Why the main narrative in the last third of the game is a bad hot mess [major spoilers!!!]

[TudorAdrian]

Geralt got all he ever wanted his entire life. Ciri is back and he gets to spend his life with Yennefer, his friends are alive and well (R.I.P Vessimir)... deserved better what?

Regarding his relationship with Ciri, Geralt remembers her as playful, stubborn child, who's been through more shit in her 15 years of life (present day 21) then Geralt in his century of living. He feels the need to protect her no matter the cost because his relationship with her is more then parent/child relationship.

In the meanwhile, Ciri has grown into a woman who is more then capable of taking care of her self, still retaining that stubbornness and youthful playfulness. It is up to you to accept that she is a grown woman now, and therefore encourage and support her, or still treat her like a child and do the things for her out of fear of loosing her again.

In the end, no matter what you do, Ciri accepts her destiny as a child of the elder blood and sets out to do what she is meant to do. Up until that point you did all you could, and everything led to that moment, when for the first time, she doesn't need you.

So yeah, at that point of the game, Geralts story was over.

Dude...there's some serious issues with the story..by all means, I respect your take on it and wish I was content with it but I'm not. The entire main plot, character development and Geralt's closure have RUSHED written all over them.

 

[Songborn]

I think the biggest pacing poblem for me is that right after the dramatic Battle at Kaer Morhen and the Sabbath you are forced to go back to running errands for people while my emotional state was more "Get out of my damn way or I swear I will burn this city to the ground". I couldn't enjoy finding Phil or planning the prison break because I was just so annoyed at the whole situation.

 

[MaIkavian]

The entire main plot, character development and Geralt's closure have RUSHED written all over them.

I believe you are being overly dramatic with this statement.

Everything up until the final preparations quest felt "perfect" to me regarding narrative and pacing. However, i can agree that after that point of the game, things felt unfinished and underdeveloped. As Songborn said, it wasn't reflecting the mood i was in, and not just me, but the characters around me.

 

[Vargeras]

So yeah, at that point of the game, Geralts story was over.

Maybe Geralts Story, but I am not Geralt. I am the player. And I have played with Ciri several times throughout the games, why not at the very end?
You will face the White Frost as Ciri, and depending on your choices you made in the games you have different ways of dealing with the white frost.
(ever played Planescape: Torment? Awesome game and you could defeat the endboss just by talking to him, though there were also like a dozen other ways.).

Not only would we learn what the White Frost is, we would also have a much better ending, and things wouldn't feel so ...unfinished.

 

[TudorAdrian]

I believe you are being overly dramatic with this statement.

Everything up until the final preparations quest felt "perfect" to me regarding narrative and pacing. However, i can agree that after that point of the game, things felt unfinished and underdeveloped. As Songborn said, it wasn't reflecting the mood i was in, and not just me, but the characters around me.

I could well be..entitled to my own opinion thank you...was it not CDPR who kept teasing this and that up until the game was released? Where's the big "amnesia shaken off, memory recovered" reveal? Where's all the stuff we've all been dying to find out about the Wild Hunt? Where's Saskia, Iorveth, Anais, etc. Side-quests were just fine don't get me wrong and some of the main-plot characters (Crones & Bloody Baron) where quite good with cool plot lines but everything else screams rushed.. I'm glad it felt "perfect" for you and other people but I cannot help but feel I was let down..it's simply not the game / resolution I was expecting to see.

 

[Goodmongo]

Sorry, but I don't see my fallacies. Basically you're just saying that only a parent could assess the issue properly.

never said that ONLY a parent could assess the issue but it is clear from the posts, yours and others, that the bad ending was due to where the persspective was placed at. If you placed it in how Geralt would feel/act then you ended up with Ciri dead. If instead you approached it from what was best for Ciri then you got the other endings. I was pointing out that this is a more common trait in someone that raised a child to adulthood. But it was never limited to them.

And underlying that argument you seem to think that every person and parent would do and think the absolute same thing in the respective situation as if there was a golden path to good parenthood. Well, my experience is quite different to that. I think human beings in reality are incredibly complex and most or almost everything we do is very much depending on an incredibly complex construct of causalities, preconditions, experiences and the special circumstances of the situation. There is no golden path to parenthood. The problem I see here is that CDPR thinks - like you do - that there is one and that if Geralt just acts accordingly there is a certain path to salvation.

Most people that make bad choices feel exactly the way you do. they don't question their choice but instead claim the test was rigged or invalid due to X. There were plenty of hints on how Ciri was reacting and how she would feel about certain choices. It was not a mystery or puzzle that couldn't be solved. See you make a very classic error. You honestly believe that all viewpoints are equally valid when they are not. But that is a major argument that would take many pages. Surfice to say that not all choices are equal. you might disagree but that doesn't refute it.

And they wrote Ciri accordingly. Of course they did. And they did a pretty poor job there, especially for the choice situations.

Again in your opinion and because you picked poorly.

They didn't write Ciri as a complex and believable human being but pressed her into a psychological choice agenda they obviously designed before they finally wrote her character.

So should games now come with a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? You do realize that you only need to consider the information given to you since it's, you know a game?

I honestly think the fallacy here is on your side

And what logical fallacy would that be?

and I think it's the the reason why there is such a big seperation between people when they talk about the end of TW3: if you agree with CDPR and their vision of good parenthood you get an "acceptabe" ending. You feel assured that you've done the right thing. The problem with that is that there are obviously a lot of people who disagree and who don't think that CDPR did a good job in writing not only Ciri's decisions but also the (choice) situation that lead to them.

We did do the "right" thing because the game verified that choice. See here's where you make another error. The "right thing" for the game may not be the "right thing" in a completely different situation. But you have no ground to stand on because the game itself defines the "right thing" for the game. This is nor different from a choice to kill or spare someone. The "right thing" in the game might be to kill that person but would it be the "right thing" outside of the game? Your error is a simple one here. You are trying to apply decisions and choices in two completely unrelated areas, a game to non-game.

If you're among that group you obviously have issues with the end. That's not a fallacy.

I never said that was the fallacy. Please reread what I wrote. It was very specific in describing the fallacy.

It's just a disagreement on one of the very basic concepts of the main storyline in the last third of the game. (And you accuse me of lacking empathy but obviously the very same applies to you. You lack empathy for everyone who thinks differently about these things. I think the these choices CAN work for some people - but not for everyone. It's not something almost everyone can relate to or agree to.)

Classic fallacy here. I was applying a skill needed to arrive at the correct solution to the puzzle provided by the game. You then go and make an ad hominem attack as your defense.

But that's not even the biggest problem with the choices. The biggest problem is that you - as Geralt - don't feel that you have any bigger influence in the end, no real agency.

So you now go and 100% verify that it was in your viewpoint about you playing Geralt. This centers around two further flaws you make. While it is true that in many RPG's the game is centered around you the player. You are the protagonist and therefore you alone should be the influence that impacts the world. This is a very common thread but the devs have said that is NOT the case here. You can of course disagree with that choice. But you make the error in insisting that it be different. The uses a more complex arc where the protagonist is not alone and in fact Ciri becomes if not the lead protagonist another protagonist. This was their story arc.

The end of Witcher 3 feels very much like an action adventure of the likes of Assassin's Creed with a linear story path and not like a traditional RPG where you have to make complex and hard choices you have to think about for some time and which often lead to inner conflicts within the player (one of the very main benefits or features of an RPG after all).

Yea and no game has done it well since Planescape Torment. It's fine to criticize the story. That is all personal taste and this is one place where everyone's taste is equally valid since it is personal.

In reality, you don't have even ONE such situation in the complete last third of the main narrative. The choices (if you want to call them that way, I don't) with Ciri feel small and arbitrary and due to the timer you don't have much time to think what you want to do anyway (although there is no context at all why the timer exists in the first place). Apart from that you literally only do what you're asked to do.

They may have felt small and even arbitrary to you but in the end they were profound. And why shouldn't a subtle choice have profound impacts? It happened many times in history.

And this linear "RPG-hostile" storytelling culminates in the epilogues.

Your anger clouds your vision. Besides every RPG ever created has been linear. Every movie and book ever created has been linear. All of them have a beginning, middle and ending. therefore by definition they are linear. But RPG-hostile? Please cite an example how this story is RPG hositle?

I agree very much with you people that the game is about Geralt. We roleplay Geralt.

Once again you prove my point. You want to only see things through your eyes. But like most good stories the protagonist changes and evolves. You didn't by the choices you made. It was me me me. The whole game centered around Geralt changing and doing things for Ciri. It was about Geralt realizing that Ciri was more important to him and the world then he himself was. And that is the empathy that most parents come to realize. But either you get and understand this or you don't.

If this is my story and if Geralt is my character I want to have the freedom to decide how I react to Ciri's decision (no matter if I like the story or not, that's completely independent from that). I want to have the freedom to choose how I deal with it.

