Witcher 3 Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Lord of Corvo Bianco

January 6, 2020 by Belghast

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.

Lost in Novigrad

January 3, 2020 by Belghast

Today is the last day of my holiday break, and it is around this point that I realize I did nothing but play games, or in this case one specific game. I am not sure if I care that this was the case since I spent most of the break fighting some sort of bronchitis nonsense. Holiday break has been one of those times when I dive into particular long games. During one such break I replayed all of Mass Effect starting from the first game carrying the save forward to the third game. This time around after having watched and loved the Netflix series, I dove headlong into playing The Witcher 3. I realize I probably should have started with the second game, but I also don’t think I would have stuck with it had I done so.

Witcher 3 is a weird game that seems to give no care what soever for you being confused about the setting. It is a game that more or less expects you to have either played the first two games or have read some of the novels. This makes it deeply enjoyable for those who have, but also extremely obtuse for someone who has not. I remember the first time I played the game some years back I bounced pretty heavily because it felt like I had no investment in the setting and was immediately being told that I love this woman enough to try and jump through a bunch of hoops to go find her, The Netflix series however gave me enough of a grounding in the setting to be able to start to care about how intricately crafted this world is.

To date I have spent 77 hours wandering the backwoods of the northern kingdoms, and I am completely hooked on the world. The Witcher 3 is among the most interesting and intricately crafted roleplaying game experiences I have ever participated in. I even tried my best to go back and get a foothold into the original Witcher game, but again didn’t make it super far thanks to the awful interface. I do however think I will be able to play the second game now, since I remember my key problem with it has been it did not like alt tabbing and I have other solutions to work around that. I’m even contemplating starting on the novels because I want to know more about this rich setting and the characters within it.

I don’t want to go into anything even vaguely close to spoiler territory because this is a game that I feel everyone should experience for themselves. I will say however that for a game that released in 2015, the game still looks phenomenal. Like I am not sure if I have another game that looks anywhere near as good as this one does in 4k. All of this gives me extreme hope for what Cyperpunk might end up being like to play, but really… I just want CD Project Red to get that game finished so they can create another epic set in the Witcher universe.

Games of the Decade: 2015

December 23, 2019 by Belghast

Continuing the series we dive into some of the games that were important to me in 2015. There were a bunch of games that made the early version of this list, but in many cases I didn’t feel like I had a lot to talk about any of them. I’ve been trying to avoid expansions/dlc on the list, and as a result that knocked out Heavensward which took up a significant portion of my year. Similarly this knocks out Destiny Taken King which also was super important. The final list was whittled down to just four games but I feel like there is something special with each of them.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

For years I had heard wonderful things about the Witcher series, but I found them somewhat obtuse and difficult to get into. Maybe if I had played the original when it first was released it might have made a difference, but trying to make it with modern expectations was a nonstarter. I found the interface to be deeply cludgy and confusing. When The Witcher 3 released I was not expecting much from it based on my past experience with the earlier two titles, but I got a free copy with a new video card and gave it a shot. What I found was a deep and rich world that I really enjoyed exploring. I’ve not gotten anywhere close to actually beating the game, but it is on that list of titles that I keep meaning to restart from scratch and play through again. The recent release of the Netflix series is re-igniting that desire so maybe I will spend some time over the coming days giving it another shot.

Dying Light

Dying Light is one of those games that is almost impossible to explain without actually experiencing it. At its core it is a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse, but it is much more than that given that there are rich systems where you gain favor with various factions of survivors. The other aspect that is hard to explain is how important movement is to this game. It is a game that takes parkour to the next level as you try and find a path to run on that is safe from the endless hordes of the undead in the world below. There is always this tentative balance between staying in safety and dropping down into the places where you need to scavenge materials from. The total package is wildly enjoyable and now that the game has been out for quite some time you can pick it up on the cheap. If you missed it the first time, well worth grabbing especially since there is a sequel in the works for 2020 release.

Victor Vran

If you have read this blog for very long you will know of my deep affinity for “diablo-likes” and ARPGs in general. One of these that sorta slipped under almost everyone’s radar is a game called Victor Vran, where you take the controls of a Van Helsing like character that hunts demons and monsters. What makes this game interesting to me is that it has really good WASD controls and extremely interesting level design that works in old fashioned Wolf 3D era “secrets” that can be unlocked to find both new paths and troves of loot. The combination makes for a compelling action RPG that in some ways reminds me of early Isometric shooters like Crusader: No Remorse. You have a wide variety of attacks and special abilities and the levels are hand crafted instead of procedurally generated. This leads to a more structured game-play experience but also somewhat harms the replay value. This is now out on even more platforms including the switch, so well worth checking out if you too are a fan of ARPGs.

Fallout 4

I love the Fallout series and have since I first played the original back in 1997. The Fallout community tends to have two distinct branches… those who hold up Fallout 3 as the best title and those who hold up Fallout New Vegas in highest regard. I like aspects of both but tend to fall into the New Vegas camp. Fallout 4 was not exactly the game that either of those factions wanted and as a result it tends to be a fairly divisive title. For me… the aspect that I love about it is Base Building, which is the nail in the coffin for other games. I love feeling like I get to have an effect on the world by linking together disparate groups of refuges into a larger community. When I play this game I more or less ignore the story-line that is forced upon you, and the constantly limiting choice paths… and instead play a game where I am rebuilding the wasteland. I am pretty great at making up my own story when I find the current options distasteful.

