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The Witcher III


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As great as I've found this game, it's incredibly difficult to get back into after a while away. I'd been playing this loads, had a break to play Arkham Knight for a couple weeks and damn is it difficult to even get into playing through a couple of quests.

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well just finished the game, my ending :cry:

so basically my ending was

nilfgaard wins complete victory over the north

temeria was restored(long live the lillies!)

skellige flourishes under cerys

ciri becomes empress of nilgaard/emhyr steps down.

geralt and triss move to kovir, where triss becomes rich as advisor to the kovir king, geralt takes on the occasional witcher contract

not sure if that is the best outcome or not.

Got bored so I finished.

Nilfgaard wins the north, but Temeria restored under the condition of fealty to Emhyr. Skellige flourishes under Cerys. Ciri becomes a witcher, Geralt and Yennefer live somewhere together, though Geralt mentions to Ciri that he's still going to do witcher things. Emhyr executes a bunch of conspirators in Nilfgaard, stays emperor.
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I like this and I love RPGS, they're my kind of thing. The problem is though after spending an endless amount of time in there before the final set of quests is that the camera angle/targeting, inability to swim properly, automatically walking slow when on a boat or inability lift up things in front of me become too much.

It's not a good thing when the hardest thing about a game is the camera.

Races aren't that well thought out either. The strategy after you get the 75 stamina saddle just becomes run as far in front as you can, wait until stamina runs out, wait for it to refill then run as fast again till you win.

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I like this and I love RPGS, they're my kind of thing. The problem is though after spending an endless amount of time in there before the final set of quests is that the camera angle/targeting, inability to swim properly, automatically walking slow when on a boat or inability lift up things in front of me become too much.

It's not a good thing when the hardest thing about a game is the camera.

Races aren't that well thought out either. The strategy after you get the 75 stamina saddle just becomes run as far in front as you can, wait until stamina runs out, wait for it to refill then run as fast again till you win.

walking in doors and on boats suck and i wish you could grab ledges easier. swimming has never been a big problem for me on the mouse and keyboard. the only time i have issues with it is when your not in deep enough water and the camera starts to freak out a bit.

to omar

ciri became a witcher? that is pretty cool, does she stay with geralt at the end?
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well just finished the game, my ending :cry:

so basically my ending was

nilfgaard wins complete victory over the north

temeria was restored(long live the lillies!)

skellige flourishes under cerys

ciri becomes empress of nilgaard/emhyr steps down.

geralt and triss move to kovir, where triss becomes rich as advisor to the kovir king, geralt takes on the occasional witcher contract

not sure if that is the best outcome or not.

Got bored so I finished.

Nilfgaard wins the north, but Temeria restored under the condition of fealty to Emhyr. Skellige flourishes under Cerys. Ciri becomes a witcher, Geralt and Yennefer live somewhere together, though Geralt mentions to Ciri that he's still going to do witcher things. Emhyr executes a bunch of conspirators in Nilfgaard, stays emperor.

Not a massive departure from my ending:

Nilfgaard won the war, let Temeria become its own country again. Skellige flourished under Cerys, and Emhyr executed the conspirators. My ending didn't give any information on Yennefer or Triss but I've not looked around for them yet. You spend the epilogue in a cold White Orchard, meeting up with Ciri. You go for a walk, go fishing, give her a piggy back, but Ciri reveals she is leaving. She decided the only way she could make a positive change in the world was to succeed Emhyr, so he names her his successor as Empress. Dandelion mentions she's the only monarch with political prowess, which she learnt from Emhyr, and simple human decency, from Geralt.

Reading some of the possible endings, I think we both did well!

Edited by Conor
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Full review/random thoughts, spoilers:

Not really sure how to start.... I played through the first two games earlier this year (Jan. and Feb.), and I eagerly awaited the release of Wild Hunt. The cinematic trailers were awesome, rivaling Assassin's Creed cinematics for sure. I didn't see too many gameplay trailers; just that 37 minute one, and a few random short ones - and they mostly started popping up near release.