You want to say fuck Ciri who cares if she's dead. I'm Geralt the one and only. My Geralt wouldn't feel this way because he has no empathy, no guilt. So let me go and take both Yen and Triss and go my way.

Every single RPG ever created has an ending written by the devs. People can like it or not like it. That is personal taste. But you are doing more than this. you are saying that they were wrong to do it. You are saying they made an error or poor design choice. that is where you are wrong. It was always their choice. A RPG game is like a puzzle. This is no different then Mass Effect forcing people to accept homosexuality. Or the fact that you can't kill kids since Fallout 2. It was their design choice. It might not be my taste but it wasn't a design error.as you claim.

I never said that the pacing was "broken". I said that it missed to keep up tension and engagement until the very end and I used a movie that is well known for good pacing for comparison. And I think this comparion is possible because I only concentrate on the main narrative in the game here. Of course a game is an interactive experience but that doesn't make the comparison any less valid. It's true that a game works differently on a mechanical level and on an interaction level with the player. But that doesn't influence how basic pacing works since modern games present big parts of their narrative in a rather movie-like, audio-visual way. Interaction is part of the tension building in game since gameplay is part of the narrative in video games. That's actually one of the core problems with the pacing in the game. There is a lot of interaction in the main narrative in the first two thirds in the game (namely: choices) while there is only little in the last third, which isn't only unusual for an RPG but for the whole concept of pacing and tension building as a whole.

You can not compare a game to a movie. That is an apple to orange situation. You seem to ignore that movies are continuous while every game, even if using cut-scenes is broken down into sections. That in and of itself causes your pacing issues. You further claim that there was a "lot if interaction" in the first two thirds but little in the last third. Using terms like "lot's" is so subjective as to be meaningless. You never quantify your adjectives nor provide detailed examples of this. So not only do you make the logical fallacy in an inaccurate comparison you then use words that have not been quantified.

Now either all games lack this pacing or you should be able to compare TW3 to a game where you felt the pacing was to your standards.

In the end looking at my DSM and applying psychoanalysis it is clear that your real objection stems from the fact that you made choices that you thought were the right ones only to find out that the devs said they were the wrong choices. You are trying very hard to justify your belief and choices. But since this is a game you'll never be able to do that. So accept the fact that this is a game and the game has a set of moral parameters that required to be met in order to get the endings that they wrote. In other words like every other game ever created.

 

[Scholdarr.452]

never said that ONLY a parent could assess the issue but it is clear from the posts, yours and others, that the bad ending was due to where the persspective was placed at. If you placed it in how Geralt would feel/act then you ended up with Ciri dead. If instead you approached it from what was best for Ciri then you got the other endings. I was pointing out that this is a more common trait in someone that raised a child to adulthood. But it was never limited to them.

You still raise the opinion that there is a golden way to parenthood aka "what was best for Ciri". I DO disagree with you and obviously CDPR on this topic on a quite fundamental level. This is very much related to the reduction of real world complexitiy to a simple dual principle, like right or wrong or good and bad. That's pretty much the biggest flaw here and it's also the reason why a situation like serves so poorly as a choice situation. In the real world psychological issues are incredibly complex. There is imho no golden way to how to behave. There is no certainty how characters will react to your actions. Believe it or not, I thought about what's best for Ciri. That wasn't my exclusive thought but it was a crucial part of my reasoning (which was severly hampered by the pointless timer btw). The point is that I do think that I did say the "right" thing. It's much to how I would act in a situation like that - and partly how Geralt would behave in a situation like that (given the fact that "my" Geralt would try to do what's best for Ciri as well). Because reality is complex and human beings are complex writers have a pretty big amount of freedom how to continue a story arch or character after such more subtle situations - especially if the characters weren't explained in big depth before (which is true if you only look at the games and not at the books). The point is that a writer could have easily just changed the outcomes 100% if he wanted so. It's not pretty hard to think about such an outcome.

Most people that make bad choices feel exactly the way you do. they don't question their choice but instead claim the test was rigged or invalid due to X. There were plenty of hints on how Ciri was reacting and how she would feel about certain choices. It was not a mystery or puzzle that couldn't be solved. See you make a very classic error. You honestly believe that all viewpoints are equally valid when they are not. But that is a major argument that would take many pages. Surfice to say that not all choices are equal. you might disagree but that doesn't refute it.

First: a situation which a clear right or wrong is NOT a choice situation. It's nothing more than a mere calculation. If you see these situations like that there is NO choice at all in the last third of the game which is pretty poor in itself for an RPG. But apart from that - an in addition to what I wrote above - I still disagree with you here. For once, I DID question my choices (or calculations). I replayed a big chunk of the last third of the game as well with the knowledge about the various results in mind. And nevertheless I wanted to give exactly the same answers. But the more I think about it the more I get a picture why we disagree here. For you, these situations were calculations indeed. You simply did what seemed best to Ciri at that time, follwing hints what CDPR thought should be the best for her (for whatever reason). I didn't. I saw these situations as real choices. I interpreted every possible dialogue option in the game as as difficult choice situation. Ithought that characters would have at least some complexity in this game and not just a dualistic check list. That's by the way exactly the design principle Bioware uses e.g. for Bioware, always dualistic, just "good" or "bad". That's what CDPR wanted to avoid in the first place. That's why many gamers loved so much in TW1 and TW2, that choices features difficult decisions that a not based on a simple right or wrong checklist but on complex and believable situations. That's what I expected when played the game. In the very short time the timer gave me I developed a rather complex construct of thoughts. What would Geralt do? What would I do? What would that mean to Ciri and other characters? What could the possible outcomes be? But never I ONLY thought about whether I support Ciri's self-confidence or not in the simplistic and predetermined way it's handled in the game. I've interpreted a whole lot more into these situations that they offered. That was my flaw, my fallacy. That I treated Witcher 3 as the complex and "shades-of-grey" RPG that it was marketed to me and that the predecessors indicated. Mea maxima culpa.

And maybe you find it great that they just made the last third of the game completely linear without any real choice at all. Maybe you like it that the outcome of the ending and the epilogues are based on mere simplistic calculations. I don't. I think it's a shame for an RPG and it doesn't provide what I expected and hoped for. I rips me of all agency and just makes me a tool of the narrative the devs have written.

So should games now come with a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? You do realize that you only need to consider the information given to you since it's, you know a game?

There is a good reason why RPG usually don't tackle such situations. This is the reason. It's too complex for video games that feature choice. It's the very basic argument against such situations actually.

And what logical fallacy would that be?

I wrote that in the same sentence.

We did do the "right" thing because the game verified that choice. See here's where you make another error. The "right thing" for the game may not be the "right thing" in a completely different situation. But you have no ground to stand on because the game itself defines the "right thing" for the game. This is nor different from a choice to kill or spare someone. The "right thing" in the game might be to kill that person but would it be the "right thing" outside of the game? Your error is a simple one here. You are trying to apply decisions and choices in two completely unrelated areas, a game to non-game.

No, I talk about these situations in specific. The rest is just a severe misinterpretation of everything I wrote. If the game gives me proper context and information on a situation whether to kill a guy or spare him I don't know the exact outcomes but I have good to guess a possible one. I don't think the game gives proper context. I don't think these situations are well executed in the game. One aspect is the completely pointless timer. Another aspect is the over-simplification which only works if you know that the game uses exactly this over-simplification.

And one of the core aspects of the Witcher games so far was that there is no clear right or wrong. Only different colors of grey. That's pretty much the whole basis for the series. Remember the first trailer for the game? That's what Witcher is all about. The game "verifies" a decision you make. Right. And you feel happy about that. Probably self-assured. But at the same time the game punishes players who think differently. But this all leads to our basic disagreement on human psychology and the complexity of human beings.

Classic fallacy here. I was applying a skill needed to arrive at the correct solution to the puzzle provided by the game. You then go and make an ad hominem attack as your defense.

Which ad hominem attack? If anything you accused me of lacking empathy before. So if anybody started with that it was you. And the fallacy is on your side because you think that there is a golden way to feeling empathy in a complex situation. That's not the case. There is of course "simple" empathy, e.g. if one suffers and you suffer with him. But there are situations like the ones in the game in which the concept of empathy is much harder to apply and especially not the only aspect that applies here. If somebody wants to take revenge and asks you to give him a gun to kill somebody you can of course feel empathy here. But that doesn't mean that it's the "good" decisions to give the weapon. Life is much more complex than that.

So you now go and 100% verify that it was in your viewpoint about you playing Geralt. This centers around two further flaws you make. While it is true that in many RPG's the game is centered around you the player. You are the protagonist and therefore you alone should be the influence that impacts the world. This is a very common thread but the devs have said that is NOT the case here. You can of course disagree with that choice. But you make the error in insisting that it be different. The uses a more complex arc where the protagonist is not alone and in fact Ciri becomes if not the lead protagonist another protagonist. This was their story arc.

Which flaws exactly? I never disagreed with that statement...

