Neat. Guessing that particular nugget is dropped in the Roche path, in that case. I need to get around to doing that, but honestly I'm not sure I can go back to play TW2.
I just finished it the other day. The non-dumbed down politics was nice. Though I played on easy just to rush through it.
I was actually hoping we were all abiding by an unspoken agreement not to even acknowledge that one.
Mea culpa.
That quest was indeed very well done and I was really angry after I saw what happened to her. I had a strong personal interest in finding the person responsible for it. I agree with you that a codex entry or just being told about it wouldn't have anywhere the same emotional impact.
I just finished it the other day. The non-dumbed down politics was nice. Though I played on easy just to rush through it.
I really enjoyed the politicking in Iorveth's path. I hope he and Saskia make a return. Seems promising from that tweet a few days ago.
I have a save from the end of chapter 1, pre divergence, so I guess I could just go back and start with that one. Man, if chapter 2 isn't really, really long though.
I really enjoyed the politicking in Iorveth's path. I hope he and Saskia make a return. Seems promising from that tweet a few days ago.
I'm not sure. They are on the other side of the continent, and the two expansions we know about are in Oxenfurt and Touissant, so I'm not really sure where they could fit in. It think that tweet could just be there to stop us wondering for eternity what happened to them. 
Maybe a dlc to explain how Aedirn fell so easily even having a dragon leading them? 
Well, you could learn the difference between a joke and a trite, hackneyed "herp derp Bioware EssJayDubyas lol" post fishing for likes from similarly thoughtless posters. If it betrayed a single original thought, it might be funny. But I don't think he needs you jumping to his defense, and I assure you, I am not impinging on anyone's hallowed, Canadian constitutionally protected right to free speech on a video game forum.
I'm not sure. They are on the other side of the continent, and the two expansions we know about are in Oxenfurt and Touissant, so I'm not really sure where they could fit in. It think that tweet could just be there to stop us wondering for eternity what happened to them.
Maybe a dlc to explain how Aedirn fell so easily even having a dragon leading them?
PS I am not Canadian, I do not care the slightest for the constitution.
Well, that was also a joke.
I come from Northern Ireland and the portrayal of the squirrels really reminds me of the IRA. You have people that call them terrorists, murderers, freedom fighters and just plain old dipshits. Young people that are encouraged and then sold out by their elders. 'Humans to the sea!' is a lot like 'Brits go home!' etc etc.
In witcher's world dragon could be easily taken down with a sheep filled with posions you know.
Yeah, but then another most beautiful dragon will come to the rescue...
Yeah, but then another most beautiful dragon will come to the rescue...
And two beautiful Zarrkenian female warriors!
Yes, waiting on a Zerrikannian army lead by Villentretenmerth to save Aedirn in a charge of the Rohirrim fashion.
Behind all facades of fantasy, magic, political and war etc. TW3 tells a surprisingly humane story. Interactions between Geralt and the world is established through emotion not simple codex texts. As for Folrain's tragedy exemplifies the gravity of LGBT issues in medieval time. It brings devastating consequences to not only both lovers but their family with absolutely no social toraence ( which is still a fact in some modern society).
Yup. In Utrecht, where I lived and studied, there's a memorial stone to the 'sodomy trials' (https://en.wikipedia...t_sodomy_trials) of the 1730's. 18 men were condemned to death and strangled in public. In that respect, TW3 absolutely reflected high - late medieval and early modern European attitudes.
But I get it why Bio chose to depict a more modern and positive attitude in Thedas; CDPR went the 'show the brutal repression' route, while Bio took the 'show the desired level of acceptance and normalcy' route. I think both are legitimate ways to go about it, although the latter is of course a lot 'cleaner' than the former.