Fast forward to release, I had serious issues running the game the first hour or two of release, it was genuinely unplayable. Then NVIDIA release a game specific driver that night, and it fixed everything. I can't say it never crashed, but that was almost certainly NVIDIA's drivers and not the game (since it happened out of game as well).

Graphics (running all on ultra essentially with hairworks on):

The game looks really really good. The detail on Geralt and most character's was especially good. I did notice a few stock faces used for multiple NPC's, but it wasn't too much of a bother. I will admit some of the textures did not impress me, notably the small sand cliffs near beaches and rocky areas. The water looked good, as did the grasslands and forests. And the detail in Novigrad/cities/towns was great.

I upgraded from an XFX 7970 TDBC to an EVGA 970 3978 in anticipation for the game..... but to be honest, I think the 7970 would have run it just fine. No way it would have performed as well as the 970 (I got 55-60fps in the wild with hairworks on, and 45-52ish in big cities, pretty much as good as possible for a single 970 with stock settings), but oh well, now I have a sweet card for new releases.

Shame the 2013 version was scrapped, fuck you consoles. :fuckyou:

The world:

Obviously the world was huge, that goes without saying. Exploring was one of the best parts of the game, if not the best part. I was a bit disappointed that Novigrad was the only big city, Oxenfurt felt small to me - and nothing in Velen compared to either. Skellige was really cool to explore.... well the islands were. The random loot in the seas was annoying, the vast majority of it was junk IMO. My favorite moment may have been early on when you first enter Crookback Bog.

The story:

The story was good, I wasn't really "wowed" by anything, everything seemed in line with Witcher lore - though even having played the first two games, I was quite lost when it came to much of the lore. There were a bazillion references to things that had happened in the books - though to be fair I'm sure a lot of it was mentioned in the in-game books, which I read very few of. :shrugs: There were some cool Easter eggs to Game of Thrones, the first two games, and other random stuff.

I really can't tell if I felt that my choices had a bigger effect in this game or the second one..... there was nowhere near the level of differentiation I expected. CDPR claims there are "36" endings (I think that's the number)...... but there are only 3 possible endings for Geralt/love interest, 3 for Ciri, and 2 for the north.... that's 18, I must be missing another "2," but if it's minor enough for me to forget it........

So it's not that there's a hugely diverse array of endings, it's that there are a few details per major story item, and those details are swapped depending on the choices you make in a few quests. I don't know, I just expected it to be more different as the game progresses, there were certainly different endings for mini story quests and the final main quest.... but everyone essentially played the same content. Players from the second game will know how different it was.

The execution of the story was done fairly well, it did make the player care about finding Ciri, and IMO ensuring that Geralt always at least tried to do the right thing in most cases. I'm not sure how many hours total the main story itself took me, I'd guess in the 30-40 hours region. Which is pretty good.

Mechanics:

Combat was good, not amazing; it was an improved/more versatile version of the second game's combat system. You could sort of just do a slash or two and roll away, and repeat that and win most battles, especially if the fight was outdoors in an open space, but I didn't really care nor did I feel that I was abusing the mechanics of combat.

The crafting and alchemy systems were awesome, definitely best of the series I think. To do well on the hard modes you really have to "be a witcher," as in use potions that are right for the situation, look up the bestiary, etc.. I do wish there had been a more diverse array of armors, most light armors looked dumb, and there really weren't that many cool looking armors IMO. I could probably count the ones I thought looked good in one hand: Redanian Halberdier, Great Sun, Ursine Mastercrafted..... Cat didn't look terrible, I never finished getting the wolf schematics.

I didn't love the character skills/building system. I like that you can't master everything, but I don't like that you weren't able to apply more than 8 skills..... and that's only when you finally reach level 28 or whatever it was. I also didn't really find myself struggling to choose between skills, if I replay, I don't think I'd even want to change my character build that much. I was hoping for a skill building system like Star Wars Galaxies, or Final Fantasy X - in those games it felt like your skills really really mattered, and you could have completely different character builds. I finished the game at level 34, interestingly, I finished my 2 playthroughts of the Witcher II at levels 35, and then 34. I don't know how people are getting to level 40+ in Wild Hunt?!?!

