The Witcher 3 has quickly become one of my favorite RPGs. Like the two before it, it is gritty, dark, and the story flourishes in moral gray areas. There's rarely a "good/right" or "bad/wrong" decision. Geralt (the titular Witcher) has the capacity to care about people, the capacity to desire money, and the capacity to not give a shit about other people's problems. He can move between any of these attitudes and more, just like (gasp) a real person! Other characters are similarly complex. The Bloody Baron is a great example, and his story is amazing to play, as he enlists the Witcher to find out where his daughter and wife fled. What in any other RPG would be a short quest-line, this plot line has mandatory and optional parts, multiple outcomes, and is interwoven into several other plot lines as it unfolds over the entire Velen act. Did I say the storytelling was amazing yet?
This is a defining feature of the game as a whole and its relation to you, the player. It does not hold your hand. It is wonderfully, thoughtfully complex. It provides some help via a bestiary, quest trackers, and some other useful modern open-world RPG staples, but it will throw an impossible quest your way without thinking twice. I am level 14, for example, and I just picked up a Witcher contract (like a monster hunt) that was marked level 25. The thing is, I might be able to do it now if I am very patient in combat, use potions, oils, and signs effectively, etc. The tools are there, but the game will do this: Here's a challenge; tackle the near-impossible now if you think you can handle it, or just come back later when you're more prepared. In the meantime, there is plenty of other stuff to do. Another way to say this is that the Witcher 3 treats me like an intelligent adult, and I am into that.
Today I completed what I believe is the first act, if I can break it into acts. Geralt is searching for his daughter, Ciri. His friend and sometimes lover Triss and he decide to search in 3 places: Velen (no man’s land), Novigrad, and the Skellige Isles. I’ve spent a whole RPG’s worth of time in Velen alone, and am about to head into Novigrad. I’m at the gates! Velen might be way bigger than the other two places. It is massive. If it’s not bigger, then I’m looking at a 100-hour game. Whoa. It is interesting the way the game moves you across the map. You’re free to go just about anywhere from the get-go, and I actually immediately went to Novigrad (recommended level 10; I was like 2). Halt! Can’t cross the bridge on account of the Redanian army is blocking through traffic. Need a pass! Well, I got a pass pretty easily (and later found 3-4 other methods of acquiring one, cool), ventured across, and got slaughtered by higher level monsters when I tried to do much of anything. So I went into Velen instead.
If you look at the map, you will see some golden notice boards with quest exclamation marks, as well as a crap load of question marks scattered around. The notice boards are in settlements, and there’s usually one job on each one, often a Witcher contract. These are FUN and often CHALLENGING. And there’s usually a cool story to go along side it. Townsfolk, scared, superstitious peasants that most of them are, are occasionally terrorized by monsters. Maybe something is haunting their fields, or a family member went into the woods and never returned, or a foul poisonous mist is creeping along the land, etc. Your job is to go figure out what’s the cause of the problem. Once Geralt determines what kind of monster it is, he has to kill it or otherwise resolve the contract. These are basically mini-bosses, and some are pretty involved. I remember trying to kill my first noonwraith (a female spirit spurned in love or who passed in some other emotional turmoil) and spending probably 30 minutes doing it. You have to trap her with the Yrden sign to make her material and attack her. She’ll move out of the Yrden circle, so you’ve got to maintain it and lure her into it again. She’ll periodically disappear and create illusions, each of which you must kill. Repeat until she’s dead. It was easier the second time I faced a noonwraith. This is how pretty much every new monster is. You’ve got to think, develop a strategy, try it, fail or succeed, revise if necessary, etc. Wyverns are another class of monster I remember using a lot of brain juice to learn how to kill. I recently discovered a monster nest with TWO level 21 wyverns. I tried it a few times, but I don’t do much damage to them.
The question marks are areas of interest that you can explore at your leisure. There are a lot of different types of areas of interest (the type is revealed when you travel to it), including guarded treasures, bandit camps, abandoned villages, monster nests, monster dens, etc., etc. There’s almost always some good experience or loot to be found, and sometimes even a little quest. I usually get really bored over time exploring maps because it feels all the same, but it doesn’t feel that way in the Witcher 3. I love uncovering all the question marks and seeing what lurks at each one, partly because even though the types of areas repeat, there are so many different monsters and treasures that could be there, and then so many different approaches to take to do whatever needs doing at each place. I recently learned, for example, that I can fight on horseback. (Geralt can call his trusty horse, Roach, to his side at any time and ride). If you gallop full speed and time your sword attack well, you can insta-kill enemies. It’s great fun to gallop around bandit camps hacking off heads as they freak out and try to defend against oncoming death.
