Witcher Witcher Travel Logs

[danutz_plusplus]

The same as with souls and CP2077, I want to have a thread for various discussions, as I stumble upon various topics, as I replay W1/2/3.

So, something that's been bugging me about W1 and which has reared its head during this playthrough, is in chapter 1, on the outskirts of Vizima, you go into the burial room below the Reverend's small chapel (to bury some dude who's remains I found during a side quest)
And after you do that, an apparition of the King of the Witch Hunt appears. And weirdly enough Geralt behaves and says he knows who the King is. (btw, another thing I never understood why Death is the other side of the sword of destiny? that's a theme I think I sort of remember from the books? But I must have completely forgot. anyone know what the deal is with that?)

But the main wondering I have is how come Geralt, who maintains he's lost his memory for pretty much anything, but still remembers the Wild Hunt.
Also, I don't remember, but if you answer incorrectly to his riddle, do you actually get to fight him now (instead of Leo)? Am I misremembering?
I also seem to remember you fight him during the apocalyptic vision, at the end of the game? During the great freeze, or however the apocalypse is called in witcher lore.

 

[Couchpotato]

So no offence meant but will this be happenig with more games you play?

Just curious more then anything.

Anyway the lore is inconstitent throughout all three games.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

So no offence meant but will this be happenig with more games you play?

Just curious more then anything.

Only the ones I anticipate providing interesting stuff to talk about as I get through them. The only reason I went to separate threads is to not take over the “currently playing” thread with one game.

 

[JDR13]

I like threads like this. They're good because they keep the 'What are you playing now' thread from getting cluttered with too many posts about the same game. Plus it's fun to talk about a game while you're doing a playthrough with other people playing it or who have played it.

 

[JDR13]

And after you do that, an apparition of the King of the Witch Hunt appears. And weirdly enough Geralt behaves and says he knows who the King is. (btw, another thing I never understood why Death is the other side of the sword of destiny? that's a theme I think I sort of remember from the books? But I must have completely forgot. anyone know what the deal is with that?)

Afaik, The Sword of Destiny is a metaphor, and the other side being death is Geralt's interpretation of it.

But the main wondering I have is how come Geralt, who maintains he's lost his memory for pretty much anything, but still remembers the Wild Hunt.
Also, I don't remember, but if you answer incorrectly to his riddle, do you actually get to fight him now (instead of Leo)? Am I misremembering?
I also seem to remember you fight him during the apocalyptic vision, at the end of the game? During the great freeze, or however the apocalypse is called in witcher lore.

Did he actually lose his memory to that degree though? It's been a long time since I played very far into TW1, but as I recall, Geralt also remember others like Dandelion, Shani, etc.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Did he actually lose his memory to that degree though? It's been a long time since I played very far into TW1, but as I recall, Geralt also remember others like Dandelion, Shani, etc.

He specifically didn't remember neither Shani or Zoltan Chivay. Or Triss or pretty much anyone.
That's why I assume this is probably an error.

To be honest, there's been other moments where the dialogue writing in W1 felt inconsistent with regards to the current world state.
Or there's been clear examples where the journal entries made things clearer as to what the writers intended with the plot than the dialogue writing did.

 

[JDR13]

He specifically didn't remember neither Shani or Zoltan Chivay. Or Triss or pretty much anyone.
That's why I assume this is probably an error.

I don't think it is. I think there's a reason he remembers the Wild Hunt.

There's a point in Geralt's story where Yennifer was taken by the Hunt, and, to get her back, he exchanged himself for her freedom. He then traveled with the Hunt for a time before escaping or being allowed to leave. I think that happened shortly before the events of TW1 but after Geralt had lost his memories, but I don't remember all the details. That could be why he recognizes the Hunt.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

There's a point in Geralt's story where Yennifer was taken by the Hunt, and, to get her back, he exchanged himself for her freedom. He then traveled with the Hunt for a time before escaping or being allowed to leave. I think that happened shortly before the events of TW1 but after Geralt had lost his memories, but I don't remember all the details. That could be why he recognizes the Hunt.

Yeah, that's part of the plot of the books, I think.
IIRC the books end with Geralt stabbed with a pitchfork during some revolt in Rivia. (the start of W1 practically mentions this, so I don't think it's a spoiler). And that's close to where the first game starts.

