Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2 Ep175: The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt
71 Plays4 years ago
Dedicated to Mel and Gennaro. We're all hyped for your co-op playthrough!
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about the Witcher 3, Jake forgets the difference between CDPR, CPR, and Cyberpunk, and Dave regales us with tales of his storied past in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about the Witcher 3, Jake forgets the difference between CDPR, CPR, and Cyberpunk, and Dave regales us with tales of his storied past in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Casual Banter
00:00:16
Speaker
We are the people of the world. We are the people of the world. We are the people of the world. We are the people of the world.
00:00:41
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave?
00:00:48
Speaker
That's going pretty well. I was actually, I had a prepped answer of bad, but then the heating pad and my back came to some type of mutual agreement a little bit ago, so I think we're okay. That's good. Yeah, my, where I thought that was going was like I had the prepped answer of bad and then I panicked and just said like, that was going good. But I want people to think I'm okay.
00:01:14
Speaker
How about you? Put the masquerade of emotion. I'm doing pretty well. First day off from my PTO, which is going for like a week and a half or so at this point. Oh, hey, nice. I'm looking forward to catch up on some games, some media, figure out who this...
Media Catch-Up Plans and Spoiler Etiquette
00:01:33
Speaker
What is it? Maybe I'll check out Invincible. I think that show was called. Yeah, that's... I think it's on Amazon. I feel like probably.
00:01:43
Speaker
There was some other stuff, if it is Amazon, that I need to catch up on, that people have said was exclusively on Amazon. I mean, I enjoyed watching it. Yeah. I mean, I literally know just the one thing that turned into a meme. Yes. Which unfortunately is also like very plot heavy. It really is. But that's the one that made it. I'm glad that I watched the show before the memes started coming up. So I was like, oh, I can appreciate it.
00:02:10
Speaker
that spoiled something probably important. And then you go watch the show, you're like, I don't know where that comes up. But yeah, I don't know if some just catch up on some of that. It's impossible for me to always avoid spoilers because I usually watch shows like three years after everyone else does. So much so that people are like. I thought everyone has seen the show and I'm fairly confident that I explicitly recommended it to you years ago, but
00:02:41
Speaker
What's the threshold on that? Do you think for spoilers like that or should you always ask? I don't know. I mean, probably give it like a year or two years. It depends on whether it's like a big TV show or like. I recommended this anime, right? Because if it's like so, for example, like Game of Thrones, right? Like it would have been kind of douchey to spoil anything. Within the last season, which eventually was spread out across the years, right? So.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think within let's say half a year after Game of Thrones, you can maybe say benefit of the doubt. People might still be trying to check it out. Maybe don't talk about it just out of the blue.
00:03:25
Speaker
You could say, like, it sucked, but then don't go into specifically why it sucked or feel like, oh, we haven't seen it yet. OK, cool. But for Game of Thrones as a whole, at this point, I can talk about any goddamn thing, please. You should know by now, or you don't care because you haven't checked it out.
00:03:42
Speaker
generations have risen and fallen since the last major book was released for Game of Thrones. It's been like 200 years. I think we're good at that point, but I will say anime is a little more niche because you could have something on your backlog if you have been meaning to check that out.
00:04:01
Speaker
And then someone's like, Oh, my favorite part in episode two of the season was when this happened. And I'm like, Oh, all right, cool. Thanks for just learning that out randomly. Don't you hate how the protagonist died? You're like, eh, I guess everybody dies, but it's still a spoil. Yeah, it's.
00:04:21
Speaker
Wait, actually, were you referencing a specific anime? No, I was. Oh. Okay, yeah. I mean, you could, you could fill it. I guess anyone could have filled one in for that, but yeah. One jumps to mind, but for the sake of if somebody hasn't watched it, I won't make the joke. Yeah. The nice thing is it is literally so vague. It could be any anime, I guess. I haven't watched that many slides of life, so I have to assume that usually the protagonist's eyes
00:04:48
Speaker
That's a lot of slice of life. That is the slice of life. It's the last slice. Right. Death. That's when you go to the fridge for the last slice and there is nothing left that it's death. Oh, or is it like it's that slice of toast as they're like running to school. Is that the slice of life?
00:05:10
Speaker
I don't know. There's a lot of things you could slice. Statistically, for me, it's going to be some sort of cheese, but I don't know. When's the last time you sliced cheese, though? Oh, actually, no, this is not impossible. Sometimes you get like cracker cheese specifically in the block. You usually got to slice that up.
00:05:33
Speaker
I will say legitimately, I do always enjoy block cheese more than deli sliced because usually I can get better types of cheeses like smoked Gouda, but I often deprive myself of it because I'm like, what am I just going to eat this on its own? That's how it would happen. The ratio of cracker to cheese tends to skew in favor of the cheese if I'm doing my own slicing. Have you ever tried cheese with some crumbs on it?
00:06:00
Speaker
It's really just like, all right, so we have the block, I bisect it and I put this on two crackers. Yeah, that'll be on my list of things to do eventually is just grab some cheese.
Cheese Preferences and Culinary Discussions
00:06:15
Speaker
Usually when I grab cheese and like, oh, I want to put it in something.
00:06:19
Speaker
We're like, I'll have other ingredients like a tortilla or bread. I'm like, this needs cheese to go with it. And I don't know where blocko cheese fits into that. Well, I mean, if it's cheese for a tortilla, it's queso, I think.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's regionalized. Hear me out. No. Queso is the molten cheese, I think, is usually how it's. It's delightful, but I'd put it under cheese product. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's fucking great on cheese. Yeah, it's just we have an interpretation of cheese. Well, I'm thinking of like, I'm jumping to toastitos, which is a bad assumption on my part. But actual queso, holy fuck. That shit slaps. Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
But that'll be in a day of the future with restaurants where we actually go to Plaza Azteca in person with people. Oh, it's been a while. Although just this week, we did have a happy hour at Pizza Pub.
00:07:14
Speaker
Did you guys seriously? Yeah. Fuck. I missed those days. Did you get a cranberry juice? I got three. Oh my god, I missed those days. I had this whole like when I was ordering the cranberry juice. I was like, oh, I'm not having anything. I don't know why I can like panic at the moment. I'm not having anything alcoholic. So I guess like a cranberry juice. And she's like, OK, fine. She took it in stride.
00:07:43
Speaker
I could tell in the moment, I was like, you know that first thing that you just said? None of that matters. You could have just ordered a cranberry juice. Can I have a non-alcoholic cranberry juice? You mean a cranberry juice? Yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah, that one. Thank you. Can I have a water? Don't spike it with vodka, please. Aw, man.
