Did Witcher 3 *REALLY* Have Good Choices & Consequences?

+
Did Witcher 3 *REALLY* Have Good Choices & Consequences?

Mature choices and consequences is one of the things I love about the Witcher series. Thinking back over TW3, I can't remember any choices that had the far reaching consequences I've come to expect from this series. Most of my choices were either never mentioned again, or resolved in the epilogue cutscene after finishing the game.

Is this just me? Am I being overly-critical? Or do other people feel the same way?

#1. The Bloody Barron's fate was never mentioned again after finishing the quest (he died in my game, btw). Neither was the fate of the tree spirit.

#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.

#3. I've heard people complain about Reasons of State. Personally, I never finished it. Wasn't my fault. I rescued Thaler and joined the conspiracy, and nothing happened after that. Not sure if my game glitched or what.

#4. Ciri's fate was resolved well. But it's the main quesltine. So it bloody well better.

Really, the only choice & consequence I think was handled well is the fate of Keira Metz. You make a choice early in the game, it has immediate consequences, and it has far reaching consequences dozens of hours later. It impacts the fates of two characters we care about (Keira saves Lambert's life, and they fall in love). That's how choices & consequences should be handled, IMO.

I still haven't played Hearts of Stone so please use spoiler tags when discussing choices & consequences from the expansion.
 
Last edited:
Don't agree regarding bloody baron, the consequence of your choice is shown immediately afterwards(fate anna, baron, kids, villagers). Just because the consequences are immediate doesn't make them cease to exist. Consequences don't have to be delayed.

King choice has some interesting different impacts as well as different feels regarding epilogue. I'm not sure what story impact it could have had outside of this in the time frame of the game.

Completed reasons of state. I like the fact you can have an impact on the politics even if reasons of state itself conclusion was awful. I was very sad they didnt use witcher 2 politics imports to have more of a say in big mix of political stuff that decided situation. As it was just good to be able to do something to stop Nilfs.
 
Just because the consequences are immediate doesn't make them cease to exist. Consequences don't have to be delayed.
Strongly disagree. There's no reason why you can have both. They could've very easily had us run into his belligerent daughter later (if he dies) and help her get out of the witch-hunters guild. Or had the bloody barron come back and help us later (if he lives).

TBH, it'd be pretty cool if his daughter became friends with Ciri or something (they are the same age). Instead she is never mentioned again.
 
Strongly disagree. There's no reason why you can have both. They could've very easily had us run into his belligerent daughter later (if he dies) and help her get out of the witch-hunters guild. Or had the bloody barron come back and help us later (if he lives).

TBH, it'd be pretty cool if his daughter became friends with Ciri or something (they are the same age). Instead she is never mentioned again.

But having both isn't essential and definitely don't think it would make much sense for her and Ciri to suddenly become friends. Equally don't think it would make sense for baron to return, abandoning anna.
That said i personally i was disappointed the whole witch hunter thing which the daughter was hooked into was rather dropped later. So perhaps if it hadn't been she could have made a cameo depending on your choice.
 
The tree spirit quest has pretty hefty outcomes regarding the orphans, and the tie-in to the Baron quest was clever. Some of the smaller quests have two, sometimes three immediate outcomes. Beyond that, the only quest that had layered and delayed outcomes like TW2 is with Keira. I can't think of any other quest line that did it as well. That was pretty much the highlight of the game for me. Expertly written, with good C&C the whole way and big consequences down the road. I want to be optimistic and hope Cyberpunk can have more sophisticated C&C while still being big, but it seems something else will have to be sacrificed to return to TW2's level.
 
Last edited:
It is complex.
The best possible situation is to have a mixture of choices with immediate consequences, long term consequences and choices that do not ACTUALLY have viewable by the player consequences (real life is like that sometimes).

A balance is required. The scenarios must make sense too.

As for Witcher 3?

As far as most video games go... it is good. Above average. But a lot more could be done. Problem is some of it require some real backbone and the ability to fuck over your players from time to time. So do not expect that from big budgeted games.
 
