Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands Analysis

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands Analysis

David Hunter

May 16, 2018

1 Overview

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands is an open world 3rd person tactical shooter game with light RPG elements. It was developed by by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft in March, 2017.

2 Formal Elements

2.1 Players

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands can be played as a single-player game or as a multiplayer cooperative game. In either case, the player takes control of one member of a four member military squad. The player can customize the member’s gender, facial appearance, and clothing, although this has no effect on gameplay. The player and the other three members of their team is deposited in a fictional version of Bolivia.

2.2 Objectives

The player is in Bolivia to take down a cocaine cartel called Santa Blanca, which is headed by a drug lord called El Sueño. His cartel is divided into four branches: Security, Influence, Smuggling, and Production. Each branch has a head of operations, subhead, and between four to six buchons, or bosses. The player must ”gather intel,” which consists of going to a pre-tagged location and interacting with an object or talking to a person, and then completing a mission. The mission will consist of a very limited number of types: killing or locating an NPC (without being detected), locating (and destroying) some object(s), or escorting/protecting an NPC/object to a location for a certain amount of time. After between three to six of these missions, a mission to take out the buchon will be unlocked, which will be a mission of one of the above types, and after enough buchons have been taken out, the player can start a mission to take out the subhead, which will be one of the above mission types, and then start a mission to take out the branch head, which, you guessed it, will be one of the above mission types. After two heads have been taken out, the player may make a move on El Sueño himself, or the player may try to totally dismantle the cartel before moving on El Sueño.

2.3 Rules

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands features a wide ranging rule set.

2.3.1 Equipment and Vehicles

The player may only have three weapons at any time: two large rifles or SMGs, and a pistol sidearm. Grenades, mines, C4, diversion lures, flashbangs, and different kinds of drones may also be equipped, provided that the player has invested the skill points in unlocking them. Each weapon type also has a number of modifications which the player may change, sometimes on the fly. For example, sniper rifles come with different lengths of barrel, different barrel attachments, different scopes, stocks, magazines, and triggers, each of which affects the use of the rifle. Longer barrels make the weapon more accurate at range, and increase the range, but also make the gun slower to raise and lower. Suppressors reduce but do not completely eliminate noise, making it easier to sneak around, but also reduce the damage and penetration. Etc. However, enemies only come in three or four varieties, and they all take roughly similar amounts of bullets to kill. Further, new types or levels are not unlocked as the game progresses, making much of the variety and customization mostly mute. There are two main decisions a player must make: loud or quiet, and CQC or distance. From those two choices, the type of weapons a player should choose naturally follows.

There are also many different types of vehicles:

• motorcycles: only seat the player, fast moving and somewhat useful for offroading
• cars, two-seaters: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage
• cars, four-seaters: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage.
• vans: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage. Some have mounted machine gun turrets.
• trucks: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage.
• helicopters: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage. Could be scouting, transport, attack, or heavy attack models.
• airplanes: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage.
• boats: handle slightly differently depending on the model, and can take different amounts of damage. Most come equipped with different machine gun turrets.

These are scattered around the map, and the player can even hijack cars passing by on the roads. Given the size of the map, it can still be quite a hike to reach one, especially a helicopter or airplane. The player’s AI controlled squad mates will automatically spawn into any vehicle that the player takes control of. It is possible to die while in a vehicle, and depending on the circumstances, your squad mates may or may not be able to revive you.

2.3.2 Stealth

A great part of the game will involve sneaking around. Your basic enemy soldiers are somewhat perceptive, but not as perceptive as in the Dishonored series: they will notice dead bodies, shots fired at them or near them, but will never notice a missing soldier on patrol, and sometimes not react to lights being shot out, etc. The player can use a drone to mark them, and can use ”Sync shot” to take out more than one enemy at the same time. Moving at night or staying in shadows during the day further reduces the chances of being spotted. The player may also adjust their stance from standing to crouching to prone, which also reduce the chances of being seen. If the player is spotted, all nearby enemy soldiers will be alerted and will begin to move in on the player’s location. Depending on the circumstances, enemy reinforcements maybe called in for support.

All is not lost, as the player can often fight their way out of the situation, or try to break the enemies’ line of sight, hide, and wait for them to return to ”normal” behavior. Even if the player is spotted, if the player can kill the enemy quickly and silently enough, no enemies will be alerted. Once the player is spotted and attacked, the status will change to ”Engaged,” but if the player can hide, then it will change to ”Hunted.” If nearby enemies have seen or heard something, but are not sure what it is, the status will be ”suspicious.”

2.3.3 Stats and Leveling

The exact amount of health the player has is hidden, but you can take several shots before dying. When you die, your squad mates will approach you and attempt to revive you. Initially, this may happen only once during a fight, but as the player levels up, the amount of damage you can take can be increased, as well as the number of times you may be revived. After taking damage, your health will slowly regenerate, as in almost every cover-based shooter since Gears of War.

