MGS 5 or Witcher 3?

I don't see how you could like Skyrim's open world but not like Witcher 3's. That makes no sense to me.

Well, not really Skyrim cuz I haven't finished it yet.
But take Fallout 3. It rewards all kind of play style. Even the copy paste subways and buildings are more complicatedly designed than Witcher's.
A lot of the quests can be completed in multiple ways too.
 
I very much preferred the level design in Ground Zeroes. I don't think going open world added much value to the game.

Yup. I could do with less open world and more bases with the intricate design of the one found in GZ. Most bases in this game are nowhere near as complex.

The guard posts are mostly forgettable and easily avoided if you desire. The best guard posts are those that you're forced to traverse due to the tight geography funnelling you through them.
 
I don't see any other game beating MGSV this gen in greatness. The game has a lot of content, an entertaining story, superb gameplay and variaty. Bought both games with my PS4 purchase but Metal Gear pulled me in much more then Witcher 3 did. Havent finished Withcer 3 yet but I plan on continuing after I am done with MGSV (79 hours played so far).
 
In terms of open world RPGs I find Bethesda games a lot more fun and rewarding.
For all the criticism I have for Witcher 3, let's not get crazy here. Bethesda's worlds are far less interesting and the content is even more repetitive, bland & braindead. They don't even have a good story to fall back on like Witcher 3.
 
I'd say MGSV for it's core gameplay but I was a lot more invested in the characters and world of the Witcher so I'd probably say the Witcher edges it. I still haven't finished MGSV though.
 
Having just finished W3 and moving right to MGS- I would say Witcher 3.

But I loved Witchers 3 story and characters. I was hooked immediately.

Metal Gear has "better" gameplay and the game engine is crazy optimized. That said- the story is threadbare and the mission settings repeat themselves quickly.
 
Meh, performance really isn't a problem to anyone but extremely nitpicky people. It's fine for most of the time, there are only certain parts of the game where it's slightly bigger a problem, but all-in-all the game is perfectly playable as is. Even if they fix the performance, the game would still have shitty side-content, janky & simplistic combat, horribly designed skill tree, repetitive & unimaginative quest design, all-too-often annoying horse-riding, way too much back & forth travelling and other problems. I personally consider those far worse problems than the framerate being a bit spotty here & there.

Witcher 3 excells in world-building & story, and even then the ending isn't all that fantastic. From a gameplay POV, it's somewhat broken & plenty flawed.

Um yeah, those things would be worse if actually true. But they're not. Shitty side content? That's one of the game's biggest strengths. Some of the best side quests ever in gaming. I simply can't fathom your opinion on that. Almost everyone praises the side quests. Combat isn't amazing, but it's decent. Plenty good for an RPG. Quest design is phenomenal. Skill tree is one of my least favorite parts of the game, but that's pretty minor.

And for the record, I don't think the performance is a big deal either. It's just one of the masterpiece's very few blemishes.
 
Sure. A lot of those are filler in Witcher anyways.

They are great for stumbling across when you are on your way to something else. Lots of good gear and upgrades can be found in them. Like I said, they are there for you to visit or not, on your whim. This is just the question marks, nevermind all of the other additional stuff like notice boards.
 
Have you played The Witcher 3? The side quests have unique stories, that means it isn't just filler content. Side Ops is filler in every way.

Yeah I did play it and finished it.
Some of them have interesting stories but most of them boils down to go here and kill this guy/monster. And you can only approach those quests in one way.
So it's nice that they contextualize things but you're just doing the same thing over and over again. The limited gameplay options don't help either.
 
If you like stealth action games, MGS V. If you enjoy action RPGs with an immersive story, Witcher 3. Both have a TON of content and will definitely occupy your time for a long while.
 
What the what? People are saying Witcher 3's side missions and world are uninteresting? Is this bizarro world?

Witcher 3 is my response, but get both.
 
I would argue that you could cut down MGSV's maps considerably and the game would still be as good. The open world isn't good enough to justify it being there for me and a lot of the time is a chore to traverse.

What makes the game as amazing as it is for me is the gameplay, but the open world doesn't hold a candle to Witcher 3's. It doesn't do a good job of feeling important to the world over all. Especially considering how most missions happen in very specific locations.
 
Yeah I did play it and finished it.
Some of them have interesting stories but most of them boils down to go here and kill this guy/monster. And you can only approach those quests in one way.
So it's nice that they contextualize things but you're just doing the same thing over and over again. The limited gameplay options don't help either.

Well I'm sorry but that's just wrong. You can come across quests in multiple ways, I have killed certain monsters that were apart of a quest but I completed the quest without even talking to the initial quest giver. So it's not just one way. A lot of quests have multiple ways to complete them as well.

