I finally beat the base game, as well as heart of stone. Both were excellent, i can’t see any game i play this year being better than this moment.
Tomorrow i start blood and wine.
So the new STLM lightning mod came out. Together with Volumetric Clouds mod, it gets pretty close to Sword of Destiny era graphics:
http://abload.de/img/witcher_comparison8gr3v.png
This is the same location unmodded:
Ok, so a few things. I started this game just after Christmas, and have gone through into Velen. I’ve ‘met’ with the agent of the Emperor, and I’ve also fought a werewolf.
There is some really impressive things here. For example, when I was summoned to the emperor, and had a chance to talk to some of the people there, I was really impressed. Talking to the Ambassador in particular by Yen was fascinating how they build out the character. There is also lots of ways they imply relationships between characters that are well done.
Going around Velen and I’m doing lots of things. The perpetual procrastinator, I never beeline to objectives. I’ll futz around, explore the map, seek out sidequests. Which, fine, is my preferred exploration. It is sub optimal because my limited time means this draws the game out, but thems the breaks. I’d rather savor the experience I guess.
Well, as it turns out, the fact that combat hadn’t been too hard before was somewhat misleading. Sure, some monsters were trickier, but nothing had been a particular threat. Then I met a werewolf. At level 4. And that werewolf wrecked me repeatedly. I’d play well, have my sword oiled, use Igni, dodge, but just couldn’t break through. That regen meant I couldn’t stay in long enough to deal enough damage. Try and overpower the regen? Get killed for being too agressive. Be more defensive? Look, full health.
Well, turns out, killing a werewolf with your starter sword is kinda a bad idea. Especially one at about 50% repair. There was, however, a blueprint I could use. The Viper school sword was available, and after shifting some items to the correct type (converting dust to nuggets) I had a shiny new sword. It was a little stronger, but that wasn’t the main plus. No, it was 10% poison chance.
Take that pesky regen.
So I go back to the werewolf cave and dispatch him with ease. As in over half my health and no healing items used. Seems gear is kinda a big deal.
Then I decide to leave the cave, send a victory tweet without pausing, and then a bear ate my face. So, after reloading, I wound up with quite the nice collection of bear pelts.
Now I stumbled across some witch (turns out that my hunch to investigate a lone building was right, bypassing the visit to the town) and she knows things. Then portals, catacombs, we see the Wild Hunt, Geralt is all ‘teleport me over there so I can chase these jerks down’ and I’m all ‘no, you just got wrecked by a werewolf and a bear, these guys are out of your league’.
Anyhow I’m liking it. The writing is, as proclaimed, a cut above. It looks nice. It has a crafting system that looks like way more effort than I want. Geralt has enough flowers to start his own flowershop. I’m flummoxed by why everyone wants Ciri, as I don’t get why the Emperor is her father but Geralt raised her apparently, yet the Emperor and Geralt are antagonistic. It let me walk away so that the Werewolf could kill the sister who deserved it. There have been no moments where I have questioned Geralts basic competence, and they write people as generally intelligent.
Seriously, Bioware, I love ya but sometimes you abuse the idiot ball.
Now a question I know has been answered, but I can not locate in thread. What settings should I change? I know some of you have suggested turning off various UI elements to improve the game experience, and perhaps some mods for different things. What are the must haves?
All quest objectives on map
Simply the best mod ever. As the name implies, it puts all quests on the map instead of only the selected one. They didn’t make a lot of mistakes with witcher 3, but not doing this by default was a big one.
Auto Apply Oils
Ok, it kind of helps you in game so some might not like, but you can pause the game and apply oils in combat, so you really aren’t gaining anything other than saving you a lot of clicking through the inventory
Realistic Trophies (or a similar mod)
The base trophies in the game are 99% useless and give basically no effect. I don’t find the bonuses this mod provides as overpowered but they are actually there so i care about my trophy now.
Immersive Cam, Immersive Motion, Alternate horse control - all three part of one mod (Immersive Cam) are great, improve controls a lot and customizable camera is awesome, includes ingame menu options for everything
Sensible Map Borders - improves exploration by removing the hard borders that force map opening
Volumetric Clouds over Skellige - see screen above
Also enable alternative movement response in the menu if not done already, also you can disable the fish eye effect for witcher sense.
Geralt and Emhyr are antagonistic because Emhyr had some not very nice plans for Ciri earlier in her life, but in the end he decided to let her go and leave Geralt alive. She was actually mostly raised by her grandmother Calanthe, but has a strong bond with Geralt due to various reasons.
You’ll only get the full picture if you read the books, but I can summarize the main points for you if you want. Overall, though, Ciri and Geralt are connected by fate.
I would appreciate that. The sorceress something Mari or other, said ‘everyone obviously wants Ciri’, but it wasn’t obvious to me. Like I know Geralt and Ciri have this kind of father daughter thing. I also get get that Emperor Emyrs is her biological father. Also he and Geralt are… not friends.
But why he would send Ciri to him? Why does everyone else want her? I know there would be more in the books, but a little more of what isn’t covered in the game would definitely be appreciated!
Both of those will be covered in the game eventually. Unless these questions are seriously bothering you, I would maybe recommend not finding them out from other sources. The way one of them gets revealed in the game is pretty cool.
