Topic: The Witcher III: Dark Difficulty [permadeath].

The Witcher 3 is harder than Skyrim but easier than Dark Souls – unless you venture into permadeath territory.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is unusually positioned in the RPG pantheon. It has all the hallmarks of a game with the potential to go blockbuster – gorgeous, bar-setting graphics, a huge, lively world, and more – but it also refuses to shuck off the niche genre conventions so beloved of hardcore RPG fans.

That means, if you’re new to the series, that you will be confronted by pages of confusing statistics and information, and you will die at least a few times while you learn the combat system.

“Dark difficulty is something that many people in the company are very passionate about. If you die five minutes before the ending, it’s over.”

In an age where many developers and publishers focus on broadening their appeal and accessibility, CD Projekt RED and Namco Bandai (which also publishes Dark Souls, remember) seem happy to embrace the genuine delights of hardcore western RPGs. Yes, some people are going to be put off – but those who persevere will be rewarded, as any WRPG fan will tell you.

If you liked the earlier Witcher games or subscribe to the Dark Souls fandom, you already know how you feel about this, I’m sure. But if you’re not really keen on RPGs with action gameplay you may be on the fence, and with good reason; this is no Skyrim.

Combat in The Witcher 3 requires finesse and precision as well as agility, rapid tactical decisions and a balanced approach to levelling and crafting. There is no enemy scaling – venture too far into end game territory and you’ll be slaughtered.

Even the early encounters can be tough for newcomers, actually, and CD Projekt RED has worked hard to ensure the game always feels challenging – even on normal difficulty.

The developer expects most people to choose normal difficulty – it’s the default. But “Normal should be a challenge,” quest designer Philipp Weber told me.

“Usually normal is easy, and easy is – well, you can be on your phone while playing.”

Not in The Witcher 3, obviously. CD Projekt RED expects its players to be willing to learn and to struggle – as well as to accept the scary menu screens.

“We want it to be easy to learn but hard to master,” Weber said.

With Bloodborne not long out & reading how some people will not even play it, because of it's difficulty setting, which sounds crazy to me. The next big RPG out is The Witcher III which will also be challenging, but not as challenging as Dark Souls but more challenging than most WRPG's, like Skyrim & DA: Inquisition. But The Witcher III will also have a new difficulty setting, Dark Difficulty, which will be challenging & have a permadeath mode. Plus if your going for the platinum you'll have to complete the Dark Difficulty, which will have a trophy tried to it. Me myself I don't have a problem with it, in fact more game's should be more difficult then what they are. At one time that was the whole point of the game, it was meant to be challenging. Games today have lost that, so I happily welcome more challenging game's. How about you ?& are you looking forwards to trying The Witcher III Dark Difficulty?

The main reason games in the past used to be more 'challenging' in some ways was the fact they often lacked a 'story' or any meaningful content. Challenging doesn't always mean perma-death or making sure your timing is pixel-perfect but can be challenging in other ways. Games actually started out as something 'fun' not frustrating. Pong (probably the first game) wasn't challenging and neither was Space Invaders or Pac-Man - well not to start anyway. Because they lacked anything meaningful due to hardware limitations, games gradually built up the level of difficulty by increasing the speed slightly or something like that otherwise you would get bored just playing the same level and difficulty over and over again.

Games can be challenging in the same way books and movies are nowadays but they initially started out as something 'fun' first and foremost. I am really looking forward to the Witcher 3 and loved the Witcher 2 - My first essential purchase this year.

Always up for a challenge, so Dark Difficulty it is! Kinda torn about pre-ordering with the expansion pack, don't wanna make developers thinks its ok putting out broken games. But, based on their previous work it may be a safe risk.

This is going to be my first per-order this gen. It just looks to good to wait...

This is stupid, because you always can copy your save file to flash drive or ps+...

Games can be challenging in the same way books and movies are nowadays

You cannot compare books & films to games, you physically interact with a game. Some games also progress how you choose, you can also choose to go anywhere you what in a game like a open world RPG, unlike a book or a film. Also books & films are by no means challenging, games to books & films are totally different. Pong started off slow then speeded up as you played, to the point of where it was challenging. Otherwise if kept at the speed when you first started the game off, there would be no point to the game. Games have always have had a challenge element to them, if there wasn't do really think competitive multiplayer would be around, chess, & a ton of games from the 70/80s?

