The Witcher -- violence, sex, and alchemy as part of your daily balanced breakfast

I think I did everything except the question marks in the middle of the ocean in Skellige. Everyone recommends skipping those and I'm inclined to agree.

this can help you figure out which points of interest are worth pursuing (ie which aren't just smuggler's caches): https://witcher3map.com/

I'm a pathological completist so I even did those. :/

Eek. At some point near hour 120 I stopped caring about the ?s. I am 50% of the way through Touissaint, which I love, but I am pretty sure I'm not going to finish the dumb vampire story.

I've started to resign myself to the idea that my Witcher fever has passed and I'm not going to finish. I was going strong up until the pandemic--playing a few hours after work every day, seeing when I could squeeze in a few more on weekends--but it's been about three months since I've picked it up.

It's not because I got tired of the game, really--I'm near the end of the main plot, took a detour for the Heart of Stone content--but a combination of pandemic listlessness and moving in with my girlfriend took me away from regular playing, and it lost that urgency/compulsion to play it. I suppose it's like exercising or learning an instrument: once you break a regular routine/habit, it gets harder to jump back in.

I feel vaguely guilty not finishing after all the time I've invested playing and modding it. This seems to be a pattern: I think I want this big open world games like Red Dead Redemption (never finished either), though because I'm enamored with the idea of being immersed in months of game play, and I become obsessed for a good stretch, then it just tails off.

Toussaint story was my favourite of the whole thing. It really escalates and it's enormous fun by the end. I really didn't like the knight trials though. I'm not looking forward to going back and doing all those frustrating horse racing quests which I'm TERRIBLE at

Playing W3 again, this time modded to the gills. I don’t care for graphical overhauls, but I installed a bunch of quality-of-life mods that do things like turn off weapon degradation, give practically infinite carrying weight capacity, auto-loot every container within like 10 meters radius, fast travel from anywhere, and keep Witcher senses on all the time without fisheye lens effect, audio muffling, or the inability to run and jump. It’s really great! The game just flies by in a fraction of the time without any of the annoying time wasting aspects—just story, scenery, and fighting.

The auto-looting is key; I never realized how much I hated humping every corner of every shack to get every broken rake. Now I just poke my nose in the door and it all flies directly into my inventory. It’s also great for “discovering” secret chests under bridges and stuff. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the “thrill” of finding a chest behind a bush during my first play through, but this time I’m content to grab the loot and go.

I've been meaning to replay this again once I'm finally done with Bloodborne and do it on the hardest setting. Might even give Gwent a go this time. It's such a great game. Possibly the greatest game of all time. Just wondering whether to start fresh or do NG+

I originally intended to do NG+, but didn’t realize that the enemies all scale up with you, to the extent that they’re harder than they ever were the first time through, so you start the game getting your ass kicked by wolves and such. Other systems are similarly affected (eg you get to keep all your weapons and armor from before but they will quickly need to be replaced by new high level items in ng+). A “new challenge” isn’t the experience I was looking for, so I started a fresh game and am very happy.

And yeah, after initially ignoring it I became a Gwent fanatic 2/3 of the way through my original play, so this time I’m keen to not miss any cards. I’m definitely skipping the “instantly win every gwent game” mod.

Free next gen update/upgrade arrives tonight.

Comes with full cross save too, so while I'm looking forward to playing the PS5 version I might actually end up getting more use out of being able to transfer my PS4 progress to PC.

It looks like it's not actually tonight though? Midnight Wednesday: https://www.thewitcher.com/en/news/46916/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-next-gen-update-global-release-timings

My bad, you're right, the 14th.

Also got a feeling it's going to be one of those cross save situations which requires you to a) reinstall the ps4 version, b) update the ps4 version, c) go into the ps4 game and upload your save file to the cloud, d) exit and delete the ps4 version, e) install the new ps5 version, f) launch the ps5 version and then download your save file from the cloud within the game.

it'll all be worth it when you get to have PS5 sex

I read that they credited and paid people for the fan mods they chose to implement in the final product, that's pretty cool. As is, frankly, the fact that this is a free upgrade.

i forgot, have you played it before josh? and/or are you planning to get the ps5 version?

I have not! I bought it on sale years ago for ... $5? Something like that. So I will be playing it for the first time on the PS5, probably late winter/spring after I clear out a couple of other games that take only a mere 30 or 50 or 70 hours each, lol.

Still haven't started this, because of the aforementioned, but also because they keep patching it. In fact, I just saw this morning that a new patch is imminent ... and maybe 20GB. That seems huge to me.

CD Red Projekt really haven't done themselves any favours over the last few years have they?

they've made one of the greatest RPGs of all time and sometimes it has some comical issues, i don't think they should beat themselves up too much

The next gen upgrade was free, so there's nothing really to complain about. Though iirc people *were* complaining that the next gen upgrade sometimes made the game run *worse* so, yeah, maybe there is something to complain about.