00:08:05
Speaker
But that was good. I had, um, since it was a happy hour, we filled up on apps, you know, a lot and then split to, uh, uh, Buffalo chicken, uh, pizzas, but you know, we got the modification. So it was dragon fire sauce instead. Um, it was a little less spicy than I remember it being. I think that maybe it was just the like blue cheese to dragon fire ratio, but still very good. I remember like that a lot.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's dangerous. But like so I'm not even I'm not even the hot sauce guy. I should really just turn this segment over to Dave, you know, just offer it on. I was going to say a pallet, but I mean, my hot sauce tolerance has gone down quite a bit. Yeah, I even threw out the two hot sauces I had lurking in the shelves.
00:08:55
Speaker
Cause they, they were dusty on the inside. Uh, I'm just imagining like less, less, uh, it'd be late at night and it's a low light situation. You're like stumbling around and grab the hot sauce and add it to your food. When I go for the shredded cheese from the fridge, I'm like, needs a little something, a sauce, but I would still say that you're more tolerant than I am.
00:09:24
Speaker
Oh yeah, pretty much all creeds and religions and races. I definitely agree with that. But specifically hot sauce. Yeah, specifically hot sauce too. It's more, I can tough it out at this point. It's going to wreak havoc on my insides though, so try and steer away from it now. But if it's like for the sake of a challenge, I'll still ruin my body for a joke.
00:09:48
Speaker
But some things haven't changed since high school. Yeah. Are we still playing Roshan Bow after this? What's going on with that?
High School Antics and Game Reminiscences
00:09:56
Speaker
I don't actually know what Roshan Bow is. I think if described, I would know the activity, but I don't have an association in my brain.
00:10:03
Speaker
Oh, it's just like a dumb boys thing of like, we're going to kick each other in the balls and take turns. Okay. No, that doesn't sound so I didn't do that. I have heard of it. It did sound really dumb. It's not a good game or even a game. There's no winner. That's the problem. There's a win condition, but you're not going to feel like a winner. Everyone loses.
00:10:27
Speaker
All right, very, very brief segue because I never get to share this story.
In-Depth Analysis of 'The Witcher 3'
00:10:32
Speaker
Back in high school, when we were forced to play sports during gym, we had like a section of like, maybe two weeks of volleyball. This is before I appreciated volleyball and incapacity and had any hand-eye coordination. And I think I was up at net to block.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. That was the intention. Didn't pan out that way. There was this big guy on the other side. He jumped up, spiked the ball, and I kind of had the bump position out to like, oh, it's going to deflect off my arms and go up to a teammate. Went through my arms, hit me square on the dip. Oh, no. And it had enough blowback that it stunned the other parts of the genital area as well. And I just kind of like, I'm like, I need like two points. So I just walked off the court for like,
00:11:18
Speaker
five minutes I'm just like that sucks and I went back and played but I've never been hitting a dick since so that's that's not too bad I've learned my lesson tried it didn't like it
00:11:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's for some reason, even though I knew the subject context, I thought you were going to say the ball bounced off your arms, up into your face. I'm pretty sure that's happened to me at some point. Oh, yeah, yeah. For me, obviously. But no, that description is far away.
00:11:54
Speaker
yeah i'm just i don't i don't know why but my mind says these embellishments as you're telling the story and i'm imagining your arms were closed and they opened it hold on a second my arms didn't want to get hit they're like save yourself
00:12:16
Speaker
have a meeting with your body later and you're like, never sacrifice the walls again. The rest of you are here to protect him. Get down, Mr. President. Um, yeah, that's a pretty good story though. So what are we talking about tonight? I figured we could talk about a game whenever we feel like it, anything else that might be important coming up.
00:12:41
Speaker
All right, let me quick scroll through the list of... Oh, here's one. Okay. We actually had a requested episode from a while back and we said, we'll get to it eventually, nerd. But this is our Witcher 3 episode. Oh.
00:12:57
Speaker
So this was actually requested by a friend of the show who's actually been on the podcast with us and has helped like purchase some games for us over the years. We have a good relationship with them as a person. So this episode is for you, Geronimo Makuchi, if I'm reading that right. Yeah. Big fan of the Witcher 3 series.
00:13:19
Speaker
I assume Witcher 3 the most. Right. And it appreciates Witcher 1 and 2 in the series. I think I'm actually, I think I might be friends with Geronimo on some social media. OK. And I think Witcher 3 is the only one he's played. I believe that's the case. Yeah. If I'm thinking of the right guy. Well, then I'm glad we're doing 3 and not 2 or 1. Right.
00:13:39
Speaker
I was actually so in preparing some notes for this episode that we just came up with the title for. I think that I have a little section in there for like, hey, here's a brief aside, a comparison to like two and one.
00:14:01
Speaker
I think I got one on the cheap because I think I played Witcher 3 a while back. I was like, oh, this is all right. So let me check out one. And then within two minutes, I'm like, fuck that. And then I stopped playing it.
00:14:15
Speaker
It's basically going from cave paintings to the Sistine Chapel. That's really the progression throughout the series. Yeah. It's changed a lot, but in a good way. So who developed Witcher 3? So I know that that's a segue, or just an easy hook. But Cyberpunk Red Company, not a lot of heard of them.
00:14:42
Speaker
haven't made anything else. Did you say cyberpunk red? I did say cyberpunk red. That's the game that was created by CD project red. Well, she's actually. I feel like that's too close, right? That's an easy mistake to make. I thought you were just like branding them permanently like your cyberpunk read to me now. Right. Those are actually really close. I didn't. Perhaps I should have thought of that association between the names.
00:15:11
Speaker
That's unfortunate. You should never name a game that's so close to your company name after you release your first game.
00:15:20
Speaker
probably true. But so for those of you who don't remember, Cyberpunk 2077 was a comical shit show of a game release. But one of the reasons that it had such high hopes going into it is because CG Project Red had such stellar reviews for Witcher 3, as far as everything. It really, like when it came out, it's
00:15:44
Speaker
It scored very highly in story, character-driven, open world, good RPG elements. It just fucking knocked it out of the park in a lot of areas where some games might excel at one or two. This was kind of like, yo, game of the year material right here. Yeah. And it actually got, I appreciate it, corrected me on the name of the game that was wrong, Cyberpunk 2077.
00:16:08
Speaker
I am having a time but I appreciate all corrections I do think that like particularly the big there was a huge difference from like Witcher 2 to 3 they're like hey let's make an open world game and we're gonna just
00:16:24
Speaker
nail all of these points and the story is going to actually be comprehensible, unlike number two. And I don't know, it was a very, it was a triumph and an open world space at any time, like a game developer that I think is pretty established as being strictly in this space can break out and hit like a big genre, a challenging genre. Open world is definitely a challenging genre.
