The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[Okagron]

Spoiler

- What happened to Yennefer? If you romance Triss the game just forgets about her, which is bloody weird considering how important she is to the story
- Ditto for Avellach. No ending slide for him, the game just forgets
- What happened to the last crone? Shouldn't there be a raid boss like quest after her as Geralt? Apparently you kill her in the bad ending, but having to make all of the wrong choices just to resolve a loose end is kind of bullshit
- What happened to the Lodge? There was all of that talk about restoring it, and then nothing
-What happened to Dandelion and Priscilla? Do they get hitched or what?
-How did Ciri return from the White Frost? What did she even do to it?

For fucks sake, even Skyrim has a more comprehensive ending.

Spoiler

1 - Did you do The Last Wish? If you either ignored it or said you didn't loved her anymore, she decides to go her own way after the White Hunt is defeated. I believe it was to be an advisor to some king i'm forgetting.
2 - Yeah, and i believe you can't even talk to him after the ending.
3 - You can actually kill her in the bad ending to retrieve Vesemir's medallion. It's still odd that she's not mentioned in the Witcher and Empress endings tho.
4 - I assume they are gonna do it, but it's just gonna take a while. Specially with everything that happened with Radovid and his witch hunts, they want to lay low for a little while.
5 - It's expanded upon in Blood and Wine. Still not much though.
6 - I guess she really wanted to live? That's what i assume happens because she remembers all the good moments she had with Geralt during the course of the game. But yeah, it's way too ambigous what she does to the White Frost.

And yes, Hearts of Stone, and i'll add Blood and Wine as well, are pretty fucking great.

 

[blessedCoffee]

Is Ciri’s adventure in the world of the future, as it was described and advertised in Witcher 3, was actually played off somehow in Cyberpunk? Cameo maybe? Or a poster at least?
Never bothered to finish cyberpunk and I really don’t give a shit, but I’m still wondering.

I never played Cyberpunk 2077, but I did saw a video where a player finds a magazine, showing a picture of Ciri. In that universe, Witcher III is a retro game.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Spoiler

- What happened to Yennefer? If you romance Triss the game just forgets about her, which is bloody weird considering how important she is to the story
- Ditto for Avellach. No ending slide for him, the game just forgets
- What happened to the last crone? Shouldn't there be a raid boss like quest after her as Geralt? Apparently you kill her in the bad ending, but having to make all of the wrong choices just to resolve a loose end is kind of bullshit
- What happened to the Lodge? There was all of that talk about restoring it, and then nothing
-What happened to Dandelion and Priscilla? Do they get hitched or what?
-How did Ciri return from the White Frost? What did she even do to it?

For fucks sake, even Skyrim has a more comprehensive ending.

Spoiler

1 - Did you do The Last Wish? If you either ignored it or said you didn't loved her anymore, she decides to go her own way after the White Hunt is defeated. I believe it was to be an advisor to some king i'm forgetting.
2 - Yeah, and i believe you can't even talk to him after the ending.
3 - You can actually kill her in the bad ending to retrieve Vesemir's medallion. It's still odd that she's not mentioned in the Witcher and Empress endings tho.
4 - I assume they are gonna do it, but it's just gonna take a while. Specially with everything that happened with Radovid and his witch hunts, they want to lay low for a little while.
5 - It's expanded upon in Blood and Wine. Still not much though.
6 - I guess she really wanted to live? That's what i assume happens because she remembers all the good moments she had with Geralt during the course of the game. But yeah, it's way too ambigous what she does to the White Frost.

And yes, Hearts of Stone, and i'll add Blood and Wine as well, are pretty fucking great.

I actually did not do The Last Wish. I assumed that neglecting it would just count as a rejection, but does it actually unlock a slide for Yen if you reject her "officially"?

 

[ekrolo2]

Whoever you don't romance just sort of fades away, they're not mentioned in the endings or even the DLCs for that matter. Ditto for Avallach who also just goes away (originally, he was gonna be the final boss which makes a lot of sense given his book history). The Lodge is doomed to die by the book canon anyway so them not getting more of a mention makes sense to me but you can tell after Kaer Morhen a lot of the cut content was replaced by nothing and haphazardly tied together with whatever they had finished.

 

[Semiurge]

Been playing Witcher 3 recently.
Its a pretty game and I like the dialogue, but the actual gameplay isn't great.
It feels really by the numbers; they stripped out everything interesting about the Alchemy mechanic and turned it into something brainless. You don't actually need potions for combat as you can just spam quen and dodge as long as your level is around the same as the enemy's (otherwise you get one shot, which potions won't help with anyway because they are pretty weak and short lived). You don't even need to make potions because all you have to do is make it once and it automatically replenishes when you meditate. Collecting ingredients is just pointless for that reason.
You know something is wrong when you can take a skill that increases health regen from food to 20 minutes instead of taking Swallow and its more efficient.

The overall flow of the quest line is pretty awkward with Act I taking ages and requiring relatively high levels but later Acts are rather short and don't have that much of a level requirement, and the inventory / crafting UI is absolute crap.
I can't help thinking that the first witcher game felt better to play and Witcher 2 had a more coherent structure, even though that had it's own share of nonsense (like QTEs).

