Male Seeking Quality Single Player Action Adventure that Loves XBoning
- Thread starter Steal Thy Kill
- Start date
Not very far in, but so far it's solid. Nilfgaardian Captain guy seems... actually decent and likable. Which is strange but I'm okay with that. Hope it holds up. This seems much more open world than the last one. First sequence goes straight to a monster hunting boss battle, which is great. Hella shit to explore on the map in just White Orchard. And the horse plus fast travel is much appreciated. Only quest completed so far is the dwarven arson thing. Absolutely refused that bribe. Fuck that. Axii persuasion is much more blatant, but seems to still be effective. I'm playing on Normal difficulty, but I still suck so I hope I can swap midgame.
It's supposed to simulate my Witcher 2 save at some point, and I feel honor-bound to replicate my choices honestly. But I have a few lies I kinda wanna tell. Like Saskia surviving with her free will intact. Or Stennis and Henselt being dead.
At this point I've got the following options: Explore; Devil Hunt Contract that I should be one level higher for; Some sort of escort quest that starts where the Devil is; and prepping for the Griffin battle which is a level 3 quest. Gotta imagine the Level 3 applies to the boss battle, and not the prep stuff. Hopefully. Regardless, time to press on.
First question though, how missable is this game? Cause Witcher 2 was suuuuuuper missable. I get that there's (probably) the whole branching storyline thing, but still wondering for the sake of side quests and exploration stuff.
It's supposed to simulate my Witcher 2 save at some point, and I feel honor-bound to replicate my choices honestly. But I have a few lies I kinda wanna tell. Like Saskia surviving with her free will intact. Or Stennis and Henselt being dead.
At this point I've got the following options: Explore; Devil Hunt Contract that I should be one level higher for; Some sort of escort quest that starts where the Devil is; and prepping for the Griffin battle which is a level 3 quest. Gotta imagine the Level 3 applies to the boss battle, and not the prep stuff. Hopefully. Regardless, time to press on.
First question though, how missable is this game? Cause Witcher 2 was suuuuuuper missable. I get that there's (probably) the whole branching storyline thing, but still wondering for the sake of side quests and exploration stuff.
What's that mean?
Very missable. If you are interested in Gwent (the card game you can play against tons of NPCs), I suggest buying any card/play against anyone you encounter as soon as possible, because that NPC might not be available to you in the future. I'll tell you right now, since this isn't a spoiler, that at some point, during one of the main story missions, you're going to be at a party with a major character you meet in Witcher 2, and there will be a Gwent tournament side quest that is optional. The cards you win from playing in it are not available anywhere else, so if you skip out on that tournament, you're shit outta luck.
EDIT: There's also a dude who sits on the second floor in a bar/inn (don't remember specifically) that gives you a monster slaying quest. At some point that bar/inn gets closed down, and thus you wont be able to talk to him anymore. I don't know if it reopens at some point, I haven't gotten that far.
There are some dialogue options that will close off side quests to you. For the most part it's pretty obvious though. The only thing is, what might seem like a short side quest that isn't worth doing might actually be a lengthy string of quests that could impact your ending to the game, not that I've gotten to the end, but this is what I've been told by others.
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Okay, got it. Also, probably gonna pass on Gwent. I usually don't do these side minigames, plus I'm not big on card games anyhow.
But it's actually really fun. T_T
I got into the Gwent stand alone beta, despite not being very into card games too.
Pazaak is where it's at
...this is why we can't have nice things.
Cleared the Prologue and off to Velen now, and holy shit that is a big map with a lot of noticeboards. Some fun name drops here and there. Triss is in the Free City, but unfortunately I'm too underleveled for that area, so the love triangle plotline will have to wait. Velen is ruled by "The Bloody Baron" who I was expressly told to not get involved with. Which means I'll be getting very involved, and (with a name like that) probably kill him. Still no word on Dandelion or Zoltan. And laughing real hard at how Redania conquered Henselt's ass as their opening move in the war. So far I'm sensing a theme of "everybody is going to hate me". So that'll be fun.
Also, did anybody actually bow to the Nilfgaardian Emperor? Before we found out he was Tywin Lannister, that is.