00:16:50
Speaker
And excel that's worthy of commendation. They actually got the game of the year reward. They didn't just Make the DLC re-release right and call it like oh, yeah the ultra super expansion No, it's The thing is like as good as it was was it like six years ago when it came out? Yeah, it still holds up
00:17:12
Speaker
So Jake and I were talking a little bit ago about what are some other open world games that we've played, experienced, and enjoyed? So for me, I played Tsushima probably most recently for an open world. It is gorgeous.
00:17:24
Speaker
And the gameplay feels really good. But I don't give two shits about the story or the characters. Yeah, they're fine. They serve their purpose. But for me, there's no hook. But with Witcher 3, like every little side character, I'm just I get drawn into because they have.
00:17:42
Speaker
human mannerisms. They have like nuance. They have back and forth in like their banter and I'm like, oh, what's their relationship? Why is this guy so fucking sassy? And like they actually round the characters with personality. Yeah. So that's one of my favorite things about the game.
00:17:58
Speaker
you really feel like you're dealing with people in The Witcher. And I don't know if it was like a requirement when they were going through and doing world building, but they're like, all right, now that you have like the gist of this character, like introduce tragedy and then like rewrite them. But that's kind of just the way the world works. Like The Witcher has a very dark world where
00:18:22
Speaker
bad things happen to all people. There's not like any sort of exception to that. It feels like a grim fable in a way, you know? I mean, everything's set in kind of like, I always want to say like 1600s castles and moors and farms and shit. Like it's just, it's poor, simple times. Um,
00:18:49
Speaker
There's like magic and other things, which if you don't have access to and you're just like a fucking peasant, your life is kind of up to the will of the fates or the weather or some guy who has something more than you do. Right. It's very like it's limited magic setting. So it's like it is fantasy. There's literally sorceresses.
00:19:10
Speaker
magical events, magical monsters, things like that. But to your average jobber, no one has access to magic. Even witchers use signs, which are just like budget magic. They're like magic if you stopped at a 101 course, specifically to just, because they want to cast fast, I guess, and all of that. But they're not meant to be incredibly powerful. So the world feels more grounded around that presence in the field. Their problem is,
00:19:39
Speaker
Are their crops okay? Has any member of their family been abducted by monsters or the war that's ongoing? They don't really care that you're like, oh man, you could really do that Sparky Fire thing with any time that you walk up and interact with a lamp.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah, and and the whole thing of like being a Witcher is for the uninitiated. Witchers will kill monsters for money. Yep. So like they are trained to do stuff. They undergo modifications. They know some budget magic and they know how to fight really well. They can fight people and they can fight monsters and they have one sword for each, steel for people and silver swords for monsters. But basically like you'll get hired on one of these side quests because peasants are like, hey,
00:20:25
Speaker
Somebody went missing and we found their body and it shredded the pieces and we don't want that to happen to anybody else Could you look into it and fix it? Thank you So a lot of times the villagers also don't come out to you after like the first shredded person. Yeah, maybe Coincidence, maybe maybe it was a fluke Timmy ran in the forest and died
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, usually like you're going through town and like you'll see like a job posting your talk to an NPC They're not like running up to you. Uh-huh. That would be weird for gameplay if you're just like, oh, let me go to the To the local shop and maybe pick up some items. It's like there's like a trail of NPCs like hey, hey Witcher, please
00:21:07
Speaker
I will say I have had the opposite experience though. It's kind of harder to do unless you're just trying to clear the map, which I did for the early part of the game at least. But there were times that I dealt with the monster and then I found the contract provider.
00:21:22
Speaker
They're just like, hey, are you hear about like the monster contract? And you're like, which one? Like, oh, it was the Wyvern. You're like, oh yeah, I killed one of those. He's like, oh, here's money. The downside is that if you do that, you can't haggle for the price. You can't basically like extort this like poor as dirt farmer while you have more money than you ever needed in your inventory. You're just like,
00:21:50
Speaker
I mean, there's literally a point in the game where like one of the contract owners will like offer you, like his daughter died or something, and he'll like offer you the dowry as payment for completing the quest. And you can be like, no, that's morally wrong. Or, huh, I never thought I'd receive a dowry. It's great.
00:22:15
Speaker
So there are a lot of, I wouldn't say moral dilemmas per se, but like they will kind of give you options between being a more of a benefactor type character or just in this only for me. Yeah. Is there a certain way that you played through this game? I think the first time that I played, so I got partially through in this playthrough, in this review playthrough, but the first time I played through and beat it,
00:22:40
Speaker
I had, I started at least as a more like generous, just helping the townsfolk RPG folk hero style character. And then like, it must've been midway through the game. I realized that you don't need to do that. And the game was never gonna reward me for it, right? Like if you're playing a Bioware game and you do the right thing, you're like, no, I will not take payment from my services.
00:23:09
Speaker
Um, this is for you. Then like you get like Paragon points. Here you go. You go on light side. Good job. Good guy. And then in this game, they're like, Oh, okay. Thanks. There's nothing else. It's like you just get to role play as somebody who's not taking payment.
00:23:28
Speaker
It's not a bad thing, but it's actually considered a good thing because the universe isn't cosmically aligned more beneficially to you now, right? Yeah, you just didn't take money. Yeah. Like you'll have some quest lines later where it matters what you do as far as are you actually helping that person out or helping somebody else out? Maybe through some turn of events.
00:23:51
Speaker
But at least for this review playthrough, I went more like, I want money and I want to kill stuff. Yeah. If I was provided either of those options, I would opt into that. The game is very accommodating for someone that's actually more accurate to like, yes, you can play however you want, but he's a monster hunter. Like as a profession, it doesn't make sense for him to forego payment.
00:24:19
Speaker
There was literally a part in the game where I killed a monster, like completed the contract, and I found someone else who wanted someone to take care of the monster as like a separate endeavor. And I was like, yeah, I'll just collect two, I'll just collect payment from two people. Like, I don't care. Like, that's good. That's a good deal.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, and also, things are really fucking expensive in this game. Maybe you start with 100 gold, for example, and the first armor's like, yeah, it's going to be 500. You're like, okay, well, I collected some berries and some scraps here. How much is that? Oh, that's five gold? Oh, okay. You either collect and sell everything or you extort everybody for money and just try and get the money where you can.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah. But also, I feel it encourages exploration because all explore parts of the map, I'll see a little question mark of like, hey, there's something here. I don't know what it is. Point of interest, right? I'm going to go check it out. Yeah. And then maybe you'll find a chest with money or loot you can sell or things to fight. So that was always a driving factor for me because I was poor as fuck for a really long time and I wanted to be able to buy cool things.