Its not a bad game per se, but its not as great as everyone (well, game journos and those outside of the Codex, anyway) makes it out to be.

With that much herb and fungi there was no excuse for not including Witcher 1's alchemy system. Automatically replenishing potions and ointments? WTF

It's just like CP77, so much useless clutter because CDPR cares more about cinematic experience than basic gameplay mechanics.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

My inventory is full of crafting ingredients, and its a bloody good thing that they are weightless (another change they made for casuals, right out of Beth's guide to resource management) I would be constantly over burdened.
The fact that a single broken rake weighs more than a 100 iron ingots is pretty fucking stupid. Witcher 2 had a better crafting system, I think. They didn't flood you resources and they had weight so you actually had to manage it, and the crafting UI wasn't complete arse.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I can see why people praise Hearts of Stone. The pacing and story structure is so much better than the main game's its not even funny.
The party with the ghost was a lot of fun and you can tell they put a lot of effort into it, even going so far as to change Geralt's walk animation and give him a swagger. I'm starting the heist mission and the set up for it is pretty damn good.
Also I bought the Professor's spectacles and they look baller.

 

[Semiurge]

Armor and weapon crafting was a step in the right direction at least. Practically any item that's not a quest item can be broken down to individual crafting/alchemy ingredients. The cost of doing so however might be just as high, if not higher, than simply buying them from blacksmiths.

 

[Yosharian]

Been playing Witcher 3 recently.
Its a pretty game and I like the dialogue, but the actual gameplay isn't great.
It feels really by the numbers; they stripped out everything interesting about the Alchemy mechanic and turned it into something brainless. You don't actually need potions for combat as you can just spam quen and dodge as long as your level is around the same as the enemy's (otherwise you get one shot, which potions won't help with anyway because they are pretty weak and short lived). You don't even need to make potions because all you have to do is make it once and it automatically replenishes when you meditate. Collecting ingredients is just pointless for that reason.
You know something is wrong when you can take a skill that increases health regen from food to 20 minutes instead of taking Swallow and its more efficient.

The overall flow of the quest line is pretty awkward with Act I taking ages and requiring relatively high levels but later Acts are rather short and don't have that much of a level requirement, and the inventory / crafting UI is absolute crap.
I can't help thinking that the first witcher game felt better to play and Witcher 2 had a more coherent structure, even though that had it's own share of nonsense (like QTEs).

Its not a bad game per se, but its not as great as everyone (well, game journos and those outside of the Codex, anyway) makes it out to be.

If only there was some, like, easy-to-install overhaul mod that fixed nearly all these problems

 

[Ladonna]

I liked Witcher 1. Played Witcher 2 for a few hours, lost interest. Played Witcher 3 for a few hours, lost interest. The latter two were heavily streamlined and the controls sucked for keyboard and mouse, at least for me. It seemed like the latter games were made for a controller.

 

[Storyfag]

I liked Witcher 1. Played Witcher 2 for a few hours, lost interest. Played Witcher 3 for a few hours, lost interest. The latter two were heavily streamlined and the controls sucked for keyboard and mouse, at least for me. It seemed like the latter games were made for a controller.

Harsh. But in the end, TW1 is the best among the three.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

hearts of stone > witcha 1 = b&w > the rest are whatever meh

also shani best girl

 

[Okagron]

You don't even need to make potions because all you have to do is make it once and it automatically replenishes when you meditate.

To be fair here, you do need alcohest (and i think dwarven spirit as well) to even replenish items in meditation, so it's not like there's no consequences for meditating to replenish. The problem here is that there so much alcohest in the game and it's so easy to craft.

 

[retinoid]

You don't even need to make potions because all you have to do is make it once and it automatically replenishes when you meditate.

To be fair here, you do need alcohest (and i think dwarven spirit as well) to even replenish items in meditation, so it's not like there's no consequences for meditating to replenish. The problem here is that there so much alcohest in the game and it's so easy to craft.

Could the Witcher 1 system work in Witcher 3 though? I haven't played W1 in ages and have no recollection of the scale of the alchemy system (how many formulas there are) but Witcher 3 is so vast that certainly it would make crafting potions with specific ingredients each and every time an absolute chore. If that's the case, I wouldn't want that. That being said, the alcohest system isn't ideal either and I do wish it was a bit more involved for subsequent replenishments.

 

[razvedchiki]

primer mod remade the alchemy system into something closer to the first games system with great success.

 

[cvv]

Could the Witcher 1 system work in Witcher 3 though?

The TW3 system doesn't work in TW3. CDPR was convinced in an open world you have to find some content every 30 seconds. They even said it outright.

Which is the most outdated idea ever. It's very 2013 Assassin's Creedy (which makes sense coz that's when the game was in production, but still). RDR2 and KCD proved you CAN have chunks of empty nature where nothing AWESOME is happening. That's actually the right way to do it.

