The Witcher 3: What Geralt Wants

[Professor Video Games]

By the way, the mental image I have of Geralt frantically eating a slab of raw meat while fending off a mob of enemies has continued to make me smile throughout this game.

[Badfinger]

Yes you'll need a lot of food. Yes, it will feel expensive at first, sloping down over time. There's a potion you can make that will alleviate that somewhat. Combat is unforgiving in the early stages, especially at higher difficulties.

 

Don't fret too much about spending money on gear. There are witcher sets that are worth focusing on, but buying non-witcher gear isn't worth your money. You'll get by, and then you'll find an upgrade and suddenly do way more than just get by.

 

An interesting thing happened in this game where I had what felt like a basically unlimited amount of money in the later stages of the game, and decided to go in on upgrading everything. I actually ran out of money. The economy for basic necessities seems "broken" but the economy in the game overall is much more balanced than I gave it credit for initially.

[Ninety-Three]

  On 12/17/2015 at 6:08 PM, video games said:

By the way, the mental image I have of Geralt frantically eating a slab of raw meat while fending off a mob of enemies has continued to make me smile throughout this game.

 

Personally I have been imagining him fighting off enemies with his sword-hand, while his left hand is used to simultaneously eat a drumstick and cast Signs.

[Jutranjo]

There's no need to get 100 of any herb, you use them to make bombs/potions once, then the potion/bomb refills whenever you rest for the cost of 1 alkohol unit. You might need ~30 herbs for the whole upgrade path of a potion, with some overlapping but you can buy them in mass later on. There's a very well stocked herbalist outside Oxenfurt's walls. Also a good place to find potion upgrade recipes. 

 

I never ran out or bothered with food after the starting area. But I didn't play above normal.

[YoThatLimp]

  On 12/17/2015 at 5:24 PM, Ninety-Three said:

Is food a meaningful resource that I should be worried about, or is this one of those games where I can buy infinite food for next to nothing? I haven't exactly got a sense for the economy yet, and I don't want to get to level 5 to discover that I ought to have spent 1000 gold on better gear when instead every cent went to food.

 

Speaking of alchemy, am I supposed to be looting every one of the I-honestly-estimate-millions of herbs strewn throughout the game world? It seems like an insane time sink that I really, really don't want to engage with.

 

I'll parrot what others have said:

 

1. Don't worry about using coin on gear, you'll find great loot

2. Don't feel bad about spending coin on food if it helps (also loot a bunch in cities when you can as well as bodies of foes you kill, its an easy way to stock up on food/water)

3. Don't go around picking up everything, but if you are running from point A to Point B and there are a few plants on your way? Might as well pick them up.

4. If you find yourself lacking in a specific herb for an alchemy recipe, try to find an herbalist and see if you can buy the ingredient. It can be a little costly but man, potions sure do help in this game. 

[Cbirdsong]

Yeah, grab herbs when it's easy, and if you're missing just one thing for a recipe, go and buy it from an alchemist.

 

Also, it took me way too long to figure this out: the fancy alcoholic ingredients you need for White Gull and other fancy alchemy ingredients are for sale at weird places. The best place early on is probably Crow's Perch, which has two vendors that sell them.

[Jutranjo]

Also regarding the special drinks, inn keepers will restock them if you buy all of them, close trade window and open it again. Good way to stock up, they're really expensive tho!

 

I think I remember reading how the devs made sure to dynamically set prices depending on your gold so they'd look fair and you could buy a bunch of stuff but you would never have infinite money. Or they did it in advance with general balancing.

[Ninety-Three]

When does this game get good? I am six hours in (killed the griffon and did all the sidequests and question marks in the first area, just got to the second), and it has yet to click for me. I mean I don't hate it, it's okay I guess, but, well, it's okay. I have yet to find a quest with more depth than "go here and either kill or examine this", and eugh, the combat. I don't know if the combat's bad or if I've settled into a rut without strategic depth, but boy is it really button-mashy and bland. Put up the shield spell, mash fast attack, try to jump back if a strike's coming, if I'm taking too much damage retreat until I have enough stamina to put up Shield again. Sometimes I use the slowing spell, but it's like herding cats trying to keep enemies inside it to get the benefit.

[Trip Hazard]

I don't think the combat is any great shakes, to be honest, although it is improved from The Witcher 2.

The game gets good when you meet the so-called "Bloody Baron"

[Ninety-Three]

I can't do it. I'm on the Bloody Baron quest and I'm already five layers deep in another goddamn chain of dependencies. I have to find Ciri but I don't know where she is so I talk to the Baron. The Baron knows where Ciri is but won't tell me so I have to find his wife. I don't know where the wife is so I talk to the Pellar. The Pellar has a lead on the wife but he won't tell me until I find his fucking goat. I don't know where his goat is so I have to walk around ringing a bell in the forest. No. I refuse. No more, I am not walking around a forest ringing a fucking bell until I find the right hotspot to advance the quest. This is bullshit filler, I hate this and I quit.

At least when Legend of Zelda had a chain of dependencies that deep they had the decency to give you the Master Sword at the end of it.

[Jutranjo]

I really liked the goat bell quest.

[Trip Hazard]

That goat, tho. He's a fine looking animal

[Jutranjo]

You can actually find the goat without using the bell but just using the witcher vision. There's tracks that lead from the hut.

[Ninety-Three]

  On 12/20/2015 at 3:29 PM, Jutranjo said:

You can actually find the goat without using the bell but just using the witcher vision. There's tracks that lead from the hut.

 

I don't care. I have gone from a bit bored with the game to angry with it, because this goddamn lost goat is stupid padding. At this point I don't care if somewhere in the Witcher 3 is buried the best story ever written by human hand, it's clearly not respecting my time, so I'm going to go play a game where I don't have to wait for it to get good.

