Playing through witcher 1&2 in preparation of witcher 3

My problem with witcher 1's story was more towards the end with the dumb B-movie tier mutant bullshit and a villain talking about taking over the world in order to save it while twirling his evil mustache.

It's a jarring shift of tone to say the least when you compare it to chapter IV for example. You have a sister accidentally killing her own sister out of jealousy and then the murdered sisters admirer stabbing her to death in revenge. Then there's a quest path where the admirer poetically kills himself in order to show the first dead sister that she really is dead in order to give her peace instead of haunting the fields and killing anyone coming there.

They really handled factions better in the earlier chapters as well where there were some actual moral dilemmas and hard choices. On the one hand the non-humans being actively discriminated against and murdered. Then the non-humans strike back with the same pointless pogroms and massacres. With the leaders of both camps openly talking about murdering people from the other group. Then in chapter V the Order of the Rose leaders flat out tell you that they're just racist and hate all the non-humans regardless of what they do. In the earlier chapters there was nuance. They say they welcome non-humans into the Order and that they really only go after the criminal and violent non-humans. On the face of it the non-humans rob a bank to fund an uprising but then you find out that they really just took back money that was stolen from a dwarven bank. We also see non-humans murdering innocent humans in revenge culminating in large scale massacres and a violent revolt at the start of chapter V. There is definitely a gray-scale with none of the sides having a clear moral high-ground. Then the Order leaders come out and say they just hate non-humans regardless. They are clearly the villains and the cause of the problem in the first place.

Only one I really liked was the first one. The third was fine, but I bet it would have been better if they wouldn't have bothered with implementing open world so poorly.

Save any white girls from spooks today, /witcher/?

Well, the Order are only bad becaue of their leader. It's pretty certain that most of them are brainwashed at that point, and without Jaques' influence things would be much better. Getting Siegfreid to be their grandmaster is a good choice.

A bigger problem is that in order to step on squirrel path you need to rob a fucking bank. Why the fuck would Geralt rob a bank?

Witcher 3 is the best by far, you'll probably enjoy it.

Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 were amazing games when they were released. Witcher 1 was did well critically although no one played it. I remember it being very fun and innovative.

If anything Witcher 1 and 2 show how far the RPG and RPG-action game have changed over time. Both good and bad. Better graphics now, generally shittier inventory and menus now (consolefags), better dialog options, more fluid combat.

Don't discount Witcher 1 and 2 just because you weren't around when they were released and don't understand them in context. They were both huge RPG releases of their time. Witcher 1 was groundbreaking in terms of story, atmosphere, and yes, even the graphics.

I really wish there was a mod or something that made W2 and W3 combat any good. I hate the whole arkham deal and having to spam LMB until Geralt does that one incredibly strong spinning air twirl move that hits like four times in a row got old fast.

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It's the lighting. The same character is quite pale in daylight.

so I heard you need to turn off minimap to enjoy witcher3

are there any more tips like that or some really good mods?

I don't think it looks bad at all, outside the inconsistent artstyles of NPCs.

Because it wasn't a robbery in that sense. They robbed the money that was stolen from Vivaldi. At least that's what they told Geralt when he came inside the bank.

Yeah but they were stealing money stolen from Vivaldi to finance their own shit which Vivaldi didn't want any part in. It's no different from stealing the money directly from Vivaldi themselves, just because someone else stole it first doesn't make it justified. Not to mention it's not even really Vivaldi's money, it's money the citizens entrusted him to take care of.

Play it on the hardest difficulty and yea definitely turn off the minimap. I personally liked playing it with as little hud elements as possible.
Get a quest, bust out the world map and plan. Follow this road, take a right at the second fork, go innawoods then look for the village or whatever. Its much better then following the gps and the game world feels more natural.
Also try using the alternative movement style in the options if you dont like the way Geralt moves, I hated it but the alternative is very responsive.

It's like you've never seen a slav girl.

post yours game screenshot please

Is there a point where Witcher 1 picks up? I'm trying to play through them all in order, but the game is feeling like a heavily modded BioWare RPG right now with the systems in it like the alchemy system and the combat.

