[Spoilers] Why did my choices in the Witcher 2 matter as much as last years snow? And is anyone else mad about this?

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[Spoilers] Why did my choices in the Witcher 2 matter as much as last years snow? And is anyone else mad about this?

I finished the game after rushing the main story on my first playthrough planning to 100% it on the second. I sided with Iorveth in the Witcher 2 and I feel like my decisions mattered bullocks apart from killing Letho. I saved Triss instead of freeing Saskia because I felt it was more important to unveil the lodge for what they truly are, and I needed Triss for that. So in my game I was expecting Phillipa to be this big obstacle that I would have to take care of. Yet no mention of Saskia is even freaking made! What happened to the girl? I let her live I was expecting to at least be able to free her from Phillipa in Witcher 3. Not to mention after getting Triss to heal Iorveth hes not even in this game, which was an extremely big disappointment to me. Anyone else feel the way I do? Because I see this entire thing as CD Projekt Red just giving me the finger.
 
I was really hoping for Saskia to turn into dragon and help us fight with the Wild Hunt but CDPR had other planes. Yeah, I am kind of disappointed the way they handled this.
 
I know that from previous Witcher 1/2 saves, this is maintained:

Witcher 1:
Adda lives -> Married to Radovid in Witcher 2 and 3.
Thaller lives - Appears in Witcher 3

Witcher 2:
Aryan Lives - > Different political implications
Henselt Lives - Different political implications
Saskia -> Different political implications
Anais given to Radovid or not - > Different political implications
Sila Lives -> Maybe she appears in Witcher 3 ?!?
 
What annoys me is that after my Geralt watched Sile die all of a sudden hes not even mad at Phillipa, even though technically shes worse then Sile? You don't even get to ask about Saskia, no mention of her is ever made. Its utterly disappointing. From what I know Sile isn't in this game. If you know, what political implications does it exactly change?
 
I think CDPR wanted to close the Geralt saga with a more true to the books episode. Lots of things in the 2 first games didn't make much sense mostly because with Geralt's amnesia, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. But in this one you reconect with Geralt's past and sadly, choices you could have make have pretty much no impact on events that unfold in this episode.

I havn't finished yet, but I've noticed things that are unexplained / twisted already. I was hoping to see Iorveth leading some sort of scoiat'hel guerrilla against Nilfgaard since I sided with him in TW2 but instead, I meet Roche and Ves doing this. And apparently, there's not much Elves anymore anywhere.

Same goes for Saskia, no mention of her yet. She is a damn Dragon. Could have been a freaking good addition in the conflict.

But, I've seen a lot of things happening in secondary quest lines, so If you rushed the main quest line, it's possible you've missed some stuff. After all, the main quest is Ciri's related, so they could have "hiden" some nice suprises in the secondary quests (which I intend to continue doing).
 
I am also a bit dissapointed, one of the things that bugger me the most is the fact that you can get Thaler killed on The WItcher 1, but for some reason the devs insisted on having him alive no matter what on The WItcher 2 and 3 :/

Other characters that were left out:

*Shani: Reduced to one letter in the Witcher 2, and 2 mentions in the Witcher 3 regardless of if she was your romance choise on the witcher 1 or not.

*Yaevinn: Reduced to 1 mention while talking with Iorveth in The WItcher 2, and completely absent in the WItcher 3.

*Siegfried: only visible in The Witcher 2 if you followed 1 path out of 3 in The Witcher 1, and completely absent in The Witcher 3

*Iorveth and Saskia: both are pretty much completly ignored in The WItcher 3 regardless of the choises we made in The Witcher 2

*Aryan: Completely ignored, not even his mother mentions him.

*Stennis: Completely ignored

*Anais: Completely ignored.

*John Natalis: Reduced to only one mention during a secondary quest, his whereabouts after the battle are unknown and unexplained.
 
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I think CDPR wanted to close the Geralt saga with a more true to the books episode. Lots of things in the 2 first games didn't make much sense mostly because with Geralt's amnesia, they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. But in this one you reconect with Geralt's past and sadly, choices you could have make have pretty much no impact on events that unfold in this episode.

I havn't finished yet, but I've noticed things that are unexplained / twisted already. I was hoping to see Iorveth leading some sort of scoiat'hel guerrilla against Nilfgaard since I sided with him in TW2 but instead, I meet Roche and Ves doing this. And apparently, there's not much Elves anymore anywhere.