If you think you have to fill the world with content, any content, in regular intervals you'll get TW3 - avalanches of boring, pointless clutter you can use to craft heaps of boring, pointless armors and swords. Pointless because the Witcher school gear is superior for every situation and every build.

That said the itemization in TW1 is boring, it's p. much all herbs and ingredients for potions you're never gonna use. TW2 hit the right balance, ish, between "nothing interesting" and "fucking crapton of garbage".

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You don't even need to make potions because all you have to do is make it once and it automatically replenishes when you meditate.

To be fair here, you do need alcohest (and i think dwarven spirit as well) to even replenish items in meditation, so it's not like there's no consequences for meditating to replenish. The problem here is that there so much alcohest in the game and it's so easy to craft.

Yeah, alcohest is really easy to get and apparently you only need one to replace everything that you used up. Its such a non-issue that it doesn't matter.
In terms of resource management its fetus-tier. That's right, its not even baby tier.

Also, why do bombs take Alcohest? Shouldn't they take alchemist's powder?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

hearts of stone > witcha 1 = b&w > the rest are whatever meh

also shani best girl

I like how Vlodomir kept lusting after Shani throughout the Dead Man's Party quest-line. That was funny.

 

[RRRrrr]

I like how Vlodomir kept lusting after Shani throughout the Dead Man's Party quest-line. That was funny.

I liked that part. It is similar to when Jonny takes control in Cyberpunk. CDP seem to have a thing for these types of quests.

 

[Maxie]

All that effort put into piecing together the city of Novigrad all for it to be largely an eye-candy, an annoying and empty-ish map with five decent quests at most, a bother to navigate and something you segway through for sword forging

A game fully set in Novigrad as-is would be superior to TW3 base game

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I suspect that the storm sinking Geralt's ship would have happened even if he didn't accept Gaunter's help.
Its strongly implying that Gaunter can see multiple possible futures, and knows how to get the result he wants.
He flat out said that he can manipulate time, and knew that if Shakelocke would step out of the circle he would die. He knew about main game's possible endings, and how to, summon Vlodomir and get the house, and knew that going to the Nilfgaardian commander in White Orchard would bring Yen to Geralt.

So he forsaw that a storm would sink the ship, and quickly came to Geralt to make a bargain, knowing that if chooses his words right Geralt will accept.
Its why when Geralt asked Gaunter if he summoned the storm he said no; he didn't summon the storm, it would have happened regardless.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Gaunter is a godlike being, ofc he can get the results he wants.

Spoiler

Look at the initials of his name.

also iirc Gaunter makes a brief appearance way back at the start of the game at the inn in white orchard.
[edit]
and he appears in every(?) quest in hearts of stone somewhere, typically as a background character.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Gaunter is a godlike being, ofc he can get the results he wants.

Spoiler

Look at the initials of his name.

Yeah, but he's the master of Mirrors though.

Spoiler

So he's actually a Dog.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

hearts of stone > witcha 1 = b&w > the rest are whatever meh

also shani best girl

I like how Vlodomir kept lusting after Shani throughout the Dead Man's Party quest-line. That was funny.

well i would too. She is a cutie.

 

[Semiurge]

To be fair here, you do need alcohest (and i think dwarven spirit as well) to even replenish items in meditation, so it's not like there's no consequences for meditating to replenish. The problem here is that there so much alcohest in the game and it's so easy to craft.

What the hell were they thinking? If only alcohest or some spirit is used in replenishing, wouldn't the outcome be diluted potions?

Could the Witcher 1 system work in Witcher 3 though? I haven't played W1 in ages and have no recollection of the scale of the alchemy system (how many formulas there are) but Witcher 3 is so vast that certainly it would make crafting potions with specific ingredients each and every time an absolute chore. If that's the case, I wouldn't want that. That being said, the alcohest system isn't ideal either and I do wish it was a bit more involved for subsequent replenishments.

Witcher 1 never had alchemical ingredients that were unique because of their alchemical components (excluding monster parts that were meant for unlocking perks), just the same things under different names and Witcher 3 could've had the same. Although it would've been nice if the three primary components that give you bonus effects (rubedo, nigredo, albedo) had been restricted to some areas in Witcher 3. For some challenge.

The TW3 system doesn't work in TW3. CDPR was convinced in an open world you have to find some content every 30 seconds. They even said it outright.

Which is the most outdated idea ever. It's very 2013 Assassin's Creedy (which makes sense coz that's when the game was in production, but still). RDR2 and KCD proved you CAN have chunks of empty nature where nothing AWESOME is happening. That's actually the right way to do it.

If you think you have to fill the world with content, any content, in regular intervals you'll get TW3 - avalanches of boring, pointless clutter you can use to craft heaps of boring, pointless armors and swords. Pointless because the Witcher school gear is superior for every situation and every build.

That said the itemization in TW1 is boring, it's p. much all herbs and ingredients for potions you're never gonna use. TW2 hit the right balance, ish, between "nothing interesting" and "fucking crapton of garbage".

There's too many witcher sets and they're too easy to make. If there were only two or three powerful witcher armor sets in the whole game, with their diagrams strategically placed, it would be balanced better.