3 is highly disconnected from the other 2 games since they tried to branch out to consoles and make the story into an epic adventure for normalfags

If you can't get into it after the Vizimia outskirts, then you probably won't like the rest of it

If you are enjoying the game after reaching Vizima, you should propably stop. There's a lot of back and forth running especially on the first playthrough when you aren't absolutely sure where to go next. One thing you could do is to up the out of combat movement speed with mods.

*If you aren't

Witcher 3 is the most fun. Specially specially with a weight limit bypass mod.

But take it from the only person on Holla Forums who has the rare ability to enjoy and appreciate AAA games.

no

All I hear is W1 and W2 buggy mess laa laa laa, never encoutered a single bug or glitch myself, I think it's just a may may.

Get the fuck out faggot, you don't belong here.

W1 is the best witcher game by far.

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calm down sperglord, witcher 1 is absolute shit gameplay-wise. witcher 2 is far better.

Hell no. I want you cuckchan summerfaggots to go back.

I'm right now in the outskirts having to find petals and shit. This game has my interest in the story but the quests in between feel boring and uninspired.

Another issue I've noticed is that the game doesn't explain stuff as well enough for someone just thrown into the series, like how the alchemy system is vital for buffs yet has a large amount of ingredients that do different things. Plus I ordered beer from the bar and never got my beer.

I can't quite say which one is best yet, but so far it's been slow after the prologue.

I recommend playing through the outskirts and seeing how you like it after things become more clear.

pretty much every in game book you get your hands on you should read

That's one cool opinion which I very much respect famalamadingdong, but the witcher 1's combat was a literal QTE

I really liked the first game, but the outskirts are extremely boring. If you liked the story so far you'll like the game once you get into Vizima.

The outskierts are great. I don't see how anyone could say they're boring when there's so few quests going on in that area. It's over before you think it even starts, but I admit that when you get access to the swamp is where te game eally starts to shine.

I like the outskirts, but on my first playthrough I was a bit disoriented and ended up wandering around unnecessarily much.

I figure the devs planned the game to be played without an arbitrary weight limit. Although it does make making money too easy.

The combat in all 3 games is pure dogshit
It's either qte or batman dancing

Oh man, I loved the quest "Where the Cat and Wolf Play". I killed the other Witcher fucker and took the girl to a relative and gave them money for food

Later when I came back to the town, she called out for me and gave me a "thank you" letter

I have never been this happy in a videogame, ever.
I treasure that letter in my inventory and never get rid of it, won't even free up space with it

Did the same.

Well, I think Vivaldi changed his mind after they hanged people close to him and confiscated his money for conspiring with the squirrels when he wasn't part of them.

Fair point.

Not just that but unforgiving as well. I tried playing it when witcher 2 came out in preparation for that but gave up on both. I got stuck on the hell-hound because I was underleveled and completely unprepared for the battle. Could've used more warning that I was getting locked onto a plot-railway.

I tried a couple of times to get through with the buffs I had before deciding to just start over later but never got around to it.

loaded up an old save a couple hours into Velen.
The health, adrenaline and stamina bars pop up in combat as do the enemy health or boss health on the bottom of the screen but other then that its pretty pure.
the current patched version of the game has all the options to tweak the ui however you want, even stuff like disabling the automatic sword drawing and sheathing or the fish eye effect of Witcher Vision*TM, which is probably the weakest aspect of the game but still better then asscreed or just about every other 3rd person game.

oh and the quick use item on the lower left of the screen show up too

I didn't have a problem with the visual stuff to simulate the extremely sharp senses of a witcher, but way too many quests relied on following a glowing trail instead of putting those senses into clever uses. Combined with the level scaling making enemies completely unbeatable without ridiculous cheesing or to pushovers because you were overleveled after doing quests in the wrong order, most of the monster hunting quests were really bad in my experience.

Stuff like fisheye effect shows not everyone working at cdpr is a genious. The idea itself makes sense but poor execution makes it a negative.

kill yourself

It's like you don't want to be the one.