00:25:28
Speaker
I was going to correct you on money you can sell, but there actually is a currency exchange. And one of the majors... Did I say money you can sell? Well, you said money or loot you can sell. Money, comma, or loot, which you can sell. Yes, with a hyphen between everywhere. Or you can sell. But yeah, there is a money exchanger, so it works in either case. That's definitely where I think most of my money came from, particularly if you're going for the sort of
00:25:57
Speaker
map completion style. I want to investigate every point of interest. I want to do all the side quests. You'll end up with a lot of money. But like you said, things are very expensive. Particularly good gear, which the game, it kind of like rations for you. And it's like, we're kind of going to get broken as soon as you really have the set of gear that you want. So we're not going to give it to you too early.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, you can still find good stuff, though, throughout. Yeah. I feel if you do some optional and some MSQ, I was always finding unique blades. I'm like, oh, it's better than my thing. Swap it out. Sell the old one.
00:26:40
Speaker
or like the Witcher school gear. There's like different side quests for getting all of their gear. So it's like, here's the cat set, the Griffin set, the bear set. There might've been an eagle, can't remember. I feel like there's definitely more schools. I just don't remember what they are. I think that's it. It's cat, wolf, bear, and Griffin. I'm pretty sure those are the four. And that gear is always really good.
00:27:09
Speaker
And if you can upgrade it all the way, which basically requires finding people who are capable of upgrading it to the next tier, better blacksmiths, essentially, it becomes really, really good. You get set bonuses in a game that is not Diablo, so that's pretty good.
00:27:29
Speaker
I didn't even know you could upgrade here. It's a certain level increment. So like if you got all the griffins that year, I think you can level it the first time, upgrade it the first time at like level 16. OK. And then again at like 20 something and then like 30 whatever. I don't even think it was a mechanic at the game's launch. CD Projekt Red has added a lot over the years.
00:27:55
Speaker
Well, if you're somebody who actually likes to upgrade their gear, please keep that in mind. It's not necessary. Yeah, it's not. I got through a lot of the game without doing probably smart things within the game.
00:28:10
Speaker
I know we talked about your preparation for fights. So one of the things you can do with fights is like let's say you're trying to track a specific beast. You can do like lore research about what it's weak to and you can put like specific oils on your blade or drink certain potions to give you benefits in battle against that. For your oil.
00:28:33
Speaker
Now, if you're me, you're mashing the X button, which is the quick attack, and then occasionally doing Igni as your fire cast. And then you do B as your dodge roll while your stamina comes back.
00:28:47
Speaker
I will brute force my way through so many games until a game makes me say, no, you can't do that anymore. Yeah. The Dark Souls approach does basically work, particularly on normal difficulty for a lot of the game. Yeah. But the diversity is there. And I do say normal difficulty because
00:29:08
Speaker
So like every game in the Witcher series, in fact, just the Witcher premise is it's actually really similar to Monster Hunter, not just in function, but like in, hey, what do I need to bring to this fight? Hunting Monsters is the same in Japan as it is in this world. Poland? I was going to squint a little bit, though, because I feel like
00:29:36
Speaker
I mean, I guess in both, you can still brute force it. I mean, obviously for Monster Hunter, if a monster has a very specific weakness, you really need to abuse that because the fights can be very drawn out. Whereas if I'm in relative level range of a monster I'm trying to fight, I can just eat bread, get a fuck ton of regen of that because I put a skill point in. Whenever you eat food, you get regen for two minutes. I'm like, cool. And then I'll hit on it with my stick until it dies.
00:30:07
Speaker
I think in both games you can for a lot of fights, particularly the early ones brute force it, but there's a particular enemy I'm thinking of that was really the catalyst for me working into preparation in The Witcher. It was either a fiend or a chort, but it's basically a large forest monstrosity and it had like a roar attack that stuns. That's the chort.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it is such a problem because you just take so much damage every time it hits you and it can stun you an obnoxious amount. I'm like, this is not a fun fight. Why is this the way that it is? And then I eventually found out that there's a decoction, which are three introduced. The previous games didn't have them to my recollection, which literally just makes you immune to that stun.
00:31:04
Speaker
And now the fight's basically a joke because you can Dark Souls 3 quick attack dodge. But without that, it was an absolute pain to deal with. It was literally this one item switched it from very, very difficult and obnoxious to essentially trivial.
00:31:22
Speaker
So do your research as I've been saying. And the game encourages you, encourages you to do that. Like the bestiary, bestarity, bestiary, bestiary, bestiary.
00:31:37
Speaker
Bestiary. Bestiary, thank you. I was like, all of these attempts have been wrong. Bestiary. We'll tell you, use this oil. It's weak to this type of bomb. Here's magic. It's potentially weak too. And knowing that upfront, figuring that out is like a large part of, I would say 75% of a contract is getting information about the target.
00:32:04
Speaker
Again, this is if you go about it the correct way. So outside of me beating stuff with a stick and going obviously very physical attack heavy and you venturing into some decoctions, how do you normally build?
00:32:21
Speaker
Uh, I really tried to not go magic this time and I failed. I went back to magic. It's the most broken thing in Witcher three. You can feel really powerful if you go other directions and to my gameplay, none of it is as ridiculous as if you go full magic. Um, it's, it's a joke actually. I think you were telling me before you can actually like burn lock people with Igne at a certain level.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah. There's a, um, it's funny cause Igni is the, the starter magical thing. When you played Skyrim first two spells, you get heal yourself and heal yourself, burn other people. It's a living, you know? Um, and this is the burn other people spell. You described it. Igni quick burst of fire in front of you and roughly 45 degree cone.
00:33:11
Speaker
I would say maybe a little bit wider, but it's AOE and the balancing part at the beginning of the game is it takes your full stamina bar and your stamina takes a while to recharge.
00:33:25
Speaker
You're not going to be able to spam it much, and it's very unlikely to light enemies on fire. There's an Incinerate condition. But if you put points in this thing, you can get it. So Incinerate happens 75% of the time.
00:33:44
Speaker
And there's a skill that is every piece of medium army you equip makes you regenerate stamina even faster. And so every two seconds you can just cast this high damage AOE spell with a good chance to basically stun enemies because they're on fire.
00:34:04
Speaker
Then the game's gone. You can use it against basic enemies, monsters, and bigger set piece bosses. It's just like, I burn you. I cast burn again. No, I'm not done yet. I cast burn again. That's right.
00:34:21
Speaker
some of them are immune to the like incinerate stun effect but not nearly as many monsters as you would think and you can roll still it interrupts your stamina region i believe for a moment but you can still roll if you don't have stamina and that way it's a little different than dark souls
00:34:44
Speaker
Sounds closer to Dark Souls 3 at that point. Yeah, it's closer to Dark Souls 3. And the other spells are also good. One of them is a take no damage personal Halo shield, basically, that you can upgrade to make like a bubble around you. And if you get hit you heal, actually, instead of taking damage then.