Yea and no game has done it well since Planescape Torment. It's fine to criticize the story. That is all personal taste and this is one place where everyone's taste is equally valid since it is personal.

Completely out of context answer. I was talking about the linearity of the narrative, not the quality of the story itself. The linearity is something that stands against the very nature of a classic RPG which features choices in both gameplay and narrative.

They may have felt small and even arbitrary to you but in the end they were profound. And why shouldn't a subtle choice have profound impacts? It happened many times in history.

That's not the point. I talk about player agency and about how the player feels. Not about the relevance and believability of the consequence on a theoretical level.

Your anger clouds your vision. Besides every RPG ever created has been linear. Every movie and book ever created has been linear. All of them have a beginning, middle and ending. therefore by definition they are linear. But RPG-hostile? Please cite an example how this story is RPG hositle?

(What was that about ad hominem attacks before?....)
First you say that it's impossible to compare narratives in video games and books and movies and now you use the exactly same argument? Wow. Well, it's indeed the interactivity that seperates video games from completely narratived media. Every video game is usually about gameplay choices and calculations. Which weapon do you use? Which tactics do you use? How do you approach? And so on. One speciality of RPGs (and classic adventures) is that not only the gameplay consists of choices but also the narrative. That's a core concept of this genre. Without that every RPG would just be a strategy game or an action-adventure or a shooter or whatever with perhaps some skills and talents on top of it. But choice and consequence in narrative is a central concept of RPGs (already in table top RPGs btw). That doesn't mean that there isn't some linearity in the narrative. Of course there is. Choice in narrative in video games mean that you have a limited, predetermined range of options to choose from. Just like with gameplay. There is no complete freedom but a range of possible things to do. In RPGs choice in narrative is usually done in dialogues where you can choose different lines (it can be done in the gameplay itself which is also used sometimes but often to a smaller degree for narrative purposes). The problem in Witcher 3 is that there is no real narrative choice at all in the last third of the game, apart from the few more calculation-based dialogues with Ciri. There is no agency at all. I don't know whether you even know what player agency means of if that's important to you at all but it is to me and many other people playing such RPGs. We don't want to just experience a well written story with some nice gameplay. We want to feel agency, we want to make hard decisions, feel that we have an impact on the world. Of course that doesn't mean that devs HAD to provide that. But it's quite rational to do so if you call your game an RPG because this is what many people expect from such a game. It's one of the core featuers of such a game, a mechanic that has proven again and again that it is of great fun for many people. That's the "RPG-hostileness" of the game in the last third of the game, the almost complete lack of agency which culminates in the 100% staged epilgues (on a broader scale).

Once again you prove my point. You want to only see things through your eyes. But like most good stories the protagonist changes and evolves. You didn't by the choices you made. It was me me me. The whole game centered around Geralt changing and doing things for Ciri. It was about Geralt realizing that Ciri was more important to him and the world then he himself was. And that is the empathy that most parents come to realize. But either you get and understand this or you don't.

Again a broad misinterpretation on your side. I very much agree with you that Geralt realizes that Ciri is more important to him than himself. I even think that this is the truth from the get go. Geralt would die for Ciri (and Yen and maybe Triss) from the very beginning. I never disputed that nor was it even part of any point I've made. So I do very well understand this. The disagreement we have is totally not about that. It's about the situtions between Ciri and Geralt in particular. It's about the fact that we obviously have a different thinking pattern and maybe different approaches to these situations. You seem to think that only your opinion is valid and that I'm just wrong on a fundamental level, lacking empathy for Ciri or whatever. Quite the opposite is true. I probably feel the same empathy for her. But that doesn't mean that I necessarily act in the same way you would (aka let my Geralt act in the same way you let yours act).

You want to say fuck Ciri who cares if she's dead. I'm Geralt the one and only. My Geralt wouldn't feel this way because he has no empathy, no guilt. So let me go and take both Yen and Triss and go my way.

What? I never wrote anything like that. I just disagree with the way CDPR wants him to cope with this situation. It's pretty depressing that you think the only logical or possible way to deal with such a situation is to commit suicide. But maybe you think that this is the right outcome. I have no problems with that. I just want the opportunity to have a word on that. I want to roleplay Geralt until the very end because this is a role-playing game (RPG). I don't want CDPR to take such crucial decisions out of my hand, making it a more or less completely directed, linear narrative in the end. And if you play Geralt as an empathetic, "good" character he is of course sad once Ciri is gone. But how to cope with that is an entirely different story that is completely independent from any empathy felt for Ciri. It's almost entirely 100% related to Geralt himself and therefore you should have a choice how to proceed.

Every single RPG ever created has an ending written by the devs. People can like it or not like it. That is personal taste. But you are doing more than this. you are saying that they were wrong to do it. You are saying they made an error or poor design choice. that is where you are wrong. It was always their choice. A RPG game is like a puzzle. This is no different then Mass Effect forcing people to accept homosexuality. Or the fact that you can't kill kids since Fallout 2. It was their design choice. It might not be my taste but it wasn't a design error.as you claim.

Of course every RPG has and end. Witcher 3 has actually three of them. And yes, I say that the end is bad on many levels. Some of that is very likely purely taste related, agreed. But some other aspects are deeply rooted in game design. If you cannot see that I'm sorry. Others seem to see it quite well.

But there is one thing I really disagree on: an RPG is NOT like a puzzle. At least it shouldn't be one. A puzzle is something that is entirely composed by logic and calculations, not involving of any feelings. Video games in general are more than that. RPG in particular are much more than that. They have certain psychological effects on the player, like player agency, about which I wrote a lot before. If you don't understand these concepts I suggest you should inform yourself better about them.

Homosexuality in Mass Effect or kids being killable in Fallout are actually pretty much choice related.Nobody forces you to be homosexual in ME and nobody forces you to kill kids in Fallout. This is the real principle of RPGs. To have choice what you do, in both gameplay and the narrative. If you don't like homosexuality just ignore it. Don't participate. That's a choice. If somebody asks you to call a kid in Fallout you can refuse. That's a choice with probably the respective consequences. That's what I want for Witcher 3. This is what isn't present at all for the last third of the game. In Witcher 3 I just have to swallow whatever CDPR writes no matter what. I have no saying in it all. You might call that a pure taste problem. And maybe you're right. I like RPGs for a reason. If a game describes itself as an RPG I want it to be one. If it's isn't one I'm naturally disappointed and I have every reason to be so no matter what you say. Sorry.

You can not compare a game to a movie. That is an apple to orange situation. You seem to ignore that movies are continuous while every game, even if using cut-scenes is broken down into sections. That in and of itself causes your pacing issues. You further claim that there was a "lot if interaction" in the first two thirds but little in the last third. Using terms like "lot's" is so subjective as to be meaningless. You never quantify your adjectives nor provide detailed examples of this. So not only do you make the logical fallacy in an inaccurate comparison you then use words that have not been quantified.

And you use no quantified argument yourself to refute my arguments. But I'm sorry about being imprecise. I haven't counted the exact choice situations for the first two parts of the game but I know for sure that there is more than one. In the last third of the game there is ZERO (=0) real choice situation in the main narrative.

And about the movie comparison: I disclosed these pacing issues coming from different structures in my initial point. These typcial "hiccups" in video games are not the basis for my assessment. I was talking about the overal story arc in a narrative that applies to all narrative and entertainment media. The acutal implication might differ but the general concept stays the same (tension is tension, no matter which medium you consume, if we just look at the narrative).

Now either all games lack this pacing or you should be able to compare TW3 to a game where you felt the pacing was to your standards.

Witcher 2 for example followed this pacing structure much better. But you're right, there a many, many games with poor writing and poor pacing. It's one of the biggest weaknesses of video games that the narrative is usually applied when the gameplay and core design is already done (at least if you value the narrative). Books and movies obviously have it much easier here since they are all about the narrative while in video games - even in story-driven ones - gameplay is at least equally as important.

In the end looking at my DSM and applying psychoanalysis it is clear that your real objection stems from the fact that you made choices that you thought were the right ones only to find out that the devs said they were the wrong choices. You are trying very hard to justify your belief and choices.

Ahem, actually no. The real problem is that there are right vs wrong "choice" situations in the first place. Situations that are both poorly written and feature a pointless timer. On top of that the game lacks any real choice situation in the last third although it is marketed as an RPG. It rips the player of any player agency by forcing an end upon him by some puzzle-like calculations that are based on an over-simplistic daualistic psychological concept which isn't revealed to the player until you see the consequences. That might work for a book or a movie with all that butterfly effect things taking place, but in an RPG that has way less possibilities to explore complex topics and that is expected to work in a certain way this is just lacking. So I don't try to justify my belief or choice. I do think that different people decide differently in these situations, even while having the same agenda. Simply because people and their thoughts are complex and not as predictable and predetermined as you might think. What I really try to point out is that CDPR neglected this and just tried to push their concept onto us no matter what. I doesn't like that, you're right. But I also think I have every right to dislike that and point it, especially in an RPG. But then again, this is just one point I've raised in this thread.