Interestingly, Two Worlds II, another Polish cRPG of some years back, did things the same way as TW3. In that game, there's a charismatic rebel leader (one of the good guys) who gives the player character a quest to find, and if necessarily eliminate, a suspected deserter. It turns out the 'deserter' was the homosexual lover of the rebel leader and the latter was afraid that he was going to betray him (and their relationship). Homosexuality was clearly viewed negatively in the quasi-medieval world of Two Worlds II.
The best solution to the quest is talking with the 'deserter' and sparing his life; turns out he needed some time for himself to figure things out . When you go back to the rebel leader, he's glad that you spared his lover's life and gives you a better reward than he would have done if you killed him.
Poland is, by European standards, a pretty conservative country (thanks to the influence of the Roman Catholic church), so this was a pretty progressive thing to do.
The original Dragon Age, the one that got most of us hooked on this franchise to begin with, was plenty gritty and grim. Not as much so as The Witcher, but it certainly wasn't all sunshine and daisies, which is what DA:I is closer to.
The great cast of characters and all the interesting interactions are wonderful, don't get me wrong. But they do not a game make. The story is far more important, and the original Dragon Age's story was pretty danged grim.
And it had plenty of bright golden outcomes that the witcher wouldn't have (like Conner, The Mages, The werewolves). The grimness wasn't all encompassing there was a balancing act. Hell it wasn't even that much in comparison. Even the Warden blight suffering has the PC searching for a cure and still around 10+ years later despite that their calling should've been speed up by the blight if anything. Loghain's calling still hadn't happened by DAI, The landsmeet actually gives the time of day to a non human, you arrive in time to stop your father from being sold as a CE so on. Sten would respect a female mage and call her Kadan. This is from a race who'd most likely kill her on sight otherwise. DA2 went too far in the grim direction and DAI went too far in the bright direction (but that's mostly because Cory was incompetent. But DAO wasn't some haven of grimdarkness. It also helped that in DAO we started from a position of weakness (unless human noble in which case you quickly lost it) and had to rebuild ourselves up. in DA2 you pretty much do the same except you keep getting kicked down at the worst moments. In DAI you start off in a position of power (even at the beginning of the game the Inquisition has power) and go up from there. There's a setback at Haven but you keep your upward climb. It also helped that in DAO we were stuck playing a warden who's lives are pretty much uniformly going to be pretty grim what with the nightmares and spending their whole lives fighting abominations.
Also there was a civil war going on there too that was relegated again mostly to background noise (and that terrible side quest where you see the small two sides fight). But that DAO gets a pass for that because?
And for me they do. BW's stories are often forgettable unless they have something to do with the companions (and of course the OMG twist). Otherwise it's very generic fanfare. The only thing that made it good for me was the excellent cast of characters. DAO without it's companions for me would be horrible and not worth a replay.
What I am saying is I never use combat difficulty as a measurement of 'darkness'. In most games I play, I usually end up as this unstoppable machine of destruction. In DAO I rip through enemies, in DAI I rip through enemies. Thus I use 'atmosphere' as a measurement.
DAO has a grim atmosphere. DAI does not. Therefore to me one feels darker than the other. Atmosphere and ambient is important to me. Bioshock for example is known for its great atmosphere, just standing in Rapture gives you a dark and grim feeling. I am speaking of that sort of 'feeling'.
And what I am saying is that it's not about combat diffiulty. It's about the actual threat to you. Horror games - horror movies - are about a lack of power.
See, Bioshock is a great example. Because I don't think it's a "dark" game, unless you talk about the lighting. I get that we'll absolutely never agree over this, but to me horror has nothing to do with how seemingly grimdark the setting is visually, because when I crush skulls as if they're made out of paper mache, there's nothing "scary" or off-putting about the whole affair.
DA:O isn't grim. It's just got body horror that doesn't affect me, poverty that's absolutely got nothing to do with me (apart from the origins), and death of people that (again, apart from the origins) I've rarely had a chance to connect with or engage. None of that makes be bat much of an eye.
