Quests, in your opinion, have poor endings or ones that need to be improved.[Spoilers]

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Quests, in your opinion, have poor endings or ones that need to be improved.[Spoilers]

During the game some quests give me an impression of being incomplete or they have a very confusing story line.

Race of nobles



A strange quest, the ending seems to suggest there will be some more.... I'd rather make Maria Louisa ask Geralt to help her with some business and after that, in case the witcher saves her son in TW 2, she asks him out to her mansion where they spend a night together.

Return to Crookback Bog



This is a very grim story.
Its problem is that the player doesn't feel any satisfaction from the children being alive and well. Nothing is said about their fate, and there are not even any more scenes with their involvement.
The knowledge that the Baron and his wife survived would be much more pleasant. But in this case the children die...
I think there should be a third variant where the Baron's wife dies, and Geralt persuades the Baron to look after the children, and thereby purges himself of his suicidal thoughts.

Fencing Lessons



Still can't understand why Geralt jumped on Rosa - she's not responsible for the death of her offenders. It's like accusing a negro afroredanian of attacking skinheads.
 
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This is a very grim story.
Its problem is that the player doesn't feel any satisfaction from the children being alive and well. Nothing is said about their fate, and there are not even any more scenes with their involvement.
The knowledge that the Baron and his wife survived would be much more pleasant. But in this case the children die...
I think there should be a third variant where the Baron's wife dies, and Geralt persuades the Baron to look after the children, and thereby purges himself of his suicidal thoughts.

The fate of the kids is shown:

[video=youtube;9Y5-WItd6J0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y5-WItd6J0[/video]

I love that quest and everything about it.

The race thing didn't really bother me ... although Broken Flowers is not one of my favorite quests. I thought it was okay. I also liked fencing lessons, But I agree that the ending was pretty strange.

I thought the ending to Reasons of State was pretty bad ... it made Dijkstra look like an idiot to me. I also didn't like the ending to Through Time and Space because I firmly believe the little clip of Eredin ought to have been a playable flashback quest told from Ciri's perspective replaying her time in Tir na Lia from the books.
 
Fencing Lessons was excellent up to the abrupt and awkward end. It's easy to tell when Geralt goes OOC, and with Rosa his sudden bout of moralizing felt off. Through time and space and Reasons of State are wrapped up poorly. The issues are well known so I won't comment there. To me the worst is the end with Whoreson Junior. It has the most hamfisted resolution to a quest in the entire series. The dead hookers are nothing more than last second shock value, the cutscenes and dialog are awkward and the options available lack any nuance. It didn't feel like CDPR's work at all.
 
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I thought the ending to Reasons of State was pretty bad ... it made Dijkstra look like an idiot to me. I also didn't like the ending to Through Time and Space because I firmly believe the little clip of Eredin ought to have been a playable flashback quest told from Ciri's perspective replaying her time in Tir na Lia from the books.
second that with all my heart
 
There could have been a bit more closure to Priscilla's storyline.

After she is assaulted, you don't even see her again, and you only hear about her condition in the empress ending of the game. I'm hoping that Blood and Wine remedies this.
 
I think the reason people find Fencing lessons so strange is because people never felt the Nilfgaard were the evil empire the game continually tried to portray. I suspect the end comments were meant to reinforce that point and failed because most people (judging from comments on this forum over the last year or so) never had any particular dislike for Nilfgaard. At worst, they were apathetic towards them.

I don't think it was poorly written though. To be perfectly honest the only two quests I thought were poorly handled were the main quest (from act 2 onwards) and the conclusion to Reasons of State. Other than that I thought they were all well written, well acted and well designed.
 
I think the reason people find Fencing lessons so strange is because people never felt the Nilfgaard were the evil empire the game continually tried to portray. I suspect the end comments were meant to reinforce that point and failed because most people (judging from comments on this forum over the last year or so) never had any particular dislike for Nilfgaard. At worst, they were apathetic towards them.

I don't think it was poorly written though. To be perfectly honest the only two quests I thought were poorly handled were the main quest (from act 2 onwards) and the conclusion to Reasons of State. Other than that I thought they were all well written, well acted and well designed.

There are lots of people who do hate Nilfgaard. I don't think hatred of Nilfgaard is anything to do with the problem with Fencing lessons(especially in a game where Nilfgaard are portrayed in a less hostile fashion generally to previously). It's very much the notion of trying too hard to establish the notion of the character Geralt with his memory back imo. Hence we get a moralising sermon where previously there would have option of pursuing carnal satisfaction.
 