So accept the fact that this is a game and the game has a set of moral parameters that required to be met in order to get the endings that they wrote. In other words like every other game ever created.

Which moral parameter? There is not a single MORAL choice in the last third of the game. It's pretty weird that you say so since that is again one of the very basic arguments of mine why I think the end is lacking. And even if there was a moral choice I wouldn't want it to be a puzzle like one that just leads to the right ending if you say all the right thing - and it really shouldn't be that way. In a moral choice situation you make decisions based on moral concepts but the consequences can greatly differ from what you expected. Making a "good" decision could lead to extremely bad consequences in the long run. This is the ambiguity and fascination of moral choices that should have been part of the last third of the game. Not just right vs wrong puzzles. This is just boring. It's a simple task that completely refutes the fascination of real choices leading to different outcomes. Of course both choices and outcomes are always predetermined, that's crystal clear. But that doesn't mean that they couldn't be hard, gripping, emotionally evocative. The very concept of choice is fight with yourself, completely independent from the actual outcome. It's about what you feel in the moment you have to make the choice and what you feel shortly after. It's about your imagination what could be the possible consequences of your actions and whether you've made the right decision. A mere right vs wrong calculation cannot provide that. Solving a puzzle is fundamentally different from making a real and well written narrative CHOICE in video games. It's a completely different world. So excuse me, but I do think that games can be created in different manners and that not everything is always the same no matter what...

 

[Goodmongo]

Going to try and limit the discussion.

You still raise the opinion that there is a golden way to parenthood aka "what was best for Ciri".

I was saying that there is a golden way for this game. Please understand this crucial difference. All decision based games come down to "Pick A Get B" type choices. TW3 is no different in that regard to Ciri. CDPR clearly had a design where certain choices led to the various endings with Ciri. This only applies to this game. So all the further points you make on parenting are moot because your parenting of a real child, or even a child in a different game has no connection to Ciri.

First: a situation which a clear right or wrong is NOT a choice situation.

Then my understanding of choice is way different than yours. Choice in the dictionary I used says a choice is the selection of one option over other options. And that is exactly what you must do. Snowball or drinking etc. Choice. And all choices are calculations in the end. Since a choice leads to a consequence you therefore must weigh (calculate) the options. Not sure how you can argue this point.

For you, these situations were calculations indeed. You simply did what seemed best to Ciri at that time, follwing hints what CDPR thought should be the best for her (for whatever reason). I didn't. I saw these situations as real choices.

Yes exactly. I approached it as a game knowing that it could never be as complex as real life. Therefore, the path was clear to me except for the trashing of the lab. But since they gave me a strong clue about her losing control before the choice became clear.

I've interpreted a whole lot more into these situations that they offered. That was my flaw,

Yes. It was only ever a game.

And maybe you find it great that they just made the last third of the game completely linear without any real choice at all.

I thought all the Ciri choices were int he last third of the game. So how can you say there were no choices? Please explain your comment about being linear with no choices.

One aspect is the completely pointless timer.

I think that comes down to taste. I like to brood over some things but I can also over analyze things so while I don't prefer the timers I thought they were OK to force a quick decision. What I don't know is what is the default choice if the timer runs out. Never tested that.

Which ad hominem attack? If anything you accused me of lacking empathy before.

Please let me explain. I said that you missed the "right" choice because you and others might have lacked empathy. So it was a possible cause. You flat out said I didn't have it and implied my arguments were invalid because of it. That is an ad hominem fallacy. To say someone should consider another's argument because they are "X" is the ad hominem fallacy but saying someone didn't get the meaning because of "X" is not. Huge difference.

And the fallacy is on your side because you think that there is a golden way to feeling empathy in a complex situation.

First off that's not a fallacy. Secondly, there is a golden way in TW3. To get end result A you must do A, B C in that order is a golden way. Doesn't matter if it's logical it is what it is. Later on you say that RPG's are not puzzles. But all games are puzzles. RPG;'s are a puzzle because you get an end result. The puzzle is figuring out what it takes to get that result. Even the best RPG (Planscape Torment) was a puzzle. They just offered a few more routes to the finish line. But even there you can make some "bad" choices and not get their good endings.

Completely out of context answer. I was talking about the linearity of the narrative, not the quality of the story itself. The linearity is something that stands against the very nature of a classic RPG which features choices in both gameplay and narrative.

Can you elaborate? Because all RPG's are linear. My point in citing books and movies was in that a story has a start, middle and end. RPG's have this exact same layout. So I feel my comparison was apples to apples while yours on pacing was not since a game can never have the same pacing as a movie. But please explain how TW3 was more linear then other RPG's.

i know you go on to try to explain it in the next paragraph but choice is not linearity. Again we might be using different dictionaries but linearity in a story means there are acts and later events must come after earlier ones due to plot points. Linearity doesn't depend on if I have one option or 100. The later events still follow from the earlier ones.

But it's quite rational to do so if you call your game an RPG because this is what many people expect from such a game. It's one of the core featuers of such a game, a mechanic that has proven again and again that it is of great fun for many people. That's the "RPG-hostileness" of the game in the last third of the game, the almost complete lack of agency which culminates in the 100% staged epilgues (on a broader scale).

I read an article a few years ago that asked 10 big game developers what an RPG actually is. There were ten different answers. I say this because I really think RPG means whatever the developer and player define it to be. For some leveling a character is RPG, others need a story, etc.

You seem to think that only your opinion is valid and that I'm just wrong on a fundamental level, lacking empathy for Ciri or whatever. Quite the opposite is true. I probably feel the same empathy for her. But that doesn't mean that I necessarily act in the same way you would (aka let my Geralt act in the same way you let yours act).

No on the contrary. Your opinions and feelings are just as valid as mine or the next guys in the real world. I'm saying that in this game there is a clear cut way the CDPR laid out and that is the only valid path. I didn't define this path CDPR did. It was their game, their story, their situations. Of course our Geralt's can be different but we can't expect the same outcome. In fallout 2 I depopulated the whole area. Killed everyone and everything. My ending was way different from another play through. Should I have expected a homicidal maniac to do well? An exaggeration but it does show the point.

What? I never wrote anything like that. I just disagree with the way CDPR wants him to cope with this situation. It's pretty depressing that you think the only logical or possible way to deal with such a situation is to commit suicide.

Again you attribute things to me that I never said. I said that was what CDPR felt was the outcome for those input parameters. Doesn't matter if I agree with it or not. It was their choice. Now I do have the right to not like it but it was their rules and since I view games as puzzles it didn't bother me.

Homosexuality in Mass Effect or kids being killable in Fallout are actually pretty much choice related.Nobody forces you to be homosexual in ME and nobody forces you to kill kids in Fallout.

Missed my point entirely. You do not have the choice. I MUST accept the homosexual on my crew. I do not have a choice to kill kids anymore. they removed these choices. They did it for PC reasons (in my opinion) as too many would get upset if most gamers went and shot the homosexual crew member int he head. The LGBT crowd would throw a fit just like the church crowd threw a fit when you could send a kid to his granddad with a bomb in his pocket. or women groups in raping women in GTA games etc. See the whole concept of choice is really not there. So don't expect your choices to be there.

And you use no quantified argument yourself to refute my arguments. But I'm sorry about being imprecise. I haven't counted the exact choice situations for the first two parts of the game but I know for sure that there is more than one. In the last third of the game there is ZERO (=0) real choice situation in the main narrative.

Like I said I felt the Ciri choices were int he last third of the game. Or am I wrong? The other choices were all minor and not as many as you claim. Yen or Triss, Baron/tree/crones, Metz, Radovid/Roche/Dijkstra, and a few more. So while it is true that only Ciri remained in the last third it was the most important.

(tension is tension, no matter which medium you consume, if we just look at the narrative).

Yes and no. See the problem is that a movie is just two hours long so it is very possible to maintain tension for that long. A game is not only longer but has all these breaks (side quests). Every side quest breaks tension. It is a distraction from the main plot. But I know you don't want to do away with side quests. Can you name another RPG that maintained tension from start to finish? I can't. Withcer 2 broke this tension many times over. Farming for nekker parts is a sure way to break it. Plus I can name several other quests that were pure distraction. But I accept that because I want those side quests.

Ahem, actually no. The real problem is that there are right vs wrong "choice" situations in the first place.

First right and wrong is based on the reward, AKA ending you get. So in that situation there must be right and wrong. Not all choices should lead to the exact same ending. Let me simplify things greatly for arguments sake. Ending options are character lives or character dies. You have a choice. give token to character or keep it and be rich yourself. One choice leads to death the other to life. See there must therefore be a right vs. wrong choice. Even games like ME used a weighted scale parameter to arrive at the outcomes. But in the end everything is cause and effect. Let me repeat that. Everything in games comes down to cause and effect. Always has and for the foreseeable future it will continue to be so.

Which moral parameter? There is not a single MORAL choice in the last third of the game.

