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Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

The Sharmat posted:

Yeah I've never gotten the "default with no import is canon" thing when generally speaking its pretty transparently done to minimize the amount of confusion for a new player, thus the maximum possible people being assumed dead.

That said any further sequels are probably gonna have to establish at least a few things as canon if they ever happen, since it would be crazy to carry on save importing for 15 years or however long this franchise will have existed by the time there's another game.

I more mean that the entire idea of canon is weird and mostly not-helpful. I think it comes from a desire to historicize fictional worlds, and it's a *terrible* idea. I was never someone into the Star Wars EU, but wookiepedia is a living testament to the folly of canonization. Big franchises are really poorly suited to this kind of systemization, which is ironic considering that the idea of canon comes from the Church, one of the biggest franchise universes in history.

I really like how Morrowind handled cannon, re: the ending of Daggerfall. Previous game had 5 mutually contradictory endings? All of them happened simultaneously because causality broke.

Letho living or dying in W2 is only determined by your play of W2. If the default save-state says he's dead, it doesn't mean that "canon" Geralt killed him because there's no such thing, there are lots of different reasons for deciding what choices we carry between games, or what characters get into the game and which ones get cut, mostly technical and production reasons, never because we want to establish an official story-state for reasons of canon.

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Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

The Sharmat posted:

Fortunately CDPR has more imagination than the posters in this thread.

not empty quoting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2oVSwflClQ

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

OAquinas posted:

Loved that trailer. A bit disappointed we didn't get quite that cinematic in the regular game, but it did come damned close in some parts.

The quality of that trailer sort of blows my mind. The reflections on Geralt's hair @_@

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
BTW there's still an easter egg in that trailer I've never seen anyone notice, if any video game detectives are interested in working the case.

EDIT: Full version, not the song

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Macaluso posted:

While that's true, it would be nice if the NPCs also reacted properly to the weather instead of just standing there chilling or picking wheat while a goddamned hurricane is coming down on them


Not every single NPC reacts to the weather, but most of them do.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

JaucheCharly posted:

What's the deal with the stone circle in the woods NW of crow's perch?

If you go there when the moon is right you can take a moongate to the underworld, but don't forget to bring the sandlewood box.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
I think it's in the Enhanced Edition, but Shani dumps Geralt because he's sullen and immature. (Good call)

BTW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DnGJ1SD09U

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
Just a teaser, should be a full trailer out at some point.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Palpek posted:

I knew it, you have to be magic to have a neverending supply of mandrake cordial.

Different guy, this is the guy who tells you about Yennifer, not the merchant. He says he's a glass merchant, but he's got no store set up.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

The Sharmat posted:

It's described as a new romance option in the article.

https://www.gog.com/game/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_hearts_of_stone

It'll probably be what you describe though.

Also this article, which has more information than the official page for some reason.

http://www.comingsoon.net/games/trailers/479813-preview-the-first-witcher-3-wild-hunt-expansion-pack

Keep in mind that in gaming terms, "romance" means "you get to have sex".

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Senjuro posted:

Comte, can you comment on which option is going to be cheaper, buying Heart of Stone with the 15% discount and then Blood and Wine when it comes out or just getting both with the expansion pass?
Yeah I know it's probably only a matter of a few bucks here or there but I'm a very cheap person.

I have no idea, I don't sell em, I just make em.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
There's no such thing as 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. It's a core theme.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
If I were in charge of one of the expansion packs, it would be Geralt putting his swords away, realizing that he's not really doing any good. He then meets up with Corrine Tilly and they open Novigrad's first licensed therapist. Sarah the Godling is the receptionist.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

El Pollo Blanco posted:

Who do we have to get sacked from CDPR to make this happen?

Probably everyone.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
Radovid and Whoreson are both quite obviously mentally ill.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Gharbad the Weak posted:

I really want to get Witcher 3, because I really like how they do business. I haven't had the best time with witcher 1 and 2, but I want to beat at least ONE of them before I consider getting Witcher 3.

So, I'm focusing on Witcher 2. My problem is that I'm terrible. When I'm not riposting, it usually devolves into "Get killed by monster, reload, place 15 traps where it spawns, repeat" which is really boring and unfulfilling.