You’re past the part where I learned about this. I picked up a book somewhere (or scroll or something) and learned that Witchers have the right to take any child they want and raise them to be Witchers. So, all the other stuff aside, Geralt took Ciri because he recognized her potential and raised her to be a Witcher. Or something like that?
Ok, so spoiler tags, because I’ll comment a lot of things from quite a few books.
[spoiler]There’s an old law that witchers will invoke as a reward called “the Law of Surprise”. Check this wiki link: http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Law_of_Surprise . Geralt invoked that law twice, and in both cases the result/reward was Ciri. Her biological father wanted her for political reasons - basically to give his empire an official “hold” on the land of Cintra, in the north. But the way he looked for her was risky to say the least, and threatened her life and the lifes of others.
In Witcher 3, Geralt has a lot of reasons to not like Emhyr. Emhyr doesn’t really love Ciri, he’s the Emperor of Nilfgard (which caused many problems for everyone, including Geralt), and he was behind the assassination of King Foltest, a crime of which Geralt was wrongly accused in Witcher 2. You can imagine that Geralt wouldn’t want Ciri, who he loves as a daughter (and to whom he’s tied in an even deeper way than that) around such a man.
And yet… he is her biological father, and Geralt knows Ciri has every right to speak to her biological father if she thinks she should.[/spoiler]
Good read…
I live in Bournemouth :) Not met him though…yet…;)
Whoa.
[quote]
"I didn’t know Witcher 2 was even happening until one of my actor friends said, ‘I went and auditioned for this game the other day, Witcher 2, didn’t you do Witcher 1?’
"I said ‘Yeah, who did you audition for - was there a particular character?’
"He said ‘Yeah, Geralt, didn’t you play Geralt?’
"I said ‘Yeah, I did!’
“Oh it felt rubbish!” he says, to know they were casting but he hadn’t been called. What on earth had he done wrong?
But an actor is nothing if not tenacious, so he brings up Borys’ number on his phone and sends him a message, plays it cool, says he’s heard there are castings and could he come in. And Borys replies.
“What happened,” he says, “is between The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2, CD Projekt decided that they wanted to completely shake it up. They were pleased with how Witcher 1 had done but they wanted to recast everything, go with a different voice production studio. I don’t know why; their reasons were their own. But that’s what they decided to do.”
Borys apologises and goes to see the new voice director for The Witcher 2, Kate Saxon, and mentions Doug Cockle. "And the story is that they went back and listened to some of the recordings from Witcher 1, and Kate went ‘Actually he’s really good - that’s a good voice for Geralt. If you’re happy to bring him back I think we should just do that.’[/quote]
Crazy that they almost went with a different VA in The Witcher 2.
Exactly, I can’t imagine a different voice for the 2nd game. It would have killed the game for me.
Oops, forgot to reply sooner.
Thank you all for those tips. Particularly you @rhamorim, that is exactly the type of detail I was looking for. That’s the hard part about jumping in to part 3 of such a narrative heavy series.
I also installed a few of the suggested mods, particularly All Quest Objectives (h/t @Murbella) and immersive Cam and Sensible Borders (h/t @Paul_cze). The Quest one in particular solves what was a small, but persistent, annoyance.
So I’ve moved further along the story. Geralt is still trying to find where Ciri went. The Bloody Baron, what a piece of work. Still it turns out he met Ciri, and was the last person in the area who had seen her. Chasing phantoms across the swamps eventually I found both his wife and daughter. The Daughter? Can’t blame her for her choice, though it seems she will have a hard time achieving her goal, since my next stop was the Crones. Turns out I found her mother first.
After much delay and trouble, I managed to stab a tree, and meet the crones face to face. I normally have a policy of not looting the cabins I find in the wild, unless they are abandoned or bandits. These poor dirt farmers have it hard up enough with the war and everything without me nicking their only tools to sell for pittance.
I am going to take everything that isn’t nailed down. I’d burn the blasted place to the ground too, were that an option. Come fight me you three.
Anyhow slow but steady progress. Gotten to level 8 now, though I don’t know where I wind up next. Could track down Kiera Metz again, could seek out Triss. Already got the pass I need, have had for a while too. I’ve got options, if not leads.
Oh, and I’ve got to figure out if I’m Triss or Yen soon I suppose. Because I know the dangers of indecision ;)
guess they couldn’t get him to do the bath pose.
If you hunt around Youtube a bit, there are a couple of terrific interviews Doug did for podcasters and Youtubers and he comes off as just an immensely likeable guy. Very happy to be interacting with fanbois and fangirls, not irritated at all to answer the same questions again and again. The adjective that comes across is sweet. He seems like a very sweet, nice man.
Utterly crazy. That said, Witcher 2 had fantastic voice acting across the board, so the new studio worked out, but god damn am I glad they called Doug again. I really really fucking hate it when companies make me like a character and then they change them in the next game.
Hitman almost suffered that fate, and only reconsidered after fan backlash.
Max Payne almost suffered that fate, and only reconsidered after fan backlash.
And now I find out Geralt almost did too. Pheew.
And yeah, Doug is awesome both as actor and as a person. Immensely likeable.
Speaking of recasting:
Wasn’t there quite an outcry when Michael Ironside was not asked to return as Sam Fischer in the Splintercell series?