In general, as the game progresses quests become less and less well written and coherent. Velen quests are generally brilliant or well done with only little issues here and there, Novigrad is generally only "meh" with some very good quests still present, Skellige is a bit worse than Novigrad, and the endgame (post-BoKM) quests and the endgame story are atrocious. Since there are hundreds of quests it would be really hard to name them all with all their problems.

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I think there should be a third variant where the Baron's wife dies, and Geralt persuades the Baron to look after the children, and thereby purges himself of his suicidal thoughts.

That would be a bad idea, and will make the brilliant ending of the Baron's quest line very cheesy.
 
There are lots of people who do hate Nilfgaard. I don't think hatred of Nilfgaard is anything to do with the problem with Fencing lessons(especially in a game where Nilfgaard are portrayed in a less hostile fashion generally to previously). It's very much the notion of trying too hard to establish the notion of the character Geralt with his memory back imo. Hence we get a moralising sermon where previously there would have option of pursuing carnal satisfaction.

That's not how I saw it. Each to their own though. Either way it's conclusion wasn't very good but at the same time that is probably because most people had a preconception of it being another chance for Geralt to get his end away. It's probably as much our fault as it was the writers to be fair.
 
That would be a bad idea, and will make the brilliant ending of the Baron's quest line very cheesy.

It's not necessary to do the exact same thing as what I wrote. I just wanted the Baron and kids to be alive.



Actually, the plot of the quest disappointed me a bit. I was sure that release of the Ghost in the Tree would be the worst option and that black horse would be eaten. But, instead, we were shown a fairy tale about how the Ghost had magically transferred the kids to Novigrad.
 
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Reasons of State did not meet my expectations. The conflict of interest between Dijkstra and the Temerian rebels felt contrived. Speaking from a meta perspective, it's unrealistic that Geralt would be able to decide the fate of Redania's authority, even despite not knowing the full consequences of his decision. To reiterate my post from this thread, he's not omnipotent. Book!Geralt would've been out the door as soon as the word 'assassination' were mentioned. It's out-of-character for Geralt to even be involved with the plotting. In fact, the entire quest seemed altogether contrived for the sake of giving players the decision to pick the faction whom they want to win the war. Additionally, the quest seems biased in favor of Nilfgaard's victory, as you must abandon your allies when they are about to be murdered to support Dijkstra, which many players are not willing to do.

And I don't think I need to emphasize the empty feeling one gets after finishing the main questline, there's plenty of posts about that. There should've been exclusive post-MQ things to do in the base game to remedy it. For example: doing a contract with Ciri (Witcher ending), visiting Ciri in Vizima (Empress ending), checking in with Priscilla, et cetera.

Speaking of Priscilla, the ending to Carnal Sins was extremely disappointing. We never speak to her again, and neither are we able to find out how she's faring after her attempted murder. She's basically shoved aside for the rest of the game, which seemed weird considering how important she was in Act II.
 
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You can save the kids, baron and wife. Just go free the spirit from the tree before you get the quest from the crones to kill it. I don't know if this was intentional or what but it works, done it on a couple play through's. But you do know the spirit is complete evil and will kill way more people in the long run.
 
You can save the kids, baron and wife. Just go free the spirit from the tree before you get the quest from the crones to kill it.