The moral choice is you or Ciri. It is not the standard moral choice but one based on what you may want vs. what Ciri needs. And before you go there what Ciri needs was defined by CDPR.

 

[Gerald01]

Goodmongo, your argument is nonsense.
As if there's a single proper approach to child raising /pedagogy /psychology.
Most of the "choices" influencing Ciri's fate are downright ambiguous or plain silly.

One example: sending Ciri alone vs accompanying her to the Sorceresses' meeting.
It's extremely easy to think the "good" one is having her back and supporting her by being there. That's the "common sense" approach.

The idea itself to base the ending on 5 secondary, obscure, silly choices is absurd in an on itself.
I can't believe there's people defending it.

I get WHY they did it, possibly, but it has nothing to do with them being clear and plain for everyone to get, nor them being "correct".
If interested I will explain.

 

[Aqueous_Null]

A bit on the OP before I get into my own point: I definitely agree about the battle at Kaer Morhen, I felt like this should be around the mid-point of the story, the peak in the middle that leads to a quieter phase that slowly builds up to the ultimate climax later on. It is so close to the "end" in TW3 though that it feels like the ending climax even though...it isn't. In fact, I feel too much of the story is spent hunting Ciri. I suspect this was to try and build up the ultimate climax to when you finally find her but I think it went a little too far.

Anyway, I don't want to add fuel to the fire but I have one additional issue with the plot structure in this game, although it's not a self-contained criticism within the plot but how it relates to other facets of the game.

Basically, for the vast majority of the story it's a race against time. You and the villains are both trying to find Ciri, you need to get to her first. This kind of story structure unfortunately works counter to an open-world video game. From an immersion perspective it makes very, very little sense to go off doing random Witcher Contracts or helping Joe Bloggs in the village of Hamlet when you're up against time in stopping what is essentially the end of the world (if the Hunt get a hold of Ciri).

I personally always found it best to binge on side content then binge on story content, which is completely different from how I usually approach such games, simply because splicing the two together led to such a large break in immersion in the story for me. If I was able to forget about the plot for a little while then the side content was golden but when the plot was in memory I had to concentrate on it to make it feel "real".

An example of games that straddle both strong narratives with a focus applied to them and a lot of "open" content are the cRPGs of old like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment. What these games have in common is that the goal usually involves you hunting down the villain in some capacity, and in a way where you do have time ie. they're not going to disappear to somewhere you cannot follow, so if you mess around a bit it just means you'll need to search for longer later. Baldur's Gate 2 is not identical in this regard, since your "soul" is taken, but the time limit is an "indeterminate" amount of time AND you get it back about half-way through the game so it doesn't break immersion too strongly if you're doing side-quests.

In other words, if you make an "open-world" game you are unfortunately constrained somewhat in terms of the type of story you tell. You can make parts of the story a race against time, that's absolutely fine, since the player seeking immersion can focus on the plot at those points and side-quest at quieter points. The issue in TW3 is that the vast majority of the story has you hunting Ciri and the only point where The Wild Hunt are thrown "off the hunt" is very near the end of the game (after Kaer Morhen).

That said, it's still a beautiful game.

 

[Goodmongo]

Goodmongo, your argument is nonsense.
As if there's a single proper approach to child raising /pedagogy /psychology.

Since when is a GAME real life. This sentence is nonsense. How can you compare a game to real life?

It's extremely easy to think the "good" one is having her back and supporting her by being there. That's the "common sense" approach.

In your opinion. Not in the opinion of CDPR who wrote the game.

The idea itself to base the ending on 5 secondary, obscure, silly choices is absurd in an on itself.

Clearly these are not secondary absurd choices but in reality profound choices.

I get WHY they did it, possibly, but it has nothing to do with them being clear and plain for everyone to get, nor them being "correct".
If interested I will explain.

Since many people got it "right" that means they did provide enough clues to solve their puzzle. Not to mention that if you did pick the wrong choice you see it immediately in Ciri's reaction. It was no problem just reloading and picking the other one

The snowball, lodge, grave and going to Emyhr choices were really pretty obvious, at least for me. Same for telling her she can't be good at everything. I at first picked the wrong choice about the lab but as soon as I saw her reaction to my choice I knew it was wrong.

So here are the mistakes you guys make with the first being the most important one.

1) This is just a game and does not reflect real life. Choices in a game should never be considered as legitimate choices for real life decisions.
2) All games are a type of puzzle. They give clues as to what you should or should not do. You follow the clues to solve the puzzle.

There are thousands of examples in various games where you have to make a choice that you as a real person would never do in order to get the reaction that a programmer and game designer wants.

You say that the choices were not clear or plain. If you want I'll be glad to point out the various clues for each choice and why it was pretty obvious to do it. The clues may not have been openly obvious (ALA Planescape Torment) but if you recognized the clue the choice was obvious.

 

[Aqueous_Null]

Since many people got it "right" that means they did provide enough clues to solve their puzzle. Not to mention that if you did pick the wrong choice you see it immediately in Ciri's reaction. It was no problem just reloading and picking the other one

You shouldn't need to reload, that's called metagaming and runs completely counter to immersion. It also runs against the whole idea of The Witcher series.

The snowball, lodge, grave and going to Emyhr choices were really pretty obvious, at least for me. Same for telling her she can't be good at everything. I at first picked the wrong choice about the lab but as soon as I saw her reaction to my choice I knew it was wrong.

This is kind of the point though: neither choice is wrong lol. It's only wrong because they enforced it. Both points have merit: destroying the lab helps her by supporting her by being a "partner in crime" and telling her she can't be good at everything helps her because it relieves the pressure she's put on herself. Like the guy said, it's about "context".

Since when is a GAME real life. This sentence is nonsense. How can you compare a game to real life?

So here are the mistakes you guys make with the first being the most important one.

1) This is just a game and does not reflect real life. Choices in a game should never be considered as legitimate choices for real life decisions.
2) All games are a type of puzzle. They give clues as to what you should or should not do. You follow the clues to solve the puzzle.

A game is immersive when you play it as if it were real life, and a story carries weight when its drama mirrors real life. When you make decisions as you would in real life, when you apply real life morals etc. and when the story itself uses those facets of life as story mechanics, it is immersive. This is not a gamey game, The Witcher series never has been and it's a large part of what makes it so good. This is not an adequate defence. It would be if we were playing CoD, it isn't when we're playing The Witcher.

There are thousands of examples in various games where you have to make a choice that you as a real person would never do in order to get the reaction that a programmer and game designer wants.

Correct, it's usually called poor writing. This is The Witcher, it's held to higher standards than most.

 

[Goodmongo]

A bit on the OP before I get into my own point: I definitely agree about the battle at Kaer Morhen, I felt like this should be around the mid-point of the story, the peak in the middle that leads to a quieter phase that slowly builds up to the ultimate climax later on. It is so close to the "end" in TW3 though that it feels like the ending climax even though...it isn't. In fact, I feel too much of the story is spent hunting Ciri. I suspect this was to try and build up the ultimate climax to when you finally find her but I think it went a little too far.

Anyway, I don't want to add fuel to the fire but I have one additional issue with the plot structure in this game, although it's not a self-contained criticism within the plot but how it relates to other facets of the game.

Basically, for the vast majority of the story it's a race against time. You and the villains are both trying to find Ciri, you need to get to her first. This kind of story structure unfortunately works counter to an open-world video game. From an immersion perspective it makes very, very little sense to go off doing random Witcher Contracts or helping Joe Bloggs in the village of Hamlet when you're up against time in stopping what is essentially the end of the world (if the Hunt get a hold of Ciri).

I personally always found it best to binge on side content then binge on story content, which is completely different from how I usually approach such games, simply because splicing the two together led to such a large break in immersion in the story for me. If I was able to forget about the plot for a little while then the side content was golden but when the plot was in memory I had to concentrate on it to make it feel "real".

An example of games that straddle both strong narratives with a focus applied to them and a lot of "open" content are the cRPGs of old like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment.

I also pointed out the issue with side quests and pacing. But games like TW3 and Skyrim are full of these side quests because the main story isn't long enough or they want to deliver much more content for those that want it. It's a double edged sword.

Now I love Planescape Torment and it's number one in my favorite list. But it was extremely linear and there really weren't any side quests. All quests were related to either the main story or the character subplots which were extremely important to the main story. In Skyrim or TW3 you can finish the main story in say 60 hours yet have 200 hours of game play. In PT it was about 100 hours no matter what. You might shave off a few quests here and there, if you didn't want to get another NPC and their backstory but you didn't have many choices.

So you either have very linear games with near perfect pacing or you have very open world games with lot's of side quests and pacing will suffer. What I highly doubt you will ever have is a combination of the two where pacing is near perfect yet you can go do whatever you want. By definition they are on opposite ends of a line.

 

[Aqueous_Null]

I also pointed out the issue with side quests and pacing. But games like TW3 and Skyrim are full of these side quests because the main story isn't long enough or they want to deliver much more content for those that want it. It's a double edged sword.