Same goes for Saskia, no mention of her yet. She is a damn Dragon. Could have been a freaking good addition in the conflict.

But, I've seen a lot of things happening in secondary quest lines, so If you rushed the main quest line, it's possible you've missed some stuff. After all, the main quest is Ciri's related, so they could have "hiden" some nice suprises in the secondary quests (which I intend to continue doing).

As I said I plan to 100% it on my second playthrough. But even with Geralt's amnesia I think hes changed as a person and hes different from who he was before the amnesia. I understand that Ciri is important and honestly I really liked her character but giving that much attention takes away from the others. I was expecting sort of a love triangle between Triss, Yennefer and Geralt but honestly Triss gets so little screen time its sad, because I would choose her over Yen any day. After finishing this game I feel like nothing has been closed for me except Ciri's story, with different companies I would say "DLC is coming!", But I don't think CDPR will do that. So guess i'm going to have to live my life with this giant hole in me.
 
as i posted before in another thread,
this world is not player created, it is based on an existing property.

would you complain that if a Game of Thrones game came out, you played as one of the characters, make some decisions in the game then when the sequel to that game came out and the story moved on to be in sync with the actual story and ignores the decisions you made in the previous game?

CDP is not Biowhore, they have never said that the decisions you made in TW2 would drastically affect the subsequent game, only the current one.

the are so many different decisions, it is stupid for developers to cater to every single one.
just accept that there is only one canon version of decisions and the rest are alternate uninverse stuff
 
So many different decisions? This isn't Mass Effect there aren't 100 important decisions, there are about 10 that I can list, this includes both paths in The Witcher 2. They went on to make such a big and amazing game they could have at least included a 10 minute quest. Why do I even have the choice to spare Saskia if it doesn't matter? Don't make that choice to begin with if you don't plan to do anything with it, just make the game completely linear.
 
the are so many different decisions, it is stupid for developers to cater to every single one.
just accept that there is only one canon version of decisions and the rest are alternate uninverse stuff

OF course there has to be one canon version. But it is poor to pretend that there never existed an Iorveth or a Saskia or the idea of a free and equal Upper Aedirn. It is not that difficult to explain the situation there in some dialogs with old friends (Dandelion, Zoltan...).

Same goes for Aryan (whose mother appearently doesn't know that she has/had a son) or Anais. It seems even Roche didn't remember her.
 
Also, I don't quite get why they bothered sparing Aryan if he wasn't gonna matter at all. I mean, his survival was a twist to begin with; I thought he'd have a big part to play since otherwise he could've just died in the explosion.
 
Not mad at CDPR since they never promised any such thing and have been showering their products with love... but I am somewhat dissapointed.

They took a lot of time to make choices out of these things in Witcher 2 and these characters were all well made and developed. Hell, they're even on the front website: View attachment 15075

We have no right to demand or even to expect these characters to come back, but it seems like a bunch of wasted potential and we can certainly hope that CDPR makes it happen.


Keep nagging people. I hold CDPR in high enough esteem that I wouldn't be suprised if they address it in one of the expansions/DLCs. I'm already a happy customer and the ability to pay for such content in the future would just cement my loyalty.
 

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I've been saying all along that they wouldn't matter. W1 to W2 didn't matter so why would you expect W2 to W3 to matter.

In fact in W1 and W2 you can avoid having sex with Triss yet in W3 Yen says you had sex with Triss. So that in itself shows that the choices don't matter.

W3 has a story to tell and to tell that story they needed a very specific world state. So no matter what you picked either your choices would be ignored or changed (I.E. Henselt). And to me it really doesn't matter as the current story is what is most important.
 
its not so much the world state that botheres me, its more that i want to know what happened to characters.
i even got to meet sile but iorveth,saskia and Aryan dont exist anymore. Scoia'tael completly gone, even though they have a big reason to fight against nilfs etc etc
 
as i posted before in another thread,
this world is not player created, it is based on an existing property.

would you complain that if a Game of Thrones game came out, you played as one of the characters, make some decisions in the game then when the sequel to that game came out and the story moved on to be in sync with the actual story and ignores the decisions you made in the previous game?

CDP is not Biowhore, they have never said that the decisions you made in TW2 would drastically affect the subsequent game, only the current one.

the are so many different decisions, it is stupid for developers to cater to every single one.
just accept that there is only one canon version of decisions and the rest are alternate uninverse stuff

Then don't make a game with decisions.

