My Frustrations and Problems with playing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

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Great thread (opening post document included).

In my opinion, the biggest underlaying issue with TW3 is the fundamental paradoxical contrast between the dominant theme which supposedly carries some constant great importance and urgency (Find Ciri ASAP and help her saving the world before it’s too late! It’s explained how deeply you are personally motivated and you are also forcefully contracted to do so.) and the real, much more relaxed and almost timeless profile of the actual gameplay where you are not only free to explore and do a bunch of side-quests but it even looks like it’s supposed to feel virtually timeless and endless, you can have at it until you get bored (up to a certain practical limit, of course, but it’s potentially 100-200 hours of secondary content next to 10-20 hours of core content and some side-content is practically mandatory). I think this was a mistake. The developers should have decided if they wanted a strong, busy, even strictly time-sensitive main questline or a plethora of timeless secondary (and tertiary) content. I sense a little too much disarray there.

During my first playthrough --- tanks to my OCD/completionist (but not outright maniac) tendencies --- I often got carried far away and ended up doing too much side content until I got bored and put the entire game aside for weeks or even a solid month. Thus, I spent at least 6 months (Or almost an entire year? I am not sure.) with it (not because I reached nearly ~100% completion but because of all the short and long breaks I took here and there) and I wasn’t even nearly in touch with the main storyline. It was much more like playing a collection of mini-games and short stories inside the world of TW3 while doing a main quest here and there once in a while. I have fairly good memory but I started to forget what it was all about (the Ciri and White Frost stuff). And that’s while completely ignoring Gwent and trying to forget about most of the hard-to-reach question marks (especially the Skellige ones on see). It didn’t hit me as much of a surprise that I wasn’t very content with the ending and the game as a whole if the main questline is considered with a heavy weight. Yet, this felt a little strange because I had a lot of great time playing. Then came the DLCs which seemed to be much more enjoyable for me. Since most of the side-content was cleared or locked out (or just felt completely useless to me at that point) when I started HoS I wasn’t carried away and the isolated storyline felt much more robust. B&W had it’s own side-content but somehow I managed to remain mostly focused on the main stuff (I guess I learned from my past mistakes). Although this port-ending ending wasn’t that much more fulfilling either. It even felt a bit contradicting to my original main-game ending (Geralt practically seemed to embark on a suicide rampage after Ciri disappeared) and reminded me to my questionable choices about woman.

It was a little ironic that I got into the series when reviewers hyped TW3 into high heavens, yet I guess I enjoyed the first game the most. And I had some problems with the second one (nothing major but it was a big change from the first, especially in how the controls/feedbacks worked, and I found it’s fights to be the most demanding at the default/normal difficulty) but at least it was a lovely romantic journey with Triss (I already liked her in TW1 but that “marriage” wasn’t really working out as I hoped. However, in TW2 I think I actually started to love her.)

I tried to wrap up and re-condense TW3’s story with the help of some forum talks and wikia research. But I still wasn’t content (and still didn’t like my ending). So, after a while when I couldn’t find any better new games I decided to do a complete second playthrough of the entire series. The original idea was to ignore most of the side-content and play at Easy (“story only”) for speed. I quickly rushed through TW1 and completed TW2 fairly fast as well. But somehow my OCD kicked in and I ended up doing MORE side-content in TW3 than the first time around (I cleared up more question marks and won every Gwent tournaments, etc). I even forgot to set the difficulty to Easy (I thought I was playing at Easy up until I got killed by Deathlaf :D). But I had a tremendous amount of free time and somehow never got too bored with the side-content (I guess I got enough practice to micro-manage my gaming regime), so there were no long breaks and it didn’t take more than a few months to finish. And this time I think I managed to understand where things went either seemingly or actually wrong for me. My impressions will be mostly about the first playthrough (I always consider that the one and only “true” experience, the rest is only about trying to better understand the original).