Ok so games are generally more interactive than movies but some books allow you to 'choose your own adventure'.

'Suddenly a man stands up and angrily threatens Geralt'. To offer to buy the man a drink turn to page x or to threaten the ma back turn to page y' thus allowing you to choose how you progress.

Stories can bee challenging - they don't always fall into the mindless action category. Some challenge the way we think about things. The point of many campaign's is to tell a story. They are more interactive than a movie story but they have similarities too. Some people want to play games for similar reasons they watch movies - for the story, for fun/entertainment, to relax after a hard day at work, for a bit of escapism etc, they don't always want the equivalent of the Times Cryptic Crossword.

Pong didn't increase its speed over time but kept the same pace and bat size. If you wanted a higher difficulty, you could select a faster speed and/or smaller bat size by flicking a switch. It was a 2 player game and the point was more like tennis. Games like Space invaders gradually increased the aliens speed but basically kept the same level design throughout.

Games like Chess can be very challenging as you have to out think and out manoeuvre your opponent. At its core it isn't that difficult, like draughts too. The same goes for a lot of the competitive MP too. CoD isn't that challenging or difficult at its core either - the same for most competitive MP. They are no different to most sports where anyone can play but not everyone is going to make a career at it. Its the equivalent of having a kick about in a park with a few friends to playing football in the premier league.

People play games for a LOT of different reasons and for some its not about the challenge. I am not saying that for some it isn't about the challenge but for a lot its about the entertainment and fun. Its also why some games have different difficulty settings - not to be more challenging for the sake of it but for players of different levels/abilities or for the way they want to experience the game. Often you see 'easy' as for those more 'story' focussed and 'hard' for those more experienced and challenge focussed.

Another reason games used to be a lot more difficult is that many of them, at least on consoles, were arcade ports. The whole way that arcade games make money is by charging you for lives, making them really the first free-to-play games in the mentality behind their design. Get you hooked, then up the difficulty to take your money off you, the further you get the more it's costing you but then more incentive you have to keep going. There's also the fact it was used to disguise the short length of most games. The usual time it took to go from the beginning to the end of a game in the 8- and 16-bit eras was about half an hour to maybe a couple of hours at best. The thing is, you'd die so often and repeat the same part so often it was longer. You'd also get sent back to the start of the game if you died enough, wiping all your progress out.

Another reason I've seen devs give is that games were rarely playtested properly back then. The only people that would've played them before launch were the devs, and they'd been doing nothing but interacting with that game all day for months. They were experts at the game and knew the hidden rules and all the little tricks, where the hidden items were, what the best spells were, etc. They didn't intentionally make it hard, they didn't realise they'd made it so challenging. Sometimes games wouldn't be playtested at all and they'd just cram as many enemies and bullets as possible at an estimation of what the game should be like. You can particularly see this in scrolling shooting games.

Of course, I'm not denying that there are also some games that do it simply to appeal to as many people as possible, but it's strange how some games make it easier and get hated by hardcore gamers and others do it and get away with it. With Resident Evil 4 we went from a limited number of saves that could only be made at typewriters, with an item that took up precious space in your inventory needed, to infinite saves with frequent autosaves made every area so you never ever needed to worry about dying, you'd just go back a few minutes.

Tomb Raider 1.. took me months to clear that game because of those 1 time use save crystals. Bloody St Francis Folly.

To be fair at least with TR1 all the save crystals were at fixed points in the levels, even though they could be far apart they were always there. TR3 was the one I hated, where the crystals were inventory items once picked up. The number of times I held on to them, because I didn't want to use them too soon, and then died before I got a chance to use them was just infuriating...

Yeah but on TR1 they were one time use so once you used it, it was gone, so you couldn't go back to reuse. So you never knew if you were supposed to use it as you came across it, or if you might be in the area a while and should use it later. Tomb Raider 2 had save anywhere which annoyed some of the hardcore (ha, as if you could call TR2 softcore) so TR3's was supposed to offer a balance between TR1 and TR2. I found it worked okay actually as you could usually stock pile a few but it still meant you didn't just save anywhere and everywhere and ruin the suspense.