Where Bel Was Mentally in 2015

2015 was the year that I went to my first video game convention in the form of Pax South in San Antonio. I got to hang out with my friends Ashgar and Rae and explore all of the nonsense that makes up a Pax while also doing various press meetings. I managed to abuse those connections to sneak them into a gameplay session for Gigantic which was probably the game of the show that year. If you start on the right side, the faces that are pointed towards the camera at the screens are me, Ashgar, Rae and then hovering above Rae and explaining the abilities is Lonrem. It was a pretty good year, that started with a bang. I greatly miss going to Pax South each year, but the timing just hasn’t worked out since 2018.

Witcher 3 Impressions

May 21, 2015 by Belghast

Losing Time

Last night I had these plans of coming home, and hopping into Final Fantasy XIV and working on crafting once again while chatting away with my Free Company folk. However when I got home absolutely none of that actually happened. I had left the GOG Galaxy client up on my screen during the day, and when I sat down at my machine it was the first thing I saw. I had fixed myself a sandwich and chips and I thought to myself… I will just play Witcher for a bit while I eat dinner, and before my wife gets home. It seems like moments later she had gotten home and was hollering up at me. When I say it seems like moments, it quite literally feels like I had just sat down at the screen. In reality about an hour passed between starting Witcher and taking a quick pause to see my wife off to church before returning to playing again. Then next thing I know it… my wife is back home and heading to bed and I have managed to lose another several hours.

To say the game is immersive is a bit of an understatement. The last game that I can remember losing entire nights to was probably Skyim, and that is a fairly apt comparison at least on a few levels. The funny thing is I have just now moved to the “second” area of the game. I say area because while the game has open world aspects it is not exactly completely open world. The first “zone” is called White Orchard and it is made up of this huge sprawling seamless area with lots of villages and locations to explore. This gives it a traditional open world Elder Scrolls feel, the problem being that the entire location has a bounding border drawn around it. While I have not pushed my luck when the game starts telling me to turn around… I am imagining that there is some sort of “slaughterfish” like mechanic that you encounter.

Gorgeous Environment

The real triumph of the game is the environment, and just how real it feels to be roaming through. What makes the game world so compelling is the fact that everywhere you look there is action going on. Nothing is static, and the weather patterns effect every last blade of grass it feels. The only problem with this is at times you feel like you are suffering from a bit of sensory overload. Like I said yesterday once I started playing I pretty much hopped off the path immediately and this is very easy to do, and at the same time rewarding. When they were pitching this game I remember them saying that it would take either 20 hours or 200 hours depending on your gameplay style and after finishing White Orchard I can see why this is. The main storyline in the zone was relatively straight forward and only actually required me to complete a few quests to get through it. However I spent the next four hours working on various treasure hunts and exploring the world.

The map system works very similar to Skyrim except that you have missions of interest that you have yet to explore marked as question marks. Now these are not ALL the locations in the world, and there are a number of other “hidden” things that you can find wandering the countryside, however if you explore each question mark it seems like you will get most of the content you would care about. That is ultimately what I spent my night doing was wandering around completing these question marks. The game has a waypoint travel system that allows you to pop from road sign to road sign, and I used the hell out of this functionality allowing me to get close to the destination that I was looking for and either taking my horse the rest of the way or just wandering of foot. Pretty much anytime I saw monsters on my minimap hud I dismounted and took them on. After some gear and some levels things like the Drowners and packs of Wolves became trivial, but the big monsters were still insane especially anything that spawned near a “guarded treasure”.

The Story Is Good

The thing that I find most interesting is that the game manages to make the narrative just as interesting as the free form exploration. There is some crazy shit going on in the world of the Witcher, and as this game is my first experience of that world I am trying to soak it all in. The game does an awesome job of giving you just enough of a primer in the setting for things to make sense, but also is unapologetic at times for talking about things that you have NO clue what is going on. There was a point in the game where I had to answer a series of questions, each of which I think represent choices that were made in earlier games. Knowing nothing about the setting I made my choices and it was interesting to see just how they played out in that discussion. I have a feeling that those choices will ultimately color what the final results of the game end up being.

There was talk at one point of them rebooting the earlier Witcher games using the Witcher 3 engine… and I really hope this happens. The engine itself is extremely robust and I can see the modder community is going to have a ball with this game. This might dethrone Skyrim in that department, pending the game itself is that extensible. The best review that I can give the game is the fact that I had to pry myself away from it last night to go to sleep. I alt tabbed and noticed it was 10:30 and realized that if I did not stop then… I would likely end up playing until after one in the morning. The funny thing about this game is that it literally came out of left field for me. I had no intent to purchase it, and am only now playing it because I got a free copy with my video card. Now I am looking forward to playing through everything the game has to offer and will more than likely purchase the season pass so that I can play the DLC as it releases. I keep harkening back to this, but I think if the game keeps up at this pace and level of quality that it might very well be that go to game like Skyrim for losing myself in the world. The only fear I have is that since this is so narrative focused, I am not sure if it will have the same sort of universal replay-ability that the Elder Scrolls games have had for me.