#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.
The "choice" who will be the next king is so badly written that CDP could have made Cery's as the canon queen in the first place.There wouldn't be much of a difference.
Svanrige only becomes king if you actively cancel a quest (why should anybody do this? it seems this has rather the purpose to give the player different content for their 3rd/4th playthrough)
The choice between Hjalmar and Cerys is so one-sided, that it could have been completely cut and the ressources spent on more important content.
Cerys is presented as intelligent, calm and very likeable while Hjalmar acts hot headed, self-destructive and a bit stupid.
She solves her personal quest flawlessly while Hjalmar looses his whole crew during his personal quest.
She finds the real culprit behind the attack on the feast while Hjalmar just kills the tools, which were used and weren't even responsible for it.
Even gameplay-wise the game tells you to choose Cerys, because otherwise you can't access a place of power and loose a skillpoint.
I fully expected that choosing Cerys, while being the logical and obvious choice, would lead to the worse outcome for the future of Skellige, but even that didn't happen. While Hjalmar attacks Nilfgaard and his people drown in blood, Cerys reign leads to a prosperous future.
I have no idea what CDP was trying to achieve with this choice. The whole choice was heavily biased and while the aim could have been to create a tradition vs progress choice , it's just bad writing if the tradition is shown on the worst possible light. Imo the whole "choice" was no choice at all.
What happened to "choosing the lesser evil" and not having clear black&white choices?

Bloody Baron/Ladies of the Wood and Keira Metz were the only two main story questlines with decent choices&consequences. Though still no comparison with Witcher 2, which did a far better job in this regard.
 
Last edited:
Some of the smaller quests generally have two, sometimes three immediate outcomes.
That is something I really liked about the game. And it's one of TW3's strongest points, IMO. But, like I said, a lot of the larger sideqests (like Skellige) weren't as fleshed out as they could've been.

---------- Updated at 02:50 PM ----------

Svanrige only becomes king if you actively cancel a quest (why should anybody do this?
They did the same thing in TW2:EE. In Act 3, there's a quest where you work with Cynthia, the sorceress who kidnapped Triss. Right at the beginning. you can kill Cynthia to get revenge for Triss, but if you do you fail the quest. Simply retarded, IMO.

The ironic thing is.... this could've easily been fixed by moving the choice to kill Cynthia to the end of the quest :p

---------- Updated at 02:54 PM ----------

As far as most video games go... it is good. Above average. But a lot more could be done. Problem is some of it require some real backbone and the ability to fuck over your players from time to time. So do not expect that from big budgeted games.
One of my best memories of TW1 is when I failed a side-quest in Act 2 because of a choice I made in Act 1. And there was nothing I could do about it except accepting the consequences of my actions, or reloading an old save.
 
Last edited:
there is no problem whatsoever that the bloody baron's quest was not mentioned ever again, the quest is over, move on to the next one
"best" outcome for skellige's next king is subjective, for me the best outcome is cerys queen, for other people is hjalmar, etc, it dependes on every person
 
"best" outcome for skellige's next king is subjective, for me the best outcome is cerys queen, for other people is hjalmar, etc, it dependes on every person
Then I suggest you watch the video I linked. Because they sure make it sound like Svanrige is a hell of a lot better king then Hjalmar or Cerys.
 
#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.

I actually thought it was pretty great that choosing neutrality in those sidequests have actual consequences and impact on the story, sometimes for the better (Svaringe becomes the king), sometimes for the worse (Radovid stays at power). In the previous games, when you got involved in a subplots, you either were not given a choice to not get involved or the game just choosed a default state. In The Witcher 3 they actually created an unique consequences for this type of choices and didn't make them only bad or only good, which is really cool.

As for the choice between Hjalmar and Cerys, I think the problem is that they made the negative and positive consequences a bit too subtle. True, Cerys make Skellige more progressive, but the epilogue also made it clear that she also make it weaker militarily, which is bad in the "Nilfgaard wins ending". Hjalmar preserve the Skellige tradition, but keep Skellige strong, which is for the better when the Nilfgaard is planning to conquer the Isles next. It would be cool if they made a longer outro's in Enhanced Edition that takes all of this things under consideration in order to make it more clear.

