For a second I was worried because I thought you meant the original The Witcher and you’d be stuck for years trying to get through it.
Yeah, saves don’t transfer but CDPR is really good about putting everything on sale whenever they do. If they put the GOTY version up, they also discount the standalone version and the individual/bundled DLCs.
What a time to be alive.
https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3001-364/The-Witcher-Adult-Coloring-Book-TPB
I have no idea what this is and what it means.
“Adult coloring books” are a hot fad right now. They usually feature more intricate line drawings than the normal kids’ books, and the focus is on relaxation and repetitive patterns. This kind of thing:
But hey, Geralt in a bathtub:
More specifically adult coloring books are a huge thing because many of the print companies saw shrinking revenues in many areas. The print sector as a whole has spent the last decade plus losing about 2% of its market share every year. Especially hard hit are those that do magazines, newsletters, flyers, and the like.
So this adult coloring book fad its a huge boon to those large format one/ 4 color presses that have particularly been hard hit. It was initially a gamble by some printers looking to use those otherwise idling machines, and it took off. For the commercial printers not in the packaging business? It was a godsend.
Basically it was a hail mary by printers that managed to luck into finding a new market. So, since it was cheap to make (the machines were not running at capacity and are cheaper to run than full color press jobs) lots got in on the act.
Your drive-by sarcasm here is unfair. I played that section last night and thought it was an effective moment of Geralt trying to be a father figure. Maybe the most effective in the game so far. (And LOL at @Enidigm’s line “aspie guy’s vision of parenting.”)
At first I chose not to steal the horses and wound up feeling ashamed that I offended our hosts and got in a fistfight with Ciri’s friends. When she went off to be by herself, I wished I’d just gone along with it to give her a little happiness. I know that feeling of second-guessing and regret despite my good intentions all too well as a dad, plus I remember it from the other perspective from when I was a teen. I don’t get do-overs in real life but I was glad I could reload and make the other choice just this once because the poor kid has been through a lot and it seems like she could use some bonding time and cheering up with a distraction a lot more than a morality lesson right about now.
Have fun hate-gaming your way through it, I guess, but that’s no reason to be disingenuous or simplistic about it.
I actually agree with you. My kid was having a rough day, so I just stole my neighbor’s PlayStation to make my kid feel better.
Were you living in a might-makes-right society where simply existing makes you likely to be attacked by monsters or raiders, a little six-fingered discount to give a bit of happiness to someone you care for might make a bit more sense. That said, I agree it’s an odd choice that doesn’t jive with the morality of the real world, and therefor a questionable inclusion. Now excuse me while I peruse the card deck of all my exes … oh, wait; I’m not a creep and don’t have those, either.
That analogy fails on pretty much every level. But I get it. Moral complexity is complex.
You’re mistaking Ciri’s point of view for the moral of the story which it isn’t.
Yeah, moral complexity is really complex when the game gives you a binary “bad ending” scene because of the choice.
I gotta post this great article again don’t I.
Forget Fighting. How Good a Dad Are You?
So at the end, Ciri does a Big Thing. I think the game could have done a better job explaining what she was doing and why, but that would be adding more content to an already overstuffed game. The important thing is that this event is what the hours and hours of running around, confusion, and carnage has led to. Her thing. You aren’t even present for it.
But you DO matter. Remember, you are Ciri’s mentor. For the final stretch of the game, Ciri comes to you for support and guidance. The way you support her is vitally important. It determines whether she completes and survives doing the Big Thing.
All of the things you say and do that make a difference don’t seem to be that important, but they are, in fact, vital. A few offhand words you don’t think twice about can have an enormous effect on someone else, and it’s not always fair. (You know. Like in real life.) All of the most important decisions in the game seem like False Choices.
False Choices?
Role-playing games, including my own, have a lot of what are sometimes called false choices. These are points when you make a decision or express your opinion, but your choices don’t have a concrete effect on gameplay.
I don’t believe false choices don’t make a difference. In fact, they are hugely important. By asking the player to mentally engage and form an opinion about what is happening in the game, you are directly shaping the player’s experience.
