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 ). 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. )
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 ). 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. )