The sad thing about the consequences is the fact they didn't manage to finish the final battle, which in the final game starts and end at Skellige, while originally it was going to move to the Novigrad and involve Nilfgaardian and Skellige fleets, on top of Novigradian and Redanian, where all the characters, including the one who live or die depending on our choices, would play some part in it. I think that would perfectly tie all the plotlines together. Well, that another thing that we can only hope to be included in EE.
 
TW3's only moral choices in the main story are either ambigious due to lack of knowledge (Spirit Tree), completely irrelevant to anything previous and lacking reason to care about (The hunted house thing) or impossible to understand their impact, and whether there is one (Ciri's choice).
 
Mature choices and consequences is one of the things I love about the Witcher series. Thinking back over TW3, I can't remember any choices that had the far reaching consequences I've come to expect from this series. Most of my choices were either never mentioned again, or resolved in the epilogue cutscene after finishing the game.

Is this just me? Am I being overly-critical? Or do other people feel the same way?

#1. The Bloody Barron's fate was never mentioned again after finishing the quest (he died in my game, btw). Neither was the fate of the tree spirit.

#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.

#3. I've heard people complain about Reasons of State. Personally, I never finished it. Wasn't my fault. I rescued Thaler and joined the conspiracy, and nothing happened after that. Not sure if my game glitched or what.

#4. Ciri's fate was resolved well. But it's the main quesltine. So it bloody well better.

Really, the only choice & consequence I think was handled well is the fate of Keira Metz. You make a choice early in the game, it has immediate consequences, and it has far reaching consequences dozens of hours later. It impacts the fates of two characters we care about (Keira saves Lambert's life, and they fall in love). That's how choices & consequences should be handled, IMO.

I still haven't played Hearts of Stone so please use spoiler tags when discussing choices & consequences from the expansion.


I'm all over the bad writing in this game like a dog with a bone but I'm going to stick up for CDPR on this one.

#1. The Bloody Barron's fate was never mentioned again after finishing the quest (he died in my game, btw). Neither was the fate of the tree spirit.

So what? It doesn't need to be mentioned again because it plays no further part in Geralt's story. He's looking for Ciri and couldn't give two hoots about some fat, drunken, self-styled Baron or a hauned tree.


#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.

As above, it plays no part in Geralt's story. He helps (assuming you do the quest) because they're his friends.


#3. I've heard people complain about Reasons of State. Personally, I never finished it. Wasn't my fault. I rescued Thaler and joined the conspiracy, and nothing happened after that. Not sure if my game glitched or what.

So what? That's your fault, not Red's. The issues many people have with it are characters acting out of character (Djkstra's odd demand at its conclusion, for example), not that it has no meaningful consequence. There's nothing wrong with the storyline, it's the character writing (and dialogue in places) that's the issue.


#4. Ciri's fate was resolved well. But it's the main quesltine. So it bloody well better.

So you're moaning about lack of consequence but mentioning a quest that has a consequence?

There are many consequences not handled well in this game but not one of these is one of them. Consequences such as Triss sleeping with Geralt is never resolved. Consequences such as Geralt riding with the Wild Hunt is never resolved. Consequences such as the world of the Aen Elle being in imminent danger from the White Frost, is never resolved. Just to name a few. We all know there are actions without consequence within the series but blimey,this is just nit picking.
 
Then I suggest you watch the video I linked. Because they sure make it sound like Svanrige is a hell of a lot better king then Hjalmar or Cerys.

He is, and you get some short and sweet action on that track.

I agree with you that as a gamer, the idea of the "best" outcome being the one where you DON'T do the quests is annoying. But purely from a choice and consequences viewpoint, I think it was great. The idea that by "doing something" you won't get the best possible ending is perfectly valid.

And it isn't as though the Cerys or Hjalmar choices are bad. Although I also agree with the viewpoints that the game pushes you too much towards Cerys.

I found the Svanrige ending to be one of those wow moments in the game. Like most players, I suspect, I DIDN'T get it on my first playthrough, I only found out about it later.

To answer your original question though, I'd put it on a par with the two earlier games, and overall I'd put it above average. They avoided falling into the trap of clearcut "Good vs Evil" moral choices, and...

TW3's only moral choices in the main story are either ambigious due to lack of knowledge (Spirit Tree), completely irrelevant to anything previous and lacking reason to care about (The hunted house thing) or impossible to understand their impact, and whether there is one (Ciri's choice).