One of the differences between CDPR and BioWare is that virtually all of CDPR’s devs (even the non-Polish ones from, say, Germany, the Netherlands or France) are from countries where war and occupation are still within living memory. It’s a subject that is also given a fair amount of attention at school, in the form of monuments, commemorations etc.
Canada’s last invasion was in 1812 (even though some Bio employees do come from countries that have had recent experience with war).
Poland was one of the countries that was hardest hit; even my own country (the Netherlands), which got off rather lightly, there are lots of little stories. My own father was sent to the countryside by my grandparents during the wartime famine (the ‘Hongerwinter’ or ‘’Hunger Winter’) of 1945. Other kids weren’t so lucky.
Multiply this kind of suffering 10 times and you’ve got Poland and the western Soviet Union during WW2. I’ve run into references to cannibalism in besieged Leningrad; let’s just say you didn’t want to be an orphaned kid who had to fend for him- / herself in that city in 1942-3. I wouldn’t be surprised if the presence of cannibals in Velen was inspired by those stories (perhaps in addition to other cases of cannibalism during extreme wartime conditions).
I think this kind of thing matters - Bio's devs do know (broadly) what war entails, but it's much more of a remote thing to (the overwhelming majority of) them. For Europeans (in particular mainland Europeans and strongest in the east) it's much closer in time and space (...Former Yugoslavia...Ukraine...). CDPR wanted to do the impact of war, as their devs and a large part of their audience understood it, some justice, so they did...
That's not really capturing Eastern Europe completely (or really even at all), and unless the developers are in their 60s+ they're not really 'remembering' any actual war. It's not about war. It's also about the society. TW3 involves a great deal of cynicism targeted at people in power. Corruption. Brutality. Exploitation.
Also, most of the lore originated with David, and contrary to what some people think, has been pretty consistent all told. That said, I do think it's in good hands with Weekes.
Most of the lore was ripped off from generic fantasy and Robert Jordan tbh. Gaider gets too much credit.
Most of the lore was ripped off from generic fantasy and Robert Jordan tbh. Gaider gets too much credit.
Most of the lore was ripped off from generic fantasy and Robert Jordan tbh. Gaider gets too much credit.
There are no new ideas.
I just appreciate their spin on it, though. All told, I think it's my favorite fantasy setting, bar none. Though I will readily agree that it's oftentimes been hampered by the uneven (and occasionally downright lackluster) execution of the games.
Whereas my continual impression of TW universe is that it's pretty humdrum. A lot of strong characters and great writing on CDPR's part, but I feel that the source material is uplifted by, again, a near goddamn perfect presentation in TW3. Which is not intended as a huge criticism (Mass Effect is a generic, ho-hum scenario that remains my favorite Bioware game and one of my all time favorite games, full stop, simply because I think the setting, story, and world design are so well presented). After scanning a few synopses, though, I don't think I'd read the books if you paid me.
This is, of course, my opinion, but given that I've spent somewhere close to 170 hours playing Witcher games over the past couple of months (seriously, excepting a break for Descent last week, this is all I've been playing since May), I think it's fairly well-informed. And I've happily walked back some of the meaner things I've said about the series and Geralt in the past. TW3 really is a triumph.
I didn't care for the entire scenario, even down to the calling bit. I can agree that it's reasonable that people would be that desperate to do something but there had to have been some clue that this just seemed too convenient of a solution.
But other people did enjoy it so too bad for me.
I liked the Grey Wardens ever since DAO. A quest event that made them look like desperate fools was bound to make me disappointed.
It wasn't just the Wardens that are made to look pathetic though. Pretty much every faction makes idiotic decisions in DAI. If you're a backer of any specific group, they trolled you hard.
I don't think the approach is that different. There are certain things you just can't show. The difference is that bioware and CDP define this boundary different and they choose slightly different approaches how to tell the player that it still exists. Bioware chose the codex entries while a lot of the really heavy stuff in Witcher 3 is told via npc conversations.
