metacritic scores are meaningless

And BTW, Oranges kicks apples' ass. They are much easier to peel, are naturally segmented, and smell nice too, where as you need a special knife to peel an apple, and it's juice stains everything while doing it, and the middle needs to be carved out too.
There i did the impossible; compared apples to oranges