Slaying a Kingslayer

Last night I finished my first play through of Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings and I have to say I rather enjoyed myself. As compared to the Witcher 3 it was a vastly different sort of game, and as a result any direct comparison is somewhat difficult. Witcher 3 is this gigantic open world experience that has you tackle tasks in whatever order you want, with significant freedom to keep going back and revisiting areas without never truly feeling you are done there. Witcher 2 on the other hand in comparison is super linear and is comprised of Prologue, 3 Acts, and an Epilogue each effectively containing a boxed area that once you have passed can no longer be explored.

Each one of these “gates” when crossed forces the player to make some rather world changing decisions, in that you are effectively going down a very different path because of them. As a result I am deeply considering seeing what the other major path structure would look like, because at the end of Act 1 you are asked to choose someone to ally with and as I understand it this kicks off a very different Act 2 and Act 3 depending on the choice. I enjoyed the act greatly because it was deeply focused on the plight of the non-humans, but the other path also involves some characters that I greatly enjoyed interacting with in Witcher 3. To be honest when I did the “simulate choices” option at the beginning of the third game I was mostly just making decisions without knowing what they meant.

I mostly just powered through the main story, because there is a not insignificant amount of tedium in doing the side quests for Witcher 2. Now had I played this game at the appropriate time when it represented one of the best possible experiences I could be playing… I would have probably gobbled up every side adventure. Playing it now and seeing how much better Witcher 3 does at presenting a world with interesting side stories, it more or less ruined the experience for me. The game however is still very much worth playing to present you with the story behind events that will ultimately resolve in the third game.

I made another attempt last night to get into the original Witcher game and even after installing a pack that supposedly fixes and tweaks a bunch of stuff I found the experience miserable. There is another mod out there that re-balances combat, but it does so in a manner I have no interest in trying. My hope was that it would take away the weird hold to attack and then play whack-a-mole system, but instead it just appears to make everything harder. Again this is a situation of if I had managed to play this around the time it was released, I might have been able to get used to it. Now however it just feels bad and my brain rebels against it every time I try and force myself to experience it.

I am guessing that CD Project Red understands how frustrating the first game is because at some point they released the above video as a recap. I guess I will accept that this is the only version of the original game that I will be experiencing. One of my favorite parts of Witcher 2 is when they show one of Geralt’s memories rendered in this same art style. So I am perfectly okay with watching that same animation style summarize the original game. The second game however is perfectly playable and I am really wishing I had started there instead of just picking up with the 3rd game. So were I to update my advice on how best to get into this series…

1. Watch the Netflix Series – while this deviates from the novels a bit based on my experience so far, it does give you a pretty good primer into the world of The Witcher and will at least allow you to understand some of the core conflicts.
2. Watch the Above Recap of Witcher 1 – you may not be as turned off by the original game, but the above recap video gives you enough detail to understand the events at the beginning of Witcher 2.
3. Play Witcher 2 – while it feels like an older style of game experience it is still very much a good game. There are UI quirks that I wrote about in another post, but if you can get past them the game and story and world are rich enough to keep you engaged. Also it is fairly easy to golden path this game and only care about the main story beats.
4. Play Witcher 3 – then of course import your Witcher 2 save into Witcher 3 and have a continuation of the world state you left in the second game. Once I determine which path I like better I am probably going to do this and play through the 3rd game again.

I’m also still working my way through the novels. I finished Last Wish last night and made it about three chapters into Sword of Destiny last night. I believe I am following the suggested reading order as Last Wish and Sword of Destiny are both effectively a bunch of short stories about Geralt’s adventures and also appear to be what the Netflix series is heavily drawing upon. Blood of Elves follows up next and begins the first of the proper novels. I am not entirely sure why I am seemingly so obsessed right now, but I am enjoying myself and am just going to roll with it for the time being.