I never read the books, so both Ciri and Yennefer were completely new characters for me. That’s a beloved daughter and a passionate “love of my life”, from whom I, as a player, know very little about. As such, during my first playthrough I was curious about this Yennefer, so tried to spend as much time with her as soon as possible. And even though I somewhat subconsciously realized that something is very wrong about the unexplained absence of Triss (remember, I loved her in TW2 and I wasn’t even told how and why they broke up between game episodes, or if they properly did and not just got carried away by outside circumstances) and somewhat strange with how Geralt behaves around Yennefer or how Yen treats Geralt (but I couldn’t really nail these down, I hoped I just needed some more time with her to get a grip on this --- but I never really came to…), I decided to play along and accepted that Geralt clearly seems to prefer Yennefer. I figured: “Hey, so…, Geralt was in love with this woman before his amnesia and now he has all those memories back, which means this Geralt is now effectively the same Geralt who never stopped loving Yennefer [plus some new memories of an alt-Geralt]. And Triss seems to be completely out of the picture now (which wasn’t a player choice). So…, why would I refuse what Geralt seems to want…?” (I usually tried to play with the “What would Geralt do?” question in my mind rather than the “What would I do?”. I played most Bioware games with the second approach but this is not that kind of a game in my opinion.) So, by the time I realized it’s probably possible to restore the Triss romance, it was already too late (I made my decision to honor Geralt’s will and pick Yennefer – as per my impression, that is…).

My biggest misunderstanding was, and probably still is, the faith of Ciri and the world considering the White Frost. My original goal was to make Ciri an empress (though I obviously wasn’t sure about the possibilities) but that failed during the first playthrough. However, while studying the choices which lead there, somebody pointed it out for me that Ciri not coming back might be the only ending where “the world is saved” (from the Frost). May be I just wish to (falsely) justify my original playthrough as a success but it seems to make more sense that way regarding the interactions with Ciri (the “what kind of father you are”). I tried to teach her self control and patience like Avallach instead of telling her “don’t worry about other people’s / the world’s problems, just try to be happy and kill some beasts” and “you don’t have to sacrifice yourself” (which is may be what leads to her return). And it sort of fits with the prophecy as well (it often sounded bad for the individual who has to “burst”). Although this is obviously all speculation either ways. But this was somewhat frustrating for me.

So, to sum it up, the game is too long / has too much side-quests (IMO) for this core questline, I think my choice over Geralt’s love life was strongly tailored and no matter how I try to interpret the endings, it’s hard to find real closure in any of them (or even just understanding them). I now prefer to think that my original ending was about Ciri sacrificing herself to save the world, Geralt sobered up from the suicidal rampage (thanks to the DLCs) and was happy with Yennefer (because he accepted that he was yet again the same Geralt who never stopped loving Yen, hence no matter what happened with Triss, this was the “right choice”). But there is so much uncertainty there… I can’t decide if it was good or bad when I was “nudged” into a decision or when I could freely reinterpret a lot of things in retrospect.

(Sorry about the non-native English. I wish wouldn’t come around as a child in complex topics. :p)
 

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During my first playthrough --- tanks to my OCD/completionist (but not outright maniac) tendencies --- I often got carried far away and ended up doing too much side content until I got bored and put the entire game aside for weeks or even a solid month. Thus, I spent at least 6 months (Or almost an entire year? I am not sure.) with it (not because I reached nearly ~100% completion but because of all the short and long breaks I took here and there) and I wasn’t even nearly in touch with the main storyline. It was much more like playing a collection of mini-games and short stories inside the world of TW3 while doing a main quest here and there once in a while. I have fairly good memory but I started to forget what it was all about (the Ciri and White Frost stuff). And that’s while completely ignoring Gwent and trying to forget about most of the hard-to-reach question marks (especially the Skellige ones on see). It didn’t hit me as much of a surprise that I wasn’t very content with the ending and the game as a whole if the main questline is considered with a heavy weight. Yet, this felt a little strange because I had a lot of great time playing.
Yeah, being the completionist and wanting to get invested in the story does not mesh very well. I did 100% in just 2/12 playthroughs I had, most of the time I finish only those sidequests that are related to the secondary characters (minus Dandelion, Zoltan, Triss and Dijkstra).
For what it's worth, CDPR did decide to trim down the 2nd act and move most of the content to 1st, probably in order to not disrupt the flow of the story with unrelated sidecontent after Geralt has finally learned the location of Ciri.
If the main quest is what interests you the most, my advice is to stick with it and only do the sidequests if and when you need the money. It's good for the roleplaying too... ;) Best part is, there's no need at all to worry about becoming underleveled, you'll earn enough XP by progressing through the story.
 
Great thread (opening post document included).