I did. I didn't want any trouble when in the heart of the lion's den. On another day, in a different place, I would have told him to take his bow and shove it up his ass, but not there. Plus, I was there for business of which we both had a mutual interest in. What happens if you don't?
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So far, a snide remark by the Emperor, and the Butler dude whines.
If you waited in the right spot just after that scene, you might've heard when all exactly thirteen lashes went down. CDPR doesn't half-ass the small stuff, either.[/quote]
Cleared the Prologue and off to Velen now, and holy shit that is a big map with a lot of noticeboards. [/quote]
Yeah. The Velen/Novigrad region is the biggest map in the game, but Skellige and Kaer Morhen aren't all that far behind. (And if you get Blood and Wine, Toussaint's gonna be about the same size.)
Game's fuckhuge, is what I'm saying.
I felt like a lot of my favorite VA's were brutally wrecked in the English dub (Olgierd and Dijkstra becoming Cockney urchins, Letho's some kinda Texas hick, Lambert's fucking that-kid-whining-in-CS:GO voice), but Charles Dance... man, if he had more screen time, he probably could've made up for it all by himself.
Anyway, as for the bowing. I've done both, and as far as I remember, the Imperial snark and the butler's complaining really is the full weight of difference that it makes. Pretty sure that part's just in there to remind you that your actions may have consequences for other people than just yourself, and they reserve the right to make you feel bad about it.
Coming to see that this game is less about questlines and more about questhydras. And, apparently, showing me two rabbits fucking each other.
Gotta say, you know a game is a complete epic when you herd goats and play hide and seek with kids.
Finished the Bloody Baron questline. Damn
The kids died. The Baron went off with Anna to find a healer in the mountains. Tamara is a witch hunter. The crones are still alive, but the thing in the tree is dead. Got a mini-cutscene where Geralt says that Witchers don't save you from yourselves (does that one change at all based on your choices?). Was pretty damn sad, but a nice storyline. Velen is a broken land, as told by the tale of this broken family. There's still a lot of Velen that's untouched though. May keep exploring before heading to Novigrad but we'll see.
Nope. D;
There are alternate endings to that storyline, but there are no happy endings. Even a witcher doesn't have that kind of power.
TIV, right, mate?
Also, read through the passage from the book She Who Knows, if you find it in the game. Should help you feel better about it.
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So, as I finish up Novigrad and get into Skellige, I'm really wracking my head against a real flaw in the game. It's got a general attitude of "who needs context or exposition anyway?".
Case in point: Yennefer. Geralt has a love for Yennefer, and a very developed past relationship... which I know nothing of. Like, Yennefer has been on screen for all of five minutes, during which I intuited fuck all, and yet it's clearly supposed to be a very important piece of the story. Granted, given that Yennefer has some apparent aversion to explaining anything, perhaps this is intentional. Yennefer drags Geralt around and we basically follow her on faith, and that's what the developer asks of us when deciding what we think of Yennefer. Keira Metz mentioned something about her dragging Geralt around like a dog. Kinda see where that's coming from. What's more annoying is that the whole romancing Triss part of the love triangle comes before finding out anything about Yen (aside from the fact that Geralt wants to fuck her). It's the most significant/annoying of the long long long line of people that Geralt knows and has a history with, but it's a history I get to know fuck all about. Oh, apparently I broke Djikstra's leg once, and he's still a little crippled. Why did I do that? Was it justified? How much does he still resent me for it? Should I expect him to fuck me as revenge or has he moved on, or will it just be petty shit?
Novigrad glitched up a bit. Autosave busted on me once, which really sucked. Had to redo a lot. Had a freeze or two going on, and some rendering issues with the character models. The Vivaldi banker guy, for example, has no arms. Not sure how I feel about Dandelion's new look. Liked it better in Witcher 2. Also, Zoltan's fucking great. Same with Priscilla. Fuck vampires. Sigi's plot to kill off Radovid at first had me feeling eh. Like, fuck him and his witch hunters, but him dying basically hands the continent over to Nilfgaard. Heard it and expected that Sigi was on Nilfgaard's payroll/exercising a grudge, and maybe it is, but then I saw Roche was on his side. So that's a good sign for whenever I go back to that plot. However, that touches on the flaw in Novigrad's plotline here: it feels half-finished, but I need to move on. Like, King of Beggars is obviously plotting something against the Eternal Fire (which I will totally support unless Bedlam somehow winds up being worse), but I get a hint of that when I first meet him and nada ever since. That assassination plot and the hunt for Eilhart are cut off in their first stages. It makes up for it because Zoltan and Dandelion, but still. Velen had a very definitive ending, if perhaps not a very happy one. It's self-encapsulated. I get that I'm gonna come back to Novigrad later and progress things, but at least leave me more satisfied when I sail off to Skellige to deal withthe Ironborn the Vikings.