Your argument doesn't make any sense. We're not replaying the books in video game form. We're not just recreating the books word for word. Yes, it's based of an existing property, but that doesn't mean it's not it's own story. There are less than a dozen decisions - and the least they could have done is just mention them.

Yeah, I get that CDPR isn't Bioware, but maybe I want to hold a developer up to a higher standard. I feel that it is a little disingenuous to create a game that has so many decisions and political ramifications and is basically a giant cliff-hanger for the next game in the franchise - only to disregard it entirely, like it never existed.
 
its not so much the world state that botheres me, its more that i want to know what happened to characters.
i even got to meet sile but iorveth,saskia and Aryan dont exist anymore. Scoia'tael completly gone, even though they have a big reason to fight against nilfs etc etc

let's say for argument that W3 was based in Kovir. Would you expect to see Saskia there? So Saskia is off in Upper Aderin and not in Valen. This is why they can honestly get around to not including her. Same for the others. I ran into a Scoia'tael unit so they exist. But you just had a major war here. They most likely left the area as neither Nilfgaard nor Radovid are their friends. And why appear where there are tens of thousands of soldiers?

Basically the map is for a limited area and that limited area would not include most of the characters that were in W1 or W2. Iorveth is in Aderin so he really shouldn't be here anyway.

Then don't make a game with decisions.

Your argument doesn't make any sense. We're not replaying the books in video game form. We're not just recreating the books word for word. Yes, it's based of an existing property, but that doesn't mean it's not it's own story. There are less than a dozen decisions - and the least they could have done is just mention them.

Yeah, I get that CDPR isn't Bioware, but maybe I want to hold a developer up to a higher standard. I feel that it is a little disingenuous to create a game that has so many decisions and political ramifications and is basically a giant cliff-hanger for the next game in the franchise - only to disregard it entirely, like it never existed.

No the problem is that many of these W2 decisions really don't matter. And some that might have mattered have been altered to fit the story. I'm talking about Henselt. Either Roche killed him or he died in the war. But he's dead. It doesn't matter in that the real impact was Kedewin was taken over to make Radovid even stronger. He needed to be to be able to have a chance against Nilfgaard.

You need to view it this way. Your previous choices did matter AT THAT TIME and place. But the world continues and things change. The area that W3 covers is not the whole world either. Many choices might impact Upper Aderin but that isn't int he game. It's just like W1 to W2. In W1 you can sleep with Triss or not. But by W2 the game starts with you two having sex. It then lets you decide if it's just that or more.

To me I don't see why many of W2's choices should even matter. I don't think anyone has actually answered that question.
 
let's say for argument that W3 was based in Kovir. Would you expect to see Saskia there? So Saskia is off in Upper Aderin and not in Valen. This is why they can honestly get around to not including her. Same for the others. I ran into a Scoia'tael unit so they exist. But you just had a major war here. They most likely left the area as neither Nilfgaard nor Radovid are their friends. And why appear where there are tens of thousands of soldiers?

Basically the map is for a limited area and that limited area would not include most of the characters that were in W1 or W2. Iorveth is in Aderin so he really shouldn't be here anyway.

I'm squarely in the "bring back Iorveth/Saskia" camp, but I think this is a fine rebuttal. Vergen is quite a bit eastwards like I said in a different post, so for us to expect them within the area of Witcher 2 makes little sense. Saskia would have her hands full fending of Nilfgaard in the Pontar Valley.


No the problem is that many of these W2 decisions really don't matter. And some that might have mattered have been altered to fit the story. I'm talking about Henselt. Either Roche killed him or he died in the war. But he's dead. It doesn't matter in that the real impact was Kedewin was taken over to make Radovid even stronger. He needed to be to be able to have a chance against Nilfgaard.

You need to view it this way. Your previous choices did matter AT THAT TIME and place. But the world continues and things change. The area that W3 covers is not the whole world either. Many choices might impact Upper Aderin but that isn't int he game. It's just like W1 to W2. In W1 you can sleep with Triss or not. But by W2 the game starts with you two having sex. It then lets you decide if it's just that or more.

To me I don't see why many of W2's choices should even matter. I don't think anyone has actually answered that question.