Combat is pretty fun. As with the other Witcher games, you use two swords, a silver one for monsters and a steel one for everything else. You can craft oils (I craft them but never use them) that increase damage against certain enemy types and potions (also which I craft but never use) that enhance your abilities and bombs (which I craft but only use to destroy monster nests). You have 5 signs at your disposal that have nifty little skill trees now. I can turn an enemy with my Axii sign now, my Igni melts armor, and Quen has become indispensable as a healing spell. I hear that the others once leveled up are also quite powerful. Too bad I’ll never have enough ability points to use them all at max, but I can buy a potion that resets my skill tree! In addition to those three signs, I have a bunch of points in the fast attack skill so I do more damage and more and stronger critical strikes. A lot of Witcher combat is dancing around enemies, parrying, and striking opportunistically. I’ve learned to make good use of the roll and dodge moves, and I can parry and counterattack pretty well. Each enemy is different to fight. It’s really refreshing.
And. That’s all for now. Wanted to write something before I got too much farther and finishing Velen seemed like a good time to reflect! On to Novigrad to talk to Triss!
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Beat Skyrim! What an epic journey that was. After all my stop-go playing of this for A YEAR I finally decided to hunker down, finish the main quest, and see how everything ends. I can say that going to Sovngarde, especially after spending so much time with the Companions, was really rewarding. I can't imaging having gotten to the end without ever doing the Companions questline. That questline culminates in you saving their leader's soul, preventing him from living out eternity as a werewolf in the huntsman god Hircine's hunting grounds, and sending him to the Nord afterlife in Sovngarde where he wanted to go. When I actually met Kodlak at the end in Sovngarde, I had many emotions. I was especially happy for him because I'd helped him have the afterlife he wanted and deserved. It was cool too how (especially since I'm the new Harbinger after Kodlak), all the Nord heroes talk about awaiting me in Sovngarde when I die. I really do feel like a hero!
Oddly, I didn't care too much about defeating Anduin, as that doesn't feel urgent or particularly impressive. Nor does it have much (if any) impact on the game world. After defeating him, you just get shouted back to Skyrim, listen to some dragons acknowledge Alduin's defeat, and...go back to doing quests or whatever else it is you were doing. I would have enjoyed the option to lose to Alduin and watch the world be torn asunder. Then game over and reload to win!
So at my typical rate of Bethesda RPGs, I can expect to purchase Fallout 4 in 3-4 years and beat it after another year. Haha. It's pretty interesting looking at Steam stats. 27.7% of Skyrim owners have beaten it. My most rare achievement was picking 50 pockets and 50 locks (12.1% of players).
Now back to the Witcher 3!
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I’m pretty exhausted with this one. The game has become more about me gaining skill points than caring about much else. For example, I’ve gotten one-handed weapons and heavy armor and several other skills to 100. At 100, you can make a skill “legendary,” which resets it to some base number and refunds the skill points you’d put in that skill. This is nice because it lets you try out new builds and keep only skills that were really useful when you level up that skill again. It also ensures you can keep leveling up your character since characters level up by gaining skill points. At 100 skill points, you’re not contributing to character level, which feels wasteful.
Anyway, I started using bows, two-handed weapons, and light armor to level up more, but now battles are just irritating since enemies scale with your level. They hit way harder on my crappy leather armor and take a long time to kill with my crappy non-one-handed weapons. I could just use one-handed weapons and heavy armor, but then I’m not leveling anything, and I’m just accumulating crap in my inventory. Not really a fan of the system once stuff starts maxing out I guess.
I’ve sunk 111 hours into Skyrim (lots of it being for a research project on the Companions). I played a couple hours the other day and a few hours tonight, and I just can’t get into it. Like, it’s entertaining, but in a mundane sort of way, like playing some casual phone game. I thought I’d play the Thieves’ Guild quests, and that was alright, but it’s really not too different from doing what I’d been doing for 100 hours. All the faction-style side quests seem the same. You join as a nobody, go on a grand important quest, and wind up the leader. I thought I’d do the Dark Brotherhood. I don’t know too much about it, but I know they are assassins, so I think it would be just…killing people. I’ve killed like 5000 enemies. Do I really need to kill more to hear what is probably only a decent story? Then I thought I’d just finish the main story, but I’ve only done half of it according to wikis! And I can’t imagine it is interesting enough for me to spend however many more hours. I’ve used all the spells and specced my character every which way, and I can’t find much new or exciting except the odd neat quest, but I have to go through so many dull ones to get there.
There is SO much to do. I still have one whole hold to explore, and I got into Markarth tonight. Basically the bottom-left quadrant is pretty much unexplored. The thought of going into any more Dwemer ruins, mines, caves, forts, etc. is really daunting. I am also really tired of taking quests that are “radiant” which means they are simple repeatable quests for little reward. You don’t know it’s a radiant quest (and therefore advances nothing) until you realize you’re getting offered it again or something. Those are such wastes of time.
But you know what? Maybe I should just deal with it and knock out the main quest. With a 1-handed weapon. Don’t worry about skill points and leveling. Don’t pick up loot. I’ve only got 1000 potions in my house. Who cares. Just get through it. After 111 hours, don’t I owe myself an epic victory?!
Argh! Anyway. I really enjoyed most of my time with this, and am looking forward to a couple presentations and a paper on communities of practice to get something out of the research. I need a new game! Maybe I’ll pick the Witcher 3 back up, but should I take a break from open world RPGs for a little bit? We shall see…
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