The player also has a hidden amount of stamina, which really only determines how long the player can run before returning to walking/jogging. This also regenerates and can be increased by leveling up the appropriate skill.

Marking enemies, killing them (while undetected)/(by headshot)/(at a distance greater than 400m) will grant the player different amounts of XP, which eventually raise the player’s level, granting skill points. Skill points can also be found as ”commendations” which are scattered around the map. The player can also pick up ”medals” which provide a small bonus to particular skills, such as increasing damage against vehicles by 5%. Similarly to The Witcher series, a larger amount of XP is granted by completing story missions, but unlike that series, almost no effort has gone into making them interesting or compelling for the player. Skills are arranged in six categories, which are divided into four tiers each. Most skills have several different levels, which require more and more skill points and resources to unlock. The first tier of skills is available from the beginning, but the second and third only unlock after reaching particular levels, while the fourth contains a special skill that unlocks automatically once the player has invested in the first level of each skill in the category.

Besides enough skill points, the player needs enough of one of four resources to level up a skill: gasoline, medicine, food, and comms. Like skill points, these are scattered around the map, but the player can also receive larger amounts by completing optional side missions that might involve tagging a convoy, hacking a radio station, defending a radio transmitter, or racing from one radio tower to another within a certain time limit.

2.3.4 Areas

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands takes place in a fictional Bolivia. Although exact figures are difficult to come by, the map is anywhere between 200 km² and 600 km², or about 20 km by 20 km to 24 km by 24 km. The game is huge, and the terrain is varied and diverse, with no loading screens anywhere, except for the interminably long one you will face upon starting the game, oh, and every time you die, which on harder difficulty settings will be often. Oh, and when you fast travel, which also might be often as you want to avoid the minutes long track from one place to another. You can explore jungles, deserts, swamps, grasslands, sea/lake cliffs, and numerous mountain formations. The terrain and world are beautiful and breathtaking, and looks great, with very little pop-in, screen tearing, or other artifacts to interfere with your enjoyment of the scenery.

Its very size, however, is something of a backfire, as it takes forever to get anywhere by foot, and can take over 10 minutes to fly from one side of the map to the other. The vehicles, almost without exception, handle like a greased water buffalo, floating and sliding around with little control or regard for user input.

2.4 Procedures

2.4.1 Leveling and Upgrading

The player will level up throughout the game, and will probably be able to unlock every ability, which mostly make small incremental changes to player stats, although some unlock new items for use, such as C4 or nightvision.

2.4.2 ”Exploring”

There are a great of items scattered around the map: weapons to collect, skill points, bonus medals, resources, and weapon mods, and also many side missions. In typical Ubisoft style, some are marked on your map from the beginning, while others can be unlocked by gathering intel from enemies, which are also marked on your map. For the most part, due to the size of the map, the player will rarely feel like they have discovered something, or if they do find something that was not previously marked on their map, it is register as a non-event or fluke.

2.4.3 Completing Missions and Boss-Slaying

As mentioned before, there are a great many missions in the game. There are 20 buchons, four subheads and four heads, plus the final boss of El Sueño. Each buchon requires the player to complete between 3-6 missions in order to unlock it, creating an actual total of 110 story missions. Unfortunately, they mostly fall into an extremely small number of types, and lack enough distinguishing details to make them interesting or distinct in the player’s mind. After completing the 3-6 missions, the player will be able to engage in a ”boss-battle” with the buchon. This might involve killing them, or reaching their location and extracting them to a rebel outpost.

2.5 Resources

2.5.1 Abstract

• Health: Unknown amount, if it reaches zero you die, and must wait for a companion to revive you. If this has already happened in the fight, you must reload from an autosave point. While not being hit, it slowly regenerates.
• Stamina: Same story as health.
• XP: Almost same story as the above. It is mostly hidden to the player how much XP you get for everyday activities like sniping, killing enemies, and the like. Completed missions display this clearly, for some reason, but the player is not shown how much XP they currently have, nor how much is needed for the next level.
• Skill points: These are used for unlocking new abilities or for upgrading existing ones.
• Suspicion: Moving in front of enemies at close distances in well-lit conditions increases suspicion, as does making noises.
• Level: A marker for player progress through the game. Receiving enough XP increases to the next level and grants skill points.

2.5.2 Physical

• Gasoline/Medicine/Comms/Food: These are different crates that can be found dispersed over the map, and also in large convoys that patrol the map. Necessary for leveling up.
• Intel: Items found or interacted with in the world give the player intel, which reveals the locations of items or missions in the world.
• Ammo: Can be replenished at ammo boxes, and also by walking over dead enemies.
• Weapons: Can be found all over the map. Described above.
• Vehicles: Can be found all over the map, must be abandoned if damaged too badly lest they blow up with you in them.
• Escort/Allies: If an escort dies, you must restart the mission. Your companions, on the other hand don’t matter.

2.6 Conflicts

2.6.1 Stat Point Investment

Increasing a skill requires an arithmetically increasing number of points, so deciding which skill you want could make a significant different in gameplay and of course influences what other skills you will be able to invest in.