I made the same choice on my first play through, only by chance. I was exploring the area and i entered the cave. I decided to save the spirit and later i was happy with this ending, thus i took the same decision on my others 4 play through.
But you do know the spirit is complete evil and will kill way more people in the long run.
My opinion is that the spirit (the druid who was the mother of crones, she made them out of dirt, as we can find out from the book 'She who knows' ) it's not more evil than the crones , on the contrary. She (the druid's spirit) wants revenge towards people from Downwarren because they sided with the crones who killed her and then imprisoned her soul in the tree. Releasing the spirit before talking to the crones is the best choice, the baron survives, Anna survives and the children are safe. Someone explained all aspects better here in a commentary which corresponds to my opinion:
''History is written by the victors, so if the Crones killed the Spirit of the Tree centuries ago, they could have invented anything they would like to make themselves appear as the heroines and no one would remember the real facts. What I mean is, we can't be sure who is right or not, but between taking a side knowing the Crones ate the children while the Spirit saved them, I'd knew which side I'll pick.
And the children are saved even if they aren't mentioned by the Spirit of the Tree when you release it, because when the Crones appear before Geralt, in the conversation you tell them you released the spirit and one of the Crones say something along these lines "then it was her who took them from us".
The only thing cannot be saved is the village of Downwarren.
Someone would might object that Black Beauty would attack the village where also lived children, but do not forget that Downwarren's villagers already used to offer their children to the crones, so the fate of Downwarren's children would have been death no matter what decision you take.
Also,another argument in defense of the spirit and one more reason (for me) to be on his side: while approaching the cave, the spirit whispers 'Go away!' and to me was obvious that he doesn't want to fight Geralt. Later i knew why, simply because he was a stranger, and the spirit wanted revenge only on Downwarren's villagers ( when we take the quest from the elderman's village, he said that the villagers disappears in this area and never come back)
Releasing the spirit BEFORE talking to the crones is the best option in my opinion, at least we can save the orphans from Crookback Bog, together with the baron and Ana.
We have to wonder why the spirit would save the orphans, if he did not promise this? The answer is obvious, because he wants revenge on the crones, taking from them their favorite 'food'. The quest is quite thick, and we can get confused if we don't pay attention to details or if we do not listen carefully to what the protagonists say. For example, the orphans can be seen later in the classroom during the Dandelion questline and there is a note with their names written on, which can be missed if we do not look across the room, and if we don't find the note, then we will never know what happened to the orphans ((this implies to notice their names when we meet them in Crookback Bog...)
 
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Releasing the spirit before talking to the crones is the best choice, the baron survives, Anna survives and the children are safe.

Unfortunately this isn't a good choice for me. I wouldn't release the Spirit without closely examining the whole situation.

I think we could've saved the baron from suicide, and reconcile him a bit with his daughter. It's a pity that that's not foreseen.
 
I wouldn't release the Spirit without closely examining the whole situation.
I have always followed my intuition and this is what i did regarding the spirit. I listened to what he had to say, I felt sorry for him being imprisoned there for centuries, I've decided to release him and I never regretted. Later when i met the crones I realized that was the best choice. I would have regretted bitterly if I would have made a different decision which would have pleased the crones and which would have changed for the worse the fate of many characters.:smile:
 
Unfortunately this isn't a good choice for me. I wouldn't release the Spirit without closely examining the whole situation.

I think we could've saved the baron from suicide, and reconcile him a bit with his daughter. It's a pity that that's not foreseen.
That's weird. I killed the spirit because I thought that it couldn't be trusted - that was after I had talked to the Crones (whom I didn't trust either). Both the Baron and his wife lived, and I think the children as well - I seem to remember that I met them later in Novigrad at a school. There's also somewhat of a reconciliation between the Baron and his daughter - not much but enough.
 
The Radovid assassination storyline. I'd have liked the chance to put down Eilhart for good and then have the chance to choose whether or not to put Radovid down as well.

I'd also have liked the chance to have gotten Yennefer back for teleporting me into the lake. She's a bitch at the best of times so she's due some comeuppance. The whole Ice Queen thing grew tiring *very* quickly.

It also would have been good to have checked in with Dudu after Whoreson Jnr - if only to have a reason to visit the quite underused Temple Isle.

More follow up with Roche and Ves would have been good to have also. Particularly given the history present from Witcher 2.

Zoltan was underused as well. Oh what I'd have given for a fishing minigame with Zoltan... it was built up so perfectly for it as well.

The teacher in Novigrad as well seemed something of a missed opportunity. She came across as a bit strange sure but I did get some Fable type vibes and the hopes of sitting in on some of the kids lessons. I think that could have been really entertaining. The ability to donate books or money would have been nice as well.

Come to think of it, the ability to donate money to beggars would have been nice in general. Particularly in Touissant given the hints to Chivalric generosity.

The lack of follow up with contracts felt something of a mixed bag. It worked in the feeling of the books - isolated stories that are quickly moved on from but when we can revisit a location as a player and the world state is still fixed at the end of a storyline then it can feel quite a disconnect. It would have been a lot of work though to provide outcomes for all those variables across all those contracts and there's only so much time and money that could have been put into the game. The lack of follow up with major characters though was a little harder to brush away though.
 
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