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Welcome back to The Daily Fandom’s retrospective on The Witcher Saga. Last time, Claudia O’Flaherty and Kyle Scher gave their thoughts on the much anticipated Netflix TV show, now they get back to the other successful adaptation of The Witcher Saga, CD Projekt Red’s video games. This part is on The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings.
Convening The Conclave On The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings
CLAUDIA: When we weren’t recording, we were discussing the wonderful and amazing game called Divinity: Original Sin 2. Which you stated you hated the combat for, and I was going to ask you why you hated the combat. But I thought it would be interesting to hear you talk about that and what games you like the combat in and why you think The Witcher 2 combat is better? Especially because I think Divinity is one of the best CRPG combat systems around, and while it’s definitely comparing apples and potatoes at this point because they are two different games in the genre. I will say this, at this point The Witcher has firmly planted itself in the Action RPG genre, it can no longer be considered a CRPG, even though there are some CRPG roots still present. But Divinity: Original Sin both 1 and 2 are some of my favourite games to play in terms of combat, so compare that for me.
KYLE: I mean we talked about how The Witcher 1 wasn’t really a CRPG either.
CLAUDIA: But I disagree with you, I actually think it kinda was.
KYLE: I know, but we talked about the rhythm game-esque combat system and things like that detracted from it being a CRPG.
CLAUDIA: Yeah, but a lot of the key elements of the CRPG, including the top-down navigability was still there.
KYLE: Who switches that to top-down? Yuck! You put it on over-the-shoulder camera view.
CLAUDIA: I played it in top-down. I get motion sick, the over-the-shoulder was very frustrating to me.
KYLE: Okay, so, this comes down to personal preference. Top-down, isometric, whatever you want to call it, it creates a distance between me and the character. It’s the equivalent of reading something in third person, where you are not in their head. I want to feel like I’m in my characters head. And to be basically looking down upon my character like I’m God to me creates a distance, at least on a narrative level, that I now have between me and my character. So that creates a problem for me. I can enjoy isometric games, I love Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 2 has some great moments. So, yeah that’s my major problem with the top-down perspective when comparing these two games. As far as the actual combat itself, I don’t give two shits about tactical combat, I don’t like it in D&D either. D&D for me is talking and having fun and roleplaying your character, the moment I have to start rolling dice, I start to get bored. Especially in combat heavy sessions, I will be checked out. I remember one session, I just got up and said I was going to get a pizza and to call me if anything interesting happened, because combat is the same over and over again. I was playing an archer at the time, so it was a lot of I shoot an arrow, I shoot an arrow, I shoot an arrow, over and over again, to the point I stopped caring. I’m much more into the roleplay aspect of gaming. Easily my second favourite game of all time is Life is Strange, which is predicated on only talking no combat.
CLAUDIA: Yeah, I couldn’t stand that game.
KYLE: So, The Witcher 2 has a relatively easy combat system, it’s simple and you can get through fights in a matter of seconds. Fights don’t last hours, I’m looking at you the Doctor fight in Divinity: Original Sin 2, so I don’t feel like my time is being wasted.
CLAUDIA: Okay, so, have you ever found a game where you preferred the combat over the story? Or just the gameplay over the story, is there any game for you that does that?
KYLE: When I was younger, I had a big fighting game obsession. But if you go back, all my obsession was about a character from the Tekken franchise called Nina Williams, because she was this totally cool international assassin. My focus was always character and always story. If you want something that is pure gameplay then maybe Crusader Kings 2 or Stellaris, I enjoy those games and they are pure gameplay, they don’t have stories.
CLAUDIA: So, you do like tactical games.
KYLE: Yeah, but I wouldn’t put that at the same tactical level as Divinity: Original Sin 2, very different kind of tactics.
CLAUDIA: Why? What makes one enjoyable for you and the other not?
KYLE: One is combat focused and the other is political focused. In Crusader Kings 2, a decision I made 200 years ago can come to bite me in the ass. Your son can become the Pope and then declare holy war on you or something like that. I don’t know it’s just a very different style. I play those type of games to relax, more often than not when I’m playing a game, I’m there to experience a story.
CLAUDIA: So, you are going into the games already with this mindset that what you really want is a story.
KYLE: I mean, I played MMOs for a while but that was mainly to spend time with my dad. They barely have stories; my favourite was Star Wars: The Old Republic because it had tons of story. I love Tomb Raider and depending on the era they are either story focused, or puzzle focused.