2.6.2 Factions

There are three factions in the game: Santa Blanca, the rebels, and Unidad, and whenever one encounters another, they will open fire on each other. The player can also use vehicles marked with the appropriate faction’s logo to gain access to certain areas without raising alarms or suspicions.

2.6.3 Stealth vs. Loud

The player may choose to tackle missions by going in guns blazing or trying for a stealth approach. Either is usually feasible, although the guns blazing approach may not be allowed depending on the mission requirements. Given the player’s limited health, and the ability of most outposts to call for reinforcements, it generally makes more sense to at least scout the location and disable the alarms before going all Rambo on them.

2.7 Boundaries

2.7.1 Stat Point Investment

After the player has max out all abilities, there is no more progression possible.

2.7.2 NPCs and Factions

If you kill three civilians within a short time of each other, you will be forced to restart the game, but other than this civilians have almost zero impact on the game. They will not alert the cartel of your presence, you cannot ask them for assistance or info during missions, and your efforts at destroying the cartel have zero appreciable effect on their behavior, living situation, etc.

As for the factions, they do not seem visibly affect by the player’s actions either. The cartel does not become weaker, less well-supplied, or more disorganized, and Unidad is not altered in any way either.

2.8 Outcomes

There are two main outcomes, depending on how much of the cartel the player has dismantled before attempting the final mission, but this is BUGGY! I completed every mission and still I was given the ending for players who had not. After the mission, I even received the message ”You have only completed 100% of the game. Continue to explore Wildlands and dismantle 100% of the cartel to see a different ending.” In the forums, it is claimed that the missions of taking out El Sueño are included in the total, which is stupid, as it forces the players who have already completely dismantled the cartel to complete the last two missions twice in order to see the ending that matches the state of the cartel. It especially makes no sense as in the first playthrough El Sueño IS FUCKING KILLED, so how can the player take him out again?

3 Dynamic Elements

3.1 Time

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands has a dynamic day-night cycle, which influences the playstyle to some extent, as it is easier to be spotted in the day than during night.

3.2 Weather

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands also has a dynamic weather system, but this seems mostly for show/immersion, and has no known effect on gameplay.

3.3 Patterns

This section focuses on game patterns as discussed by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.

3.3.1 Stopping Mechanism

The stopping mechanism pattern occurs in several areas of gameplay. First, the player may be revived a limited number of times each fight, preventing the player from abusing this ability. Second, the player may only use one rebel support action at a time, and there is a cooldown timer these, again preventing the player from using it too often.

3.3.2 Dynamic Friction

The dynamic friction pattern also occurs in several areas of gameplay. First, in stat point investment: the player needs increasing amounts of resources and numbers of skill points for each level unlocked. Second, in notoriety: if the player goes loud, it is possible that Unidad will be alerted to the player’s location, which if the player continues to stay visible and attack loudly/aggressively, will cause more and more Unidad patrols to be sent to attack the player.

3.3.3 Play Style Reinforcement

The play style reinforcement pattern is present in the sense that as the player levels up, they may invest in skills and item unlocks which make it easier/more fun to play in their particular way.

4 Dramatic Elements

This game analysis has already said some very cruel (but true) things about Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, but unfortunately for this game, it only gets worse from here.

4.1 Characters

The characters are stupid. The less said about them the better it will be for the reputation of Ubisoft’s writing team. All of them are one-dimensional, lacking in personality, and come off as stereotypes or caricatures.

4.2 Story

The story suffers similarly. A lot of effort has clearly gone into making the audio files, text files, and videos explaining the story and giving the player info about the characters, their history, and their motives for doing what they are doing, but none of it is very interesting or compelling. After watching the first three or four videos, I stopped caring for the rest of the game. It is all quite transparently setup for the player to explore each area of the map, which is where the majority of development time and effort were clearly devoted.

In brief, there is a cartel in Bolivia which is selling drugs, which is bad. There are bad people in the cartel. You need to kill them or capture them. That is the whole story. Explaining the rest would just further aggravate me for having to write it and you for having to read it.

4.2.1 DLCs

There are several free DLCs, one featuring Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell franchise, and another featuring the predator from the Predator franchise. Somehow, Ubisoft managed to make both of these horrible. The Sam Fisher DLC requires some uber-sneaking skills for the first section, before plunging the player in a punishingly difficult firefight which they must endure for several minutes before extracting him to another location. Similarly, the Predator DLC features a short investigation followed by a long and repetitive battle against the Predator.

5 Conclusion

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a missed opportunity for Ubisoft. Although the terrain generation is fantastic, they filled the terrain very poorly with boring missions and activities, and made moving around it tortuously slow on foot, excruciating by car, and simply boring by helicopter and airplane. I cannot recommend this game to anyone except as an exercise in what not to do when designing an open world game.

5.1 Potent Elements

The shooting elements are solidly done, and the world itself is pretty amazing to behold.

