Off-topic and Chatter: The Jolly Boar Inn > General Gaming - The Arcade

Going Witchering

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Jubal:
Right, I've gone back to the Witcher games, and we don't have a general thread for them so here's one.

I played through two surprisingly fast, partly because I decided I'd do a lot more switching to easy mode than the previous time and partly because I managed to get the hang of the controls and not incinerate any guards, which it turns out is pretty helpful for completion of the game. I did Iorveth's path and helped Saskia build the Pontar Free State, which was nice albeit that
Spoiler (click to show/hide)it's a bit crushing when it turns out to have been so flattened by the start of W3 that nobody's even mentioned it yet.
And now I'm on 3. I'm not finding the combat much more fluid than 2, but I think a lot of the effectiveness of the Witcher's combat systems relies on you having a controller. For example, I really can't use the step-dodge because accurately tucking my thumb under to use the alt whilst stepping fluidly whilst next to an enemy, in a game that really relies on you not taking hits, is a recipe for disaster. I also think I've barely made a single strong attack all game, I need to get to working that one but it's one key more than my brain can manage most of the time. I guess the other issue as ever is that my timing is crap which means the nice new stuff like having blocking/parrying available on the mouse isn't very helpful for me. All that said, now I'm improving a bit at strike-and-roll combat it is a lot more bearable, and I'm playing on Normal rather than Easy.

Regarding other mechanics, the alchemy system feels very streamlined: the ability system took longer to work out, it feels a bit weird that you can have so few abilities activated simultaneously as it really reduces the "ooh cool upgrades" feeling as you probably can't use whatever you just bought, though that might just be me still misunderstanding the system.

The plot writing has been very good with 3 so far - I'm still bumbling about in Velen and probably will be for some time, since I'm very much exploring random areas of the map first, sidequests second, then main quest third, although I've got back and done some chunks of main quest recently since I was feeling super underlevelled for absolutely everything. I also seem to have a constantly full inventory and almost no money due to the cost of equipment repairs and the fact this game keeps giving me chances to be generous to people and I'm taking all of them. The writing of Strenger/the Baron was really interestingly done, I though, as was Keira, though there is some obvious flirting in the latter and I have a bad feeling I'm going to horribly mess up all the major interpersonal stuff in this game.

Gmd:
Finally! The return. I can finally weigh in and help.


Witcher 2 is a great game about politics, but Spoiler (click to show/hide) The fact that nilfgaard invades at the end kind of ruins all the plot development of that game as both Aedirn and tameria get stomped, the only major importance is that the mages are blamed for loc muinne and radovid starts his witch hunts. I personally love the witcher 2 story, but its quite small scale compared to the witcher 3's apocalyptic tones. I love Iorveth as a character and i honestly much prefer his half of the game, but its events are sadly mostly ignored in the witcher 3. I felt this was such a loss and recently DM'd a witcher DnD session set just before the witcher 3 with Iorveth and saskia at the forefront of the plot.

Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games of all time so i am biased here. Also dark souls with its rolling dodges is another of my favourite series, so i cant help much with the combat advise except get good  ;D  . i've completed it on the hardest difficulty, those dodge i-frames are a the trick. My main advice is play on controller for much simpler multi targeting of mobs and pressing of the strong attack and do not at all underplay the alchemy side of the game, potions and oils give huge damage boosts. Another tip is to go all out on one build magic/swords/alchemy, dont pick and choose, as the ending abilities are a godsend. For example in combat tree Whirl, where u literally just hold attack button and do spin attacks can deal with large groups of humans easily.

Have you read the books? (i'm sure i've asked you before).

The plot of this game and its writing (especially its side quests) is amazing. It is the witcher game that links to the books the most, majorly so in its DLC so the story is strongly enhanced with the knowledge of book characters. Emhyr (Charles Dance <3)/Yen/Ciri etc. Lots of things affect lots of things in this game so be careful. Can i ask how your encounter keira and the baron went? The baron storyline is a great one, such a conflicted character.

Money Tips: take lots of witcher contracts and explore/loot everything :D

Keep me updated as you go along, people playing my favourite games for the first time is always a joy!

Jubal:
I agree regarding W2's core plot - at least the Iorveth path through it - feeling a bit undermined by W3. It does feel a bit weird that Sas just vanishes off the map.

"Get good" is horrible advice, but thanks I guess :P I mean, obviously practice does help, and I do enjoy the alchemy which is helpful. I always play with keyboards not controllers which I'm sure is a disadvantage, but I'm managing OK on normal difficulty in any case. I'm afraid to say I have gone quite a mixed build so far, and I'm about level 18/19 so it may be too late for me to specialise enough to reach the end of any of the trees - ah well. I don't think I have any desire to play the combat on a level above normal - given my handicap of a keyboard and joint problems and slow reaction times this seems like the fun/challenging rather than frustrating level to play at.