Can't really remember any issues worth mentioning with bugs in my multiple play-troughs of those two games. The thin in the OP sounds a bit annoying but is easily fixed by giving yourself unlimited inventory space which you should always do anyways, hording is fun after all.

Just got to that cave you go into with Keira. Enjoying 3 so far, but feel the open world nature is going to hurt it. Like I'll get burnt out way before the end, same as most open world games. Too much filler, not enough killer. Hope to be wrong, but I'd be surprised.

I completely agree with your first point.
I did notice on loading it back up theres an option to upscale enemies now, im assuming it does just that for the pushover enemies, gonna test it out.

The monster contract quests that really shined where the ones that turned out to be something more then just "go here, follow red clues, kill monster" but there weren't enough like that and I suppose if they all were like that they wouldnt be so memorable. Overall though I think they did a great job with making sidequests far better then the mundane fetch quests and so on from other rpg's, especially on Death March because i was always hurting for coin and i felt like i needed to look for witcher's work to get by which really added to the immersion and authenticity or the role you play.

Its pretty easy to get through the game without even seeing half of Velen/Novigrad and shit like 75 percent of Skellige. But there are lots of interesting things and quests to find if you do explore out of the way. I'd say its 80% killer with 20% filler. Some mundane monster contracts here and there but overall its far better then anything near its scope

It makes sense most of the monster hunting quests wouldn't have an overly elaborate additional solutions, but needing to be in the right place at the right level really diminished my fun. The game seems it would have been significantly better if it had been designed to be more linear from the start.

I'm at about the same place you are, finished the cave with Keira last night and met with the Baron today. 17 hours in and only level 7 since I enjoy just roaming the countryside looking for points of interest, clearing monster nests and collecting gwent cards. I really don't think they intended people to actually try and do everything because I'm already above the recommended level for the story quests and I've barely touched a quarter of the map of Velen.

I was gonna start a new thread but fuck it.. Don't read the spoilers if you haven't finished 3 user!

THE ENDING TO THE WITCHER 3 WAS SHIT.

There, I said it.. What you gonna do suck my dick about it?

The endings of the 1st game, and even the 2nd, were *miles* better, and even felt a great deal more satisfying than the third.

Now, I know I sound like a faggot with retro goggles and an erection for choppy animations, but just hear me out for a second.

I was hoping for a culmination of all the storylines and plots to conjoin and conclude, similarly to how it was done at the end of 1.

Instead, it was a clusterfuck of setpieces and ideas that just peaked at *underdeveloped*, **especially when yen just goes 'Good luck geralt!' and then just casually strolls
off at what is supposed to be the apex point of the entire plot.**

Oh and the boss fight was TOO FUCKING EASY, with cliched, obvious movements.

And those fucking videos which depicted everyone in different clothing.. what was that man? Why the pre recorded vids simulating cutscenes? Ridiculous.

And what the fuck was the wild hunt's actual motive in this? He's supposed to be a spectre, but he dies like a man at the end, even though he's supposed to be able to 'evade death' in the other games..

And, the final cherry on top of the icing encrusted jizz biscuit was when **Ciri died, LITERALLY because I told her to calm down *once.* I had been sucking that girl's dick all the show,
I had been protective, supportive and everything, trying to care for her welfare and make sure she wasn't kidnapped by THE TELEPORTING BAND OF WILD HUNT DUDES, but no, she gave up or some shit because 'LOL GERALT TOLD ME TO CALM DOWN.' So I get the bad ending because of that.. Fuck my ass with cream cheese.**

And had the devs taken amnesia pills or something? Because in the 1st game, you were SHOWN the white frost *FIRSTHAND* by grandmaster 'Jacques' ;) in the 1st game, and you were also shown in the segment where you and avallach are hopping worlds, so why did geralt act all dumb when avallach was telling him all about it?

And you're goddamn fucking right I'm salty about this shit.. Had I known soggy tits was so pivotal to the plots zenith, I would have told her to go fucking nuts, just like any other terrible father figure.