Now that we're talking about this, I realize I think Geralt forgot about Yennefer across all of W1. Or is any mention of Yennefer in W1? I thought there wasn't. Does he mention Yennefer in W2, I don't remember?
But considering he forgot Yennefer, I'm not sure why he would remember the Wild Hunt.

Interestingly, my brand new playthrough of the Witcher games motivated me to also re-read the Witcher books, alongside.
Surprisingly I don't remember a whole lot of the books.

 

[JDR13]

Now that we're talking about this, I realize I think Geralt forgot about Yennefer across all of W1. Or is any mention of Yennefer in W1? I thought there wasn't. Does he mention Yennefer in W2, I don't remember?
But considering he forgot Yennefer, I'm not sure why he would remember the Wild Hunt.

I don't remember Yennifer being mentioned by name in TW1, but I could be wrong. The event with the Wild Hunt took place after he was stabbed with the pitchfork and then revived with amnesia.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I don't remember Yennifer being mentioned by name in TW1, but I could be wrong. The event with the Wild Hunt took place after he was stabbed with the pitchfork and then revived with amnesia.

Yeah, I figured I misremembered. The books end with his "dead" and taken to Avalon, some mythical elven island or something?
Yeah, I think it's sort of coming back to me. CDPR then wrote the whole part of Geralt riding with the Hunt in exchange for Yennefer's freedom (which you find out in W3?). And then he suffers amnesia and W1 starts. Or something along those lines, iirc.
There's quite a bit of stuff going on, and at least for me, it's pretty hard to keep them in temporal order.

I just reached Vizima, and just sort of remember fragments of how huge this whole chapter is going to be.
And here I was complaining about plenty of backtracking in the outskirts of Vizima.
I think it's coming back to me about how huge W1 is, especially if you're going for a completionist run. Took me around 10h for the outskirts of Vizima.

 

[JDR13]

It's not the easiest story to follow sometimes.

I found TW2 much worse though in that way. I don't mean that the story is bad just that it's hard to keep track of events/people at times. They throw so many names at you, I was constantly Alt-Tabbing during the game to Google characters.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

It's not the easiest story to follow sometimes.

I found TW2 much worse though in that way. I don't mean that the story is bad just that it's hard to keep track of events/people at times. They throw so many names at you, I was constantly Alt-Tabbing during the game to Google characters.

Yeah, the "main story" is complicated enough, even if you don't include all the political intrigue and machinations; especially in W2.
But I loved all of that. I can't wait to get to W2.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I've gotten a very good chunk into chapter 2, in Vizima, in W1 and man it's getting tiresome. There's so much backtracking and going back and forth.
And since I'm doing quite a lot quests in parallel, alongside the big detective quest of the whole chapter, it's really messy. In the sense that I'm really losing track of who's doing what where. It's really messy.
I've also broken a few quests since the games doesn't stop you from selling items you've gathered for a quest. And I also couldn't recover those items (I went to every seller, but I guess they're just gone?)

Another weird thing is that I constantly have a feeling the game just loses track of the state of the investigation and what npc is where, and this sounds like bugs for combinations of world state that they did not account for. All this impression coming from the dialogue that NPCs say that sometimes doesn't seem congruent with the state of the quests. I think I might've gone into some weird territory.

I know one example absolutely was wrong. At a certain point I got a fisstech (the local drug) item, and then encountered Coleman, an NPC that's present in a few quests. He also sells the stuff.
Without too much regard I sold him my only item of fisstech. And then, due to a choice in chapter 1, he died at the hands of the Scoiatel.
Didn't think much about this until I reached a point in my detective quest where I was supposed to have the Vizima jailer tell me about a prisoner, and he only does this if you give him a fisstech.
I specifically remember going to him, and couldn't advance the plot since I had lost my only fisstech item. And the only seller died.
After a bit of research online it seemed you could produce fisstech by doing the formula manually, even if your Geralt don't know the actual formula.
I tried following the formula the internet was saying to use, and it failed. It just produced an "unknown oil". But wouldn't you know it, somehow, in my inventory I now had a fisstech item.
I'm 95% sure that wasn't there before.

Anyway, after this, I watched Mortismal gaming's Witcher 1 50min retrospective video, which went over all the chapters of the game. And yeah, it killed my patience for the game. Now that I remembered all that I will have to go through to finish the game, I think I'm done with it. I'll just start on Witcher 2 directly. This especially since Witcher 1 is getting remade.