In my opinion, the biggest underlaying issue with TW3 is the fundamental paradoxical contrast between the dominant theme which supposedly carries some constant great importance and urgency (Find Ciri ASAP and help her saving the world before it’s too late! It’s explained how deeply you are personally motivated and you are also forcefully contracted to do so.) and the real, much more relaxed and almost timeless profile of the actual gameplay where you are not only free to explore and do a bunch of side-quests but it even looks like it’s supposed to feel virtually timeless and endless, you can have at it until you get bored (up to a certain practical limit, of course, but it’s potentially 100-200 hours of secondary content next to 10-20 hours of core content and some side-content is practically mandatory). I think this was a mistake. The developers should have decided if they wanted a strong, busy, even strictly time-sensitive main questline or a plethora of timeless secondary (and tertiary) content. I sense a little too much disarray there.

During my first playthrough --- tanks to my OCD/completionist (but not outright maniac) tendencies --- I often got carried far away and ended up doing too much side content until I got bored and put the entire game aside for weeks or even a solid month. Thus, I spent at least 6 months (Or almost an entire year? I am not sure.) with it (not because I reached nearly ~100% completion but because of all the short and long breaks I took here and there) and I wasn’t even nearly in touch with the main storyline. It was much more like playing a collection of mini-games and short stories inside the world of TW3 while doing a main quest here and there once in a while. I have fairly good memory but I started to forget what it was all about (the Ciri and White Frost stuff). And that’s while completely ignoring Gwent and trying to forget about most of the hard-to-reach question marks (especially the Skellige ones on see). It didn’t hit me as much of a surprise that I wasn’t very content with the ending and the game as a whole if the main questline is considered with a heavy weight. Yet, this felt a little strange because I had a lot of great time playing. Then came the DLCs which seemed to be much more enjoyable for me. Since most of the side-content was cleared or locked out (or just felt completely useless to me at that point) when I started HoS I wasn’t carried away and the isolated storyline felt much more robust. B&W had it’s own side-content but somehow I managed to remain mostly focused on the main stuff (I guess I learned from my past mistakes). Although this port-ending ending wasn’t that much more fulfilling either. It even felt a bit contradicting to my original main-game ending (Geralt practically seemed to embark on a suicide rampage after Ciri disappeared) and reminded me to my questionable choices about woman.

It was a little ironic that I got into the series when reviewers hyped TW3 into high heavens, yet I guess I enjoyed the first game the most. And I had some problems with the second one (nothing major but it was a big change from the first, especially in how the controls/feedbacks worked, and I found it’s fights to be the most demanding at the default/normal difficulty) but at least it was a lovely romantic journey with Triss (I already liked her in TW1 but that “marriage” wasn’t really working out as I hoped. However, in TW2 I think I actually started to love her.)

I tried to wrap up and re-condense TW3’s story with the help of some forum talks and wikia research. But I still wasn’t content (and still didn’t like my ending). So, after a while when I couldn’t find any better new games I decided to do a complete second playthrough of the entire series. The original idea was to ignore most of the side-content and play at Easy (“story only”) for speed. I quickly rushed through TW1 and completed TW2 fairly fast as well. But somehow my OCD kicked in and I ended up doing MORE side-content in TW3 than the first time around (I cleared up more question marks and won every Gwent tournaments, etc). I even forgot to set the difficulty to Easy (I thought I was playing at Easy up until I got killed by Deathlaf :D). But I had a tremendous amount of free time and somehow never got too bored with the side-content (I guess I got enough practice to micro-manage my gaming regime), so there were no long breaks and it didn’t take more than a few months to finish. And this time I think I managed to understand where things went either seemingly or actually wrong for me. My impressions will be mostly about the first playthrough (I always consider that the one and only “true” experience, the rest is only about trying to better understand the original).

I never read the books, so both Ciri and Yennefer were completely new characters for me. That’s a beloved daughter and a passionate “love of my life”, from whom I, as a player, know very little about. As such, during my first playthrough I was curious about this Yennefer, so tried to spend as much time with her as soon as possible. And even though I somewhat subconsciously realized that something is very wrong about the unexplained absence of Triss (remember, I loved her in TW2 and I wasn’t even told how and why they broke up between game episodes, or if they properly did and not just got carried away by outside circumstances) and somewhat strange with how Geralt behaves around Yennefer or how Yen treats Geralt (but I couldn’t really nail these down, I hoped I just needed some more time with her to get a grip on this --- but I never really came to…), I decided to play along and accepted that Geralt clearly seems to prefer Yennefer. I figured: “Hey, so…, Geralt was in love with this woman before his amnesia and now he has all those memories back, which means this Geralt is now effectively the same Geralt who never stopped loving Yennefer [plus some new memories of an alt-Geralt]. And Triss seems to be completely out of the picture now (which wasn’t a player choice). So…, why would I refuse what Geralt seems to want…?” (I usually tried to play with the “What would Geralt do?” question in my mind rather than the “What would I do?”. I played most Bioware games with the second approach but this is not that kind of a game in my opinion.) So, by the time I realized it’s probably possible to restore the Triss romance, it was already too late (I made my decision to honor Geralt’s will and pick Yennefer – as per my impression, that is…).