00:35:04
Speaker
The bubble can break. It uses your stamina for energy, but turning bosses' attacks into health is really good. If you're standing in poison, you can just hold the button and heal over time as the poison is hitting your shield.
00:35:21
Speaker
I know some of the other magics are kind of used for utility. I'm going to say something from Dota 2. What's the force push? Art. You can use that to break easily damage walls, like a door or some rubble. That's used throughout, but I'm not using it in combat.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah. It starts, it's probably the weakest start in combat, but it's another one where if you have a, there's a potency attribute for how like powerful the spell is. Ignis potency causes it to like do more damage and has that chance to ignite. Ard's potency is the chance to knock enemies over.
00:36:03
Speaker
And certain enemies are weak to it usually like harpies or flying Monsters where they'll always basically be knocked to the ground But if an enemy is on the ground, you can execute them. You just walk up and be like stab though
00:36:17
Speaker
I've done that before with harpies, but it's because they charged me. I did my level one, Igni, and they're like, fuck. And I'm like, oh, yeah. I give them the chop. Yeah. Usually, I was just going to say, usually I start a play through with Yarden, but eventually you swap off to just more effective ones.
00:36:39
Speaker
I feel like early enough, you have a very broad accent. Like you don't have points in anything. Yeah. But when you get levels, you can put points into a tree and then say, like, these are my active things that I have access to. Yeah. And then you can buff them. So you're like, oh, well, this will give me better quick attacks, which is the route I went this time. There's stuff for strong attacks. There's stuff for like deflecting projectiles. There's the different magics we're talking about. There's some utility options as well. There's stuff for specifically decoctions.
00:37:09
Speaker
So there's a lot you can explore. But since it does take a bit too level, I found the first thing that worked for me and kind of invested in it. But you could definitely put a couple of early points and stuff to see what you like. Yeah. But I feel like you can't go wrong. You can respect, but it costs money. Yeah, it's like 1,000 gold. And it's not really available till you hit some of the first major cities. So it's not super common.
00:37:40
Speaker
I would argue you probably could go wrong, but the game is balanced in such a way that even if you pick a suboptimal decision, it's not going to be unbeatable. You don't have to really put skills in anything. They're just very powerful, potentially. You're not going to get yourself out of anything, though.
00:38:01
Speaker
I like the skill tree as a whole. I think it's a good idea. You have to like slot the skills into active boxes to actually get use out of them. And then you can put like a mutagen for extra synergy bonuses things. That's cool. It's a cool little system. It reminds me a little bit of materia from like final fantasy seven.
00:38:21
Speaker
But the part I'm less sold on is there's actually a bunch of trees. So you mentioned a lot of the useful trees, like we went through magic, there's utility trees like healing, extra bonus healing, getting more stamina regen, fast attack, slow attack.
00:38:40
Speaker
But then there's trees like bombs and crossbow is a distinct tree. And then there's a tree for potions, which is okay. But like a separate tree for something else and like, I don't know, it's so much, it's so much.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a little wide because I feel like you're not going to ever invest into like potions, bombs or crossbows really until like you'd have to like really see them as effective. Yeah. Because like when you get thrown into something, you're like, oh, I'm going to hit stuff with my attack and I'm going to use one of my magic abilities. So those are the two you're most familiar with. So most likely to invest in. Yeah. And they hit you with that in the tutorial. I think the only potion they make you create like through the tutorial is swallow.
00:39:27
Speaker
which is like the heal over time. I'm giving the eyebrows a chance. It's the heal over time. Very ubiquitous across the Witcher games.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah. But also, you do get healing regeneration from just eating any type of food on its own. And then with the point I was talking about in utility, anytime I eat anything, I would get that active, you're just going to keep healing over time bonus. So I just steal bread or water from villagers just from their houses as they're sleeping. And then I go fight something like just eating snacks while I fight.
00:40:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's very much like Legend of Zelda loot system where you just go into people's homes and like take everything except like Link was for the most part just breaking their pottery. Geralt straight up like just steals their personal belongings. Yeah, it's like I walked into a home and I looted a child's doll and they're like was this like an abandoned home like a loot like a post battlefield. The town's deserted. He's like, no, no, this is the major city. I just walked up and stole the kid's doll.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah. Geralt is an asshole, at least how I play him. But yeah. All right. Before we get too off on all the intricacies and mechanics, I feel like we need to talk about some of the story.
Highlighting 'The Witcher 3' Quests and Bugs
00:40:42
Speaker
That's fair. One of the areas. Sure. And I feel like you know which one we're going to because it's the one that everybody always talks about, but it's because it's really fucking good. Yeah. So there is a quest line in Velen, which is a kind of
00:40:55
Speaker
I want to say it's a big moor area. It's kind of like a sad, swampy village place. And as per the environment, life is shit. But you get a quest from this baron where he wants you to find his missing wife and daughter. Yes.
00:41:12
Speaker
And I don't want to spoil everything about it. But holy shit, this was the hook for me. Like it went from before playing is like, this game is enjoyable to holy shit, I'm thoroughly invested. Yeah. Because the question is not like, hey, go here, do thing. It becomes like a multi part quest. And you think all of these things are unrelated. And then it all ties back together. Oh,
00:41:40
Speaker
It's so good. It's so fucking good.
00:41:44
Speaker
It's actually almost good to the point of being detrimental, because there's few points quite as evocative and narratively constructed as this one particular quest line later in the game. There are points later in the game where it's like, as part of this main quest, you need to complete all of these subquests. And they're mostly hits. I don't mean to criticize them, but this is a standout for sure. It's really good.
00:42:12
Speaker
And it has the right something I want to touch on since we're talking a little bit about the story is like Witcher 1.
00:42:21
Speaker
didn't really open really well with the story. Witcher 2 was like, hey, there's so much we have to explain to you or you won't be able to appreciate this, that it was like impenetrable. Witcher 3 does enough kinetic storytelling that I feel you can, it's 100% the best one to start with.
00:42:43
Speaker
Um, because you don't, you can start this game not knowing anything. I'm just like, Oh, here is a man trying to find a woman. There you go. Good enough enough to run on. They can introduce the rest as you go. Yeah. You really just need that basic thing. Um, but as you go, you, you discover more about the nuance and like what's actually happening. Yeah.
00:43:11
Speaker
Cause like you find out, I feel like it's not a spoiler at this point. The Baron and his wife did not have the best relationship. So you're like, oh, she ran away because he was abusive and shitty. Yeah. And then you find out reasons, like more reasons of why that's the case and like other things that happened.
