This morning is a day of reckoning. I’ve been on vacation since the 20th of December and in that amount of time you can really screw up your sleep schedule. Though over the last few days I have made failed attempts to reintroduce getting up at a specific time, this morning and the day as a whole is going to suck. This holiday was a dual edged sword in that I spent most of it sick, but because of that I also spent most of it gaming. Over the course of this extended break I poured 80 hours worth of game time into The Witcher 3 and have reached a point where I am happy to walk away from it having seen how the main story plays out and having knocked out most of the Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine expansion content. Blood and Wine specifically was fantastic because I absolutely adore the Duchy of Toussaint. I love my Vineyard and it helped give me a sense of ownership in the setting as I explored it.
Sometimes my brain works in a specific pattern where I end up going all in on something. Anyone who has engaged me in a Destiny lore conversation will understand what I am talking about because I sometimes get obsessed with things. Right now I am decades late becoming obsessed with the world of the Witcher and as a result I have started reading the novels. I don’t read particularly quickly and I tend to read before bed and as a result a chapter or two at a time. That said I am slowly chewing my way through The Last Wish which seemingly based on the consensus of sources I found was the proper starting point to this series, and also more or less what the Netflix show has been drawing from. I’m still on the first of the short stories but probably about halfway through it at this point.
As far as Witcher 3, I have to admit it is a little depressing to be walking away from it. I mean I could keep playing it and whittling down the remaining tasks that I have or collecting the last few Gwent cards that I am missing. That said when I reach the “endgame” for a single player game it just feels hollow. I know that all of those NPCs that I love will never gain new dialog lines and will just more or less sit there as a testament to the fact that the world is forever frozen with no new adventures to be had. I may at some point start New Game Plus to see if that is any different, but really I left the game in a good spot and am more or less happy with the various conclusions. There is only one thing that I might have tweaked but it was not worth the back tracking required to change the way something played out. Also I am just going to throw this out there… but Triss is infinitely better than Yennefer. Maybe the books will change my opinion, but Triss is a delight to be around and Yen basically treats Geralt like shit all the time.
In my tradition of doing everything the wrong way… I spent yesterday trying to find the next game to play and wound up falling back into Witcher 2. There is no way I will ever be able to complete the first game because it just feels like crap, and while it was suggested that I remap everything to a controller… that isn’t how I way to play it either. I would love to see someone do a complete port of the first game to the Witcher 3 engine. In the meantime however I have watched a few Witcher 1 recap videos and more or less understand what happens. Witcher 2 is way more sluggish befitting the era in which it was released, but I do think I will be able to get used to it. The pacing is just more slow than I had expected and it is frustrating dealing with all of the invisible walls that appear to be everywhere to keep your character from getting out of bounds. I am interested however in seeing how the story plays out, so more than likely this is what I will be playing for the next bit.
The weirdest thing about all of this is that I always thought that the Witcher universe is one that I would enjoy, but for various reasons I struggled to gain purchase. In some ways it is too reliant upon the source material because it expects you also to be obsessed with things in order to actually understand what the hell is going on. I’ve talked about this before, but the game absolutely throws you down conversation trees where you are expected to know who the hell someone is and are going to be struggling to pull together context clues as you go or make a trip out to the wikipedia page in order to sort out just why the hell we know who this Regis guy is for example. That said because it draws so deep upon an existing work, it means there is an absolute wealth of interesting characters to draw upon and I chose that specific example because I love him so much.
The witcherverse is a bit of a slog to get into, but having recently been indoctrinated into the cult of the white wolf… it really is worth the effort. The truth is had I not watched the Netflix series I probably would have bounced again. That is not to say that it is required viewing, but it did give me enough of a primer to feel like I could understand at least the layout of the world and how the various kingdoms fit together. It also helped that as I dug further into the Witcher 3, there were places and events that were brought up that I saw in the series giving me a bit of a rope ladder to try and climb towards understanding. At this point… I would probably suggest just starting with the 3rd game as the first is an unplayable mess and the second seems to have some pacing and user interface issues especially in the quest advisement area. I’ve spent way too long figuring out what the hell I am supposed to be doing already and have yet to clear the first area. The third one while it absolutely drops you off a cliff and expects you to learn to swim on the way down.. it does present itself in a familiar interface that is easy for any MMORPG player or someone who has played a modern open world game to understand.
It is kinda funny that you feel like that about the way they handle the Witcher universe in the game because the first Witcher tries to go out of its way to introduce it to the player. They did it by making Geral amnesiac so when someone goes like “Oh, hey Geralt, long time no see!” Geralt’s reaction tends to be like the player “Who the hell are you?!?”. Well, ok, he is actually a lot more polite about that. But you get the idea. XD
I don’t know about the other games but they also had some optional books and notes that give some lore about the setting. Not that they help much but the effort is there at least.
Having said that, the Netflix series helped a lot in getting more invested in the setting for sure. I am currently in Chapter 3, I think, and in the city I am right now I thought it was just another city in the universe. I didn’t know Geralt had an adventure there before in the books/TV series. 🙂
Also, I haven’t played Witcher 2 and 3 yet but I agree with you about avoiding the first one. Unless you have a high tolerance for mediocre gameplay and really love some good story, it is not worth it.
I just cant with the first game. I would have loved to have started with that game and worked my way up. The controls are not good and since I prefer not to play things with a controller… I am kinda screwed.