My biggest misunderstanding was, and probably still is, the faith of Ciri and the world considering the White Frost. My original goal was to make Ciri an empress (though I obviously wasn’t sure about the possibilities) but that failed during the first playthrough. However, while studying the choices which lead there, somebody pointed it out for me that Ciri not coming back might be the only ending where “the world is saved” (from the Frost). May be I just wish to (falsely) justify my original playthrough as a success but it seems to make more sense that way regarding the interactions with Ciri (the “what kind of father you are”). I tried to teach her self control and patience like Avallach instead of telling her “don’t worry about other people’s / the world’s problems, just try to be happy and kill some beasts” and “you don’t have to sacrifice yourself” (which is may be what leads to her return). And it sort of fits with the prophecy as well (it often sounded bad for the individual who has to “burst”). Although this is obviously all speculation either ways. But this was somewhat frustrating for me.

So, to sum it up, the game is too long / has too much side-quests (IMO) for this core questline, I think my choice over Geralt’s love life was strongly tailored and no matter how I try to interpret the endings, it’s hard to find real closure in any of them (or even just understanding them). I now prefer to think that my original ending was about Ciri sacrificing herself to save the world, Geralt sobered up from the suicidal rampage (thanks to the DLCs) and was happy with Yennefer (because he accepted that he was yet again the same Geralt who never stopped loving Yen, hence no matter what happened with Triss, this was the “right choice”). But there is so much uncertainty there… I can’t decide if it was good or bad when I was “nudged” into a decision or when I could freely reinterpret a lot of things in retrospect.

(Sorry about the non-native English. I wish wouldn’t come around as a child in complex topics. :p)

It is a great balancing act between "game" and "story". Personally, I look at it this way:

Geralt has done everything he could for Ciri. Arguably, so have Yen, Triss, Vesimir, and all the rest of them. The fact remains that none of them have any way of knowing or understanding what she is going through, how her power actually works, what it will ultimately mean...

In that regard, only Emyhr's search for Ciri is "urgent". And Geralt and Yen are not certain they'll ever give her to him. Of course, they want to find her. Of course, they're worried...but what the @#$% are you really supposed to do trying to track down someone who can alter or shift between realities more or less at will? No matter how earnestly they search, there's no guarantee of them ever finding her.

There's really no rush. Just a lot of worry and concern.

In that regard, it's one of those times where life has to go on, despite all the worry and concern. Geralt needs to make a living. Ciri is obviously only a piece of whatever Yen is truly working on. People are still in need. Everyone needs to eat. And there's a war on. Very little (besides destruction) is likely to happen quickly.
 
Great thread (opening post document included).

I tried to wrap up and re-condense TW3’s story with the help of some forum talks and wikia research. But I still wasn’t content (and still didn’t like my ending). So, after a while when I couldn’t find any better new games I decided to do a complete second playthrough of the entire series. The original idea was to ignore most of the side-content and play at Easy (“story only”) for speed. I quickly rushed through TW1 and completed TW2 fairly fast as well. But somehow my OCD kicked in and I ended up doing MORE side-content in TW3 than the first time around (I cleared up more question marks and won every Gwent tournaments, etc).
So in my opinion the reason why you couldn't make it through the main storyline of the third game quickly is because the the game's story is not compelling and interesting enough for a player to get sucked into the story. If I'm being blunt the antagonists and more specifically their motives are bland and unimaginative, i.e. radovid(motivated by power), Emhyr(motivated by power in regard to the war he started), the crones(just there to cause problems), and the wild hunt( motivated by power and bloodlust).

Great thread(opening post document included).