Now I love Planescape Torment and it's number one in my favorite list. But it was extremely linear and there really weren't any side quests. All quests were related to either the main story or the character subplots which were extremely important to the main story. In Skyrim or TW3 you can finish the main story in say 60 hours yet have 200 hours of game play. In PT it was about 100 hours no matter what. You might shave off a few quests here and there, if you didn't want to get another NPC and their backstory but you didn't have many choices.

So you either have very linear games with near perfect pacing or you have very open world games with lot's of side quests and pacing will suffer. What I highly doubt you will ever have is a combination of the two where pacing is near perfect yet you can go do whatever you want. By definition they are on opposite ends of a line.

I already explained in the very post you quoted that it has nothing to do with size of the game or linearity, it has to do with the type of plot you choose. The only reason the story pacing and side-questing don't mesh that well together in TW3 is because they chose a storyline that has you racing against time for 80% of it, no other reason. If there had been ample periods in there where you had time on your hands it all would've worked perfectly. And that would've come naturally with better pacing.

 

[Goodmongo]

You shouldn't need to reload, that's called metagaming and runs completely counter to immersion. It also runs against the whole idea of The Witcher series.

No. You do it all the time. Everyone does. there is no ironman mode and in fact a small minority will ever play an ironman mode game. So this comment is way wrong as save reload is extremely common and I doubt if there exists more than 1-2% of the entire player base that never reloaded a game.

This is kind of the point though: neither choice is wrong lol. It's only wrong because they enforced it.

Therefore it is wrong because they did enforce it. Have you missed the obvious point I'm saying in almost every post? This is a game. Games are puzzles to solve. this is not real life. Once you accept this fact your life outlook will greatly improve. Trust me on that.

A game is immersive when you play it as if it were real life, and a story carries weight when its drama mirrors real life. When you make decisions as you would in real life, when you apply real life morals etc. and when the story itself uses those facets of life as story mechanics, it is immersive.

Games are not real life. They can't be because you are limited in what you can see or ask. If it's real life then gee maybe we would ask Ciri a question or two more than what we can. This is complete nonsense to say that it should reflect life. Ever hear of fiction? Many of the best fiction books ever written had implausible events to make the twist for the plot.

Your expectations for what a game can or should do is insane. The technology isn't there yet. No game ever created can reach those lofty levels. It was a puzzle and you failed to see the clues and solve it. So human nature says you can be mad and angry and blame the puzzle maker. or you can also say that they got you and move on with your life.

---------- Updated at 03:12 PM ----------

I already explained in the very post you quoted that it has nothing to do with size of the game or linearity, it has to do with the type of plot you choose. The only reason the story pacing and side-questing don't mesh that well together in TW3 is because they chose a storyline that has you racing against time for 80% of it, no other reason. If there had been ample periods in there where you had time on your hands it all would've worked perfectly. And that would've come naturally with better pacing.

Every game has you racing against time to do X before Y happens or so they claim. Skyrim, Oblivion, ME, Fallout you name it. So you have a choice. Complete linearity or many side quests. Come on tell me one game, just one that offered plenty of side quests without some major linearity. heck like I said even some very linear games like ME3 had you racing against some artificial time deadline that only really starts when you get to plot point Z anyway.

EDIT: If it's so real life then how come you can carry and fight with 190 pounds of crap on your back, loot every house you see without anyone saying a word and so on and so on. There is zero consistency in your arguments that say it should reflect real life yet accept all of the other stuff that isn't. If these was less hypocritical statement I might accept your argument. But everything says it's a game so treat it that way. Don't act like the wierd guy in his mom's basement that thinks he's actually having sex with Triss.

 

[Gerald01]

Goodmongo, more nonsense from you.
It's as if you are trapped in your little snowglobe unable to visualise the world outside.

Your entire line of reasoning rests on two huge a priori assumptions:
1)the minor one is that there's a proper "good" ending between the two
2) that CDPR, and this the main one, agrees with your interpretation of things
with the corollary:
3)that CDPR has to be right becuase they themselves set up the rules , which is a huge circular argument


I see you are not interested in the slightest to know what actually may have been the reason behind the choice, so have a nice rantin'. Bye.

 

[Aqueous_Null]

No. You do it all the time. Everyone does. there is no ironman mode and in fact a small minority will ever play an ironman mode game. So this comment is way wrong as save reload is extremely common and I doubt if there exists more than 1-2% of the entire player base that never reloaded a game.

The only time I reload to change a choice is if I misinterpreted what the choice meant (ie. you only get a short line as a dialogue option so sometimes what Geralt actually says differs from it). Other than that, I do not reload. And I think you'll find a lot of gamers who play for STORIES do not either.

So your statement of "No, you do it all the time" is unequivocally wrong.

Therefore it is wrong because they did enforce it. Have you missed the obvious point I'm saying in almost every post? This is a game. Games are puzzles to solve. this is not real life. Once you accept this fact your life outlook will greatly improve. Trust me on that.

What are you talking about?

It is not "wrong" of me to not realise such dire consequences were forced upon me on such a bizarre choice. At all. How am I meant to know that without doing what you do: reloading so I get the "favourable" result? I play in a way that choices = consequences, that's meant to be the entire mantra of The Witcher series. So if I'm required to reload all the time, that goes completely counter to what this series stands for.

That said, if I am meant to follow the "choices = consequences" concept of The Witcher then I need to be able to make relatively informed decisions. This is where those 5 choices are "wrong". They're "wrong" because the game designers enforced a metagame event into a STORY. You seem to be forgetting that key element: it's a video game, yes, but we are discussing the plot of the video game. This is not CoD. This is not Heroes of the Storm. This is a video game that revolves around stories, and thus when discussing said stories it needs to adhere to the same rules as any story-making process whether through moving image, book or any other medium.

But I actually sympathise with you if you're completely unable to immerse yourself in a story and always feel separated from it in the way you describe here. No offence, but you sound like a robot, honestly. And I have no clue what you're even talking about "life outlook" - what? We're discussing the plot of a video game, this isn't a counselling session.

Games are not real life. They can't be because you are limited in what you can see or ask. If it's real life then gee maybe we would ask Ciri a question or two more than what we can. This is complete nonsense to say that it should reflect life. Ever hear of fiction? Many of the best fiction books ever written had implausible events to make the twist for the plot.

Why am I having to explain this to you? I mean genuinely I am NOT conceiving of the notion you don't get this.

Obviously games are not real life, duh, that's like saying the sky is blue. And obviously within fiction things can happen that cannot occur in our world, magic for instance. However, good fiction mimics real life in its drama. This is how stakes are built, this is how you come to care for characters, this is how emotions are triggered when watching/reading/experiencing a story. If there is no tie to real life in any way with a story's drama, there is no emotional connection between the viewer/reader/player.

So, for exmaple, that twist of the plot you're talking about will have NO impact if there's no dramatic basis upon which to place it. If there's no connection to the characters, no stake in the story or the world, then when a twist occurs the response is: "Ah well."

This is story writing 101 and I am amazed I need to explain this to anyone who indulges in stories.

Your expectations for what a game can or should do is insane. The technology isn't there yet. No game ever created can reach those lofty levels. It was a puzzle and you failed to see the clues and solve it. So human nature says you can be mad and angry and blame the puzzle maker. or you can also say that they got you and move on with your life.

What are you talking about, again?

This is not an Adventure game, I don't know what this obsession with "puzzle" is lol. It should - and is for the majority of the game - the complete OPPOSITE of a puzzle. The dialogue choices are not meant to be obtuse, they are meant to be clear. And they usually are. This is because they are the interface for the player to control Geralt's decisions, thus we need to know exactly what we're having Geralt decide. The way we do this? With clear, concise dialogue choices. Thus, again, it is actually the opposite of a puzzle.

And my expectations are not insane. Why? Because they've already been fulfilled by TW2 and some other non-CDPR titles. They've already been done. By older games.

Obviously a dialogue system where you're given a finite set of choices may not have the perfect choice you yourself would say, I get that and I think every player accepts that. That is not the issue here. The issue here is that these are choices that have no immediate or obvious sign of affecting such a large event in the plot.

If someone asks me "Will you help us with the assassination of Radovid?" - that's a pretty big question. If I help, I am fully expecting it to potentially have an influence on whether Radovid is killed. Why? Because it's relevant to the subject at hand.

If Ciri gets pissed off and I tell her to calm down, I do not expect that to have a huge influence on whether she manages to return from a portal lol. It's barely pertinent to the event in question.

Let me give you an example: it would be like telling Ciri to calm down then find her in her room afterwards hanging on a noose. There's a modest connection between the two events but the result is overkill.

Every game has you racing against time to do X before Y happens or so they claim. Skyrim, Oblivion, ME, Fallout you name it. So you have a choice. Complete linearity or many side quests. Come on tell me one game, just one that offered plenty of side quests without some major linearity. heck like I said even some very linear games like ME3 had you racing against some artificial time deadline that only really starts when you get to plot point Z anyway.