The quest system was pretty good, I will say towards the end the side quests started to get fairly repetitive. It was sort of annoying though that I would level to 20, and then check out a Skellige island I had never been to, and find 3 quests for level 12...... there were many quests I discovered too late for them to give me XP, which was annoying.

As others have mentioned, the camera angles and forced walking pace indoors got annoying. Swimming was sometimes annoying, and terrain navigation was often quite tough - though I think that was in response to people saying terrain navigation in Skyrim was way too easy.

Overall:
I know I listed a lot of grievances here, but for each issue I had, there were 10 things I loved. It was a great game, easily worth the money, and CDPR's customer-friendly policies and non-sellout production/development/marketing policies get big points too.

I finished pretty much everything at 96 hours in, and I'm looking forward to the expansions later this year. I will probably do another playthrough first though.

I give Wild Hunt a 9/10.

And @Bran and Conor

Yeah she becomes a witcher, though she doesn't undergo the Trial of the Grasses. I guess she's an exception since she has Elder Blood? It was actually sort of confusing, it seemed like the endings for the story items didn't add up. It said Geralt and Yennefer retreated to some location to live with each other, implying Geralt was leaving the Path. But the ending with Ciri had them sitting in a tavern talking about the Path to come...... :shrugs:

And Conor, your Geralt ended up lonely and by himself because you romanced both Triss and Yennefer instead of one of them. :lol: I like that, CDPR punishes for excessive lust.

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i think the ending is told years and years down the road, dandelion as the narrator sounds quite old like a man reflecting on events years into the past, where as the actual ending is just months after the events of the game actual finish.

i think your actual review is pretty spot on, i too would give the game a 9/10 which may go up depending on how good the expansions are. i think for a first time open world game cdpr did an amazing job. for the next game i would like to see a little better exploration factor, i think having better hand placed loot would go a long way to exploring some similar to what elder scrolls III morrowind and the gothic games did.

as for level i read that some people use the banking system to level, which would take a long time but some people have done it. i think i ended up at level 36 but i still have enough green quests to probably take me to 37. i too was a little annoyed about the quests in skellige being so low level compared to what most people would be when going their for the first time, i did them anyways for the story or just to complete them but it would have been better if maybe the quests scale in some way like if you find the quest at level 17 maybe the enemies would be 3 or 4 levels higher. this seems to be a problem in most open world games to be honest i dont like the oblivion/skyrim enemy scaling system where everything scales to your level i would rather see it like gothic where certain areas would be sprinkled with crazy hard enemies that would kick your ass until you geared up and hit a certain level, where there isnt any type of artificial level limit but more of an organic gear/skill "check" of sorts.

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Full review/random thoughts, spoilers:

And Conor, your Geralt ended up lonely and by himself because you romanced both Triss and Yennefer instead of one of them. :lol: I like that, CDPR punishes for excessive lust.
I have no regrets. In fact, I romanced Keira and the girl from the Gwent Tournament. I actually think it fit the story quite well. I'd not played the first two, but I thought Geralt sending Ciri to bigger and greater things as the Empress while he lived out his days as a lone wolf (pun intended) worked really well in the full picture. It also makes sense in the post-game, rather than it just taking place before the final battle. There are 36 'endings', but they also include what happens with the Bloody Baron, Keira and so on. I thought it was interesting that Djikstra could've ended up ruling Novigrad! I didn't even remember I'd made an actual choice during that, I thought it seemed obvious :lol: It was wonderful when I lobbed his head off. Was sad for Crach though :(
Edited by Conor
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I was also a bit disappointed that you don't really take part in the North vs. South war at all. I had assumed one of the game's major decisions would be siding with Nilfgaard or the North. You sort of could choose, but it wasn't anywhere near on the scale I had hoped. I was hoping for big battles, sieges, etc..

And where was Aryan La Valette?! I thought he would be the guy that the northerners rally behind to fight Nilfgaard. I let him live in my W2 save. And that's another thing, I didn't feel that loading my W2 save really did that much in terms of altering my story compared to those who didn't have saves. It was similarly unimportant from W1 > W2, but I just figured it would matter more this time.... :shrugs:

Edited by OmarBradley
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I came across the Skellige's Most Wanted glitch, shame since it was a great little contract. I've completed Novigrad: Closed City as well but it still shows up in my questbook because I failed one of the steps (even though I clearly didn't). Faithful Friend is broken too. Odd though, I didn't have any glitched quests until after I'd done the main story.

