Witcher 2 Choices, consequences and sequel

This post is going be spoiler heavy so please be warned!

In one of the other thread JDR13 mentioned that the choices in Chapter 3 did not have any real consequences for the game. This got me thinking about C&C and TW3.

My memory of TW1 is bit vague now but the game had lot of C&C and most of them were pretty much self contained to that game. However I felt that your choice of Triss or Shani should have had an impact on TW2. However they choose to ignore this in TW2 and went with Triss. I think the game is better for this but it does make the whole C&C thing bit cheap. Luckily TW1 did not have many C&C that felt as though they should have some effect on TW2.

Take DA Origins, it had many C&C that felt as though they should have an impact on the expansion or the sequels but Bio ignored many of those C&C hence making them meaningless and cheap. Ignoring one or 2, I can live with but ignoring whole lot is very bad game design. If you are not going to follow them up then you should not include them to being with, IMHO.

This brings me to the C&C in TW2. Currently there are few C&Cs that feels as though they should have an effect on TW3. For example whether to kill Letho, Sila, Henslet, Sakais etc. If I killed Letho in my current play through then I don't want to see him alive in TW3!

Having said that I think TW3 will take place in Nilfgaard and many of these characters won't make an appearance at all, so they can easily get of this predicament. However it would be nice say bring back Letho in TW3 if he was alive in your TW2 as he is sort of related to Nilfgaard.

This brings me back to JDR13 point that many of your C&C in Chapter 3 did not have any consequences for TW2 and I don't think they are going to have much consequences for TW3 either.

Anyway enough of my ramblings!

lostforever said:

This brings me back to JDR13 point that many of your C&C in Chapter 3 did not have any consequences for TW2

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As I just pointed out in the other thread, I don´t think this is quite true.
Besides, I think that sometimes a mere presence of a choice, regardless of whether I´m informed about its consequence or not, is all that´s needed, roleplaying and all.
Like the one in the final encounter, for example.

lostforever said:

and I don't think they are going to have much consequences for TW3 either.

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Neither do I, because to have the consequences really substantial, The Witcher 3 would need to be a strategy game .
I do hope they´re planning to give this aspect more substance than was given to TW1 -> TW2.
Plenty of references is probably a given, but more exclusive or mutually exclusive content for imports would be a big plus and I´m certainly prepared to be more critical to the sequel if this aspect will get TW1->TW2 treatment.

Imports from TW1 felt like an afterthought, but since it wasn´t advertised as a big deal and most of TW1´s stuff was self contained anyway, nod here and there was sufficient for me, with one significant exception which would be Shani - she was an interesting and important character and her quite unique relationship with Geralt wasn´t really resolved in TW1, so this omission came off as quite a big disappointment.

I'm not sure how the mere presence of a choice equals C&C, but I guess some gamers will have different ideas about that. The bottom line is that none of the choices in Chapter 3 have much of an impact at all. At least not in TW2.

I do think I was spoiled by how much impact the Chapter 1 choice had though.
Obviously choices near the end of the story aren't going to make as much of a difference in the game, but something in the epilogue or post-ending would have been nice.

CD Projekt has a chance to do something really special in TW3 regarding consequences.

JDR13 said:

I'm not sure how the mere presence of a choice equals C&C, but I guess some gamers will have different ideas about that.

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Haha, I didn´t really mean to imply that.
I just meant that for me not every choice necessarily needs to be coupled with some further in-game consequence to be satisfying.
The opportunity to further define/nuance (or choose in accordance to) a character I´m playing may be enough.
Killing the dragon or not (at least at the end of Roche path) is such a choice, for example.