[Griddlelol]

That quest is weird, I got the joke, but is it really a joke if it does the exact same thing it's making fun of other RPGs for doing?

 

In the end, that quest was like 5 minutes, I don't think it's worth rage quitting over, especially as there's so much more wrong with the game than that quest. 

[Ninety-Three]

  On 12/20/2015 at 8:43 PM, Griddlelol said:

In the end, that quest was like 5 minutes, I don't think it's worth rage quitting over, especially as there's so much more wrong with the game than that quest. 

 

It was a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation. It wasn't the first stupidly deep chain of dependencies, it wasn't the first time the game asked me to engage in the horribly dull act of "walk around a large area until you hit the right hotspot", it wasn't the first time I spent way longer than is reasonable on a chain of Fedex quests, it was the fifth hour the combat felt bland and button mashy, and it was the seventh out of seven hours that the writing durdled around advancing nothing and establishing little instead of grabbing me.

[Griddlelol]

I can completely understand. The Witcher jumps from high highs to real low lows. The lows tend to be around anything that involves combat or moving around. I found I could look past it because I just enjoyed travelling around the world, and some quests were just great.

[Ninety-Three]

I'm perplexed as to what this game did that's getting it on everyone's Game of the Year lists. It's not the combat, because people in this thread seem to be confirming my assessment that it's a bit bland and button-mashy. After seven hours of play I think I had about ten minutes of fun (playing Gwent, before I realized all the strategy of that game was completely undermined by the pay-to-win TCG nature of it). Do the quests get that much better later on in the game?

 

Is it just really easy to forget the bland combat and chains of Fedex quests to focus on the highlights? Because it does have a way of eating up hours without me noticing, if it weren't for Steam telling me I'd played for seven, I would think I'd only given it around three.

[J.C.]

Keep in mind you're 7 hours into a 50+ hour game. The minute to minute game is not what makes the game as great as it is. If you're not liking the writing (which it reads like you aren't), this game might just be Not For You.

 

I never liked Gwent so I skipped it entirely aside from the first time it comes up. Combat opens up a little as you get more signs and abilities from spending skill points. I never found quests to be tedious, aside from one where I had to find something in a large area and I just kept missing it. Witcher sight stuff could have been improved, but the majority of the time it works just fine.

[Jutranjo]

You could enable the witcher sense coloured objects to show up on the minimap if you wanted to keep trying it.

[Badfinger]

I think you actually don't like Witcher 3, because mechanically that's pretty much what the game is. I think that's ok!

 

Your description of the chain of quests highlights to me that you're seeing what I saw as the to the comparative trees I focused on. I don't actually think the quest is supposed to be "ha ha this quest is just like those other quests isn't this a fun poke oh crap we actually just made the quest". You don't care, and Geralt doesn't care (I think he says so), but the pellar cares. The Pellar cares a lot and he's a weird fucking dude who's sort of messed up that's interesting to interact with, and you have to deal with him on his terms. The Baron is a complex character that's interesting to talk to and interact with. I appreciate that the world happens around you. I also mostly enjoyed the challenge of the combat. It's not the best part of the game, but oils and potions and multiple opponents providing a different sense of combat than a single one was good for me. I'm pretty sure I was also like 20+ hours into the game when I got to the pellar, because I got past the White Orchard and said "I MUST SEE EVERYTHING". I may have even been to Skellige before doing that. After nearly 100 hours, I remember the pellar questline but I didn't remember the part where you hit the button to do Witcher Sense and follow a highlighted trail to an object.

 

The politics, places, and people are why Witcher 3 is GOTY. Holy shit the ending to the Bloody Baron quest line. Jeeeeeeeeeez

[Trip Hazard]

*endings

[Ninety-Three]

  On 12/21/2015 at 6:18 PM, Badfinger said:

The Pellar cares a lot and he's a weird fucking dude who's sort of messed up that's interesting to interact with, and you have to deal with him on his terms. The Baron is a complex character that's interesting to talk to and interact with.

 

You know how Fallout 4's dialogue options have been described as "Yes", "Yes", "Sarcastic (Yes)" and "I'll do it later"? That's kind of how dialogue interaction felt to me in The Witcher 3. I wasn't interacting, I was pushing Geralt along a narrative railroad where my only input was deciding whether or not to pursue a particular quest right now. I think there were a couple times I got to choose between having a fistfight with some peasant, or Jedi mind-tricking them. The one time I did use Jedi mind-trick, the game decided to punish me by making me spend a minute, literally sixty seconds, walking his glacially slow ass about thirty feet west, and I swore off mind-trick because clearly the devs hated me for using it.

 

Other than those peasant fights, it felt like everything was just choosing between "Yes" and "Sarcastic (Yes)".

[Erkki]

Hm... It seems like you are just set against it from the start, at least I don't understand what would make you just dismiss it like that. It has one of the most deep and interesting characters you can find in a game of this type (I think, because I don't play too many games this long any more).

[Professor Video Games]

Agree with what Badfinger says.

 

I think the combat's fine, if not the deepest thing in the world...certainly not button mashy unless you're way overleveled. More importantly, if you don't like the writing and the worldbuilding, then the game just isn't for you. What I, and I think many other people love, is that game world is so well realized and populated with interesting, unique people that I want to learn about and interact with.

 

The roleplaying aspect of this game isn't so much deciding what type of person Geralt is, he's an existing character, not a fallout style blank slate...it's more about things like deciding what information to give people or picking when to be aggressive or back off and then dealing with the consequences of those choices.