Not to this extent. The issue with TW3 is that it establishes as a sense of impending doom very early on in the plot. In games where side-content doesn't affect immersion you are not racing anyone else or facing doom. You are chasing something, sure, but you are not competing with another force.

Let me give you a hypothetical example to highlight what I'm saying:

You mention Fallout, right? Let's take Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, you are searching for your father. To make Fallout 3's "search" like TW3: the story would tell you early on that The Enclave were also hunting your father and when they find him, they're going to kill him. So now you need to get to your father asap because he's in immediate danger from another force.

Note the difference?

But of course, in Fallout 3 you're actually searching because you want to know what's going on and he might be in some danger. Then again, he is also much better equipped for dealing with The Wasteland than you are anyway and when we do find him, he's not actually in danger at all. So going off and doing some side content along the way feels absolutely fine. The "rush" to find him isn't as extreme.

Now Oblivion, as an example, you can also continue to do side-content because from an immersion perspective you can busy yourself closing portals which acts as a "band-aid" fix for the over-arching plot device. In other words, you're dealing with the threat of Oblivion portals at the same time. It works. It doesn't work as well as Fallout 3 but it works.

Skyrim, I admit, is a different story since Alduin threatens the entire world right now. The only saving grace is actually a negative about Skyrim, which is that its plot is hardly stellar or a main attraction so I never feel that immersed in it to begin with! But if the plot was actually more involving then it would've suffered from the same issue.

Finally, ME is also fine:

ME1 there's no "pressing rush" until after Virmire. All the dialogue points to the idea that you're having to root Saren out anyway, that he's in hiding, so it doesn't have the same sense of impending doom.

ME2 is even better. You need to attack the Collectors but it's communicated to you multiple times throughout the story that most important is that you go there fully prepared. Add to this the majority of the side-content boosting your chances and outcome from the final mission and the side-content is actually incredibly immersive and connected to the main story.

ME3 is like ME2 but a bit worse. The sense of impending doom is there, which works counter to the immersion, but you're on a mission to gather allies, resources, weapons etc. which again fits in nicely with side-content.

The perfect time in TW3 to allow the player time to side-quest was when Ciri was on Isle of Mists. If the dialogue leaned towards her being safe there for a fair period of time and that you need to gather weapons, coin etc. in addition to allies for the battle at Kaer Morhen, there is your perfect excuse to do side-content AND it be immersive. Unfortunately, this opportunity is missed.

Honestly, I love this game too but if your opinion on this is that it is perfect and no matter what anyone says they're all wrong, you're right etc. then there's no point in you even frequenting a forum let alone this thread. You are not able to discuss because part of discussion is the ability to be open to other points of view. For instance, this is a fact: when I play TW3's side content, I lose immersion in the main plot. This is not up for debate. So trying in vain to tell me it's not the game's fault etc. is irrelevant. I am expressing what happens to me in my gameplay experience AND why it occurs. It's called constructive criticism.

 

[Goodmongo]

Goodmongo, more nonsense from you.
It's as if you are trapped in your little snowglobe unable to visualise the world outside.

Your entire line of reasoning rests on two huge a priori assumptions:
1)the minor one is that there's a proper "good" ending between the two
2) that CDPR, and this the main one, agrees with your interpretation of things
with the corollary:
3)that CDPR has to be right becuase they themselves set up the rules , which is a huge circular argument


I see you are not interested in the slightest to know what actually may have been the reason behind the choice, so have a nice rantin'. Bye.

LMFAO. You don't get it. CDPR never agreed with me. Unless they had a time machine they couldn't. They never consulted me on what I thought either. So your comment is insane nonsense. Second, I never said I agreed with CDPR. It doesn't matter if I agree or not. It was a puzzle that they laid out for a gamer to solve.

You can go live in your world of "I'm right and they're wrong" all you want. But just like any author you didn't write the books. Do you have the right to say Rowling must change some plot point in her Harry Potter books? No you don't. You only have the right to like it or not like it. She controls it. CDPR control TW3.

There is a correct and right choice. CDPR dictated what that is and what you must do to get it. So your choice is simple.

1) Follow the rules of their game in order to get the choice you want.
2) Don't follow their rules and get the choice they dictated.

---------- Updated at 05:08 PM ----------

So your statement of "No, you do it all the time" is unequivocally wrong.

So unless you never die, you in fact do reload from a saved game.

What are you talking about?

It is not "wrong" of me to not realise such dire consequences were forced upon me on such a bizarre choice. At all. How am I meant to know that without doing what you do: reloading so I get the "favourable" result? I play in a way that choices = consequences, that's meant to be the entire mantra of The Witcher series. So if I'm required to reload all the time, that goes completely counter to what this series stands for.

See I realize this is a game. It is a puzzle and the correct answer might not be what I think it is. And as a game it gives you clues if you picked correctly or not. When I made the wrong choice about wrecking the lab Ciri's response was very clear that this was a bad thing to do. See games are like that. Most of the time they tell you if you did what was expected or not. Now I had a choice I can stick with my initial choice and roll the dice. Maybe it meant nothing and the choice was just one of many that in the end don't have any real impact. But since I already had a few other of these "Ciri" choices my gut told me it was important. I reloaded and went with the other choice and the result proved it. Ciri's reaction was pure joy.

See here's where you logic fails. You keep insisting that it should reflect real life. Well in real life I might have just fucking asked her. Hey Ciri would it make you feel better if we trashed the place? But knowing it's a game and not real life I knew it was just another puzzle to solve.

That said, if I am meant to follow the "choices = consequences" concept of The Witcher then I need to be able to make relatively informed decisions. This is where those 5 choices are "wrong". They're "wrong" because the game designers enforced a metagame event into a STORY.

There were many clues as to what to do. Some subtle others obvious. If it was so hard then how did others get it right? In many ways you and I are alike. I can tell from your deep analysis on things. But I'm willing to bet I'm a lot older than you are. I've come to realize that I can over analyze things. That Occam's Razor is really the best choice.

But I actually sympathise with you if you're completely unable to immerse yourself in a story and always feel separated from it in the way you describe here.

On the contrary I get deeply immersed. As I said PT is my number one favorite game. But I realize that in the end it's a game with a puzzle to solve. Some games like KOTOR 1 blew me away with their plot twists that I never saw coming. I love great stories. I love books. But a game is much more than a book. Honestly the single biggest difference is that I view a game as a puzzle to solve. A puzzle wrapped in a story in this case. But ultimately still a puzzle. I approach the game not as how I personally would react but as how the character might react. Going back to KOTOR or PT you can be a real nasty prick if you want to. And in a second play through I was. None of the choices were what I would normally pick but I wanted to see how the game plays out being that way. To get those nasty endings the game sometimes forced me to do things I had trouble even contemplating to do. But is was required.

Obviously games are not real life, duh, that's like saying the sky is blue. And obviously within fiction things can happen that cannot occur in our world, magic for instance. However, good fiction mimics real life in its drama.

Ever read the mystery crime books of the 1940's-1960's? The Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, Agatha Christy ones? In every single one of them they have a plot twist where the book withheld critical information, a surprise character was introduced or something happened that was pretty unbelievable. My point is that doing things or requiring things that are not really "true" is common in many types of stories. It seems CDPR wanted to lay a trap for the players. And it worked. What I don't know is if it was a conscious effort or it just happened. As I said everyone can hate it but they alone have the right to do it or not to do it.

This is not an Adventure game, I don't know what this obsession with "puzzle" is lol. It should - and is for the majority of the game - the complete OPPOSITE of a puzzle. The dialogue choices are not meant to be obtuse, they are meant to be clear.

This is really our main difference in how we approach this topic. All games from strategy to adventure to shooters to RPG's are one type of puzzle or another. I'm a programmer and have been since the early 1980's. All programs are a flow of logic. Figuring out that flow is the puzzle. Games don't have AI. they can only do what is programmed. Pick choice A get result A etc. In the 1970's there were "interactive books". These were stories in a book where at certain points you were told to make a choice. Then based on your choice you skipped to page X to continue the story. Same basic concept here. technology hasn't advanced much beyond this point.

And my expectations are not insane. Why? Because they've already been fulfilled by TW2 and some other non-CDPR titles. They've already been done. By older games.

TW2 was a very linear puzzle to be solved. If you wanted to get an ending where you cured Saskia of being controlled you MUST pick two very specific choices. But back in act two when you realized that she was controlled it was too late if you picked Roche path. And if you went to save Triss you never were given this option. And there are others.

Obviously a dialogue system where you're given a finite set of choices may not have the perfect choice you yourself would say, I get that and I think every player accepts that. That is not the issue here. The issue here is that these are choices that have no immediate or obvious sign of affecting such a large event in the plot.

Which is a common thing in RPG's. Many choices in games have results that you don't know till the next chapter or even the ending.