So, with the knowledge in mind that I'm literally bad at videogames, is there a particular way I should be building Geralt so that I can do the most bullshit possible and crush enemies? I know I need to be throwing knives and bombs and setting traps and casting spells, but I don't find a lot of resources. If there's a generally Really Good Way To Go, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

I really do want to like this series, but for whatever reason combat and leveling isn't clicking for me. HELLP

Just skip it or watch and LP, honestly. If you like W3 enough that you want to go back, do that then (and start with W1 because it's actually awesome).

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Palpek posted:

Kurwa is a magical word that you can use as a verb, noun, adjective or actually any other function. It can be taken literally, figuratively or with no meaning at all, it can be used as a coma or an exclaimation mark, you can build a whole sentece using only variations of it, it all depends on the context. Anyway Skurwysyn = Z Kurwy Syn = a son from a whore.

First word I learned in polish, still one of the only words I know. Thankfully, it's versatile.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Jinnigan posted:

I finally beat the game and I love it, a lot. But did anyone else get incredibly bored in the first act? Like, to the point where you wandered off to other video games? I played the entirety of Fallout New Vegas (for the first time!!) in between dropping W3 and picking it back up. I think it's because you go entirely too long before meeting up with any persistent and major characters. I mean, the Baron and Keira and so on are cool and all, but it's really not comparable to the hook of finally finding Ciri or getting into messes with Triss and Yenn.

Actually, I guess that's one of my major pet peeves about the quest design in W3: it's far away and above the rest of RPG quest design, but god drat I wish there were less quests in which you're interrupted on your way to doing something.

(I'm not a professional game designer so please bear with me as I try to express what I mean)

I guess the basic "thing" of story, game, and quest design is that the story gives you a goal, then a problem en route to that goal, and then the gameplay comes from resolving the problem? I think the storylines around Cerys and Hjallmar were really well-designed, because you directly help them out with their goals instead of chasing wumpus butts on the other side of the isles. And, the story and information you learn through doing their quests also sets the foundation, the characterizations, for the next chunk of the story: choosing to support either Cerys or Hjallmar (or not) as the next ruler of vikings Skellige.

But it's frustrating when the gameplay is overcoming a goal that has no direct correlation to that story. There's also a lot of times in W3 where the problem you're presented is really just an interruption, and doesn't move forward any of your understanding or story. One example is the dwarves in the Isle of Mists: what does finding the three dwarves have to do with Ciri's condition, her fate, the danger she's in, or what's next? It's just a bit of clever filler, for the purpose of ...? Not making it too easy to get to Ciri, I guess. I don't really know if the game would be damaged by taking the quest out. But for me the worst is the entire Whoreson Junior plotline, which is just egregiously meandering. In order to find Ciri I have to find Dandelion which means I have to find Whoreson and to do that I have to help Djikstra who leads me to Roche and then I meet Radovid who finally, finally tells me where Junior is. Somewhere in the middle of this is where I lost interest and went to play other games. It's just too long, too many turtles down, too convoluted, without any real interaction with my actual goal: just nested interruptions within other interruptions. It didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything or moving anywhere, just getting mired in a neverending plotline. Or, think about it this way: it's 5 degrees of separation (or quests of separation, if you like) between my actual goal (finding Ciri) and actually getting anywhere with it.

It got better after that, and once I actually got to Ciri, the game had me thoroughly engrossed, because I felt like I was actually accomplishing things, building allies, preparing for war, etc etc. But it took a looooooooong time to get there.

This is the difference between "and then..." and "therefore" storytelling, and you are right, "and then..." gets boring fast. I think our Baron storyline was excellent, but it doesn't really work as well with the main story as it should.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Pellisworth posted:

It's like the complete opposite of Inquisition. DA3 is basically a single player MMO filled with shallow and repetitive collect, fetch, kill quests. Most of us in this thread are still collectively losing our poo poo over how Witcher 3 manages to be both huge and high-quality throughout. There is very little filler and even the simplest quests are fully voice-acted and animated.