...

I wonder how much peoples hardware affects their experience since the game looks amazing.
Like how many people who are negative are playing on lowest settings with fps capped at 30?

because they rewrote the game to appeal to a bigger audience, the first game's depiction of the white frost just being an ice age is closer to the books than the third game where it's a destroyer of worlds
Same reason they rewrote Ciri and Nilfgaard to not be as fucked up as they were in the books

Normalfags want an epic adventure, and they wrote the game so that they could get into this without playing the first

...

>And what the fuck was the wild hunt's actual motive in this? He's supposed to be a spectre, but he dies like a man at the end, even though he's supposed to be able to 'evade death' in the other games..

Eredin knows the Aen Aelle (or whatever the fuck those elves were called) world will be destroyed by the white frost soon so he wants to get ciri so he can use her teleport powers to teleport massive numbers of his warriors (physical ones, not spectres) and take over the world to save his race. He was physical during the game too, and not a spectre. The second game mentioned the wild hunt appearing physically once when geralt and letho fought them.

I suppose that it worked in drawing them in, but then again if they were that invested in the plot to finish the game, they could have been a bit more true to the lore and shit IMO.

Also my nigga Jacques should have got a bit more exposure IMO, only one little reference wasn't really enough considering that it was only a couple years after all the order of the flaming rose business had gone down.

AND NO SIEGFRIED EXCEPT IN GWENT!? Fuck me..

From what I recall 1 didn't have that problem, it was a retarded change they made in 2 with the manual dice tossing. The board looked shittier too and had worse lighting. 1's dice poker was fucking fantastic.

I never understood why one needed to bring out the silver sword for them then considering that they are essentially just elves.

1 also had the best transition images where it was closer to a fucking painting rather than the comic shit that 2 and 3 did

...

The bad optimization/bloated requirements certainly turned me off the first time around. Now I've got a new card I can actually play it. The Gameworks hair looks good but also can look really bad and distracting, same as the shadows. Some are good, some are a mess that ruin the immersion. Face/skin, outfit and floor textures are top notch though.

How could you post this! There is absolutely nothing wrong with being jewish

It kind of fits actually. Living skeletons and other demonic shit.

Right on man, I felt that too - especially in the endings.

I thought the music was way better too tbh, that wailing chick needed to chill out a bit in 3..

Tbh I was trying to embed a video of the epilogue onto here from youtube, but I don't know how to do it without it just displaying as code, or not working in the 'embed' option, ala:

:'(

I'm playing on pretty low settings and getting something like 36fps on average but graphics don't really affect my enjoyment of games at all.

You put the url to the video in the embed, it'll do the rest of the work. Note that you can't up an image and embed at the same time.

So your taste is shit, that's the only explanation for how you can enjoy modern AAA games.

congrats you spoonfed reddit

Not working properly for me.. Ahh well

Don't listen to that guy, he's an idiot. Post the normal url of the video, not the /embed/ url, like pic related.

Solomon's seal has a fundamental place in alchemy and hermetic tradition, symbolizing the unity of fire and water by crossing the two triangles representing each element. A cross symbolizes the same. As with everything that the jews have done, they've stolen the seal, rebranded it as their own and mixed it in with their stolen magical knowledge.

It fits in Witcher when you look at the alchemic and hermetic background and ignore the thieving kike lies.

I have mine on medium settings and ever 5 hours or so the game will crash to desktop or the graphics will start tearing and stretching. Shit's annoying as fuck.

0 self awareness
he says that as he plays witcher of all things and browses reddit, we know you browse reddit faggot

That's not how this trigger works, user. You've fucked up more often than that.

Realism in video games.

so this is not a mod?

can you play game without using batm- I mean witcher senses?

Mostly, but the quests are designed around them, so you'll be either guessing where to go next or looking for obvious locations of quest advancement. I wouldn't recommend it.

It's like you don't loot the weapons of everyone you kill.

Man, being able to sleep and lead Roach by his/her reigns would add to the game so much. Immersion would be through the roof m8s.