Most people probably haven't seen it, but there is some really disturbing stuff in Velen, especially whenever the Baron's men are involved.
I couldn't find a youtube video of it so I wrote one conversation down
if you are overly sensitive don't click on the spoiler tag:
Spoiler
Another one was a father telling his daughter that she has to hide in the woods before the Baron's men arrive. As the quest progressed and the baron's men arrived you can see the father talking to one of them
Spoiler
There is also a (easily missable) quest in Crow's Perch later,
Spoiler
These are just some examples, but if you listen to the npcs in Velen there is a lot of grim stuff Bioware wouldn't even tell in codex entries.
Yeah but bioware didn't show ANYTHING. It's war with out refugees, a demon invasion without anybody being affected, there's not battlefields, there's no large scale battles on screen (not even the decisive victory against corypheus, which occurs off screen and the advisors just tell you about it).
No, we get big empty maps, enemies to fight, npcs with nothing of value to say and quests that don't matter and have no incentive to replay. The side quests have no stories.
In the witcher you can ride though battlefields after a major conflict, it's sad, it's emotional... bioware offers nothing like that, the war might as well be in another land. They did a damned shoddy job of making the plot feel the least bit serious.
So he should not make a joke, because it could offend someone, and can be considered tasteless?
That is the bioware thought process.
Behind all facades of fantasy, magic, political and war etc. TW3 tells a surprisingly humane story. Interactions between Geralt and the world is established through emotion not simple codex texts. As for Folrain's tragedy exemplifies the gravity of LGBT issues in medieval time. It brings devastating consequences to not only both lovers but their family with absolutely no social toraence ( which is still a fact in some modern society).
See, this is what the witcher provides, that origins had, and dai gave up. They don't steer clear of the sad and unfortunate truths in life, they take them on and portray them in a manner that makes you think... that quest made me kind of sad. It reminded me of being an elf in the alienage in the city elf origin, elves face a lot of racism and it was told well, bioware used a fantasy setting to put the player in a position of being downtrodden and taking revenge.
DAI doesn't do that, boware used to be okay with tackling something head on, but honestly DAI's approach was to skirt the issue of racism entirely and make everyone bisexual... hell, Celene roasted an entire alienage. My elf inquisitor could not have had less to say about it.
There are no new ideas.
I just appreciate their spin on it, though. All told, I think it's my favorite fantasy setting, bar none. Though I will readily agree that it's oftentimes been hampered by the uneven (and occasionally downright lackluster) execution of the games.
Whereas my continual impression of TW universe is that it's pretty humdrum. A lot of strong characters and great writing on CDPR's part, but I feel that the source material is uplifted by, again, a near goddamn perfect presentation in TW3. Which is not intended as a huge criticism (Mass Effect is a generic, ho-hum scenario that remains my favorite Bioware game and one of my all time favorite games, full stop, simply because I think the setting, story, and world design are so well presented). After scanning a few synopses, though, I don't think I'd read the books if you paid me.
This is, of course, my opinion, but given that I've spent somewhere close to 170 hours playing Witcher games over the past couple of months (seriously, excepting a break for Descent last week, this is all I've been playing since May), I think it's fairly well-informed. And I've happily walked back some of the meaner things I've said about the series and Geralt in the past. TW3 really is a triumph.
I've been playing since May).
DA is your run of the mill DnD setting with a little of the latest epic fantasy hits (A Song of Ice & Fire and The Wheel of Time) thrown in for good measure. But then ME is just a collage of popular science fiction so...
Yeah there are no original takes on anything any more. There hasn't been for hundreds of years. All stories can be traced back to something. They can still be fresh and interesting for what they deliver. A simple plot that is well executed can still be better than something is supposed to "make" you think. I often find that Bioware has very simple plots, but they tend to flesh out the world alot and then just polish all the little details, and at their best we get games like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2.
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