5.2 Areas for Improvement

The rest of the game goes here. The story is bland, and the player lacks any real sense of agency, as after totally dismantling the cartel, nothing in the world has actually changed: the NPCs struggling to live under the cartel still go about their random walks and live in shitty cinder block houses. They will not thank the player, and the player has not changed their lives at all. As the player battles the cartel, it undergoes no changes as a result of the player’s actions, so killing those soldiers in training and their training officers does not result in lower numbers cartel soldiers elsewhere, nor in weaker soldiers due to lack of training. It was just an excuse to make the player explore that area of the map, which is the real showcase. The player is not even given any videos showing how their efforts are making a difference to the drug trade abroad.

Recursion and Stackoverflow

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share a little incident that happened while I was working on Particularly Wavy yesterday. I had a light source on the left, and two light splitters on the right. When I tried testing this level, as soon as the two light splitters were setup as in the picture below, my speakers would explode as they tried to play hundreds of sound effects at the same time. Then Unity would freeze just after giving me a stackoverflow exception error. I tried the same level several times before giving up because I had some errands to run.

As I was walking to the train station to run those errands, I finally figured out what was happening. The way that light splitters work is when light hits one, we check if the light ray has hit this splitter before. If it has, then we just update its children, which involves using a function called Emit. If it has not hit the splitter before, we create two children: one which passes through the splitter, and a second which reflects off the surface. After creating those two children, we run Emit on them. The kicker is that we use Emit to determine what type of object we have hit, so the HitSplitter function can be called from Emit.

If you haven't got what was happening, here it is: When light hits the first splitter, it creates two children, one of which passes through and hits the second splitter. This also creates two children, one of which passes through, while the other reflects back to hit the first splitter. Here, again, we create two children, one which bounces back to hit the second splitter. And I think that's enough. Basically, I had created a situation where light would bounce back and forth an infinite number of times, or as close to infinite as your computer can handle before crashing the program.

The solution to this is as simple creating the problem in the first place: I was already keeping track of the "depth" of the light ray, or how many times it had bounced or split from the light source, so just checking whether this number is less than a limit, say, 20, prevents infinite recursion.

In any case, I now have 75 puzzles set up and earlier this week created two new game mechanics, but they need more testing and debugging to make sure they work correctly.

Final April/First May Update

hey all,

I've been super busy with work the last few weeks, but I have also been putting in some programming and design hours on several fronts.

First, Particularly Wavy now has about 74 complete puzzles. I noticed and fixed yet another series of bugs regarding loading and saving XML files, an issue which plagued me several months ago, and I've gone through all the puzzles to make sure they are actually complete-able following a resize to the mirrors. Also, I've started a few prototypes based on a few new game mechanic ideas.

Second, I've just come back from a "retreat" in Karuizawa, where I read most of Homo Ludens and completed a few design activities for my long dreamed-of game project, an RPG/RTS smash-up. I plan to complete a few more design activities for it in the near future, but I've more or less promised myself to begin development on it by 2019.

Cheers,

Second April Update

hey all,

It is currently raining cats and dogs here in the land of the rising sun. But that has not stopped me working on Particularly Wavy. I am now up to 70 completed puzzles, and I am pushing out an updated version with better controls for Android operating systems today.

I've also been playing a few games and getting in a little more design and research for my dream project: an RPG/RTS hybrid with procedurally generated quests. In terms of games, since finishing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I've been playing This War of Mine, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Ghost Recon Wildlands in particular deserves special mention for its horribly voice-acted characters, bland and generic mission design, and totally inconsequential story. Ubisoft has reached a new low in terms of open world game design.

In contrast, This War of Mine is a tiny game in which player choice always matters, and everything you do has a consequence. Granted, it is also very heavily influenced by the bigger game State of Decay, but both deserve attention for how they model the consequences of player actions on other characters and the world.

Cheers,

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Analysis

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Analysis

David Hunter

April 11, 2018

1 Overview

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an action RPG developed and published by CD Projekt Red in 2015, with 15 small pieces and two main pieces of DLC published over the course of the next year. It is the third and potentially final game in the Witcher series, and concludes Geralt’s story which was begun in The Witcher from 2009, and continued in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings from 2011. This trilogy is based on a series of novels and short stories by the Polish author Adrzej Sapkowski.

2 Formal Elements

2.1 Players

The player takes control of Geralt, the white-haired mutant monster hunter from the previous two games. By now, Geralt has recovered his memory and is days from tracking down his on-again off-again lover, Yennifer. Geralt is controlled as a third-person avatar, just like in the previous games, but features more advanced movement, as he can climb many objects, roll, dodge, ride a horse and swim. At certain times through the game, the player will also take control of Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter, who has only been referenced indirectly and briefly in previous games. Like those games, The Witcher 3 is a strictly single-player experience.