I made the mastercrafted Wolf armour too, looks great. The best armour I have is the Nilfgaard set from DLC, it's levelled and mine are all 34/37. I sold the mastercrafted Griffin stuff though, looks like shit compared to the others.

Edited by Conor
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Bit of news on the first expansion, Oct. 13th release (or maybe that isn't news), but there's a short promo vid and some screenshots.

There's a screenshot of Geralt talking to a girl who looks a lot like

Shani.

i think it is her!

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I have to say, I'm impressed you guys got the happy endings.

On my first play through I got the rather bleaker, "there ain't going to be a sequel ending". I just played through the later part of the game when the decisions matter, making them like Geralt seemed liked he would have.

Ciri never came back and Geralt basically committed suicide after killing the last Crone. I guess the path of sleeping with every female in the game didn't work out for him.

On the other hand, Emyhr kills all his political enemies and wins the war, Termeria is restored (?), and Cerys lived happily ever after as ruler of Northern Ireland.



Edited by AtariLegend
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Not W3, but still relevant:

11228024_904987219585908_425594815771980


I have to say, I'm impressed you guys got the happy endings.

On my first play through I got the rather bleaker, "there ain't going to be a sequel ending". I just played through the later part of the game when the decisions matter, making them like Geralt seemed liked he would have.

Ciri never came back and Geralt basically committed suicide after killing the last Crone. I guess the path of sleeping with every female in the game didn't work out for him.

On the other hand, Emyhr kills all his political enemies and wins the war, Termeria is restored (?), and Cerys lived happily ever after as ruler of Northern Ireland.



Yeah if you bang them both you get an unhappy ending ironically. I did find it interesting that were wasn't really any explanation of where the last Crone went in my ending, at least I don't remember if there was.

So torn on NG+ and Heart of Stone.... I am right in the middle of DA:O, and then have Inquisition to do. I'm in Dragon Age mode. :S

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not W3, but still relevant:

11228024_904987219585908_425594815771980

I have to say, I'm impressed you guys got the happy endings.

On my first play through I got the rather bleaker, "there ain't going to be a sequel ending". I just played through the later part of the game when the decisions matter, making them like Geralt seemed liked he would have.

Ciri never came back and Geralt basically committed suicide after killing the last Crone. I guess the path of sleeping with every female in the game didn't work out for him.

On the other hand, Emyhr kills all his political enemies and wins the war, Termeria is restored (?), and Cerys lived happily ever after as ruler of Northern Ireland.

Yeah if you bang them both you get an unhappy ending ironically. I did find it interesting that were wasn't really any explanation of where the last Crone went in my ending, at least I don't remember if there was.

So torn on NG+ and Heart of Stone.... I am right in the middle of DA:O, and then have Inquisition to do. I'm in Dragon Age mode. :S

i ended up killing her :lol:

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Not W3, but still relevant:

11228024_904987219585908_425594815771980

I have to say, I'm impressed you guys got the happy endings.

On my first play through I got the rather bleaker, "there ain't going to be a sequel ending". I just played through the later part of the game when the decisions matter, making them like Geralt seemed liked he would have.

Ciri never came back and Geralt basically committed suicide after killing the last Crone. I guess the path of sleeping with every female in the game didn't work out for him.

On the other hand, Emyhr kills all his political enemies and wins the war, Termeria is restored (?), and Cerys lived happily ever after as ruler of Northern Ireland.

Yeah if you bang them both you get an unhappy ending ironically. I did find it interesting that were wasn't really any explanation of where the last Crone went in my ending, at least I don't remember if there was.

So torn on NG+ and Heart of Stone.... I am right in the middle of DA:O, and then have Inquisition to do. I'm in Dragon Age mode. :S

i ended up killing her :lol:

I don't even remember that being an option. Or are you talking about the Crone?

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