I think I'm done with the original game. While it's cute and charming sometimes, and I really like some of the plot points, a lot of it really hasn't aged all that well. The backtracking is absolutely a killer. And the combat system, god damn, is it annoying. Needing to constantly time clicking at the end of the animation. And sometimes mis-clicking. And sometimes clicking on the wrong enemy. Really frustrating. It's interesting that they said they implemented this system to go away from just spamming click. Well, I'm not sure this is better.

Anyway, onto Witcher 2. A game I absolutely love, in both story and gameplay/combat. It might arguably be even better than W3 with regards to its combat system. From what I remember anyway.

 

[JDR13]

It sounds to me like you're burning yourself out. You just started day before yesterday, and you were already deep into chapter 2? Maybe try not binging to this extent, and you might start enjoying these games more. I never had any of the frustrations you describe.

I doubt it's coincidence that every game you've played lately you start out enjoying and then come back a day or two later complaining about this and that. You need to take a break or do more non-gaming things in between gaming sessions.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Yeah, I need to take it easier. I tend to get this way, and start rushing. And then I get frustrated when the rush doesn't work.
I went back into the swamp in W1 this morning, and just took it slower. I might just continue the playthrough. I'll have to see.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

At least for now I started a Witcher 2 playthrough. It also took a bit of fiddling to get it to run.
First, it doesn't even star if you're CPU has too many cores or something. But there's a workaround to make it think there's fewer, or something. So that got it running.
Then, it doesn't have ultrawide support. So Flawless Widescreen to the rescue. It now runs decently in ultrawide.
I say decently because with everything set to max, it still has pretty significant frame drops. It averages at around 70 or 80 fps. But with certain camera orientations (and probably certain amounts of content to render, I assume) it drops to even high 30s. It definitely is noticeable. I'll keep an eye out for the other areas. There's definitely something that's unoptimized.

Aside from all this, I was again surprised how dense the game is off the bat. I mean, in the first 20 min of the prologue there's constant references to what happened in W1, references to stories from the Witcher books (the Crinfrid Reavers even reference Yennefer, though by an incorrect name; but sufficiently suggestive to know that's who they mean). And even references to things that have probably happened off-screen, between W1 and W2's start.
I'm just amazed at the amount of stuff they throw at you.

I'm trying out Insane difficulty. We'll see if I abandon it. The combat though, is not as smooth as I remembered it. Maybe I have a bit of rose-tinted glasses.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Yeah, nevermind. I just found out that Insane difficulty means ironman mode. So one death and game over. Fitting end.

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, nevermind. I just found out that Insane difficulty means ironman mode. So one death and game over. Fitting end.

I've never played in that mode. Well, except when all games were like that (we usually had several lives, though).

A game where you can't have multiple saved games already stresses me, because I like to try things. But I must admit that it gives more value to the gameplay at the same time. In Elden Ring, I'm more cautious than usual, and when I do something, I try to make it count.

 

[JDR13]

At least for now I started a Witcher 2 playthrough. It also took a bit of fiddling to get it to run.
First, it doesn't even star if you're CPU has too many cores or something. But there's a workaround to make it think there's fewer, or something. So that got it running.
Then, it doesn't have ultrawide support. So Flawless Widescreen to the rescue. It now runs decently in ultrawide.
I say decently because with everything set to max, it still has pretty significant frame drops. It averages at around 70 or 80 fps. But with certain camera orientations (and probably certain amounts of content to render, I assume) it drops to even high 30s. It definitely is noticeable. I'll keep an eye out for the other areas. There's definitely something that's unoptimized.

I've seen a few others talking about those issues as well. It's a shame because the games isn't very old.. 2011 I think?

Do you have Ubersampling enabled in the options? If so, turn it off and see if that makes a difference for you. At the resolution you're running, you don't need it. All it does is blur the edges a bit, but it doubles the rendering needed from your GPU.

I'd love to see a rerelease of the first two Witcher games. They wouldn't even need to remaster them. Just tweak them to run better on current hardware and maybe bundle them together.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Do you have Ubersampling enabled in the options? If so, turn it off and see if that makes a difference for you. At the resolution you're running, you don't need it. All it does is blur the edges a bit, but it doubles the rendering needed from your GPU.

That's the first and only thing I tried myself, and indeed the framerate practically doubled and stabilized. And I really don't see much of a difference visually.