I'd consider those strengths instead of weaknesses.

The ones that I'd have the strongest complaints about are the small things where there is a consequence but you don't necessarily see it. The Annabelle choice is the one that comes to mind - if you release a Plague Maiden into the world because of a decision, I'd have liked to see the impact of that. I don't think they need to do this with every decision, but I do wish they'd done it a bit more often.
 
Last edited:
I'd consider those strengths instead of weaknesses.
.
That's okay.
I consider good C&Cs ones which are ambigious because of moral challenge (in which each choice signify different values) rather than lack of information for the possible outcome (or worse yet when you have no possible way to indicate whether you are MAKING a choice), and also ones which the characters in question are relevant to you and not ones you met precisely two seconds ago.
 
Mature choices and consequences is one of the things I love about the Witcher series. Thinking back over TW3, I can't remember any choices that had the far reaching consequences I've come to expect from this series. Most of my choices were either never mentioned again, or resolved in the epilogue cutscene after finishing the game.

Is this just me? Am I being overly-critical? Or do other people feel the same way?

#1. The Bloody Barron's fate was never mentioned again after finishing the quest (he died in my game, btw). Neither was the fate of the tree spirit.

#2. Skellige's next king has no impact on the story. Worse yet, the best outcome happens if you don't do this questline at all. (Svanrige becomes Skellige's best ruler in centuries). That's idiotic, IMO, because it incentivizes skipping content.

#3. I've heard people complain about Reasons of State. Personally, I never finished it. Wasn't my fault. I rescued Thaler and joined the conspiracy, and nothing happened after that. Not sure if my game glitched or what.

#4. Ciri's fate was resolved well. But it's the main quesltine. So it bloody well better.

Really, the only choice & consequence I think was handled well is the fate of Keira Metz. You make a choice early in the game, it has immediate consequences, and it has far reaching consequences dozens of hours later. It impacts the fates of two characters we care about (Keira saves Lambert's life, and they fall in love). That's how choices & consequences should be handled, IMO.

I still haven't played Hearts of Stone so please use spoiler tags when discussing choices & consequences from the expansion.

Simple answer: no.
 
I'd consider those strengths instead of weaknesses.

The ones that I'd have the strongest complaints about are the small things where there is a consequence but you don't necessarily see it. The Annabelle choice is the one that comes to mind - if you release a Plague Maiden into the world because of a decision, I'd have liked to see the impact of that. I don't think they need to do this with every decision, but I do wish they'd done it a bit more often.
My two pence. I don't like C&Cs where the player can never possibly imagine the outcome. IMO, that's borderline a Deus Ex Machina type situation - where a conflict has a resolution that wasn't previously mentioned in the story.

The player shouldn't be able to know exactly what will happen. But they should be able to predict what the possibilities are e.g. "Character X has flaw Y and might hurt group Z if I help him. On the other hand, character N has flaw Q and might hurt characters P. Who should I choose?"
A few examples:

The choice between Cerys and Hjalmar. Hjalmar's flaws are clearly visible, but so are his strengths. It's a choice between two equally weighted solutions, and it's mostly a matter of opinion which is better.

The choice between Roche & Iorveth in TW2. Both characters' flaws and strengths are clearly visible. And you can get a feel for how Lorido might react to your decision. Once again, it's a choice between two equally weighted solutions, and the player can predict the potential outcomes.

Most of the choices between the Scoia'tael and Order of Flaming Rose in TW1 were also this way.
 
Last edited:
I agree with Phinn. The game doesn't always give you enough context prior to making decisions. In the Skellige and tree spirit quests, more context would have had me thinking ' huh, ok now I see it'. Instead of, 'I had no idea that would happen...' And again, this is mostly in the main quests. The side quests I encountered nailed it.
 
I also agree that better context would have improved making some decisions. It strikes me as rather odd that they placed such emphasis upon following tracks, and examining environmental clues, in order to identify monsters for contracts, yet left investigating other situations a bit in the shallows. Unless, of course, this was intentional -- given the limitations -- to demonstrate that the Witcher can't always be prepared. . . .
 
Top Bottom