Remember, video games are just tools we use to affect our brains. The only important thing about a game is how our brain perceives it. Any choice, even a false choice, affects our perception of the game. All choices matter, even if they don’t affect your stats.
The difference with The Witcher 3 is that all of the most important decisions are hidden in plain sight. They seem like false choices, but they directly change the ending. Your words have enormous importance to your child, but they seem irrelevant to you. It’s exactly like …
Being a Parent.
I have two kids. It has been endlessly frustrating to me how bad a job pop culture, especially video games, does depicting this fundamental human experience.
The Witcher 3 is the first game I’ve ever played that really engages my parent brain. When Ciri came to me for advice, my experience raising my own daughters had an affect on what I chose.
Yes, it can be unfair. You can think you’re doing or saying the right thing, and it all falls apart. Welcome to parenthood.
I think this is cool and unique, and I wanted to make sure it didn’t pass without comment. It’s a shame it all happens so late in the game, because it’s really well-crafted.
Not to mention the horse owner is a apparently a racist asshole, so punishing him a bit while simultaneously bonding with Ciri isn’t exactly some impossibly hard moral connundrum…well at least for me it wasn’t.
The point of the word “complex” is that it isn’t binary. Nor is it bad. The focus in that scene was on Ciri’s emotional reaction in her pleading with Geralt and her disappointed slouch but the player is free to ignore those cues. Just as Geralt, or any dad, would have to ignore and try to tolerate a sulking daughter. You need to look past the moment and see the long-view to see the good outcome, teaching her right from wrong.
I can tell why you prefer the more free-form sandbox games if nuanced, emotional storytelling bounces off you like this.
I loved the way the seemingly inconsequential “false choices” (as @Paul_cze’s linked article puts it) turned out to be some of the most important player inputs in the game.
Compare the way the Telltale games do this. They offer you a choice like save Billy, letting Tammy die, or save Tammy, letting Billy die. This seems incredibly important in the moment, but it turns out that it really doesn’t matter. Whether Billy or Tammy live, you will still see the same story ending. This is a classic false choice.
The Witcher 3 upends this beautifully. Whether you scold or praise Ciri seems like such a small thing, but that decision along with a few others makes a gigantic difference on which ending you get. Killing the trolls and wyverns, executing mages, and crafting potions gets you to the end, but giving Ciri the parenting she needs (not necessarily wants) is the key to getting the ending you - the player - prefers.
I disagree with that last sentence.
Giving Ciri the parenting she wants (not necessarily needs) is the key to getting the ending you - the player - prefers. IMHO. She wants to steal horses? Let her steal horses. She wants to bust up some guy’s lab just to make herself feel better? Don’t stop her, just let her do what she wants. She wants to feel independent and not have you hover over her? What she wants is more important than whether you can help her by being there or not. In all cases, you want to do what she wants, not necessarily what she needs. In some cases, the two are the same. But you always want to make the decision based on what she wants if you want the better endings.
And that’s exactly what people have issue with. You generally want to telegraph these things at least a little to avoid such surprises in the end.
Maybe. I think we’re looking at the same thing and just taking away different conclusions. I felt the lessons you needed to impart to Ciri were necessary, but not what she really wanted in those moments. I felt a large part of her wanted you to step in and do the parenting thing as her mentor, but you needed to let go and give her the independence she needed.
@Bateau As for telegraphing the key moments, you’re right that most games throw up a big old warning to the player, but The Witcher 3 gives the player the info to succeed by rolling out similarly hard choices in the form of earlier quests like The Bloody Baron. Those early choices are the players warning that The Witcher 3 is going to throw some curveballs at you. Choices matter.
Yeah, and it seems it’s a hurdle for games that are well-written with meaningful choice and consequence that many players still think in basic terms of good/bad, win/lose, right/wrong.
It wasn’t emotional. The end of the game said I pretty clearly made the wrong decision because I didn’t steal horses. Is there a reason you’re being an asshole to someone who has a different opinion than you? I’m a bit tired of you treating me like an imbecile.
Why does it need to suggest you made the wrong decision at the end of the game (in a very binary way)?
It’s not Ciri being upset that is the problem. It’s the end of the game pretty much telling me I made the “wrong” choice that seemed quite cack handed to me.