Hm, no pun intended, but I think you made something wrong here: you informed yourself way too much about the game before you played the game.
My mistake was knowing about a "big decision" in the second chapter.
I actually already decided before, but I wanted to know what I had to do to decide.
Because when Geralt talked to Iorveth and I wanted to come with him Geralt stated he wanted to talk to Roche before going.
And I was like.... what the hell? Because when I went to roach the only decision I could make is go with him or just end the dialogue and go.
It was confusing.
Maybe it was a bad example.
In theory you should be surprised by consequences. It shouldn't be a systemic approach like: I want to see this ending so I have to make action X in situation Y. You should make choices and decisions based on your own agenda or the agenda of the character you (role)play but not based on consequences you shouldn't even know at the time of your choices. If you do that you just play the game the wrong way (yeah I know, that's not really possible, but you possibly cut a lot of the fun for yourself here).
Yeah I normally do that. The problem is there were multiple moments where I was actually told what would happen but suddenly there were additional consequences. Like a quest locking off due to a choice, although I personally did not make the conclusion that this quest locking off would be the reasonable consequence of my decision. So when I heard about the "big choice" (an yes again, maybe the problem was that I knew there is a big choice in the first place) I just had to look so I definitely make the choice I want to make.
Mind you - I did not check up the consequences, I just looked what exactly I had to do to make this choice and if I had togo immediately after that choice or if I had time for other stuff. I often don't like that in an RPG if there are moments where you feel obliged to make the decision instantly because it is better for immersion purposes due to time pressing within the story. That alone is not a problem, but if this decision instantly locks off all quests/opportunities/Locations you had earlier it is kind of..... not cool IMO, I just don't like it. It's like "okay, you made your decision, NOW there is no time anymore", whereas if you do not choose and say you need a while to think about it you can finish all other quests and stuff and then continue as if time stands still.
I can only recommend watching Extra Credit's video about choices and consequences.
I know the video.
But then again, in the end this topic (how I play my games in terms of choices and consequences) is not the point of my previous post.
For me, big consequences are those that fundamentally change the course of the story.
IMO that is possible without locking off locations. CDPR said themselves that the locations will change over time based on your consequences. Maybe one location will REALLY be locked off, but not in a physical sense, maybe more because the village/town was destroyed, or because people in this town are now hostile towards you. Or for another reason.
There are possibilities to provide the player with big game and story-changing consequences without locking off areas IMO.
Why?Because consequences that involve environmental change aren't really big or rewarding.A village burned down ,so what?Some npcs vanished from the game and some huts got burned that's it
Well, fist of all, the game world feels alive that way. Second of all, maybe you liked some of the NPC characters, some of them might be quest givers, not strangers anymore. And third, burning down that village and removing the NPCs is about the absolute same as if you just locked off that area. There is nothing to get there anymore, possible quests are not available. But for that, there might be other quests available nearby that wouldn't be if the village didn't burn down.
Also, I know we will have 2 or 3 areas which are outside of the "main game area" in the game. Those might be unlocked or locked based on your choices as well. Events might change based on your decisions in The Witcher 2 or your decisions you made during your playtime in TW3.
There are a lot of possibilities.
Branching doesn't require areas to get locked ,it can definitely happen in an open world setting.It requires quest chains to be locked.
CDPR confirmed some quests might be locked due to your choices and/or due to your actions (such as completing a special quest could lock another quest). They said themselves in the 35 minutes gameplay video "be careful though, finish/take one quest and another one might vanish".