In Velen, my key choices:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)Keira has been safely sent off to Kaer Morhen, the Baron is dead and the bog orphans are alive.
I have been doing a ton of exploration so I'm now quite overlevelled for the main quest, but oh well :) I'm now working my way through Novigrad and some of the politicsy stuff, though I seem to have managed to lock myself off finishing some quests I want to complete because characters are only giving me dialogues for other quests so I may have done things in the wrong order (likely due to my tendency to want to do all the side quests before pushing on with the main).

Specifics of the current problem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)Started the quest that involves going to a party with Triss. This means I don't have the dialogue available for getting Triss to look at the gem thingy I snagged from Philippa's Hideout.
Not read the books yet but they're on my list!

Gmd:

--- Quote from: Jubal on September 07, 2021, 02:45:34 PM ---and I'm about level 18/19 so it may be too late for me to specialise enough to reach the end of any of the trees - ah well. I don't think I have any desire to play the combat on a level above normal - given my handicap of a keyboard and joint problems and slow reaction times this seems like the fun/challenging rather than frustrating level to play at.


--- End quote ---


I'm sure this will be fine on normal, just play what you find fun provided it avoids the frustrating level. Some monsters especially towards the end and can be hard to fight. There are a few chances to reset your builds with items in the game. If you do suddenly feel like a change.


Interesting Velen choices! I'll say no more.


It's not a real rpg if you arent completely overleveled for the main quest right? Novigrad is an interesting place as it is the main "hub" of the game so has quests from a variety of levels that appear as you progress through the game. You can easily stumble into doing things in an odd order.


Spoiler (click to show/hide) I wouldn't worry too much about that, all the main characters have their own side quests/romances which are considered separate to the main story, but yeah it does stop you progressing for a it


Be sure to give them a read, i love them so much. Especially enhances the DLC blood and wine as it revolves completely around a book location and major book character.

Jubal:
Well, I finished the main quest. Still got Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine to do.

Overall thoughts: I think for me the thing that stands out about Witcher 3 is the acting. Nobody in that VA cast was having an off day, it's very much up there with the best and the graphics do the characters pretty good justice as well. I wasn't as thrilled by the narrative design as I'd hoped in places: the scenes are very well written, the task mix is interesting, I just don't agree that pressurised timed decision-making is a good way to simulate interpersonal interactions and key plot moments. So in that sense I wasn't a huge fan of how the romance lines and core interactions with Ciri were handled (I got the romance lines wrong, and got the Ciri stuff right mainly by looking it up - I genuinely don't think the outcomes of a number of key interactions are properly predictable from the text you get given & that the game doesn't telegraph what it's doing very well in some of those cases). Where they did do a good job, I think, was ensuring that "wrong" outcomes were still well acted to create a good story. The setting is as ever really good, a few big suspension of disbelief elements required (the more you think about Gwent, the less it works) but it's generally enjoyable and the characters are really interesting.

I was finding it odd that the end state is un-implemented, so I'm going to leave it a week or two before starting the DLC so I can sort of take them on their own merits rather than in the light of having finished the main story and finding it weird to go back to a Novigrad that's acting as if I hadn't.

My end state, with accompanying notes:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
* Ciri became a witcher. She would likely have died - call it a toss-up - had I not looked outcomes up, and I maintain that some of the decisions you have to "get right" in order to "be supportive" are unintuitive (the "lighten your spirits" versus "you don't have to be good at everything", either of which can be construed as supportive) or actively counterintuitive (someone stressing about a meeting should not actually be told "hey, you'll be fine on your own" rather than supported at the meeting). I did quite like the story ending, I thought the bit with Ge'els was fun: Eredin was underwhelming, barely scratched the gilding on my mastercrafted Witcher armour honestly.
* I stuck with my Temerian allies so Nilfgaard won the war. I was a bit annoyed by this because it was not at all obvious to me why Djikstra didn't just bugger off and take over Redania rather than coming to murder his erstwhile allies totally unnecessarily and then get killed because I'd put too much effort into keeping Ves and Thaler alive during these games to let him kill them now. Also, given they don't implement the end state, having a choice to spare Djikstra after that fight seemed an easy gimme for more variation?
* Cerys was queen of Skellige. I liked the Skellige rulership stuff perhaps the most out of the core political quests: it handled in a way that seemed sensible and fun.
* Geralt remained single. I'd decided I wanted to go with Triss, but picked the option where he asks her to stay and she refuses at the docks so I just leaned into that and had Geralt be a bit sad and mopey about it.
I think that's about all you get much major choice over? Except the Velen stuff as discussed earlier.

I do wonder if there's much more to be done with the Witcher IP in games. The trilogy in many ways feels right and neat, and it'd be very tricky to make more games about Geralt given the finality of W3 and the huge scale of choices involved, but there's presumably always going to be the temptation to find some way to use it more, and I might go for it if that did happen as I'd like to explore more of the world: a Witcher game set thirty years or so after W3 (long enough for you to explain a major new shift/reset in world politics) where you got to create your own witcher rather than being Geralt might be fun in its own way, I sort of felt it'd be fun to explore the other schools a bit, though maybe the series is just too wedded to its core cast for that to work.

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