Instead of kneeling down through the night and storms, I'd sleep. Instead of having Roach teleport near me when I stray off investigating, I could lead him along the trail in case of needing him.

Tried that on the /test board just now.. Seemed to work. Thanks user!

Ice stage starts at 22:30.. Pretty sure the guy playing installed a few mods too though because those swords weren't in the game AFAIK

Apparently the triggers are:

Say “Relax, you don’t have to be good at everything,” when comforting Ciri during Blood on the Battlefield.

I think I probably did this because I was just trying to fuckin make her chill out and not get fucked up over herself.. Didn't know she was gonna take it personally as a slight against her fucking hell.

Missable: Choose to visit the Emperor during Blood on the Battlefield, and say “Definitely need it more than you” to accept payment for bringing Ciri to him.

Didn't bring Ciri to him, the emperor can suck my fucking nuts

Accompany Ciri to the meeting with the Lodge of Sorceresses during Final Preparations.

Yea, did this because I didn't trust them *AT ALL* after the events in 2, and even some of the shit in 3 - so why the fuck would I leave ciri, who i'd only just found, in the hands of some crafty bitches.

Say “Calm down” when Ciri loses her temper during The Child of the Elder Blood.

Did this so that Ciri wouldn't blow Avallac'hs house up.. Fuck the ducks.

Say “No time” when Ciri asks to visit Skjall’s grave at the end of The Child of the Elder Blood.

Visited the grave with her because I thought she would appreciate it.. NOT ENOUGH THOUGH APPARENTLY.

...

The 'Punished Geralt ending' is basically a giant fucking cliff hanger.. He just fucking collapses and gets swarmed by DROWNERS..

Still, at least you get to finally kill the sneaky third witch.. When he threw his sword, that was fucking awesome..

The outro with berem and all that was pretty cool, except when Geralt goes 'that's not true, I don't feel anything any more.' That was kinda lame.. Since when was Ciri -that-important, he didn't even acknowledge her existance in 1 and 2. Also annoyed by the fact that I was gifted this wonderful ending literally because I had said one thing wrong.. That, and the leadup to it should have been given more work to it rather than how many different ways you can piss off the secondary characters but w/e I suppose.

Also, where the fuck do zoltan and dandelion go off to right at the end? I know they're managing the tavern, but can't they take 5 to help save the world for a second? 0% effort

Man, so far Witcher 3 is fucking great.

It's a good game user, just a bit of a dickslap for fans of the series now and again..

What dickslap?

Gas the Poles, race war now.

Off the top of my head:

Zoltan, Dandelion, etc
White frost no longer doomsday/ice age scenario which turns men into mindless animals etc
The wild hunt no longer harbinger of death, but just some elf dude (why is he and his men so huge btw? And how are they spectres in this game..)

(Cont.)

Still a good game, but damn man..

They really should do a dice poker DLC. You could play as a mercenary or a bard down on his luck who moves from town to town fighting, drinking, and playing dice poker. You could try to get your opponent drunker than you are so the game is easier but then that makes the fights harder.

That sucks, needed fixing sure but to cut it entirely is bad. Hope fist-fights are in at least

I see what you mean but it wouldn't make much sense from a gameplay perspective to keep them the same or you'd have no way of ramping it up unless you'd have Geralt become a one-man army. Could've used some plot justification for it though.

Haha, I love your style of thought! Gwent can be quite addictive, but I did miss that dice poker..

Fist fights are still in, bit more dynamic than the previous games - they're basically just a standard fight but without weapons.

Yea I thought that myself tbh, thought they could have played up to his amnesia a little more perhaps, and for the items, it could be done like eredin kicks your ass, nicks your shit, and you have the choice to try and get it back from him later in the game or something.. That would be cool.

That's an excellent idea. Would solve the balance issues, motivate the player directly and a good starting point for a series of quests that leads from the prologue to the later chapters.

Not sure how to it with the skills though since amnesia would get a bit tiring after a while. Geralt has had to learn what Drowners are three separate times at this point. Best would've been if they could've come up with different settings and monsters for each game but that might be asking a bit much.