00:43:30
Speaker
So, it turns, they do a really good job of introducing a character like that and you're like, oh, they're just blanket pieces of shit or like they're just the one basic character. And then you come back at the end of part of the quest and you're like, oh, things have changed. Oh, things have changed.
00:43:48
Speaker
They're really good of going from like a single facet character to a multifaceted character. So while I don't like the Bloody Baron as a character, as far as like who he is, as far as like how well rounded he is, I really do appreciate everything that went into him. Yeah. Because like you see where he's coming from. Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's so much more than a one-dimensional, like, quest. If this was something like The Elder Scrolls, it would be like, hey, find my loved one. And then you would go and you would do that. There they are. Okay. The quest is complete. And this, it's like, find my loved ones. And then you start to learn about the character of the person that you're doing the quest for. And you learn about the character of the people that you're trying to find.
00:44:33
Speaker
And maybe you find them and the game gives you different options than what like the person you're doing the quest for actually wants. Like that's a really recurring theme in a lot of the quests and subquests that there are multiple ways to complete it. And you could be just money grubby, whatever gets me the most capitalism points. Or you can try to go through it with some sort of moral line and
00:45:03
Speaker
the game will really review for that. It's like, oh, you want to be the good guy? You want to do the right thing in every situation? Is that what you want to do? You want to only do the things that don't have negative consequences? Yeah. This is kind of what we were talking about before, the game giving you those options of, do you want to be the good guy or kind of like the more selfish individual? But if you are always trying to be the good guy, because of the nature of the game and its world,
00:45:31
Speaker
Not all things went happy all the time, 100%. Shit's going to go awry a lot and you can't control it, but you might think you're doing the best situation for the time being, but maybe that'll cause some butterfly effect down the line.
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah, and this game, this is one of the things I think that makes it a good, a good open world narrative game is your choices oftentimes do actually have consequences. We talked a little bit, I don't know if it was on episode about like Mass Effect recently, I believe it was.
00:46:02
Speaker
and how it's just kind of at the end, you get computer terminals telling you like, hey, thanks for helping me out with that thing two games ago. And you're like, yeah, I remember that. Um, nameless space peasant, like 54. Um, this game is a lot more like, I'm going to spoil one really, really early consequence. Um, cause it's literally put right in front of you at the beginning of the game. Um, as soon as you arrived in Velen,
00:46:30
Speaker
There's like a wounded person at the end of the road. And it's the very first road you start on, uh, that you could help. He's like tied up next to some drowners. Um, if you don't help him, he's going to die and you can help him. You can set him free. It'd be like, I'm the good guy. And later you find him and he's a straight up bandit. Like he's killed people. He's got all their personal possessions like near him. And he's like, thanks for helping me out. Here's 50 coins or whatever.
00:47:00
Speaker
But he never forgets a debt. He doesn't. Yeah, he literally helps you out. He's like, hey, you want to join us around the fire? We can eat. Here's your reward. Thanks for helping me out. And that's a level of realism as far as how in-groups, out-groups work in real life that video games don't portray. Yeah.
00:47:24
Speaker
They do a really good job of it and it makes you always kind of question what you're doing for your play through. I like to do what just feels good in the moment because it's a game, right? I'm not trying to have the moral high ground when I do all things. I'm not trying to play a maniacal villain all the time.
00:47:47
Speaker
So I'm going to spoil something a little bit for another quest line in the Velen arc. Yeah. But I need you to remind me of the name of a certain blond sorceress. Blond sorceress. Kira Metz. Kira Metz. Yeah. So she's a sorceress. You do some stuff for her. You guys, it gets a little frisky. But basically something that she's looking into is
00:48:14
Speaker
like an object of great power, which as far as we know at this point in the game could cause like a terrible disease or fix it, maybe. Right. So when I was initially playing the game, I was talking with you and I believe other Justin, as far as like that quest line, it's like, oh, that was really cool. I like the story played out. And then did you guys kill Kiramets too? And you guys said, what? And I said, Oh, did you, did you not? Because at the point in the game,
00:48:44
Speaker
After you go find her, after she runs off, you can say, hey, I'm not going to let you get away with this manuscript thing. Or you could let her have it and do whatever. There's a lot of ways you can go down. But I just said, no, I don't trust you with this. I don't know you enough. I don't trust you. So we ended up fighting, and I killed her.
00:49:06
Speaker
So that's how my playthrough went. But I didn't know that there were other options. Whereas Jake and Justin obviously went a different route. So I love having those types of conversations in games where it's, here's how I did it. And somebody goes, I had no idea you could do that. Yeah.
00:49:24
Speaker
It's very much like usually games don't let you kill well fleshed out characters or have terrible things really happen to them unless it's part of the main narrative plot. And there's like there's literally three ways that that quest sequence can end up. Maybe four and could be a misremembering one, but.
00:49:43
Speaker
It's really rare that the game's just like, oh, you're kind of just like acting like a douchebag to this person that is trying to help you. They're just not going to. Or you want to kill them to just take what they have. There is a dialogue option for that, you know? It's kind of nuts what they'll let you do.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, the game, if you want to go through as pure good, the game is going to really just stab you over and over with it. If you want to go through as like pure evil, it kind of might work. But going through like Dave's going and going like, hey, I'm going to do basically what I want is definitely
00:50:25
Speaker
the least punishing, particularly if you're like, I'll just take money for every single thing that I can take money for.
00:50:39
Speaker
I want to hit some other points over here. There's so much in this game. Yeah, there really is. So I apologize for the things that we missed that was to talk about, whether this is Gennaro specifically or another listener. Who's that? I don't know. Not familiar with that name. Geronimo. My bad. Okay. Excellent. Thank you.
00:50:58
Speaker
So which of the sorceresses did you try in romance? Ooh, okay. Probably depends on the play through. I'm pretty sure I can tell you from experience that if you try to be a playboy, that doesn't work out very well. I think usually go with Yennefer. That's fair, she does have a unicorn.
00:51:23
Speaker
Yeah, stuffed unicorn. Yeah. And literally like this is you ask this question is kind of like a top level thing, but this is through the series. Girl's gone through this entire arc. These are all just plot lines for previous games. It's like he lost his memory.
00:51:40
Speaker
He ended up with Triss, a Trist with Triss, if you will. But he was supposed to be in a relationship with Yennefer because they had the spell cast on them, like when they were brought back to life and they're drawn to each other. And it's this is like enchantment kind of.