Despite the valid geography argument, I do have an answer to why many of W2's choices SHOULD matter: My first and most important reason: because that would be AWESOME! I never expected them to turn up in the game we have, but I still think there's definite potential by for them by extending the geography towards Vergen in an expansion.

The second argument: Our actions in W2 COULD have mattered. Just because CDPR chose to retcon our choices, doesn't mean that they didn't matter Goodmongo. Wether or not they SHOULD have been altered to fit the story, is exactly the debetable point of this thread and shouldn't be taken for granted.

I'd like to remind you that the Northern Kingdoms did fine in two previous wars without a single kingdom needing to absorb the rest. In fact, Redenia fighting Kaedwin would have weakened these two kingdoms more than them just immidiatly allying together! What the hell happened that Kaedwin be such a push-over? Did Radovid fart hard enough in the general direction of Henselt that he choked on a chicken bone and that all of Kaedwin immidiatly surrendered? What? If Kaedwin was still healthy enough to be worth annexation, then their would have been resistance against Redenian rule. If it hadn't, than what was the point? That Nilfgaard has such an easy time invading in all the civil chaos, is proof enough that the North isn't that easily unified. Kaedwin wouldn't have surrendered to Radovid if it had still been worth conquering. Granted, their might have been a good reason, but all we're getting right now is "and Redenia conquered Kaedwin and it couldn't have been easier... moving on."
Admit it. It smacks of lazy writing and disrespect of established lore. Forgetting about a single character is more understandable than just dismissing an entire nation.

In fact, our W2 decisions WOULD have had a MAJOR impact on the war. With Prince Stennis alive, Aedirn could have been unified enough to resist. With Anais in the hands of John Natalis, Temeria could have been organized enough to fight back. With Saskia defeated, Henselt might have become a more powerful force than Radovid and without the defeat of Saskia, Vergen's Scoia'Teal geurillia's could have been a major impediment in any push north. Ask Napoleon or Hitler how dangerous militia in the rear can be.
Alternatively, we could have killed Stennis, murdered Henselt and leave Temeria in civil war. Massive difference.

This is why W2 choices could matter. Whether they should matter is up for debate and I don't think you actually gave a reason why they shouldn't.


Yes of course, too much work, but CDPR are awesome and asking them literally expand the Witcher 3 towards that, is exactly what we're doing.

I'm not even asking that our choices be respected. Wether or not we made sure the Pontar valley is independant during our playthroughs of W2, can also be made irrelevant by Nilfgaard's invasion. Regardless of whether Saskia was defeated earlier or not, she could still be there fighting against Nilfgaard for the continuation/creation of her state. What we did earlier or if we broke the mind control, could be handled in just a few lines of dialogue.

But for the love of god give us our favorite characters back. ;-) I want to see Iorveth and Saskia again!
 
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let's say for argument that W3 was based in Kovir. Would you expect to see Saskia there? So Saskia is off in Upper Aderin and not in Valen. This is why they can honestly get around to not including her. Same for the others. I ran into a Scoia'tael unit so they exist. But you just had a major war here. They most likely left the area as neither Nilfgaard nor Radovid are their friends. And why appear where there are tens of thousands of soldiers?

Basically the map is for a limited area and that limited area would not include most of the characters that were in W1 or W2. Iorveth is in Aderin so he really shouldn't be here anyway. .

Usually i would agree with you, but at the beginning of the game, they showed the war map. in that map Aderin was taken over including the upperarea, which indicates to me saskias area has fallen into nilfgaards hands. of course as a player i want to know are they alive or dead. they dont need to appear (though i rather would have iorveth then roche) but at least a mentioning would be nice. zoltan for example since he stayed in vergen for a time could have said something. even kalkstein gets a mentioning in the game.
 
Usually i would agree with you, but at the beginning of the game, they showed the war map. in that map Aderin was taken over including the upperarea, which indicates to me saskias area has fallen into nilfgaards hands. of course as a player i want to know are they alive or dead. they dont need to appear (though i rather would have iorveth then roche) but at least a mentioning would be nice. zoltan for example since he stayed in vergen for a time could have said something. even kalkstein gets a mentioning in the game.

I deeply suspect that CDPR isn't addressing Vergen, simply to give itself the room to do so at a later date when there's an entire expansion dedicated to the area. It seems too big an oversight for this to be an accident.

Or at least I can hope...
 
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