2.2 Objectives

The player’s initial task is to gather clues about where Yennifer is and has gone. Completing this objective functions as the tutorial of the game, since the player will have to investigate several areas, complete a monster contract or two, and gather ingredients in the world, much as in the main game areas of Velen, Skellige, and Toussaint. Upon finding Yennifer, the player is given their real objective: find his adopted daughter, Ciri. The player will spend most of the game completing branching quests that lead to her.

Along the way, of course, Geralt also has many opportunities to change people’s lives. Like in previous games, these are rarely straight forward. Early on, Geralt has the opportunity to brew a witcher’s potion in order to heal someone, even though witcher’s potions are normally deadly to ordinary humans. Should the player take this chance, an acquaintance of that person will confront Geralt later on, telling him that although the patient survived, now they are a shell of a human being.

2.3 Rules

Like most RPGs The Witcher 3 has a complicated rule set.

2.3.1 Stats and Leveling

Geralt starts with 3500 Vitality, and for each level up he gains 100 Vitality. Each level up also gives Geralt one skill point to spend, and potentially unlocks an ability slot in his active skill tree. Geralt can also gain skill points by activating a Place of Power for the first time.

Skills are organized into groups, categories, and tiers. There are four main groups: Combat, Signs, Alchemy, and General, and inside each group, there are categories:

Combat: Fast Attack Strong Attack Agility Defense Battle Trance Signs Aard Yrden Axii Igni Quen Alchemy Brewing Oil Preparation Bomb Creation Mutation Trial of the Grasses

Each group and category is also divided into tiers: 8 points must be spent on abilities in the first tier of each group before the second tier unlocks, and 20 and 30 cumulative points must be spent to unlock the third and fourth tiers, respectively.

In order to receive the benefit of an ability, it must be placed in the active skill tree. Once fully unlocked, there are four places for mutagens, and 12 places for abilities. The abilities are grouped so that three abilities are linked to one mutagen. Mutagens come in three colors: red, green, and blue, which match to Combat, Alchemy, and Sign abilities. Each ability that matches the mutagen’s color will contribute a bonus to that mutagen’s category: red mutagens increase sword damage, blue mutagens increase sign damage, and green mutagens increase vitality.

2.3.2 Combat and Magic

The Witcher 3 continues The Witcher 2’s combination of Dark Souls and Batman: Arkham Asylum style combat. The Witcher 3 attempts to have the weightiness and precision of moving, dodging, and hitting in Dark Souls and the cinematic flair and acrobatic finesse of managing multiple opponents in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Both light and strong attacks can be interrupted by a dodge or a roll, which is the main saving grace of the combat system. Geralt’s attack animations, although graceful and fluid, also take a great deal of time to connect with the enemy, during which time it is very likely that that enemy or another one will launch a much quicker attack against Geralt.

Bombs, signs, items, and potions may all be used during combat, with the exception of putting a rune on Geralt’s weapons or armor. Items and signs may be changed in a menu which slows down time dramatically, but not completely.

Four quick use items, such as food or potions, may be equipped at the same time and switched between during combat. One steel weapon and one silver weapon may also be equipped and switched between on the fly. Two types of bombs and two special items, such as a mask or torch, may also be equipped.

2.3.3 Crafting

The Witcher 3 features a detailed, comprehensive, and thorough crafting system. There are approximately 100 individual components which can be bought or harvested around the world, which can then be combined into several thousand different items, some of which can be further combined into other items. A similar, though less extensive system can be found in The Witcher 2. However, any composite item in The Witcher 3 can be dismantled into its constituent parts, which be be sold or used to create other items.

2.3.4 Areas

The Witcher 3 is divided into several large open areas: White Orchard, Velen and Novigrad, Skellige, and Toussaint. With few exceptions, the player is free to wander anywhere at anytime, although the level of enemies and monsters in some areas might make it nearly impossible to do so for lower level players.

2.4 Procedures

2.4.1 Leveling and Upgrading

The designers followed their choice from The Witcher 2, and greatly reduced the amount of experience Geralt receives for killing humans and monsters. Instead, most of his XP is derived by completing quests. Indeed, since Geralt is over 100 years old, and has spent much of his life traveling and slaying monsters, he is basically as proficient in it as he can be. This also makes it difficult for the player to engage in typical RPG behavior, such as farming for XP by repeatedly killing monsters in an area. It is usually faster to find an appropriately leveled quest and complete that, and the designers have put the requisite effort into making the dialogue, environments, and choices involved in completing such quests quite interesting.

Crafting, both involving potions, oils, and bombs, and making weapons, armor, and runes, also plays an important role in the game. Weapons and armor can greatly affect Geralt’s ability to give and withstand damage of different types, and potions, bombs, and oils can completely change the difficulty of a fight when used appropriately.