Arguably you're just doing the same things in TPP as well. There's just way less variety.
 
Well I'm sorry but that's just wrong. You can come across quests in multiple ways, I have killed certain monsters that were apart of a quest but I completed the quest without even talking to the initial quest giver. So it's not just one way. A lot of quests have multiple ways to complete them as well.

Arguably you're just doing the same things in TPP as well. There's just way less variety.

What? So the difference is you didn't talk to the guy first? But you still had to kill the monster with swords and signs. Would the outcome have been any different if you did talk to the guy first? No.
 
What? So the difference is you didn't talk to the guy first? But you still had to kill the monster with swords and signs. Would the outcome have been any different if you did talk to the guy first? No.

But you just said there's only one way to approach quests, I just proved you're wrong. And that's just with contracts, other quests have completely different outcomes including contracts for that matter, like not killing the target at all.

It's a RPG.
 
I think it's relevant to quote Eat Children again:
Thing is you can dilute the questing/missions in both games down to bare bones simplicity and levy that as criticism that ultimately amounts to subjectivity as context and reward are something the player has to find themselves. MGSV missions are literally just "go to place, sneak in, kill/extract dude or blow stuff up, repeat". Wild Hunt is "go to objective marker, talk to person, activate detective mode, follow trail, click things". All games can be distilled down to their basic gameplay loop, but I feel what's important is the details that imbue this loop with interesting context.

In Wild Hunt that context is mostly the writing and world building. If you're not invested in the world itself, the stories being told, the people, the monsters, the lore, and the adventure of Geralt, then yes the quests will be boring as shit.

In MGSV it's the game systems, the stealth, the combat, overcoming the AI, implementing your tools and gear, and maximising your strategy for the biggest gameplay gains in a single mission arc. If you're not invested in the game systems then of course it's repetitive and boring.

Ultimately it's very subjective since neither game will cater to all tastes. But I also feel both games enrich their gameplay loop with enough context and depth to be rewarding for those who have a taste for that context or depth.

There are some quests where you heavily influence what happens in TW3 though.
There's even some contracts where you don't necessarily have to kill the hunted monster.

Don't forget one game is an RPG, the other an action/stealth game.
 
MGSV by far.

Never played W3, but every time I watched a stream it was either a bunch of talking heads, horseback in the forest, or the white haired dude twirling around with a sword.
 
Um yeah, those things would be worse if actually true. But they're not at all true. Shitty side content? That's one of the game's biggest strengths. Some of the best side quests ever in gaming. I simply can't fathom your opinion on that. Almost everyone praises the side quests. Combat isn't amazing, but it's decent. Plenty good for an RPG. Quest design is phenomenal. Skill tree is one of my least favorite parts of the game, but that's pretty minor.
Yes, the question marks that the game is filled with are some of the worst filler I've ever experienced. It's the same few enemy types over & over and too few of them offer anything good as a reward. A select few of them do, but most of the time it's just crap that you can't even sell or do anything worthwhile with because of the game's stingy economy.

And the STORIES of the side quests are decent, some even great, but what you actually do during those quests isn't all that special. It's the usual kind of fetch quests, "go to point X & get rid of some generic enemy & then travel back to get your reward" back & forth boredom and whatnot. The detective stuff is overly simplistic and isn't all that fun after the first few times you do it, let alone the 76th time. The Witcher contracts are fun the first time you come up with some new "boss" enemy. They get less interesting when it's your 17th vampire that is no different from the first except it's stronger. And I don't agree that all the stories are so magnificent that it alone destroys any criticism thrown towards Witcher 3. It applies to some quests, but not nearly to all of them. A bit too many of them are just "monster X is terrorizing our village, woe am us, could you kill it for us?" types of ordeals. A few quests throw some nice story twists into them, but at some point even that isn't enough when it's your 30th time doing the exact same thing.

It's not that they are horrible beyond redemption, but I guess the problem is more with the fact that the game never plays around with its systems & ideas. The detective stuff always boils down to *find location x -> find something that will give you a scent/footprints -> follow the red marks on the ground/scent in the air -> find culprit -> kill culprit/bring culprit to justice/whatever*. Or once you've fought one Griffin, you've fought them all. At most the game tricks you into believing you would be fighting against a Griffin and then as a twist it throws Enemy Type 3 #48 at you.

And the combat wouldn't be bad if it actually evolved a lot more & offered more varied challenges, but due to the extremely limited & limiting skill tree and very little variety in enemy designs, it just ends up being extremely boring & repetitive, which is NOT a good thing for a game that can take up 80-100 hours of your time even if you don't aim for 100% completion. Witcher 3's combat is pretty bad when you compare it to something similar yet actually great like Dragon's Dogma.
 