I think my choice over Geralt's love life was strongly tailored
This is a big problem not because I went into the third game caring about Geralt's love life but because I personally don't like it when a game gives a player a "choice" like this but tries to do everything in their power to make the player choose one option over another.
Compile the lack of an actual choice with the lack of an interesting, creative, or well written story and as far as I'm concerned I have to ask what's the point of making "The Witcher III: Wild Hunt" a game at all. Looking back, if the player focuses on only the main story then the game becomes more like an average to bad movie(depending on how harsh of a critic you are) that you watch at your own pace. If the player focuses on exploring, secondary quests, treasure hunts, and contracts then the game feels like The Elder Scrolls but with less freedom to do what you want. So back to the rhetorical question "what's the point". I get frustrated because I really like single player story driven RPGs and I first fell in love with the genre with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. However the genre seems to be dying. Game makers and players seem to be in favor for more online games and more RPGs like fallout and Skyrim which aren't really story driven IMO. So it obviously sucked for me to get sucked into the Witcher world with the first 2 games only to be disappointed so heavily with the third game.
Thanks for the reply
 
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To be honest, the story of TW3 has bigger problems than Geralt's love life ;)

But I understand why CDPR gave Geralt some "canon-strictly" responses and answeres when it comes to moments with Yennefer. Witcher is this kind of RPG where you roleplay an existing character and not creating a new one. In WItcher 3 we have a Geralt who has his memory back and it doesn't matter if the gamer read the books or not, Geralt have to react at many points like Geralt did in the source material before, cause this is his character.

Let's just make this a bit over the top:
Emhyr asks you to find Ciri and the gamer is like "Don't know, her, don't care", take option to say "no" to the quest. End of the game.
This would not make any sense at all.

I mean the whole series is built like it wants you to explore the source material.
TW1 with tons of parts from the Geralt-Saga-Universe, homages, scenes etc.
TW2 starts to "continue" the soruce material but still gives you enough freedeom for yourself.
And TW3 is the "real continuation" to the source material and maybe over the time you got enough interest to look this source material up.

As said, now you have a source Geralt and he have to act at serveral points like Geralt; bound to his past, this might collide with the choices the gamer would make, but we are now at the point where "real" RPG ends and some "source character bound" RPG begins at some points of the story.
 
To be honest, the story of TW3 has bigger problems than Geralt's love life ;)

But I understand why CDPR gave Geralt some "canon-strictly" responses and answeres when it comes to moments with Yennefer. Witcher is this kind of RPG where you roleplay an existing character and not creating a new one. In WItcher 3 we have a Geralt who has his memory back and it doesn't matter if the gamer read the books or not, Geralt have to react at many points like Geralt did in the source material before, cause this is his character.

Let's just make this a bit over the top:
Emhyr asks you to find Ciri and the gamer is like "Don't know, her, don't care", take option to say "no" to the quest. End of the game.
This would not make any sense at all.

So I tried to be clear but I guess I wasn't. I am fully aware that there are more problems with the story other than Geralt's love life and that problem just adds to the other problems with the story as a whole. I tend to bring it up for 2 reasons. The first one is that they do give the player a "choice" but they really don't which I think could be laziness or something else I'm not 100% sure. The other reason I tend to bring it up is because in my opinion this is one of the sub plots of the game where the story writers didn't have to be so "canon-strict" because of the work they did in the first 2 games. However the writers either got scared and backed down from this or as I said before they got lazy with this subplot.
Ultimately this game is about Geralt and Ciri which should allow for some flexibility with what is "canon" for anything that does not strictly affect the nature of Geralt's relationship with Ciri. This is why I say the story wasn't creative. The writers really didn't seem to take any liberties with the source material. And if we are being honest here its not like the books are some widely regarded great works of literature that don't need any tweaking or improvements.

Of course the player can't say no to the quest of finding Ciri because as you so adeptly put it that would be the "end of the game".

As said, now you have a source Geralt and he have to act at several points like Geralt; bound to his past, this might collide with the choices the gamer would make, but we are now at the point where "real" RPG ends and some "source character bound" RPG begins at some points of the story/

Well yes and no. From reading this bit it reads like you view the character of Geralt as static and unchanging. However, in most good pieces of media and literature characters are dynamic, at least in my opinion. They change their outlook on various things and people over time much like real people do. Obviously you need to keep parts of the the source material accurate for the sake of having a story but since this is an RPG it doesn't make sense to follow the source material so strictly. It ultimately goes back to my previous question, What's the point of making the game? When the writers followed the source material so strictly TW3 ceased to feel like a game and I didn't feel like I was playing a game. The main quests felt more like a movie and I became the unseen catalyst that moved Geralt from place to place so the predetermined script could be acted out. Nothing about it felt like an interactive game. If CDPR's plan for this series when they started working on the first game was to follow the source material so strictly by the end then not only am I disappointed with CDPR's choice but I also have to keep asking what's the point of making the game in the first place. Just let the author write another book if they wanted things to be so "canon-strict"

Thanks for the reply
 
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