The Witcher 3

Okay, so it is out? I was paying too much attention to Watch_Dogs to notice.

From my understanding, your gear, money, skills, level, recipes, and all other character-specific unlocks (Gwent cards, I hope!) carry over. Your story progress, obviously, is reset, and encounters rescale to your current level.

So playing the entire game at near-level cap then. Huh. Kinda weird that new game plus has level scaling when the regular game doesn't.

edited 19th Aug '15 8:42:44 AM by Ghilz

That's what the devs said. I haven't tried it yet so I haven't seen it in practice. Maybe just the main story rescales?

From what I've seen, I've kept all my armor and weapons, all my potions, oils, bombs, and decoctions (most being superior, whoo!), alchemy recipes, crafting materials, money, and foods. Sadly my godly Gwent deck didn't carry over. Enemies and quests are at level 31 in White Orchard (meaning I was getting full experience from them at around level 35)

So who's the new king of the elves? And what favor will Avallac'h ask of Ciri? A kiddo with that gene of hers?

So, I recently bought the entire trilogy on Steam and have been slowly making my way through the series.

Some thoughts:

First game was, to be quite honest, a chore to go through. I liked the story and the characters, but I felt that the gameplay was just too clunky. I mostly rushed through the main quest.

Second game was much more to my liking. The gameplay was good and I felt that the characters were much more memorable and interesting as well. I picked the Iorveth path the first time around and I will probably re-play the game sometime in the future to get a look at some of the alternate decisions.

Just started Wild Hunt yesterday and got as far as killing the Griffon in White Orchard. So far, I like the interface for the game. It's much simpler and cleaner than previous games, though I miss the Time Lapse effect of meditation that was in the previous games. Alchemy and crafting is also much simpler thanks to the ability to pin recipes so that you don't have to constantly switch from one menu to another. All in all, the interface is a nice improvement.

I'm not a fan of the controls however. I don't know how to describe it precisely, it's just that Geralt's movements are too...floaty? Is that the word? His momentum seems to always propel him just a bit further than I had planned. Makes it feel clumsy at times, but it's still managable.

Everything else about the game is amazing. Graphics are mind-blowing. My rig can only run the game on High settings, but even those are really good.

What I enjoy is that even the seemingly minor secondary quests are brilliantly voiced and acted and introduce several fascinating characters.

Anyway, that's it for my long-winded post. I'm off to play some more.

I agree about the "floaty" nature of the controls. I've just switched back to TW3 from a long run with Ubisoft's stealth games, most recently Watch_Dogs, and I have to say that Ubisoft does a much better job of making the character move the way the player intends. Geralt has a fascination with running off of ledges that would embarrass any Assassin.

I started a New Game Plus run (from a level 34 save) and it's interesting that it not only bumps up the levels of all the quests and encounters (about +30 if I am seeing things correctly) but also the crafted items. I had thought that I'd have to give up my Mastercrafted Feline gear for random drops, but it seems that my crafting recipes have been wiped and the new ones that I'm going to learn will be scaled to match the game's level. Very nice.

Question: without going into spoilers, does the game have drastically alternate paths like in the first game with Iorverth/Roche? Or are there other incentives to playing New Game Plus ?

If I've judged the vastness of the game correctly, I probably will be playing this for the forseable future, right up until Fallout 4 comes out.

edited 26th Aug '15 12:09:49 PM by GutstheBerserker

The game is really big.

There are a lot of branching paths that will give different story outcomes for particular characters. Some of those have consequences in a specific battle later in the game, some have consequences for the main ending (there are three primary ones), and some have consequences for the ending summation.

Of major outcomes (beware: MAJOR spoilers) you can:

• Choose what happens to the Bloody Baron in Velen. The good ending has him retire to tend to his wife; the bad one has him commit suicide.
• Choose what happens to Keira Metz. The good ending has her hook up with one of your fellow Witchers; the bad one gets her life-work perverted into a bioweapon by Radovid (I think).
• Choose who becomes High King of Skellige. Your choice is between a wise queen who leads the Isles to prosperity and a reckless king who screws everything up.
• Choose who wins the war between Nilfgaard and the North. If you don't assassinate Radovid, Radovid defeats Emhyr and the Church is unleashed on everyone. If you assassinate Radovid and side with Dijkstra, Emhyr is assassinated in a coup after the war effort falters. If you assassinate Radovid and side with Roche, Emhyr wins the war but Temeria is granted vassal status.
• Determine whether Ciri survives her attempt to stop the White Frost, and, surviving, whether she chooses to become Empress or a Witcher.
• Assuming you get one of the good endings for Ciri, choose whether Geralt will end the game with Triss Merigold, Yennefer of Vengerberg, or neither. (As amusing as it might be, "both" is not an option.)