00:52:00
Speaker
We're attracted to each other, but we don't even know if that's what we want sort of thing. And that all comes to a head in The Witcher 3. And you don't have to know about all of it, but the game will tell you a little bit at least. And that's literally just the romantic interests in this game. It's just an aside, basically. Yeah. So like these are- Who did you pick? That was going to be my question.
00:52:28
Speaker
Don't ask. I like redheads. That's a total lie. So I will say at least as far as the Sorcerer stuff is concerned, it's not just like who you want to fuck. These are actual characters throughout the game. They will have quest lines and interactions and you'll see them again unless you kill them. Yeah.
00:52:49
Speaker
I believe I picked Yennefer as well because I guess just who I saw the most in the game. Though in my first playthrough, I did try and fuck everybody because I'm like, why not? Yeah, the game the game is not full frontal, but it is top top frontal. Yeah, you see some.
00:53:11
Speaker
Bodies pressed up against each other type stuff. It's not full-on graphic, but it's more so than other games. You're sure That was actually a thing for the first game in particular because like it was a little bit more
00:53:25
Speaker
This is why I hate video games. It's a fulfillment of the male fantasy type style thing where it's like you could go through in The Witcher 1 and literally be like, I'm going to bang all these people. And each time like there was a romantic interaction, there's no cut scene or whatever. You would get a card, literally like a card art, usually topless of that character. And it was a collect them all type situation.
00:53:53
Speaker
The proverbial belt notch. Yeah, it's literally that. Saying it's misogynistic is not a strategy. So at least in The Witcher 3, they're a little bit more realistic about it, and they do kind of punish a pure misogynistic approach. Also, your character has motivations. There's main things you're trying to... People you're trying to find and things you're trying to acquire, to the extent that doing side quests
00:54:22
Speaker
from a roleplay perspective doesn't always make sense. You're like, I must find this person. But I mean, yeah, I guess if you got some in the sewers, I can check. Well, I mean, is it how important is it that I find them now? All right. That's my question. The game does have a few things that are timed, but they're very far and in between. Far and few in between. Yeah. The Ira Punk actually has more, I believe.
00:54:51
Speaker
I will say at least as far as the sorceresses are concerned, you can always tell there's some history between you and these ladies, because I jumped into Witcher 3 as well, so I haven't played the previous games to know that.
00:55:08
Speaker
You do feel that back and forth that there is like some type of pre-existing relationship? Yes. They pretty much all know him because there's a lodge of sorceresses, a flock, if you will. And Geralt's been around
00:55:23
Speaker
a long time. Um, I'm trying to figure out, I was looking this up to see if this was for this specific game or not, but Geralt's like a hundred years old. Really? Yeah. Because he's the underground, the trial of the grasses, the Witcher mutations, all of that. They screwed with his, screwed with his growth. But, um,
00:55:43
Speaker
The source services are like, hey, here's a very capable combat professional. Who is sterile like us? And we can basically use him. And that's what they do. So I will say it's not just for sex. It's a lot of times like they need him to do X, Y, and Z.
00:56:01
Speaker
Uh, because he is very competent. So they will kind of manipulate him. Yeah, exactly. Manipulate him to like do certain things. Um, and you as the player who wants to have a sex scene later, it'll be like, yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah.
00:56:18
Speaker
I'll go find the cheese wheels and market. I'm all good for that. Rolling back the big wheel of cheese. Gonna have some sex. Gonna have some sex. I'm imagining this as the Odysseus with a rock. Rolling the rock up. Sisyphus. Sisyphus, yeah. Rolling the rock up. Who's Odysseus?
00:56:42
Speaker
Fucking no, I can't remember that one. Anyway, he's not in Hades Jake. I'm imagining Sisyphus, but it's like a giant cheese wheel He's like as soon as I get this cheese wheel up this hill sex But yeah it is
00:56:58
Speaker
From a morality standpoint, there's you're going to find things objectionable that people do in this game. Part of it is just it's a little bit non Poland is Western, but this is not traditional American Western storylines and outcomes and all of that. It's like.
00:57:17
Speaker
very much more war torn, anything goes medieval land than some sort of moral story. Yeah, basically Poland. Sorry, I had to throw in that one cheap joke because I actually like Poland. I want to go back at some point. But yeah, it's it's definitely more grimdark, but it's in a good way.
00:57:43
Speaker
It's for adults. Yeah. I feel like at this point, if you're looking for something that's going to be more rounded and I don't want to say family friendly because that kind of puts too much of a friendly tone on it. But if you always want a happy ending type stuff, this will not be the game for you for sure. But I keep losing.
00:58:11
Speaker
Yeah, like there are other games that will fill that void, so to speak. But this is more so just the story is so good. The characters are so good. I really enjoy the combat. Like it's aged a little bit, but it's still really good compared to anything else in the series.
00:58:29
Speaker
And hey, maybe combat's not your thing. Maybe you want some type of other game mechanic within the game. And for those of you sick fucks, there is a game called Gwent. And I will now put down the mic and let Jake take over the episode. So anyways, Gwent is a card game.
00:58:47
Speaker
That's it. No, it's very, I mean, it literally exists as they have it as a separate game you can play online now. But the main core. I think the standalone is a little bit different from what they have in Witcher 3. It uses the same rules, but they do have more cards. Okay. And maybe they have some different commanders, but the short of it is you draw, you have a deck, you populate it with however many cards you want, you draw from that deck,
00:59:13
Speaker
And those are the cards that you will basically use for the rest of the game. First one to win two rounds wins. You try to put more points on the board than your opponent, but you can also screw with their board a little bit. Or do a little faint to play a card and then take it back into your hand with a decoy or something, play the card again.
00:59:34
Speaker
And so the game starts out really straightforward, sort of like, my guys are stronger than your guys. And by the end, it's like, I'm trying to get as many points onto your side of the board as possible to give myself more cards so that I'll win the later rounds while you burn everything out. There's a lot of strategy to it. And it's way better than it should be for
00:59:55
Speaker
a mini game that was included in a single player game. And also, for those people who that sounds cool to, I believe it's every single merchant in the game you can play Gwent against and you can win different cards. They actually have a questline to win cards.
01:00:13
Speaker
The game actually, so there's an achievement for getting every card in the game. And some of them are actually skippable, you can miss them in like main story options. But at launch, there was no way to track all of the cards. And eventually, they apparently went back because when I played through, there's a book in your quest log. And it's like this magically updates as you complete your Gwent collection. And it'll tell you like you're missing two cards in Velen, one for White Orchard.