CLAUDIA: But you love it because you love Lara.
KYLE: Yeah, I love Lara. I have played every single game, all five reboots, and read the comics as well. If you couldn’t tell, I have a character type I like.
CLAUDIA: I know, I know.
KYLE: Gunpoint! That’s a game I like the gameplay of, and it’s only has an alright story. It’s an indie stealth game.
CLAUDIA: So, you do have some games where you like the gameplay as opposed to the story, which I think is important. Something that is really rough, for me anyways, is to hear all of these judgements about these games that boil down to “Even those these game offers X, Y, and Z, I was only here for X, so I didn’t care about the rest.” Does that make sense? Like, I had someone say to me that they felt like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse wouldn’t have been as good if it wasn’t so pretty. And I was like “Okay, you get that was the point?” It’s visual storytelling, it’s like saying I didn’t like the comic because there was fucking pictures in it.
KYLE: I have heard that comic comment before from someone and I just groaned.
CLAUDIA: Exactly! So, for me, going to a video game and being like “I didn’t like the game because the gamey bits distracted me from the story” is hilarious. Full fucking spoiler but I didn’t like The Witcher 2, and I’m a lot harder on it than The Witcher 1 because there are a lot of stuff in that game that are a studio making its first attempt at a game. There are things about The Witcher 1 that are enduring, because I know where that studio was at the time. With The Witcher 2, I’m like “Well, you fucked up a perfectly good story, you fucked up some perfectly good combat, and I’m out.” So, first thing I noticed about The Witcher 2 combat is that it’s much harder than the first game. You said it was very fast and easy to get through, what difficulty were you playing on?
KYLE: Normal.
CLAUDIA: Cool, I was playing on Easy and still dying half the time.
KYLE: So, I figured this out back in Witcher 1, but there is a broken build you can do. In The Witcher 3, they finally fix it, but it can be exploited in the first two games. Level up Aard as much as you can.
CLAUDIA: Oh yeah, I love Aard.
KYLE: It will stun people and give you an instant kill. No matter what their health is or what kind of enemy they are, it will give you an instant kill.
CLAUDIA: That’s good to know, because I was leaning towards that. I was relying heavily on Aard throughout the game, so it’s good to know that we came to the same conclusion. The Witcher 2 steps us pretty firmly away from the series CRPG roots, CRPGs are a little more slower paced, a little more tactical, top down, all of that stuff. The Witcher 1 had some flavour added, but it had so many things that were pulled directly from CRPGs, and that is to be expected because they were directly inspired by CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate. Meanwhile, Witcher 2 is very much an Action RPG. And the difference between an Action RPG and a CRPG can be summed up in the difference between Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Even though those are both games with characters, and parties, and magic, and combat, they perform very differently. The camera is at a different angle and the combat for an Action RPG tends to be more real time, tends to be more reaction based. If you think of it, Dark Souls was the logical evolution of that genre and maybe the pinnacle of the genre in many ways.
KYLE: I fucking hate Dark Souls.
CLAUDIA:: There are a lot of pillars of the industry in defining new and improved ways to do things, Breath of the Wild showed everyone how to do an open-world game, meanwhile Dark Souls showed everyone how to make combat hard but not unreasonably so. Dark Souls is all about learning you enemies and learning how to move around them, Witcher isn’t nearly as good or well put together in that regard. But The Witcher 2 does rely on reaction times, you getting real familiar with alchemy, getting real familiar with signs, using your skills and resources abundantly and wisely. On the one hand, I can tell it’s better than the first game, and I did enjoy that. I enjoyed that this combat system was something I could learn as I got into it and was somewhat understandable. But on the other hand, to go back to what you were talking about earlier, everything you said is perfectly valid but it’s still an opinion. Some people will say they have a hard time watching TV shows instead of reading books because they feel more connected to the characters in one way or the other. While I understand that the top-down angle can make it hard to relate to characters, really, it’s no different than being told a story versus shown a story versus a cinematic experience versus an episodic experience. These are all just different formats in which to deliver a story.
For me, I suffer from pretty extreme motion sickness when it comes to first and third-person games, so when a game allows me to fiddle with the controls or better yet change into a top-down perspective I absolutely do that every time. It’s one of the best things a game can do for me to win me over. One of the first things I noticed about The Witcher 2 was that I couldn’t move the fucking camera. I was so upset, it made me motion sick, I eventually got over it, but that isn’t a good first impression to make on a player. I definitely appreciate a cinematic camera, and I think more CRPGs would benefit from one because we are at a point technologically where we can do that, but we choose not just for the sake of nostalgia. The truth of the matter is, I play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 and those graphics were shit, and if I can relate to whatever triangles made up Bastila’s face, then you can get over an isometric camera. While I have a preference for the games I like, I try to enter every game with an open mind. In music, they know what makes you like a song isn’t whether it’s good or bad, it’s familiarity. Music has a setup and payoff pattern in it, and we get a satisfaction from it. The only way for you to enjoy the setup is if you know what the payoff is supposed to sound like. That’s why we seek out songs of similar type, so we can get that release of endorphins when the song hits that magical moment. When you enter a genre you don’t know, you end up confused because you don’t know what the setup and payoff is. While this isn’t universal, it’s useful when understanding games.
So, there is a lot of emotion and thought that goes into looking at a game, so I don’t knock it for not exactly being what I want. So, The Witcher 2 combat is not my thing at all. I can’t do reaction times and for me to find combat enjoyable I need the ability to make decisions without feeling the pressure of time. That is why I like turn-based combat and real-time with pause because growing up I sucked at shooters and I sucked at anything that required me to have a whip-fast reaction time. The Witcher 2 doesn’t provide that, so automatically the thing I look for in combat doesn’t exist. I also found the controls super fucking clunky; it has some really strange decision making going on when it comes to how it decides to play an animation and for what purpose.
KYLE: Yes, it does.
CLAUDIA: When I walk into combat and try to pull out my sword, it takes me fucking five minutes. I’m like “What is going on Geralt? You having issues there? You can’t seem to get that sword out.” I’m used to modern games that don’t force me to take a few seconds to pull out my sword. I had to start timing it so that when I came upon a group of enemies, I had pulled out my sword ahead of time because if I waited until I saw them, it would have been too late, they would have gotten a hit on me already. And some of those forest creatures can one-shot you if you are not careful.
KYLE: If you hold down W and press the left mouse button, Geralt does a running charge at the enemy.
CLAUDIA: Well, that’s good to know, it wasn’t in the tutorial.
KYLE: I thought you would have figured that out.
CLAUDIA: Like I said, this isn’t a combat system that is super familiar to me. I did figure out Aard was the way to go, but that was after experimenting because I wanted to make sure I tried everything. Overall, not super enjoyable.
KYLE: As far as the animations, I prefer The Witcher 1 because they look more like how Geralt fights in the books.
CLAUDIA: Yeah, actually that’s a really good point. And the whole style switching in Witcher 1 feels more Geralt-y.
KYLE: Witcher 2 feels like Batman: Arkham Asylum combat ported over to the Witcher.
CLAUDIA: That’s interesting, I have not played the Arkham games, so I can’t speak about that.
KYLE: Their amazing, so many nods to the comics too.
Crafting and UI in The Witcher 2
KYLE: In Witcher 1, we briefly touched on alchemy and how much you don’t like crafting systems.
CLAUDIA: I hate crafting, yeah.
KYLE: Witcher 2 takes a step forward and a step backwards as far as crafting and specifically alchemy is concerned. Do you like the new crafting system and the changes to the way potions work?
CLAUDIA: Everything felt simpler in this game to implement find and do. Was I still annoyed when they asked for a specific plant and I didn’t have it in my inventory when I had been picking plants this entire time? Yes. I was so anti-using it in the first game, even though they told me I had to, I did actually use it in this game. I found it went a lot better, I understood what it was doing better, also their UI was cleaned up so everything was more apparent.
KYLE: Oh my god, I disagree with you on everything there. The alchemy in Witcher 1 served a purpose, every potion had a use and you would use them at one time or another. The potions lasted roughly an hour each depending on the potion, some lasted a little bit less. Because they were all useful, I kept at least one of every single one with me at all times. Witcher 2 makes all potions, unless you spec into the alchemy tree, last roughly 3-5 minutes. Meaning you have to know the fight you are going into, sit down and drink the potions, otherwise they are going to run out by the time you get there.
CLAUDIA: That’s honestly probably why it worked for me. If you think about it, that’s a lot more in line with the types of games I’m used to playing.
KYLE: The infamous Kayran fight near the end of Act 1 is a good example of the potion problem.
CLAUDIA: I loved that fight. I mean, it was kind of bad, I died so much, but it was actually kind of fun.
KYLE: Geralt and Sile create a potion to counteract the Kayran’s poison and Sile tells you to drink it before you go down there. When are you supposed to drink it? By the time you get two-thirds of the way down the cliff, a cutscene starts. You are either forced to drink the potion before you are climbing down, which means you are eating into the time it lasts, and the cutscene counts towards the timer as well, or just not drink it. As a result of all of this, I hardly used potions in Witcher 2, whereas in Witcher 1, I was potion crazy. Which to me is more in line with Geralt, because he is using elixirs all the time.
CLAUDIA: I found myself using them all the time because it was easy to gather ingredients and it was clearer what they did. I had more impetus to use them, I guess.
KYLE: It was the complete reverse for me.
CLAUDIA: That’s so funny.
KYLE: The only thing I bothered crafting was oils. Because oils can be applied at any time, are incredibly useful, and they may have a short duration, but I don’t have to sit through a cutscene just to apply them like I do potions. They are really simple and really easy. I found myself using crafting far less than Witcher 1, I was only crafting oils, a couple of bombs, and the occasional potion required for a quest. The only potion I made sure to regularly keep crafted was Cat just in case I ran into a dark area, which by the way lore breaking because Geralt’s eyes are supposed to adapt automatically, but whatever. He shouldn’t have to drink a potion for that.
CLAUDIA: I feel you on that one. It’s also just a shitty game mechanic. Like, I get in D&D and you enter a place and you need a light source because you don’t have dark vision, but Jesus fucking Christ, I’m playing a video game, can my character always have a torch or something?
KYLE: Especially because Geralt has had dark vision built into his character since the first short story. Those minor lore breaks, I’m not going to quibble about even though I should. They introduce other crafting in The Witcher 2, in Witcher 1 they had very minor crafting with the meteorite swords. Which was the only way you could get an upgrade in the game because you were given one of the best swords at the beginning.
CLAUDIA: Which I don’t mind. I’m not much of a weapon person and crafting is so boring most of the time, if I get a good weapon at the beginning, I just won’t upgrade it.
KYLE: The thing is that the crafting now has to be done through a third party. You get the recipes, then you go to someone and you have to have the ingredients and the money to pay for it, and have bag space for all of it including the recipe which has weight. And that leads into the other issue that the UI in this game is atrocious. Not only is its colour pallet awful, just hurtful to the eyes, but the way you have to navigate it sucks ass, there are too many submenus. In The Witcher 1, all I had to hit was I and I had all of it easily accessible.
CLAUDIA: I hated Witcher 1’s UI, I don’t know why but my ability to navigate it was non-existent.
KYLE: The Witcher 2’s UI has a lot of issues with it, for instance, mouse speed is inconsistent from in-game and in the menus, meaning you have to deal with headache-inducing spins in-game or a sluggish mouse in the menu. Witcher 1 was a PC exclusive and they partnered with a French company, Widescreen Games, to produce a console port called The Rise of the White Wolf. That ended up being a massive financial burden on CDPR and they had to cut their losses on it. So, they went into The Witcher 2 with the mindset that they would handle the port themselves. It released on PC first, then got an Enhanced Edition which coincided with the console release. So, they started preliminary work on that port, so they designed The Witcher 2’s UI to be controller friendly. They clearly didn’t have a handle on that yet. I have played it on both mouse and keyboard as well as a controller to test it out. I prefer to play Witcher 2 with mouse and keyboard because on the controller in order to switch a sign, I have to hit a button, select the sign submenu, move up to the sign I want, then click another button to confirm.
Beyond that, the problem with the UI is that it’s so disorganized that I would regularly apply the wrong oil or rune to a sword. In addition, the fucking inventory system with crafting sucks. Everything weighs so much, and you pick up ingredients with every piece of loot. You are constantly playing inventory management, to the point that I just started picking up orens and herbs and that was it. Even though the crafting gear is better than what you can purchase, it wasn’t worth the hassle of dealing with constantly being overweight.
CLAUDIA: I’m going to be honest; I just hacked a cheat for that, I wasn’t about to play inventory management.
KYLE: Combine that with the double doors to hide loading screens, and the constant doubling back to get rid of excess items gets rather time consuming. Plus, the back ass backwards nature of having to have the ingredients, the recipe, and the money to pay someone else to craft something is just annoying.
CLAUDIA: It’s very D&D of them.
KYLE: Yeah, it’s just fucking frustrating. I don’t bother with crafting usually in most games, but if I’m roleplaying Geralt, I feel like I should be doing alchemy. He’s a Witcher, this is what he does for a living, and it just takes me out of character.
CLAUDIA: I think that was very well said.
Dialogue in The Witcher 2
CLAUDIA: Let’s talk about the dialogue. I noticed it in the later parts of the game, but people just start lecturing back and forth. This is less a mechanical observation and more of a craft observation. Like Geralt will say something to Iroveth or Philippa, who I hate, and then they say something back and it will just feel like that all the dialogue isn’t really conversation, it’s just little mini-lectures that they are saying at each other. Sometimes it feels very disconnected, the first game did this a lot too. So, I don’t know if it’s like a translation issue or something, it’s very awkward. It results in bad voice acting to be totally honest even though the vo people probably did the best with the material they were given. You can tell what they were going for with the classic Geralt monologues in the books.
KYLE: You mean Geralt is more than a grunt machine? That’s impressive.
CLAUDIA: Kyle, you and I have our differing opinions on how much Geralt should be allowed to talk. But it just came across as very odd and very stilted. I did think overall that the narrative delivery in this game was better, but for me it just felt like I had less of a say over Geralt’s character.
KYLE: Yay!
CLAUDIA: The first game was pretty bland in its overall narrative, but it allowed more freedom of choice in that regard. In this one, there was very little choice, and I was just like it doesn’t matter what decision I make, regardless of the big decision that changes everything. There was something in Geralt’s delivery and the options provided, it was obvious that this is the way it was written and I’m just here for the ride.
KYLE: Because Geralt is a preestablished character with a predefined personality.
CLAUDIA: But here’s the thing, Kyle, mechanically its bad game making practice to deceive your player into thinking they have a choice. I will be the first to admit that there are plenty of choices in this game, but there is just something off in the dialogue. I’m just trying to say I think they are struggling how to tell stories at this point.
KYLE: I didn’t really notice anything off about the dialogue, because lecturing is kind of RPG dialogue in a nutshell. Almost every RPG I have ever played does not have any conversations that feel real.
CLAUDIA: I know, but some of them feel better. I just find it more stilted than the already stilted dialogue I get out of something like Pillars of Eternity.
KYLE: I think they finally have a handle on Geralt’s voice. It’s not perfect mind you, but Geralt doesn’t feel bland anymore, Geralt feels mostly like Geralt, and he goes on his philosophical monologues and calls people out on their bullshit like he is supposed to do. When he first meets Iorveth and he’s like “You’re just another old elf in a young elf’s skin, using clever words to mask an obvious truth. This is not about race or freedom.” I’m like thank you Geralt for saying what you normally say.
CLAUDIA: Whereas to me that sounded so stupid. That sounded like an action hero line that you throw out there. What someone who is writing an action hero sounds good.
KYLE: One of my favourite lines comes also from that scene: “You’re here because someone powerful told you to be. Someone who’s using you. They may wear a crown, carry a magic wand, or even lead a guild, but be sure of this: it’s not about your freedom, your rights, or your ears. Nilfgaard ploughed you once, now someone new does.” That’s Geralt!
CLAUDIA: I know, but that’s such bad dialogue. The way it’s delivered and presented, it’s like “We get it Geralt, you are always right.” It feels like action movie dialogue.
KYLE: Geralt is not always right and I don’t know where you get this preconception.
CLAUDIA: I think it’s prevalent in the games because I think they treat him as the action hero that says the cool thing. This feels very much like the Witcher, but I think this comes down that I don’t think the Witcher world is very good sometimes. It’s very preachy and it assumes things about people that maybe I disagree with in some ways.
KYLE: I adore the Witcher world. But anyway, I don’t have any particular issue with the dialogue. For me, it’s the equivalent of hitting the Investigate button in Mass Effect. Where it is clear that this is not the direction the conversation was supposed to go and it’s just here for exposition and it doesn’t feel natural.
CLAUDIA: Yeah, that actually describes it so much better than how I was trying to describe it earlier.
KYLE: But to me, that’s every RPG. Things like Life is Strange, or The Walking Dead are RPG-ish and have more natural dialogue, but their only gameplay is dialogue.
CLAUDIA: But compare this to Dragon Age: Inquisition, while they still have some clunky lines, it’s not as clunky as The Witcher 2.
KYLE: Sure, but I don’t think it’s a translation issue, I think it’s a genre issue. For instance, Pillars of Eternity’s constant info-dumping in their dialogue. Or take Mass Effect, where you play as Commander Shepard, a highly experienced and well-traveled military officer and you still have the option to ask, “What’s the Genophage?” The Genophage is a fact of the world that has been around for decades, someone like Shepard would know what it is. Bur because the player doesn’t know what it is, we have to have Shepard ask that question. The only games that I can think of that have realistic dialogue don’t do dialogue choices. Your Uncharted’s, your Last of Us’, your Red Dead Redemption’s.
CLAUDIA: Those are literally the types of games I don’t play, so I will have to take your word for it.
Side Quests in The Witcher 2
KYLE: One of the common criticisms of The Witcher 2 is that there is a massive focus on the main story, to the point there are very few side quests. The criticism was so widespread that CDPR would later massively overcompensate in The Witcher 3. Do you agree with this assessment?
CLAUDIA: No. I love myself a game with a bazillion side quests like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but I will absolutely eat up a ten-hour RPG. I have no problem with the way this game was structured or the lack of pointless side quests. I literally couldn’t care less; any game is stronger for cutting side quests. So, disagree with that criticism, and people that level that criticism tend the be the kind of people I question what they are playing the game for. While I think you should approach games with an open mind, most of us playing story-based RPGs are here for the story, so I’m not going to cry a river because there were few side quests for me to pick up in the first town. I don’t necessarily want those, there is a story to get to. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like you have to complete a side quest to get to the main story ala Dragon Age: Inquisition.
KYLE: I agree. There are some brilliant side quests in The Witcher 2 but there is also some absolute trite. “A Sackful of Fluff” was so fucking awful. It was just get feathers, go back get more feathers and so on. And it was all a lead up to cheap joke that this guy likes to dress up as a chicken as part of his sexual kink. That is not at all in line with the world, the tone, or the game, and just there for filler and I hated every second of it.
Meanwhile, a side quest only available on Iorveth’s path “The Secrets of Loc Muinne” is one of the best side quests I have ever played in a game. It’s the one where Cynthia, Philippa’s girl toy who turns out to be a Nilfgaardian spy, takes you to find this golem. It’s just a fun quest, it can be completed with very little combat because you can talk you way around the golem, and the riddles in the riddle room change if you fuck up and have to reload. It was fun and it added depth to Cynthia, who was this side character that had a cool twist and then didn’t get much more to do before this quest. So, it has some really good side quests, but it also has some really bad ones. The monster contracts suck ass in all of the games, but here they are especially annoying. The Nekker one where you have to find the nests that blend into the environment. I have to look up a map online every time I play in order to even find them.
CLAUDIA: I find them and then can’t blow them up because I didn’t craft a bomb. I was just like “Fuck this, I’m out.” The only good side quests for me in an RPG is when they interact with the story in an interesting way or when they tie back into a character. That is why the loyalty missions are such a big deal in all the Bioware games.
KYLE: Exactly! My favourite side quest of all time becomes a main plot point in one of my favourite games, Dragon Age 2. In Act 1, there is a side quest called “The First Sacrifice” that starts out about a husband looking for his missing wife. He is a pretty shitty guy, maybe she ran away from him abusing her. You eventually find the wife’s finger and you presume she was murdered and there might be blood magic involved, it’s very much a cold case, just a side quest. Then Act 2 rolls around and that quest becomes plot-important as the killer of the man’s wife fucking murders your mother. That is god damn good storytelling, where you can miss it, you can skip it, but it becomes integral to the plot. That’s amazing. For me, the side quest has to mean something, like you said about the loyalty missions. There is a big difference between you being Hawke, an immigrant that has to do menial tasks to earn their place in Kirkwall in order to survive, in order to eat your next meal, and being the Inquisitor, the chosen of Andraste, and being told to kill some goats to get some meat just because someone wants that for dinner.
This Conclave On The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings Has been Called to Recess
Check out the next part of The Witcher Retrospective to get the rest of this Q&A between Kyle and Claudia. Topics in the next part are Triss Merigold, Narrative Choices, and Philippa Eilhart among others, so it’s sure to be a fun read.