Those are the biggest ones. On a smaller scale, you can choose to play Geralt as an unrepentant dick who's just in it for the money, a champion of the downtrodden, or somewhere in between. You can also tackle the three main story areas in any order, but they are level gated so that you should naturally be inclined to try Velen, then Novigrad, then Skellige.

edited 26th Aug '15 11:14:36 AM by Fighteer

Ah, good. Thanks for the info!

Welp, there goes my free time for the next couple of months XD

F level gates! Go straight to Skellige, its more fun that way!

As long as you know what you're doing you can take down much, much higher level enemies.

Holy shit man, it took me a hundred hours over the course of like nine weeks to beat this game, but it was worth it.

Over 6 million copies of The Wild Hunt were sold until 30 June and the game is still selling great.

That's good to hear. It's a great game and I hope it's success encourages developers to make more of this style of RPG

I want the big DL Cs!

The dead Ciri ending ripped my heart out. Holy crap. [sad]

edited 1st Sep '15 6:18:20 PM by Phoenixflame

So, I just moved out of Velen and started exploring Novigrad. According to Steam, I've been playing for about 39 hours wich is already more than what it took me to finish the second Witcher. I probably didn't even do half of the available quests in Velen. This game is truly massive.

I really, really liked the Bloody Baron story-line. Some great writing there. In the end, I chose to kill the evil tree spirit and thus condemn those orphan kids to being eaten by the Crones. I did manage to save Anna however, at the cost of her sanity. Pretty bittersweet ending.

There are a ton of quests left to finish in Velen and White Orchard, but I'm wondering if I should just move on with the story and come back to them later or grind them out. The problem is that Secondary quests seem to give very little in terms of XP whereas main quests can have you go up a level simply for watching a cutscene.

For now I'm walking around Novigrad, postponing finding Triss and just exploring the area.

edited 3rd Sep '15 7:06:26 AM by GutstheBerserker

I actually went to Novigrad way early to find smiths that could make Witcher gear.

I've only managed to craft a few pieces of the Griffin armour so far. I can never seem to find Meteorite Ore/Ingots to craft the witcher Gear, so I'm assuming that it's the sort of thing that becomes more available further along the game?

Also, it keeps blowing my mind how richly detailed and well-voiced the side quests are. After having played Dragon Age: Inquisision in wich the secondary quests felt very MMO-y and modular, this is a refreshing change of pace.

Even if some of the side quests don't give out much in terms of rewards or experience, just seeing the conclusions of some minor storylines feels satisfying.

Also, this is a very minor detail, but you want to know something that always bothers me in Medieval Fantasy games? When exploring country-sides, there never seems to be enough farmland to justify the population. In Wild Hunt however, the attention to detail is amazing: most peasant huts have a small garden in the back, there are large crop fields across Velen and outside Novigrad. There are also other small details that make the game feel like a living, breathing world.

You'll see women doing laundry outside their huts, kids are playing in the streets, you'll even notice people visiting the outhouse or sitting down for a meal.

It's just set-dressing of course. But it makes the game feel very immersive.

edited 3rd Sep '15 8:34:47 AM by GutstheBerserker

The Witcher contracts have the best rewards, but if you've been grinding everything out, you'll probably outlevel a lot of the side content, so it stops giving you significant amounts of XP.

Yeah, after exploring Novigrad for a little while, I'll probably head back out to Velen to finish up some the Witcher Contracts I missed. Most of them where beyond my level last time I attempted them, but I should be able to survive now.

It's a bit old news but CD Projekt got 150000 euro grant from European Commission, for the production of Witcher's second expansion, Blood and Wine.

What's the first one titled? O.o

Hearth of Stone

For raw experience and such, old 2nd-string missions aren't really worth it, but the voice acting is good enough to feel justified. Like getting a little girl to her Auntie's: the Auntie bluntly says she has five kids to look after and no money, so you've done the child little good, but Geralt can opt to give her some (threatening vengeance if she spends it on hooch) and the woman's overjoyed. Total warm fuzzies.

The Baron storyline is amazing! I was with Geralt when he beat the shit out of Baronatheon for his abusive alcoholic ways, but still managed to feel sympathy when he gave his side—not justifying his crimes, but showing how aware he was of them. The orphans died in my playthrough too, but the Crones were pretty truthful in "well they're out of pain." All other orphans in this world seem to be starving misery fodder. That said, poking through the lore, the Tree Spirit seemed totally justified in hating the Crones—I got the impression they might have been her daughters? Either she went mad and evil with power so they sealed her up (going evil with power themselves) or they plain wanted her power for their own.