2.4.2 Exploring

The maps of White Orchard, Velen/Novigrad, Skellige Isles, and Toussaint offer diverse environments including rolling hills and flat fields of farmland, rivers and lakes to explore the depths of, caves and ravines near mountainous terrain, and dark mysterious forests hiding bandits and monsters. These maps feature loads of hidden stories built into environmental clues. While exploring the coast of Velen, Geralt will stumble across pirate camps, and within the camps he can discover notes from the pirates explaining why they choose those places, and letters or notes from the farmers and fishers who the pirates killed which explain what they were doing there before their untimely deaths. This is just one of the many areas which CD Projekt Red has made cohesive through the use of these story-telling devices.

Geralt can also find dozens of location-based quests, uncover countless monster nests, bandit camps, locations of power, and elven ruins.

2.4.3 Boss-Slaying

As Geralt investigates monster attacks during witcher quests, and at certain points throughout main story quests, Geralt will have to engage in what amount to boss battles. The investigation sets the stage for the boss battle by providing clues as to what monster Geralt might have on his hands, and what its strengths and weaknesses might be.

The battle itself will play out depending on how well you pay attention to these clues and use them to defeat the monster.

2.5 Resources

2.5.1 Abstract

• Health: Health starts at 3500, and the player gains 100 points for each level up. When Health drops to zero, Geralt dies and the player must reload a save file. The only exception is when Geralt is killed by city guards: in this case, he is knocked out and loses some money. Geralt can regain his health by using potions, eating food or drinking beverages, and on easier difficulty settings, he can regain it after meditation.
• Stamina: Geralt can cast signs, run, and dodge using stamina. Outside of combat, it regenerates quite quickly, but when facing enemies, it takes several seconds to regenerate fully. Signs can only be cast when the stamina bar is full, and use up the entire bar once cast.
• Toxicity: Witcher potions give Geralt game changing bonuses and abilities, but they come with a downside: the more potions active and the more powerful the potion, the higher the toxicity. Higher toxicity levels reduce Geralt’s health and could lead to death, but toxicity levels gradually drop over time.
• Adrenaline: Geralt gains adrenaline points during combat by damaging enemies. Adrenaline increases the damage Geralt does, and can even unlock special attacks if the appropriate skills are known.
• XP: Geralt gains XP primarily through completing quests, but he can also gain limited XP through killing enemies. From levels 1-10, it takes 1000 XP to level up, from 11-20 1500 XP, and from 21 and above it takes 2000 XP. Each level up grants one skill point.
• Skill point: Skill points can be invested in the abilities
• Abilities: The abilities have been described briefly above. Each ability requires one skill point to unlock, but the ability’s tier must also be unlocked by having the required number of skill points invested in that category.
• Level: As Geralt completes quests and slays monster and bandits, he gains XP, which works as described above.

2.5.2 Physical

• Money: There are several different currencies in The Witcher 3, however, only one can be used for buying and selling items. The others must be converted at a bank.
• Food and Drink: There are many different consumable items, each of which have slightly different effects.
• Materials: There are hundreds of different crafting and alchemical components, which can be combined at crafters to make weapons and armor, or which can be received by dismantling unneeded weapons and armor.
• Weapons and Armor: There are three main classes of armor: light, medium, and heavy, and they each offer different amounts of protection. Weapons come in several different groups as well: there are crossbows, steel swords, silver swords, axes, clubs, and maces.
• Books, Recipes, and Diagrams: Recipes for oils and potions can be found throughout the world or purchased at vendors, as can diagrams for new weapons and armor. There are countless books, letters, and notes, some of which are crucial for completing main quests or side quests.

2.6 Conflicts

2.6.1 Stat Point Investment

The player is granted one skill point per level up, so deciding which ability to unlock or increase can have a dramatic effect on gameplay.

2.6.2 NPCs

It is not possible to make everyone happy all the time. Through dialogue choices, Geralt will inevitably make someone unhappy. This may close off further quests for that person, lead to a fight, or some more complicated outcome.

2.7 Boundaries

2.7.1 Stat Point Investment

All skills have a set number of points that can be invested in them, and as mentioned before they are organized in tiers which are locked through different amounts overall stat point investment in the category. Further, Geralt has a limited number of mutagen slots and ability slots, so although Geralt could learn all the abilities, he can only have a maximum of 12 abilities and 4 mutagens (plus one extra mutation and 4 extra abilities if the player has completed an optional quest in the Blood and Wine DLC) activated at a time.

2.7.2 NPCs

Most NPCs are not attackable or killable. This makes sense as no matter what kind of Geralt the player decides to play as, he would not be one to indiscriminately slaughter innocents.

2.7.3 Swimming and Climbing

Geralt has limited ability to climb on objects in the environment. Normally, these are marked with white shading on the edge of the climbable object, which could be interpreted as fungus or as guano.

2.8 Outcomes

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has several main outcomes, depending on the player’s choices. These include changing the fate of Geralt and Ciri, who will be king of the Northern Kingdoms, and of course which (or neither) of the main love interests Geralt will be with at the end.

3 Dynamic Elements

3.1 Time

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a dynamic time system where one real world second equals an in-game minute. The day-night cycle affects NPC behavior, as most of them will go into their homes and sleep at night, but during the day they will wander around or do their jobs.

