Starting The Witcher Series with the third entry

[maork22]

Starting The Witcher Series with the third entry

Now that the witcher 3 is about to come out I wanted to share with you my opinion about starting The Witcher series with the third game as a Witcher veteran. We all know that since it was first revealed it attracted a lot of gamers that were not familliar with The Witcher or never played it. probably because it has gone fully open world and the shiny next gen visuals (I am talking only about the reveal). So people that are new to the franchise are pre-ordering or intending to buy The Witcher 3 without playing the previous games.
Now. I am not judging nor criticizing the people that I am describing. It's their choice and who am I to tell them what to play? But. I think doing this is a mistake for a number of reasons: First, The Witcher is a heavily story focused game series and is based on an existing universe that was created in the books and novels. By starting from the third game in this series you are missing out a lot. Sure. there's going to be a prologue and I'm quite confident in CDPR to make a good introduction but them saying that you can start from TW3 and that it's completely fine. is also to attract new players. so they're kinda biased. I. personally. would never start a series of anything from the third entry. movies. books or games.
In addition to that. if you are interested in TW3 why not play the first ones? TW3 isn't entirely different from them so if you like what you saw from TW3. you can get some of it in TW1+2 which are fantastic games that I think everyone should play. they have an amazing atmosphere. great story and excellent soundtrack and whice will be probably be present in The Witcher 3.
That's just my take on this and I hope I inspired someone to gain interest in the books or the previous games. And even if I didn't, I kinda needed to get it off my chest.

 

[Darkhollow]

Now that the witcher 3 is about to come out I wanted to share with you my opinion about starting The Witcher series with the third game as a Witcher veteran. We all know that since it was first revealed it attracted a lot of gamers that were not familliar with The Witcher or never played it. probably because it has gone fully open world and the shiny next gen visuals (I am talking only about the reveal). So people that are new to the franchise are pre-ordering or intending to buy The Witcher 3 without playing the previous games.
Now. I am not judging nor criticizing the people that I am describing. It's their choice and who am I to tell them what to play? But. I think doing this is a mistake for a number of reasons: First, The Witcher is a heavily story focused game series and is based on an existing universe that was created in the books and novels. By starting from the third game in this series you are missing out a lot. Sure. there's going to be a prologue and I'm quite confident in CDPR to make a good introduction but them saying that you can start from TW3 and that it's completely fine. is also to attract new players. so they're kinda biased. I. personally. would never start a series of anything from the third entry. movies. books or games.
In addition to that. if you are interested in TW3 why not play the first ones? TW3 isn't entirely different from them so if you like what you saw from TW3. you can get some of it in TW1+2 which are fantastic games that I think everyone should play. they have an amazing atmosphere. great story and excellent soundtrack and whice will be probably be present in The Witcher 3.
That's just my take on this and I hope I inspired someone to gain interest in the books or the previous games. And even if I didn't, I kinda needed to get it off my chest.

While I agree with you ..I wanna play the devil's advocate and say this: what if the people are interested in Witcher 3 only have heard it about it now, because of the multiple trailers & appeal that they have gotten to the public? Do you expect them go to back and do all that? Probably not..they will just play Witcher 3 from the beginning.

There are multiple ways to go around this..use a Witcher 1 save -> Watch retrospective of W1 on youtube and decide what path you wanna take (human vs nonhuman) -> play witcher 2 -> Import it to Witcher 3. Or watch retrospective to Witcher 2 as well and play W3 and use the decision system inmplemented in the game to make their choices (I think this will be well done and be very thorough).

Regarding books....you can listen to either audiobooks or just get recaps like on the games on youtube.

Now for something that everyone should go and do if they haven't already:

I recommend people do this BEFORE W3 comes out. I know majority won't, but maybe it can reach a few people that will do it. Reading the books and gaining so much information on the backstory of Geralt and his friends and it's an INSANE immersion boost to prepare you for Witcher 3. You guys have no idea how happy I was after reading the books and replaying both witcher games again.

 

[earthonline]

many friends of mine are playing this first

once they see how cool it is they will play the previous ones too

 

[Jimbob_2.1]

Try to remember that not everyone has a way to play the previous games play (play station gamers mostly). Also the Witcher is mainstream now, even more casual gamers, who only buy the biggest triple a games are looking forward to this game. Many of whom wouldn't have the patience for older or less actions games such as the Witcher 1. They would probably take one look at the dated graphics or clumsy gameplay and instantly disregard it. I know because my friends are some of these people and out of 6 or 7 guy's I convinced one guy to play the Witcher 2, which he pirated and then stopped playing after one day because Destiny came out. So don't worry about people playing the previous or reading the books because I doubt most of them would appreciate them anyway. Having said all that though if someone's on these forums they're probably not one of those people so if anyone reading this hasn't already read the books or played the game, you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you played the W3 without first familliarising yourself with the world and its characters.

 

[White_Wolf77]

Now that the witcher 3 is about to come out I wanted to share with you my opinion about starting The Witcher series with the third game as a Witcher veteran. We all know that since it was first revealed it attracted a lot of gamers that were not familliar with The Witcher or never played it. probably because it has gone fully open world and the shiny next gen visuals (I am talking only about the reveal). So people that are new to the franchise are pre-ordering or intending to buy The Witcher 3 without playing the previous games.
Now. I am not judging nor criticizing the people that I am describing. It's their choice and who am I to tell them what to play? But. I think doing this is a mistake for a number of reasons: First, The Witcher is a heavily story focused game series and is based on an existing universe that was created in the books and novels. By starting from the third game in this series you are missing out a lot. Sure. there's going to be a prologue and I'm quite confident in CDPR to make a good introduction but them saying that you can start from TW3 and that it's completely fine. is also to attract new players. so they're kinda biased. I. personally. would never start a series of anything from the third entry. movies. books or games.
In addition to that. if you are interested in TW3 why not play the first ones? TW3 isn't entirely different from them so if you like what you saw from TW3. you can get some of it in TW1+2 which are fantastic games that I think everyone should play. they have an amazing atmosphere. great story and excellent soundtrack and whice will be probably be present in The Witcher 3.
That's just my take on this and I hope I inspired someone to gain interest in the books or the previous games. And even if I didn't, I kinda needed to get it off my chest.

I do agree with you on your recommendation to those who haven't played TW1 and 2 to play them first before playing TW3 to have the complete story on what's going on in TW world. However, like some of the earlier replies above, there are some ways to workaround that (read TW books, watch youtube, etc...) as I believe some of the reasons why they want to play TW3 is due to the massive open worldliness and not so much on the story and lore.

In other words, many people have their own agenda on why they want to play TW3 and it's really up to them whether or not they want to play the earlier installments and that really depend on their intentions.

 

[portcullis_sk]

Second of all, and back on topic. I played TW2 first then deleted save file and went back and played both TW1+TW2 back to back. They've been dormant on Steam for a long time now, maybe I need a bit of time with them during my couple of weeks off --- which does actually include 19/5 and a few days after, so hip hip hooray!

 

[TheMorbidAtheist]

I had the same gripe for the past 2.5 years - people who had the opportunity to play the first two games and familiarize themselves with the series jump on the open-world next gen bandwagon.

 

[portcullis_sk]

Seriously? Being moderated and told to "keep it civil" for telling somebody - politely if forcefully [though admittedly with some sarcasm] - to break his paragraphs away from a wall of text? I'd just like to point out that there was no name-calling or bad language used in the now moderated section, nor was I trying to kick something off -- and I get that English may not necessarily be the poster's first language, it's just a real pet peeve of mine: if you're going to post multiple hundreds of words in multiple paragraphs, put breaks between.