01:00:42
Speaker
To kind of help out that's convenient cuz I hate trying to like look online for like where the fuck is this one thing? I can't find huh. Yep I remember I was trying to make a specific bomb and I'm like where is crows eye and it's like it's fucking everywhere. I'm like where where everywhere We'll find it first you find a crow No, it's a fucking bush. Yeah, it's just it's a random bush. I just had to wait and find it or find a merchant that could sell it to me and
01:01:08
Speaker
I realize this is an aside, but even you mentioned Crozae and Alchemy and stuff. Alchemy is so much better in The Witcher 3 than any previous Witcher. It's ridiculous. For comparison, things were easier to make in Witcher 1, but they always took the full ingredient list. In The Witcher 3, it's a little bit more complicated to make a potion the first time.
01:01:31
Speaker
and it might take some exotic ingredients that require you to actually go out and quest and experience the game. But once you make it, you get that potion every single time you rest for an hour. You can refill your potions any time you're out of combat, basically. That's really nice compared to microing all these potions that you might not want to even pause to use anyways. Yeah, especially with the item fear that all gamers have of, when am I going to use my elixirs? Uh-huh.
01:02:02
Speaker
Exactly. You get them back every time you rest. So potions and bombs. So feel free to use them. They're dirt cheap. You magically replenish the entire stock. Geralt Lake has
01:02:15
Speaker
He has a wine cellar full of potions. And then whenever he has a rowdy night, drinks all of them, he can be like, oh, I'm going to use one dwarven alcohol when I rest and replace that entire cellar and all of my bombs. And he's been an alcoholic ever since. Yeah.
01:02:37
Speaker
I mean, like Jesus turned water to wine, but this was an equivalent exchange, presumably the same amount of liquid. A girl takes one flask of alcohol and rebuilds all of his bombs and potion collection. To God. Presumably, right? Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
All right. So I know we got to stop with the cautions or even better. Those didn't exist. This one is just like, we're going to fill your toxicity meter almost entirely, but you don't have to worry about it. Here's a buff for like 30 minutes. So good. I just hate that. I keep laughing at the cautions. Um, there's a cockatrist to caution.
01:03:22
Speaker
So I want to ask, because it's kind of like a closing thought, did you have any standout moments or experiences from playing The Witcher 3 that you think are worth sharing to get somebody hooked if they are not already by this point? What's funny? I mean, like, so Bloody Baron Quest is great. We talked about that. I think about bugs, sort of. And that's not something to get people to play the game.
01:03:45
Speaker
There is a there is a quest you can do where it takes place. It goes through like this cave and it's like a level 13 ish quest and enemies are leveled in this game. Sometimes you run across stuff. You just can't fight yet. They don't all level with you, which is fine.
01:04:02
Speaker
It'll be marked as you're gonna get fucking dead. Yeah, this enemy has a skull for a difficulty indicator. And this is one of those enemies. So he's on top of the hill where this cave runs, but he has like a teleport-like move. And if he senses you fighting these other guys in this cave, he'll teleport into the cave.
01:04:22
Speaker
kill everyone else and then one shot you. So you run away or die. Basically, you can't do damage to them in any real capacity. And I thought that was hilarious.
01:04:37
Speaker
I eventually did come back and killed him. It was it was funny. Otherwise, I think the game's just it's a really good adventure simulator. A lot of good memorable side quests or things that turn you a little bit for a loop. And I like the Batman liked investigation part of preparing for the encounter with a monster.
01:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, it feels good to unravel some stuff. You kind of, hey, here's a monster. Go check these tracks. And then you kind of get some pieces of a bigger story. But honestly, each side quest, you don't know if it's going to be something very kind of brief or if it kind of explodes into this bigger grand quest. But every time a quest, not contract, that's been presented,
01:05:26
Speaker
They've done a really good job of making it interesting to where I get drawn in. These little side characters and NPCs who you shouldn't give a shit about, I'm like, oh, I actually got invested there, and that's fucking wild. The one I wanted to talk about, again, going back to Kiramet's, was the rat tower.
01:05:48
Speaker
So when you like go there to talk to the ghosts of like, Hey, uh, you ghosts aren't leaving the place. What's up? Why are you not rested? And landlord and you guys need to leave. Yeah. And then basically, do you care if I spoil this part?
01:06:04
Speaker
No, I think we've covered a little bit about this already. We'll put minor spoilers for it. So basically you talk to the ghost and she's like, Hey, I died. Um, my boyfriend left me and could you bring him back to like, say goodbye, right? Johnny Bravo.
01:06:22
Speaker
Yeah. And you go and you bring him back and then she basically says like she wants you to kill him because he left her and she wants him to die as well. But like also you hear like- Depending. Well, yeah. This is actually already indeterminate depending on some decisions you made.
01:06:42
Speaker
There's some decisions, but that is a possible outcome, but also like you hear like the way that she died and like the whole thing is like It's dark. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah, but it had me really invested. Yeah, exactly So like having those like little experiences like that that like gives me the chills Always look back on fondly of like a game made me feel something. That was really cool. I
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, there's literally entire classifications of monsters that are created through misdeeds. Like it's terrible death situations or something like that. People who cheated, Uno, you name it. Right, yeah. That's the worst, actually. That's how you get a short. But yeah, it's very much that occasional quest that really pulls you back in and pushes the rest forward. Not that they're...
01:07:36
Speaker
I wouldn't say that there's a lot of filler, but there is a lot of, here's your baseline monster hunting content. And then occasionally it's like, oh, snap. There's more complicated motives going on here.
01:07:51
Speaker
And then behind this all, there's an actual main plot that we haven't touched on in the slightest. Who's Siri? Anyway, thanks for coming out tonight, everybody. I'm pretty sure that's an Apple thing. Yeah, excellent game, though. Good recommendation. Mr. What would Kimbrey's name?
01:08:12
Speaker
Geronimo? Geronimo, yeah. So unfortunately, it took us a long time to get to this one, but there's a long queue, a lot of requests that have been sent in over the years. And hey, actually, I feel like this timing, although we really postponed it for no good reason at all, is convenient for an upcoming event. Oh, yeah. What's the event? Geronimo will be getting married.
01:08:37
Speaker
Oh, I should know this. I did say it was friends on Facebook. So congratulations to him and Mel. We're looking forward to that. We love you both. And for everyone else who's listening to this episode.
01:08:52
Speaker
You're all right. Yeah, definitely passable. But you could be even more liked if you, like Geronimo, sent in your own suggestions for future episodes. Can't be anything else in The Witcher because I'm not going to go back and play one or two. But it could be something else. And if you have an idea like that, feel free to send that in.
01:09:14
Speaker
Soapstonepodcast.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook. Congratulate Geronimo on his upcoming wedding and join the discussion where we talk about games, other things, usually not that much. But you could be the impetus, you could start this. Facebook.com slash Soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. And if you're playing Witcher 3, don't forget to swallow.
01:11:14
Speaker
you