Further, there are many time sensitive quests, in which Geralt will need to meet an NPC at a particular time, wait a set number of days, etc. There are also several passive time sensitive abilities, such increasing Vitality regeneration during the day (night).

3.2 Weather

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a dynamic weather system. This has some effect on NPC behavior, and both they and Geralt will comment on the weather in the game. It also adds a bit of atmosphere and drama to the game.

Lastly, there are a few passive abilities which are affected by the weather.

3.3 NPC Standing

As the player interacts with NPCs, your dialogue choices and in-game actions will affect your standing with those NPCs. They may approve or disapprove of your choices, thus unlocking or blocking off further interaction, or changing the tone of further interaction.

3.4 Patterns

This section focuses on game patterns as discussed by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design.

3.4.1 Stopping Mechanism

The Witcher 3 contains the stopping mechanism pattern in how it prevents the player from spamming the witcher signs: the player needs a full stamina bar in order to cast a sign, and once cast, the stamina bar must regenerate from zero.

3.4.2 Dynamic Friction

The Witcher 3 contains the dynamic friction pattern in many forms. As mentioned before, the amount of XP needed to level up increases once Geralt reaches certain levels. In the Blood and Wine DLC, the enhanced mutations require increasing numbers of mutagens and skill points to unlock.

Finally, as Geralt advances in the game story, the level of monsters and enemies increases to counterbalance Geralt’s own increasing power.

3.4.3 Resource Placement

Due to the nature of the skill tree, it is possible to swap out abilities and mutagens on the fly. This makes Geralt’s skill tree an example of resource placement pattern. Placing an ability in a particular place on the skill tree allows Geralt to take advantage of that ability, and also influences his overall attack power, sign intensity, or vitality.

3.4.4 Play Style Reinforcement

As the player can choose which abilities to employ, and which types of armor and weapons to equip, the player can choose a play style which matches their own preference. Equipping a particular trophy, for example, the player can increase the amount of XP they receive for killing monsters and bandits, making it easier to level up. Or, by equipping certain weapons, abilities and mutations, the player may make it easier to kill enemies more quickly using dismemberments. By investing in alchemical abilites, the player can make ever greater use of potions, oils, and bombs in combat.

4 Dramatic Elements

Like the previous games in the Witcher series, The Witcher 3 features a moving, multifaceted and branching story.

4.1 Characters

The characters of The Witcher 3 are all mostly well voice-acted, touchingly animated, and speak dialogue that is quite well-written, especially compared to other video game titles. Instead of all good heroes and all bad villains, we get a complicated cast of distinct grey characters. Geralt can even engage sentient monsters, such as trolls, in dialogue and decide whether to resolve the matter with them peacefully or with violence.

The main character and star of the show is Geralt. While he tries to maintain witcherly neutrality, he clearly cares when others are mistreated, but he is sarcastic and can be cold. His main love interest in books, Yennifer, plays a key role in the plot, but is not always truthful and sometimes has a hidden agenda. She can also be petty and bitchy. Triss, Geralt’s secondary love interest from the books and his main love interest from The Witcher 2, also appears, although she is at first noticeably bitter about how Geralt abandoned her at the end of the previous game to find Yennifer. Dandilion, the self-centered womanizer bard from the books, Djikstra, the spymaster, Vernon Roche, the commando, and many other characters all make their appearances. Ciri, Geralt’s adoptive daughter, is also a playable character and the player gets to see why Geralt loves her so much: she is kind, loyal, and determined, despite the harsh fate in store for her. The Red Baron, Vesemer, Cerys an Craite, and many more characters fill out the huge cast. The Red Baron in particular deserves special mention: his quests are gut-wrenching enough to make even jaded players cry.

4.2 Story

The Witcher 3’s events take place approximately two years after The Witcher 2. Geralt had regained his memory in the previous game, and is now searching for Yennifer. When he finally finds her, he discovers that their adopted daughter, Ciri, who they believed had fled to another world, had returned but was being hunted by the Wild Hunt. They then begin a game long quest to find her and protect her. Along the way, Geralt will have to help or hinder many of the characters mentioned above. Unlike the previous games, the quest system has been greatly overhauled, allowing for multiple objectives and quests to be pursued at the same time. This allows the player greater freedom in the exact order in which they complete each task, and even which tasks to complete.

The first stage of the game takes place in White Orchard, but after several hours moves on to the Velen/Novigrad area. This map is huge and has hundreds of locations to visit and dozens of well-crafted quests to discover and unravel. Geralt will encounter the Red Baron, a drunken self-declared baron who wishes Geralt to help him locate his missing wife and daughter in exchange for information about Ciri. Geralt will also meet the Witches of Crookback Bog, three monstrous beings who terrorize the local villagers.