I like this take on Witcher 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkIKbTiuJ9A
I think the thread consensus is that the writing, world-building, and immersiveness of Witcher 3 ranks among the best of all time.

Edit: there is a good 100+ hours of content in a Witcher 3 playthrough, even not being completionist. It's enormous.

One of the things alluded to but not specifically mentioned in this video is that one of the real rewards of having good scenes is that you can have a really long game that's rewarding even if you don't finish it. Some long games, like MGSV, and classics like BG2, benefit from this; I will probably never finish either of those games, but they are both amazing. I think this is one of those things that DA:I doesn't get quite right; it's got cool scenes, but they are all in the service of much much longer stories that all build to a cresendo, if you give up before you get there there's never any payoff.

If you only play Witcher 3 for 20 hours, that 20 hours will be satisfying and your time won't feel wasted. That's the goal anyway.

PS don't tell any other studios about our secret ok

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
previews for heart of stone:

http://www.pcgamer.com/love-giant-frog-monsters-and-ghost-parties-in-the-witcher-3s-first-expansion/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/09/28/the-witcher-3-heart-of-stone-introduces-a-tonal-shift/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/09/...9&utm_content=2
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-i-cant-wait-for-the-witcher-3s-new-expansion/1100-6430925/
http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/the_witcher_3_hearts_of_stone/preview-3948.html
https://www.vg247.com/2015/09/28/the-witcher-3-hearts-of-stone-hands-on/
http://www.gameinformer.com/games/t...campaign=buffer

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Blacktoll posted:

You feel very strongly about Geralt and his love choices.

Well, they are the best romances ever written in an RPG, so... I figure it's worth talking about.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Shockeh posted:

I feel like I miss something fundamental about the Yen romance, because I like that she's written independently and she's a strong character in her own right, but I just find her annoying.

You know, holding a grudge against me for memory loss (which you decided to actively IGNORE because 'you know I'd come find you sooner or later' and I'm the bad guy here?) is pretty lovely, and she doesn't have a problem at any point with Triss over it. Surely you'd be more annoyed at the friend who was sleeping with your boyfriend whilst he had memory loss, Yennefer?

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Yen doesn't hold a grudge against Geralt for sleeping with Triss while he had amnesia. She's upset when he brings it up because he's invalidating her feelings of betrayal.

We can assume that Triss and Yen resolved their differences, as much as they can be resolved, off-screen. There's a small amount of this in-game, but it's mostly implied.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Avalerion posted:

That's the point though, Geralt didn't betray her, Triss did, she's barking up the wrong tree.


I am, by no means, a relationship expert, but here's a free piece of advice. Sometimes people feel aggrieved, and if you don't want them to teleport you into a lake, you should not try to talk them out of feeling aggrieved. "It wasn't my fault" is such a lovely thing to say when someone is telling you that they are hurting.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Snak posted:

So you're a domestic abuse apologist? :confused:

:rolleyes:

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Snak posted:

Okay... my "you a domestic abuse apologist" comment got some eye-rolls, but I was responding to this:

And I can't see how that's different from saying that if you don't want to get hit, don't antagonize them when they are emotionally vulnerable. That is literally the excuse that domestic abusers make, that someone is emotionally abusive towards them so they respond with physical abuse. Like if the roles were reversed and a male character slapped a female character because she was being insensitive, no one would be defending it.

edit: And in case it's not obvious, no I don't think that forums poster Comte de Saint-Germain is defending real-life domestic abusers.

Domestic violence is obviously totally unacceptable. Does teleporting someone into a lake count as domestic abuse? Depends on the context. If I did it in real life, clearly, yes. If Yenn does it to Geralt in their fairytale land, it's not.

When someone is hurting and trying to work through that, their partner needs to be able to recognize that and help them work through it. The inability of someone to do that doesn't mean they deserve to get hit or teleported or turned into a frog, it means that they should probably not be with that person.

If your version of Geralt can't get over the fact that Yenn is going to side-swipe him occasionally while she works out her feelings of betrayal, yeah, he should be with Triss.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Shockeh posted:

Genuinely started to effort post in reply, then realised Oh God This Is A Rabbit Hole.

tl;dr - My Geralt feels sympathy for her, but doesn't feel in the wrong, and making him chase her all over the loving world because he should infer everything all the time when Yenn could have fixed it at any time is why he's dumping her for Triss.

