First benchmarks here.
Hmmm. I’m divided on whether to assume I had rescued Triss or removed the enchantment from the dragon. The dragon is important to the attempt to create a more egalitarian kingdom, but Triss is apparently vital to preventing a full-scale witch hunt from breaking out.
I’m playing on an i7-860 @ 3.6GHz, Radeon 9750 3GB and 12GB RAM. At medium-high settings, I get 40-50fps with a few dips. Controls feel a little wonky but I might just need to get used to them. Had to lower my mouse sensitivity to 75% though because it was twitchy as hell.
Edit: Resolution is 1600x1050
I literally built a new PC this weekend and it is top notch on all specs and my controls feel a little wonky too.
I am starting to think it has something to do with the game being made for both a controller/console and mouse/KB. Watch Dogs was wonky like this and something else I recently played (can’t remember now) had that weird, slightly squishy feel to it. Subtle but annoying.
Other than that I have everything turned to 11 and it plays pretty well. Graphics are nice but not bowling me over either. I am not sure but FOV once again feels like shit. Why do devs never learn on this one? Or in order to hit some FPS mark they narrow in the FOV?
The story is kinda slow to get going too. You pretty much start almost as if it were just another day being a Witcher.
Gameplay-wise I am starting to get my ass kicked but in a good way. Was just talking to a merchant at the side of the road and a pack of wolves came from off screen/radar and kicked my ass. Sure any one wolf is no problem but a half dozen? They were a big problem. 
Well, it’s been running flawlessly. Who knew? I mean, Dragon Age 2 still doesn’t run quite right.
The wags at Penny Arcade said the minimum specs were Skynet. Recommended: two Skynets. But the system I built for Dragon Age: Inquisition is handling it just fine in OMFGWTFBBQ mode. I wouldn’t say the controls aren’t awkward, but jumping straight from playing Inquisition I have to remember not to hold down the mouse button because it is no longer my free look button, it activates Witcher Sight.
so far I’ve run into three bugs:
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got stuck in the noonwraith well. previous autosave was all of 2 seconds earlier, though so no biggie.
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finished a quest before it was assigned. this is more problematic - it means no xp for the quest and it’ll stay in the log.
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sometimes Geralt wants to put his sword away in the middle of a fight. It’s a little weird punching a pack of wolves to death.
Other than those, no problem. Runs a hell of a lot better than the second game ever did.
They definitely made some odd/terrible decisions with the default key-mapping. Dunno why they couldn’t just use the Witcher 2 controls that we’re used to. I know some of the actions are different like those hop dodges, but still.
From what I understand, its assets got downgraded a bit for “next gen” console porting and possibly because of the reaction its original min/rec specs received. You have people now complaining that it doesn’t look as good as it did in the teaser clips from a year or so ago.
Maybe…but the screenshots they were complaining about were “how it looks on the absolute minimum settings”
Of course, they’re also complaining that “it’s not really open world” because there’s multiple maps and loading screens when you fast travel.
Here’s some people who care far more than I talking about it
I’m playing on medium-high settings anyway so I don’t really care about how it looks or doesn’t look in Super UItra-Zesty mode. I was just mentioning why it might perform better than expected for people who read the initial spec requirements.
I honestly forgot which way I went on this one. I know I went Iorveth, and I’m pretty sure I learned Saskia was the dragon long before the final chapter but I can’t recall either saving Triss OR not saving Triss.
I’m pretty sure she showed up at the final judgment thingy though, and then the dragon attacked me, so I’m guessing it must still have been under Sila’s control at that point.
Triss always gets saved. If you do it, then no witch hunt. If the kingslayer does it, then bad news for the sorceresses. From the other bits you said, I think you saved her - IIRC it was a choice between her or Saskia.
It does seem that the college of sorceresses was up to some shit, but I think they were trying to save the realm. I’m kind of confused by the network of plots.
I’ve been screwing around exploring the question marks on the map. I don’t suppose you could give me a hint which quests I could accidentally solve before given?
The one that happened to me was one of the Treasure Hunt missions.
I overstated a bit - I had picked up the whatsit that assigned the quest, but found the treasure just by exploring, before reading the book that told me where to look.
So, don’t overexplore the windmill area, until you have a quest marker telling you to do so.
I’ve heard people have had similar problems with the Noonwraith. They skip reading the journal or the bestiary entry, which prevents them from finishing the quest.
And I really, really hope they patch the inventory system a bit. Separating the books from the food from the potions/bombs/oils would be a good start.
Is it a repeat of the hot mess that the inventory was in the first Witcher?
Once again they forget the fundamentals. A CRPG is a virtual inventory management system that is occasionally pressed into service to simulate combat.
Hairworks doesn’t perform well on my 700 series GPU, but I just read about a tweak that lets oyu set the MSAA level for it. The default setting is 8x, gonna try 2x and see if the performance is good enough.
I don’t have much time to play it, so I’m still in the opening scene up to the first little village you encounter.
Playing on the hardest difficulty, the drowners on the beach were scary!
I’m playing on second to hardest, and the drowners still fucked me up but good (up until I found the schematic for a proper silver sword). Bit shocking, considering all those hours I spent whirlwinding through dozens of the little shits like they weren’t even there back in Witcher 1. When did drowners get all swole ?! 
All the more puzzling that, on the other hands, deserters and bandits ? Those guys get cut into hilarious gibs in one swing. I could swear I cut a dude clean in half with my bare fists once.
A couple early tips:
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if you see a beehive, use igni. Then loot it, then sell the honeycombs (usable item tab) to the alchemst once she unlocks - good early money (she pays more for them* - there’s a notice nailed to a tree in town that lets you know.) I’m not sure how often merchant’s cash refreshes, though, so it’s not quite infinite money. And annoyingly, you HAVE to pay cash…you can’t give a merchant 100 crowns worth of whatever and take a 90 crown item. Fortunately, cash doesn’t vaporize if you spend it the wrong way. Repairing an item? Merchant can now buy (repair cost) worth of crap from you.
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in the southwest area, you can find a swarm of neekers. Not too tough, but they can drop blue and green mutagens. Getting sign intensity up is handy. A few hundred extra vigor points not as much.
Re: the inventory - if you pick up a paper, one of several things can happen: -
it may simply make a journal/recipe entry.
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it may show up in your quest item page
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it may show up in your usable item page
if 2 or 3, then reading it may give journal/recipe entries AND/OR it may advance a quest. If you skip this step, you may not get proper credit for completing the quest.
At least it’s weight-based rather than slot-based. Witcher 1 had you leaving piles of swords lying all over the place.
*yeah, every merchant has his own list of what he’ll buy and what prices he’ll pay.
I myself appreciate the fact that I keep stumbling on shit that is way past my pay grade. I never did like this crap with the world always leveling up to match me. I check out the lay of the land, and if see something I can’t handle, I put a pin in it and come back later. I feel bad if I’m leaving a monster that the local community would be better off without, but it doesn’t look like you get XP for individual monster kills anyway. You just wear down your gear for nothing.