Witcher 3 if you enjoy story rich open world rpgs. Metal gear if you just want to screw around and have fun. To me, witcher 3 is far and away the better all around game.
 
Choice in RPGs is an RPG mechanic, which gives a player agency context on top of the narrative context when fulfilling a task. Visual Novels were built on this mechanic exclusively and it's because it can be more engrossing than being told a straight story. Usually choice is handled poorly or dryly or predictably, but Witcher 3 makes this rewarding by being brutal and unpredictable. It elevates the gameplay, but ymmv. Depends on what you're looking for, but I feel people seeking to play RPGs typically value this. Souls sort of changed the ARPG field tho and what people should expect from an RPG.

The combat itself is pretty poor unless you spec in a sign build, I feel, where you're spamming and spacing and laying dots and controlling. It made the last bosses a whole lot of fun and probably tailored my feelings for the game more fondly. It's all still janky tho and sign overuse feels a little ooc.

Similarly, MGS is almost always highly regarded, but it's not like its gameplay, until 5 and maybe 3, has ever been great stealth. It's usually just been slapstick AI abuse. I don't feel that the series at all would have been as highly regarded without its unique narrative context and the game's quirky reactions to your player choices.
 
MGSV by far.

Never played W3, but every time I watched a stream it was either a bunch of talking heads, horseback in the forest, or the white haired dude twirling around with a sword.

If you're going to be this reductive about one game you can easily be reductive about another.
 
Having just finished W3 and moving right to MGS- I would say Witcher 3.

But I loved Witchers 3 story and characters. I was hooked immediately.

Metal Gear has "better" gameplay and the game engine is crazy optimized. That said- the story is threadbare and the mission settings repeat themselves quickly.

I have to agree with this assessment. MGSV's open world is boring because everything in the world relates to gameplay so there are really no non-hostile NPCs aside from animals or anything that would make it seem like an alive place. There's nothing to find by exploring, plenty of uncrossable mountains in places where they need not be. Whereas W3 is definitely designed as an open world game, in MGSV it seems like they made a collection of missions and then decided that hey, maybe we could give the player the whole map to wander in but never filled in any content we now expect from open world games. Even Mother Base is largely empty.

The saving grace of MGS V is the quirky story and very polished gameplay. It gives the player lots of options and approaches. My only beef with its AI is their ability to alert the whole base in a second and have every soldier swarm towards your location. I know it's kind of the series trademark but it doesn't make sense most of the time when the scale in V is much larger. I wish it had more degrees to its alert system.

Witcher 3 has its flaws, there's some clunkyness in the movement and animation, some quests can be repetitive and you really have to up the difficulty for the combat to become interesting. If it had a bit more Souls/Bloodborne to its combat it would be fantastic as the basis works. That said I was completely hooked and gladly spent 87 hours finishing the game and will buy every extension DLC for it.

My recommendation is to buy both, but for me the game of the year is by far Witcher 3.
 
This thread is basically an early GOTY debate. Both games are stellar but for very different reasons. Witcher 3 is like experiencing a beautiful painting. MGS5 is like solving a fun and irreverent engineering problem with a whole bunch of variables.

There's a lot of other factors to consider as well but id give the nod to the Witcher due to being more polished and complete (at this time).
 
But you just said there's only one way to approach quests, I just proved you're wrong. And that's just with contracts, other quests have completely different outcomes including contracts for that matter, like not killing the target at all.

It's a RPG.

I meant how you approach to complete the quest. Not how you approach the guy to get quests.
 
The main thing i hate about the Witcher is when an enemy aggros and the camera tries to lock itself on the enemy instead of just letting me run away. I'd rather be able to lock on myself if i wanted to fight.
 
Yes, the question marks that the game is filled with are some of the worst filler I've ever experienced. It's the same few enemy types over & over and too few of them offer anything good as a reward. A select few of them do, but most of the time it's just crap that you can't even sell or do anything worthwhile with because of the game's stingy economy.

When people talk about side content in TW3, they'll usually be talking about the actual side quests, which are actually pretty fleshed out (and numerous).
POIs are only little things you're supposed to stumble upon while exploring, hence why everybody recommends to turn them off on the world map.

And the STORIES of the side quests are decent, some even great, but what you actually do during those quests isn't all that special. It's the usual kind of fetch quests, "go to point X & get rid of some generic enemy & then travel back to get your reward" back & forth boredom and whatnot.

And MGS V missions are all "go rescue this prisoner/capture this guy".
See my last post.
 
When people talk about side content in TW3, they'll usually be talking about the actual side quests, which are actually pretty fleshed out (and numerous).
POIs are only little things you're supposed to stumble upon while exploring, hence why everybody recommends to turn them off on the world map.



And MGS V missions are all "go rescue this prisoner/capture this guy".
See my last post.

See, but this is what I've been trying to say.
The objectives are repetitive in MGSV, but how you complete them is totally not. The game gives you an insane amount of options for the players to choose.
In the Witcher 3 there's like 2 options max.
 
20 hours in and about 1/5 through the main campaign i gotta say MGSV

Can't think of a single thing that i don't like about this game so far, and i'm no huge MGS fan at all
 
See, but this is what I've been trying to say.
The objectives are repetitive in MGSV, but how you complete them is totally not. The game gives you an insane amount of options for the players to choose.
In the Witcher 3 there's like 2 options max.

Since you can't seem to be bother to scroll up, I'll quote myself:

I think it's relevant to quote Eat Children again:

Thing is you can dilute the questing/missions in both games down to bare bones simplicity and levy that as criticism that ultimately amounts to subjectivity as context and reward are something the player has to find themselves. MGSV missions are literally just "go to place, sneak in, kill/extract dude or blow stuff up, repeat". Wild Hunt is "go to objective marker, talk to person, activate detective mode, follow trail, click things". All games can be distilled down to their basic gameplay loop, but I feel what's important is the details that imbue this loop with interesting context.

In Wild Hunt that context is mostly the writing and world building. If you're not invested in the world itself, the stories being told, the people, the monsters, the lore, and the adventure of Geralt, then yes the quests will be boring as shit.

In MGSV it's the game systems, the stealth, the combat, overcoming the AI, implementing your tools and gear, and maximising your strategy for the biggest gameplay gains in a single mission arc. If you're not invested in the game systems then of course it's repetitive and boring.

Ultimately it's very subjective since neither game will cater to all tastes. But I also feel both games enrich their gameplay loop with enough context and depth to be rewarding for those who have a taste for that context or depth.

There are some quests where you heavily influence what happens in TW3 though.
There's even some contracts where you don't necessarily have to kill the hunted monster.

Don't forget one game is an RPG, the other an action/stealth game.

MGS V and TW3 are completely different genres, and their quest focus is completely different.
 
Well here is my opinion, I played the Witcher 3 and it was my 1st in the series and I loved it. Bought MGS:GZ because I really wanted to get into the series in time for MGSV but i hated it, I`m sure its not 100% the same as MGSV but my point is try GZ at least to see if you enjoy the gameplay.
 
Now that I've played both extensively (finished Witcher 3 long ago) I have to give the nod to Witcher 3. The world is just so much better. I love MGS, but Witcher 3 is the total package.
 
Fallout 3 is an RPG and that game gives players a lot of options.

1) Not every RPG goes for the same focus on sidequest...?
2) Even then, there are some variations to how you go into combat if you bother to try them (sword/bombs/potions/signs). Though I don't doubt it is nowhere near as close nor as satisfying as MGS V possibilities. There are some pretty influent dialogue choices in quite a lot sidequests and contracts.
3) In anyway, my whole point was to point out that when people say quest are good, they can do so for different reasons; which in the case of this thread definitively is the case.
TW3 quests are all about immersion, atmosphere and story, which is why most here who prefered TW3 said it is the better open world, because that's also a part of the same thing. The fact that the actual gameplay is somewhat redundant doesn't bother so much in this case, because your focus is on story and world.
 
1) Not every RPG goes for the same focus on sidequest...?
2) Even then, there are some variations to how you go into combat if you bother to try them (sword/bombs/potions/signs). Though I don't doubt it is nowhere near as close nor as satisfying as MGS V possibilities. There are some pretty influent dialogue choices in quite a lot sidequests and contracts.
3) In anyway, my whole point was to point out that when people say quest are good, they can do so for different reasons; which in the case of this thread definitively is the case.
TW3 quests are all about immersion, atmosphere and story, which is why most here who prefered TW3 said it is the better open world, because that's also a part of the same thing. The fact that the actual gameplay is somewhat redundant doesn't bother so much in this case, because your focus is on story and world.

Which is why I think Witcher 3 is not really a good open world RPG.
 
Which is why I think Witcher 3 is not really a good open world RPG.

Why?
I was just explaining why it is one, you'll have to try harder then that.
Just roaming through the world, and everywhere literaly stumbling by chance on varied and interesting side-quest, often tied with the region you're currently in, in addition with the very alive world, excellent weather effects and atmosphere, makes for a great immersion, thanks to this open world design. So yeah, I'd rather say it's a great open world RPG.

Edit:it is however not a good sandbox RPG, yes, if that's what you're meaning.
But open world != sandbox.
 
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