After discovering as much information about Ciri’s whereabouts from these two sources, Geralt will be ready to move on to Novigrad. Here, he will encounter Triss, Dijkstra, Dandilion, Zoltan Chivay and a host of other characters from the books. After helping Triss, Geralt will learn that Ciri met Dandilion, who is now missing and who Geralt will have to track down. After completing a series of quests to find out where Dandilion is and what he has been up to, Geralt will discover that Ciri is not in Novigrad and can met up with Yennifer in the Skellige Isles.

In Skellige, Geralt will get caught up in the political machinations of who will become the next ruler there, in addition to trying to find out what has happened to Ciri. With what he discovers here, he picks up a cursed creature from the Red Baron’s castle and takes him to Kaer Morhen to remove the curse. The creature turns out to be Avallac’h, an elven Sage who has been helping Ciri keep away from the Wild Hunt and teaching her to use her powers.

An epic battle at Kaer Morhen ensues, during which Vesemer dies. In the aftermath, Geralt and his allies set about gathering sorceresses and trying to convince Eredin’s (the leader of the Wild Hunt) allies not to support him. Back in Skellige, Geralt and his allies track down an artifact to summon Eredin into a trap. During the battle, Geralt and Ciri will battle different warriors of the Wild Hunt.

Based on certain actions and dialogue choices during the course of the game, Ciri may die, become the Empress of Nilfgaard, or become a witcher.

4.2.1 DLCs

The Witcher 3 released two major DLCs post-release: Hearts of Stone, and Blood and Wine. Hearts of Stone features a few new enemy types, many new weapons, and several interesting quests and quest lines. In terms of tension and pathos, it rivals the best moments of the Red Baron’s quests. Blood and Wine introduces a whole new area roughly half the size of Velen/Novigrad: Toussaint, a kingdom loosely based on a fantasy version of medieval France. This area features new enemies, items, and at least 30-40 hours worth of quests. Again, the best of these rival the best in the main game.

5 Conclusion

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is generally regarded as one of the greatest games of all time. The development team have produced a powerful RPG where player choices can lead to radically different outcomes in the story. It shines not only in the main quest, where the writing, animation, and voice acting are all superb, but in the innumerable side quests, which show the love and dedication to detail the team must have exercised to create them.

5.1 Potent Elements

The graphics, music and animations deserve special praise for helping to bring the world to life. The detective elements of the quests, like the detective elements in the Arkham series of Batman games, are some of the best in video game history. Lastly, the choices the player must make are extremely well-crafted dilemmas, each one an agonizing moment as the player struggles with an ethical issue.

5.2 Areas for Improvement

The combat and Roach’s AI are perhaps the biggest disappointments. Roach is semi-autonomous, but he seems to react to unseen cues in the environment, making his behavior seem random and frustrating. Although generally satisfying, in trying to strike a balance between cinematic flair and precision, the designers generally force the player into set patterns of attack → attack → dodge → attack → sign → attack → attack → do something else/wait for your stamina to recharge.

April Update

hey all,

Lots of news. After my previous school bit the dust, I have finally found another job at a different company. It is a much larger company than I have worked at before, which has taken some getting used to.

I stopped working on Particularly Wavy for a few weeks and tried to get more work done on the item and questing systems for my RPG dream project. There are still quite a few issues to iron out and develop, but overall I think it was time well spent. I have since then resumed work on Particularly Wavy, and have got an Android version up and running, and gotten the puzzle count up to 65+!

I also tried to develop another game for a game jam about destruction, but I was not able to make the deadline and I'd say that the game is more or less dead on its feet. I wanted to make a game about being a frost giant in a frozen wasteland who pees and snow structures to destroy them, but I was unable to get some nice procedurally generated meshes working. I was able to generate some images using metaballs, cellular automata and Perlin noise, but I just couldn't get the fucking meshes to work correctly.

Besides, all of that, I've been playing through The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for a second time in order to write a game analysis of it. I've also started Antichamber, and heaven forbid, I actually downloaded another fucking Ubisoft game: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, which is somehow simultaneously a technical marvel and almost the most boring open world sandbox third person shooter ever developed.

I hope to get these posts back on their regular schedule starting this week.

Thanks for reading!

February First Update for Particularly Wavy

Hey all,

My oh my, what a busy week. I've been watching a lot of GDC videos about adding feedback to one's games, and I've realized how poor a job my games do at this, so I've been programming some sound effects to play when you click objects, more sound effects that play when you move or rotate them, and even more sound effects that indicate if you hit the target with the correct color of light.

I've also been tracking down more bugs dealing with light filter game objects and targets, since although I already coded them, I did not have them working correctly for all situations. Finally, check out the video showing the improved shadow shader and the sound effects.

Besides that, I've been getting my computer ready for a clean install of Windows 10. Since November, I've been suffering through endless looping and re-downloading and re-installing of the same 2 or 3 Windows 10 updates, 2 of which were "successfully" installed more than 20 times. Last month I went so far as to disable the Windows 10 services that were running in the background and causing all these downloads, etc. But that seems to have effected a lot of other systems, and although my computer still runs pretty well, I'd like to get things properly updated.