Essays 31 October 2020, 20:30

Crude Classics. Games Full of Bugs that Players Love Anyway

Games are rarely perfect in technical terms. Sometimes, though, it is the least sophisticated productions that win the hearts of players with their history and atmosphere, making us willing to turn a blind eye on even the most ridiculous drawbacks.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I'm probably gonna get slapped for vilifying the national treasure of my native gaming, but before anyone throws anything at me, allow me to explain. The Witcher 3 is an absolutely fantastic game. I have spent almost 300 hours with it and had a lot of fun completing tasks, outplaying the villagers in Gwent, or slaughtering monsters. The magnum opus of CD Projekt RED is an extraordinary game and it fully deserves each award it has received. One note, though: if you bought Wild Hunt at launch and didn't come across at least a few glaring bugs in the first few hours, you can easily start betting on the lotteries, because you're apparently born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

As for the bugs, Ciri, Geralt, and Wild Hunt must step aside for Roach. The unfortunate horse could levitate, run on its hind legs, or teleport across the rooftops. (Source: Kotaku)

The technological state of The Witcher 3 at the launch is largely justified by the scale of the whole venture. The Warsaw-based studio has struggled to deliver such an ambitious product, with less funding than most AAA developers. In the end, this impossible mission was a success, as Wild Hunt lived up to all expectations, but at the cost of a lot of shortcomings. There were such bugs as diddling camera, disappearing characters' heads, getting stuck on the smallest objects, and a whole bunch of other mishaps. And Roach took the cake. Geralt's mount caused unspeakable trouble to the engine, which every move made the poor animal levitate, teleport to bizarre places, or even stop at imaginary obstacles. Fortunately, CD Projekt RED quickly brought the number of bugs to an acceptable level... though the world of The Witcher still hasn't gotten rid of them for good.

And speaking of Roach – did you know that the bugs associated with it were actually deliberate, made out of concern for the players? At first, riding a horse seemed so realistic in The Witcher 3 that testers began to show signs of motion sickness. So the developers had to set up a special team responsible for creating all kinds of bugs – otherwise, their work could seriously harm fans. Well, at least that's how the situation is portrayed in the behind–the–scenes footage from two years ago, published - probably by accident - on 1 April .

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt