The Witcher 3's biggest flaw (TW1, TW2, and TW3 spoilers)

Despite the following flaw, TW3 is still a masterpiece and best of the series. But it has two significant, one major flaw. The less significant is the clone NPCs.

However, the biggest flaw is that the save import is absolutely lousy and does not account for your choices other than a few things. No where does it go near Mass Effect 3, which does save import so well that it can be a fault for new players. Other than three things, the game simply put, ignores your choices.

For example, Henselt is always dead in TW3, and Saskia is blamed....although in truth, Henselt will survive TW2 other than if Geralt lets Roche kill him. Saskia was also killable in TW2. So the entire political storyline in TW2 doesn't port over well at all. Iorveth sided TW2 players get doubly screwed, TW3 seems to ignore that side of TW2. Anais is ignored as well. TW1 doesn't even matter at all regarding choice because Thaler is in the game despite him being killable in the first game. And the mage purge happened anyway regardless s if you save Triss or not in Act III of TW2.

So as great as TW3 was at giving closure to the books, it wasn't a very good sequel to TW2.

Only things that mattered were the survival of Aryan LaValette (which his mother doesn't go with you to the horse races if he was killed), Sile (who dies anyway) and Letho (bonus mission and Kaer Morhen help).

CDProjeckt RED should have put more effort on save import, and the consequences of your decisions.

The combat bothers me more than any of that other shit.

Combat was pretty good.

Meh, it's not a story sequel to The Witcher 2.

The Witcher 3 is it's own separate story. It just so happens to make references to the last game. Having in-depth save import would be somewhat pointless.

Not pointless.

Its an immersion breaker.

Its one of the few areas where DAI beats TW3. DAI did not use this excuse.

No one was biting in the other thread so you decided to make your own?

None of that bothers me. I loved Witcher 3 but my biggest gripe was all that pointless filler content. I had enough of that crap in DAI. All those 'points of interest' really do people need that shit to feel rewarded for exploration?

It's actually more an element of modern RPG design that's to blame but I kind of hoped CDPR were above having to appease the 'must have something to kill every time I move' kids. Still loved the game though.

Meh

texasgoldrush thread

Worth about this much in terms of effort.

since when was I in another thread with this complaint?

Actually he makes a valid point.. That is a huge flaw.

Didn't bother to read your OP but you seemed to be trying quite hard to bait people in another thread.

And I care how? And really I never did.

@blueinheaven: yup, it killed DAI for me. Offline mmos I call them and when I see a thousand fetch quests I just turn the game off.

@jg4xchamp: There you go. If your combat is less interesting than in Fable, you have to know you're doing something wrong. Ditto for exploration which is also a lot more boring and geometrically limited than Fable 2. Moreover most quests require you to help somebody with something that is awfully close to them a'la Far Cry 4. And maybe most importantly the world seems a product of artificial concoction, and is awfully reminiscent of Assassins Creed in the way after some time everything's predictable when you have encountered all event types. There's no sense of awe after some time. Oh and giving you shitty amount of XP for side quests also doesn't help.

Giving you insane amounts of exp for main quests was much more of a problem for me. I massively outlevelled everything before I even got to Skellige.

Sure you didn't, sure you didn't...

Wild Hunt's story manages to hold well on its own. It helps to have knowledge of the past two games but it's not a requirement to enjoy the plot it provides. So in short, it doesn't bother me much.

Also this. Witcher 3 is a very good game. Hell, I could even call it a great game. But the combat is a black mark on the overall package, from the weightless mechanics to the braindead enemy AI.

TLDR, still better than Mass Effect 3

Some ways , yeah....some ways no.

all ways, yes. no choose your favorite color endings

Yeah, I agree with you. It feels kind of dumb. Really wished the choices played in the Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 had a bigger impact in the Witcher 3's story.

The choices made in those games had little to no significance at all. It is a shame.

which was fixed in the extended cut. But I guess you live under a rock.

Not only that, certain storylines, such as Anais, were not even continued.

No Iorveth appearance either. At least Shani for TW1 is coming.

CDPR most likely were more interested in designing the game for new players and the new consoles.

The only players that are able to import saves are the PC gamers that played W1 and W2.

adding concept art isn't fixing a horrible ending.

The import isn't great, but I haven't encountered anything especially egregious like in TW2 when I was attacked by a Knight of the Flaming Rose saying I killed my bro Siegfried (I didn't) because I took the Neutral path in 1.

Some people really shouldn't be allowed to make threads.

That was egregious as well.

Siegfried is only always killable if you side with the Scoia'tel.

Which is a fault and unfair for series vets. It is one of the most criticized things on the Witcher forums other than bugs.

They could have at least have done a Dragon Age Keep like thing like Bioware did, despite the fact that DAI was a separate story.

DA:I didn't even let me import the previous save and instead expected me to remember every single minute detail about a game I played five years ago to input it all in manually. I'll take TW3's version over that any day.

I guess I played TW1 and 2 the correct way then

TW1 - Thaler survived and I saved Ada, who married Radovid The Mad

TW2 - Sided with Roach, killed Henselt (and Detmold - happily), Rescued Anais (who was then taken into Radovid's care) instead of Triss, Didn't kill Letho because he saved Triss and let Saesenthessis survive after getting skewered.

Do I win anything?

My biggest gripe was how easy the game got once you level up to 20 or something. And there wasn't really a huge variety of monsters. And that exploration was only worth it for the vistas, if you want to gain XP then main quests give you tons of XP....for just watching a two minute cutscene.

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Not really....Dragon Age Keep has a simpler mode where you would only make the important decisions.

And you could import your saves to DA Keep.

Meaning I would lose the rest anyway. I just went through the full tapestry and put in everything I remembered, which is probably a better option.

And no, it only imports the Warden. (Don't know about DA2. Didn't like the way the demo worked, so I skipped that.) As in the Warden's name, face, and character background. You need to enter in the choices yourself manually, and that's a horrible way to handle it.

It handles DA2 as well.

The Warden is only mentioned in DAI, he or she is not in DAI, so his info is meaningless. Hawke is in DAI however.

ME3 had pretty good combat. But apart from that TW3 was much better.

No, I have picked up some very good equipment and diagrams while exploring. The game still has good challenge after Level 20, especially on Death March.

And it really only gets easier because you are learning the game, not because of real backwards difficulty curve.

Better save import, ME3 runs on save import. Its the star of the show, while TW3 drops the ball.

The story also has better pacing than TW3 as ME3 had the best pace for a Mass Effect game overall, while TW3 hangs in Act I too long. Excellent side quests and good characters keeps TW3 from getting boring in Act I.

They are all better than mass effect or dragon age.

especially the writing.

I know it handles DA2. I mean it doesn't let you import saves as you claimed. And the Warden's info maybe meaningless, but that's the only part it actually automatically imports. All choices need to be manually entered.

And as for Mass Effect 3, the save import feature was a disaster at launch, especially for those of us who started way back at ME1. And that was never really fixed. My custom ME1 female Shepard still looks like a flat faced clown when imported, needing a fan-made fix to make her look human. Never once got a solution for my default ME2 "Jane" Shepard. And several choices were fucked up on import that Bioware never fixed, for example Shepard not remembering seeing Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker.

At least The Witcher 3's save import works as intended, even if barebones.

It imported my save from my 360 versions of DAO and DA2 to a PC version of DAI.

What choices? In my game, not only did Shepard remember seeing Liara as the Broker, Feron would not be alive if you didn't do the DLC. Some flags are bugged, like Conrad Verner, but that was a ME1 bug.

And no TW3's save import does not work as intended. Hell, Roche doesn't even mention really, that you sided with Iorveth in TW2. Iorveth isn't even in the game.

Now lets talk about plot threads that were abandoned: The fate of Saskia, whether not she is freed or not from Phillipa's spell, the whole Anais story, no mention of Triss helping Iorveth heal if you rescue her instead of helping him free Saskia (basically the whole Iorveth side of TW2 was forgotten). TW3 is a great first class standalone game, but its a pretty bad sequel. It downright abandons plotlines coming out of TW2.

No, it's not possible. It only imports Warden and Hawke, not plot decisions. You will simply get a default world state if you don't manually pick your choices. This is how the Keep is made. If you thought having your Warden and Hawke show up in the Keep meant you got your choices imported, then you just played with a default world state.

As for Liara, I mean when they first meet in ME3. Unless you manually edit the save file, which I did to test the difference, Liara won't at that moment remember that you two met recently. Because that flag is not set correctly. (Unless Bioware fixed this recently.) Conrad Verner was an ME1 bug, but they actually "fixed" that in ME3 by having him make excuses for getting mad at Shepard in ME2, but that's a different matter entirely.

And when I say TW3's import works as intended, I mean just that. As intended. Iorveth not being in the game or the Iorveth path of TW2 being pretty much forgotten is not a bug, or something unintentional. That's just what they chose to do with the story. My point is, they at least did the importing part correctly for the little they choose to import. There are no missing plot flags or telling the player to remember choices made years ago. Bioware, on the other hand, tried to do a lot, but didn't do many of it properly.

You must be a devil with the ladies.

Wrong. You cannot possibly have a default world state if you import your Warden and Hawke, because they too, have a default setting. Warden is a female Dalish Elf that died in the end and Hawke is a male mage who sided with the mages while Carver became a Templar. The DAI default is a female human rogue who allied with the mages and had Cassandra be divine It must be something on your end because I was able to port all my major choices and change them if I wanted to.

Yet, its insignificant, because Shepard would have meet Liara recently regardless of the Shadow Broker mission or not. Liara gives you Thane and Samara's whereabouts in ME2. She is one of the four main hub NPCs in ME2. So whatever you are even saying is trivial. The game does recognize that you did the Shadow Broker DLC, simple as that. Feron will not be alive without doing it and the conversation with Glyph will be different.

And that's why CD Project still lags far behind to Bioware when it comes to save import. Lets ignore choices from the previous games and their outcomes. So it basically ignores what went on in TW2. This is why the Mass Effect trilogy is a better trilogy than the Witcher game trilogy.

The fact is you cannot call something that performs well with a few hiccups inferior to a system that was half-assed that worked "as intended".

By default world state, I obviously mean the rest of it.

For example, my Warden was a human mage, and that character's name, appearance and background imported fine. But if I didn't manually pick the choices, he would have been dead without romancing anyone, as opposed to alive and romanced Leliana which was how it was in my save. And of course, not just those, but everything that happened in Origins. It's not just me who has had to do all this manually. This is my biggest gripe with Inquisition. I will never have a proper import because I can't remember every choice I made in a game I played like five years ago.

Luckily, Mass Effect wasn't this bad. But what you consider trivial isn't always trivial to everyone. For one, my female Shepard's appearance sure as hell wasn't trivial to me. Even after over three years, that face still can't be imported properly without third party tools.

This is why I say Witcher 3 worked as intended. You can say the amount of choices they picked for the story is inferior, but at least every single choice they decided to carry over worked fine.

I love the combat. It's very strategic, which is probably helped by the fact i'm playing the game on hard.

Meh I don't think the story is that bad granted I didn't play the Witcher 1 or 2. I would say the combat is it's biggest flaw and I can even get past that. I feel that the Witcher 3 is one of the best made complete games in the last 5 years. I mean it is rare that I play a game that I want to actually want to do the side quests and contract quest. So yeah the game is really fun.

The combat and menu/inventory navigation are it's biggest weak points

Yup, gotta use your brain or you will be killed.