Well, to be fair, she could just as easily reply that she couldn't resolve the problem because she got written out of the story because the writers of W1 didn't like her.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Constantly LARPing posted:

Wait, that's why Yen and the events in the books aren't mentioned in W1 (aside from the frequent winking references)? I always assumed it was a combo of them wanting to tell a self contained story since they had no idea it would be successful enough to allow for a sequel, and recognizing that few people outside of Poland were aware of the books so it made no sense to extensively delve into them. That's pretty funny if its the case, as it makes W1 even more like fan fiction. Decently written for a video game fan fiction, but still.

I've heard a number of reasons for why they made this choice, and I don't actually know how many of the original writers are still here, so idk if what I said is actually true or not. Even if it is, it's probably not the whole truth.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
It's hard work, please buy a copy for everyone you know this xmas.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-hearts-of-stone-review/1900-6416268/

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Senjuro posted:

gently caress this plague of open world games and the obsession with bigger and bigger maps that they've created. Would the Witcher 2 have been better if it had an open world? Would the Witcher 3 had been worse if most or even all the points of interests were removed and the map was condensed? Waste of resources if you ask me.

no one did

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Crows Turn Off posted:

Yennefer is Geralt's girlfriend in my playthrough (first encounter and said I still liked her after the spell was lifted, haven't had the second encounter yet). I haven't done the High Stakes quest yet, and apparently you get to sleep with Madame Sasha during it. Does that ruin things with Yennefer at this point?

Yenn and Geralt have a pretty open relationship, the only thing that will cause problems for you is telling other women that you love them.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

The Sharmat posted:

They don't actually. When they're together they're exclusive and the one time for each of them it didn't work out that way it made them both hosed up and guilty. They're just old and jaded and don't give a poo poo about what the other one does to meet their needs when they're broken up.



As depicted in the game, I think this is pretty clearly an open relationship, at least to a point. I think we can both agree that their facebook status would be "it's complicated".

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Are we supposed to know what that song is? Or is it just made up?

I think it was originally supposed to be the melody to "poker face" but wound up just being improvised nonsense (it's funnier as improvised nonsense).

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.
16 gb of it are a file called notavirus.exe

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Jack of Hearts posted:


What happens if you tell Kiera that there's someone else? Can you still persuade her to go back to Kaer Morhen?

She's disappointed and teases Geralt about it, but they stay friends.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Antti posted:

Usually the scripts for DLCs and expansions are done at the same time as the main game's so that the VAs can record all their lines in one go. Or are they introducing altered VA in the patch for the base game?

That may be how other companies do it, but we didn't make out DLC in advance of release. Yes, we call back the actors to do new lines. It's actually not that difficult, most of them all live in London.

EDIT: Some of these may be lines we recorded and didn't get in for one reason or another.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

The Sharmat posted:

Ah, so restored unfinished content?

Maybe? I don't know anything about these lines specifically and I've not heard anything about restored content, but it's possible. More I was responding to the above poster who assumed the DLCs had already been recorded.

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Helith posted:

it appears that Saskia ordered her armour several sizes too small. Fans of anime tits will rejoice.

SHE BREATHES THROUGH HER SKIN

Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Poolparty posted:

The in-game taxman cracking down on nefarious pearl salesmen was pretty awesome.

:) that's mine

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Comte de Saint-Germain
Mar 26, 2001

Snouk but and snouk ben,
I find the smell of an earthly man,
Be he living, or be he dead,
His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.

Regy Rusty posted:

No. Do all of them.

But feel free to skip any ? locations if you don't enjoy them. Honestly, I prefer to just turn map markers off and explore naturally, it feels better and prevents UbiSoft-inspired OCD. You don't get anything for beating all the points-of-interest, and a lot of them have cool things to see and do, but a lot are also pretty similar.

All the quests, the stuff that shows up in your journal under main quest, side quest, or monster hunt, are hand-made and unique. The ? are also hand-crafted, but sadly not all unique.

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