Okay, so I feel I have now progressed far enough into TW3 to write some informative opinions on the game so far. I have just finished all of the Novigrad quests, have done all of the sidequests I've found (slightly annoyed that I found that soldier statue in Zoltan's quest loooong after Triss had left. Why couldn't the game not generate her final quest until the end of the main Novigrad quest line?!). I'm only level 20, so I'm wondering how I'm going to get that level 35 trophy, hoping Skellige isn't full of impossible fights.
First off, I've been reading through this thread off and on, certainly not all 481 pages of it. But have found the conversation interesting and have found some articles about the game that I've liked. To repost, since they've probably been lost to the mists of forum obscurity, I found this article very interesting to read: http://kotaku.com/th...er-3-1711003491
I really enjoyed one of the poster's comments, which I can get behind 
:
The Witcher 3 is a guy who has his heart in the right place and while he respects women he can’t quite shed some patriarchal instincts and behaviors. It’s like a dad who respects women and teaches his daughter to fix motorcycles and does the dishes but also can’t help trying to bully her boyfriends and tells sexist jokes with the boys at the bar.
DA:I is the over-earnest liberal arts male student who really heavily identifies as feminist, talks about appropriation and privilege and “problematic” but also can’t understand why the women in his book club won’t sleep with him and maybe has like a weird Asian fetish.
I agree with this, as Bioware can try too hard to be as socially progressive as possible, even though I still prefer playing those types of games to the gritty, grim realities of the world like TW3. I am one of those who didn't care for Dorian's personal quest as it did feel after school special to me despite Gaider's defense of it. It seems ironic that in the DA world, Tevinter is the only nation which has strong opinions on same sex relationships, so our first ever male homosexual companion is from that nation, and his personal quest revolves around his sexuality. Bioware either needs to stick with the socially progressive stance of "see? being queer and trans is cool in this world! the real world should take a note from this!" or address real world politics by having more prevalent conflict amongst minorities and the disenfranchised that we confront in the game, to have a stronger metaphor to current political and social issues.
Right now, they're cherry picking and saying everything's fine and dandy, except for Dorian whom we'll use as a soapbox for acceptance! Why couldn't Dorian be gay but his personal quest be about anything other than his sexuality, to show that gay people have more going on in their lives than who they sleep with? That would be more revolutionary to me than having the first male gay NPC but make his quest about his sexuality. And I'm saying this as a gay man. (Not that it makes my opinion better or more informed, just to provide context of where I'm coming from on this issue)
So yeah, I think TW3 does venture too deep into murder porn and juvenile wish fulfillment and humor as pertains to women, and I dislike that about the game. But at least the majority of the game doesn't focus too much on this, and sticks to one tone on its social and political issues. Life is crappy, people- especially the poor and unfortunately women- have it worse off than most. We as Geralt can be a protector of those we encounter, but our actions aren't going to change the world or advance human rights by decades. It's grim but it's realistic.
In terms of morality, I did enjoy the Bloody Baron quest, and think it's a good demonstration of grey morality without a "good" option/outcome and an "evil" one. Of course, I'm sure the developers knew what they were doing and probably wrote the most morally intricate plot toward the beginning of the game to ensure that the most number of players accessed it. I was really surprised by how graphic the story got, especially actually seeing the botchling. I never thought something like that would get past censors in the States. The story was well done in that most of our interactions were with the Baron, so we got to know him as a character the best, yet we could still sympathize with the daughter and wife. I sympathized with him, too, in that he's so pathetic and sounds like he has post traumatic stress disorder along with alcoholism. Not that any of that excuses his behavior and his family was right in fleeing him, but he is still a person with real life reasons behind his actions rather than a bored Orlesian noble who is willing to let the world burn because she's been overlooked all of her life. cough.
Of course the side quests can be compared with DAI and for the most part they are more engaging. There are the treasure hunt quests which really are just fetch quests, and the majority of the contract quests involve the exact same mechanics of Witcher sense tracking, find evidence and create a potion/bomb/oil to deal with the monster, dispatch and return for reward. Some of the contracts were more interesting than others, with a few options in how to proceed (kill the doppler or let him flee, same with the succubus) which helps to characterize Geralt as a person (merciful or mercenary?). And I liked that the contracts were really just elaborate methods of introducing us to the rarer monsters of The Witcher's world, rather than just encountering them in the field.
This is something I wish DAI had done more of; I can only think of the envy demon as a unique monster which is plot relevant, most others are just rift spawns or random monsters in the zones. I wanted more demons as threats to social order than cannon fodder. I wanted a despair demon to take over a town caught in the civil war and cause a rash of suicides due to the hopelessness of the situation (this makes me sound like a bad person) and we have to investigate to find and banish the demon. Instead, we have ranged cold attack units. I think this is the real reason we didn't have desire demons; most of the desire demons in the first two games were involved in corrupting people and causing them to follow their basest nature (kitty, the templar who wanted a family, the one in Sebastian's quest, etc.). Why couldn't Cory have placed a desire demon in Celene's court disguised as a courtier, and have it tempt Florianne into taking the spotlight as she was never permitted to do before? This would give her some realistic motivation rather than Bond villain mustache twirling, and would show the insidious dangers demons can pose.
All of this being said, I still prefer Thedas to the world of The Witcher and enjoy the characters in DA more than in TW3. DAI seems more replayable as well, due to different playable classes, companions, and the main plot quest decisions. I don't think I'll want to replay TW3 soon after I complete it. I know I'm not going to buy the DLCs and have instead been watching youtube videos of HoS. I'm more invested in the DA world and want it to continue and hope to enjoy DA4 when it comes out. But TW3 definitely succeeds far better in having a story-driven game work well in an open world, and is innovative in its occasional dual PC gameplay with Ciri.
I'll probably write more thoughts as I get further into the game. Let me know your responses and how off base I might be with some things! 
Retour en haut
It is not about console vs pc. Tis not about 30fps or 60fps, I am not against consoles although I will admit I own mainly Nintendo consoles/handhelds. Tis about value, people simply get more value out of mod heavy games TES/Fallout on PC.