If someone asks me "Will you help us with the assassination of Radovid?" - that's a pretty big question. If I help, I am fully expecting it to potentially have an influence on whether Radovid is killed. Why? Because it's relevant to the subject at hand.

But you had no clue that doing so means either Nilfgaard wins the war or you have to kill off Roche. Yea I went with killing him but then was disappointed that keeping Roche alive meant Nilfgaard won the war.

If Ciri gets pissed off and I tell her to calm down, I do not expect that to have a huge influence on whether she manages to return from a portal lol. It's barely pertinent to the event in question.

Way over simplification. And there are five of these choices to make.

Not to this extent. The issue with TW3 is that it establishes as a sense of impending doom very early on in the plot. In games where side-content doesn't affect immersion you are not racing anyone else or facing doom.

Except for all Elder Scrools (Skyrim, Obilvion, Morrowind), ME3 and somewhat ME2, Fallout etc. do the exact same thing. They all have the end of the world is fast approaching so let me go kill these to things to farm for some item. Skyrim was extremely bad in this.

You mention Fallout, right? Let's take Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, you are searching for your father. To make Fallout 3's "search" like TW3: the story would tell you early on that The Enclave were also hunting your father and when they find him, they're going to kill him. So now you need to get to your father asap because he's in immediate danger from another force.

Note the difference?

No because in that game you learn exactly where he is yet there are many side quests that you must complete because the game ends soon afterwords. So you go off exploring all the places you skipped before doing the last string of quests. You are right that there is no rush for much of the game. But when you do know all the facts and the plot involved there is a rush. AKA Project Purity. But here is my character going off to explore more of the wasteland.

Now Oblivion, as an example, you can also continue to do side-content because from an immersion perspective you can busy yourself closing portals which acts as a "band-aid" fix for the over-arching plot device. In other words, you're dealing with the threat of Oblivion portals at the same time.

The portals were a farming source for the orbs that were necessary to make stuff. But remember how the Hero Of Kavatch should race to solve the problem? Instead we went off exploring old ruins.

Finally, ME is also fine:....

Well all ME games were extremely linear. There was no open world. No real set of side quests. All quests were related to the main plot. I said pacing is much easier in linear games over ones with lot's of side quests. This is an apple to orange game comparison.

The perfect time in TW3 to allow the player time to side-quest was when Ciri was on Isle of Mists. If the dialogue leaned towards her being safe there for a fair period of time and that you need to gather weapons, coin etc. in addition to allies for the battle at Kaer Morhen, there is your perfect excuse to do side-content AND it be immersive. Unfortunately, this opportunity is missed.

And the whole Gwent thing breaks pacing. But that's exactly my point. You either have pacing and do without the contracts, gwent etc. or include them and lose the sense of urgency. Once again my logic in treating this as a game comes to help rescue me. I can accept it and compartmentalize it which means my enjoyment doesn't suffer.

Honestly, I love this game too but if your opinion on this is that it is perfect and no matter what anyone says they're all wrong, you're right etc.

On the contrary. You have every right not to like things. There are many things I don't like either. But it is CDPR's game. They made it. It was their vision. Having accepted this fact I'm in a much better place to enjoy what they did do and not worry about what they didn't do. And that is very key. Sort of like the old senerity prayer to accept the things we can not change.

I think a good example is the endings to ME3. People hated them. they redid them and most still hated them. I didn't like the original endings but I accepted them. My enjoyment was therefore much greater. My son was so upset it effected him for the rest of the day. I told him why let something you have no control over have that much control over you and your life.

 

[Scholdarr.452]

LMFAO. You don't get it. CDPR never agreed with me. Unless they had a time machine they couldn't. They never consulted me on what I thought either. So your comment is insane nonsense. Second, I never said I agreed with CDPR. It doesn't matter if I agree or not. It was a puzzle that they laid out for a gamer to solve.

You can go live in your world of "I'm right and they're wrong" all you want. But just like any author you didn't write the books. Do you have the right to say Rowling must change some plot point in her Harry Potter books? No you don't. You only have the right to like it or not like it. She controls it. CDPR control TW3.

There is a correct and right choice. CDPR dictated what that is and what you must do to get it. So your choice is simple.

1) Follow the rules of their game in order to get the choice you want.
2) Don't follow their rules and get the choice they dictated.

Well, basically in this short sentence you agree with me tha Witcher 3 is a really bad story-driven RPG that relies on choice&consequence. Because everything you explain here is a good formula how to NOT make an RPG. But I get the feeling you don't care at all whether Witcher 3 is an RPG and features certain stuff that usually comes with an RPG. You don't seem to care whether the game is completely linear or offers real choices. You just accept everything CDPR does by telling everybody that critique is pointless due to personal taste. That's like going to the cinema for watching an horror splatter movie that turns out to be romantic comedy and you don't caring at all with the argument "Hey, it's how the creators wanted it to be."

The point here is that people here discuss why choice&consequence for example is poorly executed in the last third of the game or almost non-existing. Other people care about that because they want to feel agency. It's what they expected from that game and what the game promised to offer. A broken or poorly delivered promised leads to disappointment, naturally. So it's not just about me "not liking the plot". It's about how the game and especially the narrative elements are constructed from a design perspective. That's neither abitrary nor fully subjective. That's not just about taste.

It's weird that you compare the game to Harry Potter here while you opposed my movie comparison so heavily in the first place? Double standards very much? And it's not even a valid comparison here because - and this time it's important - games differ from strictly narrative media in one central point: interaction. That's why a game is led by design and not by narrative (although narrative can heavily influence design). And game design is based on principles and concepts which usually translate in a (more or less simplified) genre description. (Almost) Every game can have a narrative but from a design and mechanics point of view they can be very different and that has nothing to do with whether you like the plot or not. One of these concepts is choice&consequence and the feeling of agency. One of these concepts in particular for the Witcher series is having deep and complex choices that cover a palette of grey instead of pure white or black (which means good vs bad) decisions. With the choices that are rather puzzle calculations (like you've admitted yourself) in the last third of the game they broke this concept that was marketed to the gamers as a core mechanic or feature of the game (remember the first trailer and the predecessors). In making a rather clear good vs bad ending (consequences) and the corresponding choices they erased their own highly valued complex choice and consequence concept from the game. This is one of the main points of critique I have written about here. I dislike large parts of the end of the game BECAUSE it's created like a linear game with just a puzzle attached to it instead of featuring real choices that can't be "solved" by reasoning or calculations. A choice that includes morality is never solvable like a puzzle. A good choice situation, like Witcher 3 promised to have, should feature ambiguous possibilities and options that don't feature a clear right vs wrong structure. Basically it should be following the "the lesser evil" mantra which it doesn't follow AT ALL in the last third of the game, at least not to an extend the player can control or has influence on. He just follows a linear storyline following some puzzles along the way. That might please you, ok. But it doesn't please me because that's not how the game was supposed to be and it's not how I expected it to be. So yes, I dislike that very much and I'm disappointed by that. I wouldn't have written so much about the topic if it wasn't that way. (That I don't like some aspects of the plot is a completey different point by the way that has no direct connection to neither pacing nor the issue with choices and consequences).

 

[Goodmongo]

Well, basically in this short sentence you agree with me tha Witcher 3 is a really bad story-driven RPG that relies on choice&consequence. Because everything you explain here is a good formula how to NOT make an RPG. But I get the feeling you don't care at all whether Witcher 3 is an RPG and features certain stuff that usually comes with an RPG. You don't seem to care whether the game is completely linear or offers real choices. You just accept everything CDPR does by telling everybody that critique is pointless due to personal taste. That's like going to the cinema for watching an horror splatter movie that turns out to be romantic comedy and you don't caring at all with the argument "Hey, it's how the creators wanted it to be."

Sorry you miss my point. I can care. I can hate things. What I can't do is change them. My only option is to buy or not buy their game. This is a really basic concept. I've purposely not said if I like it or not. My personal taste should not influence you and your personal taste shouldn't influence me. CDPR did not completely mislead like you horror vs romantic comedy implies. I understand you used that hyperbole to try to enhance your point.

The point here is that people here discuss why choice&consequence for example is poorly executed in the last third of the game or almost non-existing.

OK you are trying to make a statement of fact that the last third of the game had no or very few choices and consequences. That is incorrect. There are 5 choices surrounding Ciri alone that have profound consequences. This completly wrecks your assertion. You may not agree with the choice but to state there are none is inaccurate. To claim otherwise requires you to cite the number of choices in the first and second third of the game that fit your criteria. I will continue to call people out on this as it is simply not true. You're hating the choice doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I

It's weird that you compare the game to Harry Potter here while you opposed my movie comparison so heavily in the first place?

Please gain some reading comprehension. I NEVER compared the game to Harry Potter. Go reread what I wrote. Prove me wrong. I compared a person's reaction and ability to change the game to a person's ability to change Harry Potter. Please stop these fallacies of argument.