Well I think that the amnesia card can get quite old fast if played too much.. Knowledge from the previous games such as monsters should remain IMO, or at least, for very common ones like drowners.

Considering they've already played it once in the first game it would be too much until witcher 5 or something.

Maybe they could make something up about local species that are similar but not exactly the same? I do miss buying books for research from the first one though. For 3 I think they should've kept buying books but used them to give hints where you can find certain plants and ingredients.

Why do people keep calling Witcher games RPGs?

I hope you choose the popular path in witcher 2, if not, just pretend witcher 2 was the last game.

What's the popular path then? I sided with Roche because he trusted Geralt when he said he wasn't the killer and helped him escape.

...

Also because best bro. I wonder what Roche is doing in 3 if we told him to side with Radovid in 2.

Why do people keep calling video games RPGs?

wpc.4d7d.edgecastcdn.net/004D7D/mkt/document/Changelog-1.30-ENG.pdf
Seems they're not fixing the inventory lag which was my biggest issue since BW patch.
Guess they would have to rework entire inventory again and its just not worth it.

And just like that I got the title of my autobiography set.

Fingerbanged By Bumy Elves - user's Story

Vivaldis new looks is pretty good.

Ciri is the worst part of the books.

I always assume that Geralt is a fucking idiot when it comes to money and finances (as it's heavily implies he barely scrapes by)

I always assume he just sells all the "rare" shit he finds in his adventures for equipment, repairs, lodging and food. And can never really make a lot of money because he gets caught up in some grand adventure that eats up most, if not all of his time.

Radovid did nothing wrong.

Looking good. His uneven beard always triggered my autism. Glad it's gone.

This is doubly so, considering that some villages give "a large sum of money", which is equal to 20 crowns. Yet in some jobs, he get's ~300 coins, enough to feed an entire small village ten times over?

That's something that many RPGs in general can never quite get right, where the main character will become so wealthy that he can afford nearly an entire town for life, and yet it's still implied he isn't filthy rich.

The problem is that the player goes up against so many enemies on his own and still win. It's not at all unusual to kill 5 bandits alone and then get all the loot from their corpses. It's different if you split the loot among a team and need an entire team to win.

in the books, no body is hiring witchers anymore because there arent many monsters to hunt and its not like the was saving for retirement, because odds are he would die in a hunt anyway.

Am I the only one who thinks that the world in The Witcher is boring as fuck? Really it seems to me that this whole "slavic" theme is only a slight coverup for another generic interpretation of dark fantasy as just "slightly more dark and realistic high fantasy".

I started playing Knightshift and it seems to be doing a much better job at actually feeling slavic.

its literally stated in his biography in Witcher 2

The world is meant to be quite bare of monsters and magic, the numbers are dropping. Even non-humans are dying out. Given a century, the world of Witcher will just be medieval slavland.

Shit taste user

Nah, fuck you, the game is fun.

I know that very well, I've read some of the books.

It still kind of feels like your typical fantasy game with your archetypical fantasy creatures.

No fuck you faggot
The game is one of the most painfully generic things I've touched and I got this shit for free

Anyone know what the latest patch is about? Steam started downloading 3.6 gigs and now the mods I added crash the game.

That's because it's just slightly edgy generic fantasy, only relevant because they apparently don't have anything better to read in Poland and because its a setting of some video games.

I'd say it's a bit more than that since it blends in some germanic mythology that you rarely, if ever, see otherwise, noon wraiths for example. Otherwise it's the Game of Thrones of vidya so to speak.

Most fantasy blends in folklore. It's nothing ground breaking. Using existing stories and folk beliefs is the simple way of setting creation. Witcher isn't even well researched on that regard, the influence is from all over the place.

As a Pole, I can confirm

I read mediocre genre fiction in my own language too.

Yeah, but at least it's sort of an unexplored niche for us slavaboos. I would still put the writing above most fantasy RPGs, at least modern ones.

Did you burn them for warmth?