it's set a new pinnacle in gaming, it's truly EPIC.

i beat Imlirith yesterday on blood and broken bones, high five anyone? : D
lv. 24 currently, with two lovely Relic swords waw!

Simple answer is no. It is not a rasing the bar. It's good use (mostly) of what already invented / established in gamedev.

Indeed, it's quite a masterpiece. I put over 600 hours into Skyrim this year and felt it was quite epic and really enjoyed it a lot, but The Witcher 3 has taken the open world RPG to a new level in so many ways that it's really been a great pleasure to play so far. I love the storyline and interactive dialogue, and the voice acting is movie quality IMHO. The "Game of Thrones" type atmosphere really makes it more powerful than your average fantasy world type RPGs too IMHO. Definitely the best RPG I've played to date.

High five! :)

It's my first rpg and i been heavy gaming since gta4, the graphics ho inside me has been waiting on it for ages though,
i always intented to have a W3 rig and i do, and sacrifice was made ! hehe
I bought two 960 cards and got two W3 codes.
all the dlc is uber cool.
seen vram usage at 2.5gb at 1080 (60fps) hairworks on, no aa nor blur).
The monsters and creatures are IMMense WAW! yes!
I like the red haired relic one. forget it's name but it does some nifty magic.

high ten, because The Witcher 3 does not go half way

I don't think it raised the bar. It spit on fans and attracted new auditory. That it did. If I didn't play previous Witcher games I would probably think that it raised the bar too.

Am I missing something, or are you referring to Triss as 'it' and a relic? If so, what ARE you?

I played the previous games, and read some of the books. And I still think that "it raised the bar". Game is awesome, doesn't matter how you look at it.

I get the impression that some people are just pissed because their computers don't stack up. Mine doesn't -- I can only play on high -- but I'm not bitter. I'm currently playing Witcher 1, with a view to going all the way through, and I have found more bugs and issues in the first game than I did in my two play-throughs of TW3. Some people are never happy.

It is a great game, maybe it does raise the bar but mostly it does more with technology than every other game I have seen. The shear size of the world, the locations and stories are fantastic, it has amazing graphics and combat while simple to control is yet robust in action.

I can see some great expansions for this game, into the area on the map we have yet to be. Also, I would like to see some more common monsters, like giant crabs along the sea shore and spiders! :)

Yeah, I haven't bought the Expansion Pass yet but I will at some point for sure. I gotta admit too that I hope that after they release the two expansion packs that they have more announcements to make more expansions also. Ultimately I'd love to see this game be as popular as Skyrim was and is, it certainly has the tech and all the elements anyway except for Redkit 2 SDK not being out for modders. If they get their act together on the development kit, this game stands a good chance to go full-blown-Skyrimness. :)

It has raised the bar for being the most restrictive open world game to date. flame on.

I agree
when i first started playing i was dissapointed because it did not seam to have the vast mountain ranges a very very deep dungeons that skyrim has.

But having played it more i have changed my mind
the world may be more flat with more small villages and fewer dungeons than skyrim but the number of small villages and the fact that anyone one of them can trigger a cutrscene and add a quest to your list makes it so much more immersive.
The world is less bland than it would first seam, just a 2 min horse ride in a random direction can take you thru many different terrain types
and to top it all off there the the moving folliage, everything from trees to grass moves.

I could never go back to skyrim

Why y'all guys so mad up in this thread? There's kids starving in Africa and y'all guys be butthurt because a really good videogame isn't perfect

Expansion pass will be must buy for sure. : )
Happy days.