Overall though, still really liking the game. May be the first one I buy DLC for in a long long time.
Case in point: Yennefer. Geralt has a love for Yennefer, and a very developed past relationship... which I know nothing of. Like, Yennefer has been on screen for all of five minutes, during which I intuited fuck all, and yet it's clearly supposed to be a very important piece of the story. Granted, given that Yennefer has some apparent aversion to explaining anything, perhaps this is intentional. Yennefer drags Geralt around and we basically follow her on faith, and that's what the developer asks of us when deciding what we think of Yennefer. Keira Metz mentioned something about her dragging Geralt around like a dog. Kinda see where that's coming from. What's more annoying is that the whole romancing Triss part of the love triangle comes before finding out anything about Yen (aside from the fact that Geralt wants to fuck her). It's the most significant/annoying of the long long long line of people that Geralt knows and has a history with, but it's a history I get to know fuck all about. Oh, apparently I broke Djikstra's leg once, and he's still a little crippled. Why did I do that? Was it justified? How much does he still resent me for it? Should I expect him to fuck me as revenge or has he moved on, or will it just be petty shit?
Novigrad glitched up a bit. Autosave busted on me once, which really sucked. Had to redo a lot. Had a freeze or two going on, and some rendering issues with the character models. The Vivaldi banker guy, for example, has no arms. Not sure how I feel about Dandelion's new look. Liked it better in Witcher 2. Also, Zoltan's fucking great. Same with Priscilla. Fuck vampires. Sigi's plot to kill off Radovid at first had me feeling eh. Like, fuck him and his witch hunters, but him dying basically hands the continent over to Nilfgaard. Heard it and expected that Sigi was on Nilfgaard's payroll/exercising a grudge, and maybe it is, but then I saw Roche was on his side. So that's a good sign for whenever I go back to that plot. However, that touches on the flaw in Novigrad's plotline here: it feels half-finished, but I need to move on. Like, King of Beggars is obviously plotting something against the Eternal Fire (which I will totally support unless Bedlam somehow winds up being worse), but I get a hint of that when I first meet him and nada ever since. That assassination plot and the hunt for Eilhart are cut off in their first stages. It makes up for it because Zoltan and Dandelion, but still. Velen had a very definitive ending, if perhaps not a very happy one. It's self-encapsulated. I get that I'm gonna come back to Novigrad later and progress things, but at least leave me more satisfied when I sail off to Skellige to deal with
Overall though, still really liking the game. May be the first one I buy DLC for in a long long time.
Oh yeah, Witcher 2 was where they really explained all about Yen an- haha, just kidding! They hardly touched on that, apart from an optional infodump from Letho at the end. Reading TW3's in-game bio's on Geralt, Yen, Ciri, and Triss will help a lot, as will a couple of in-game book passages. And some quest lines, of course.
And it doesn't really help that Triss is really awesome in this one, whereas Yenn turns out to be... kind of an arrogant bitch.
Novigrad isn't done; you'll be going back there, later.
Also, the money you paid for passage to Skellige is fully recoverable. Just gonna throw that out there.
And it doesn't really help that Triss is really awesome in this one, whereas Yenn turns out to be... kind of an arrogant bitch.
Novigrad isn't done; you'll be going back there, later.
Also, the money you paid for passage to Skellige is fully recoverable. Just gonna throw that out there.
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Yeah, the whole canon of Yen and Geralt is from the actual books. Like most others I just made my decision with no context and googled that shit postmortem.
Not that it mattered really, from the brief interactions with the two women, there wasn't really a choice for me. Yen was def my type.
Not that it mattered really, from the brief interactions with the two women, there wasn't really a choice for me. Yen was def my type.