That's what awesome when it come to the "grim darkness" of 80's Warhammer 40K.
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It's so vibrant. And I kind of hate dull colors.
Oh yeah, that classic 80s Warhammer art. John Blanc had some very strong influence on how that went though -- exaggerating more abnormal features and use only a small color pallettes. It's true the newer, digital artworks GW picked is more detailed, but feels far more bland precisely because of a loss of character.
Personally I think the 4th edition 40K artworks and the 4th edition Fantasy Battle arts were the best representation of the setting -- gritty, silly, and epic all the same time.
That's the feeling, right there, right? When something's not there, your fantasy just clicks on and makes it up. I wonder if many people feel the same, but that is definitely the feeling many modern games lack a lot, because they are simply way too polished.
And Witcher series actually were rather good with your decisions, espeicially given that the devs actually bothered to check your previous savegames and transfer whatever you've made in the prvious game into the next game. They kind of half-assed it with Witcher 3 though. Luckily, I've made all the choices that are exactly the same as in Witcher 3, and yet something about that game is a bit off in my eyes, so I still haven't played it, even though I've enjoyed the first 2 parts and quite so.
Yeah, that keeping your decisions from the previous games was probably around for a while. The earliest game that I remember actually playing with that sort of thing was the Mass Effect series -- oh, ME1 and ME2 had some really good writing for the squadmates for me to actually care about them. I was basically star trek and in some way a noble bright 40K Inquisitor game. A lot of the decisions in the first two games were given due weight and impact. And I agree with one Youtube known as Mr. BTongue that the first two thirds of the third game is also handled with well, it's really just the end stretch that's really, really half-assed.
As for Witcher 3, never played the second game, and couldn't handle the combat in the first game, so can't comment there; to me that game has the same problem with Kingdom Come: Deliverance -- they use a number of preset faces. There's really only about a dozen or so faces across the whole game (and for Witcher 3, it feels like there are even fewer faces for Elves, Halflings, and Dwarfs), so anytime there's a close up conversion where the game zooms in, the illusion was broken to me. Oh, also the fact I can't properly attack civilians outside of scripted events felt off too. The Guards are overpowered without mods and can kill Gerald easily, it all felt too restrictive even if lore-accurate.
Eh... how about I put it like this: in Witcher 3, upon arriving in Novigrad? there's the scene of witch burning where one can see Geralt was really angry at what had transpired. I tried to kill the Witch Hunter dude by flashing the sword and using the signs -- game won't let me. I threatened him a few times, the guards engaged me; with a mod that debuffed the guards, I succeeded in killing them but the Witch Hunter walked away, and the crowds just went "oh, I guess that happened" and stayed where they stood.
See, that's the problem I've got -- the game wasn't designed to handled player interactions with its systems. No other guards responded to Geralt killing two other guards, no alarms were raised. Every other NPCs simple stood as scripted and did nothing else. KDC:D had the same problem, and I constantly felt like playing with hands tied behind my back. I have no problem playing in a character's shoes -- novel Geralt was probably smart enough and detached enough to not openly flaunt the authorities like I did there -- I don't know, I've not read the books yet. Nevertheless there's no option to take revenge, to assassinate the Holy Flames' leadership in that city. Everything and everyone just felt "unconnected", if that makes any sense.