Gaming The Witcher Series (PC RPG of the Forever)

Expansion #1 in-bound....

 

While I'm pretty pumped for the expansions, Hearts of Stone sounds like it'd be the title of one of those dumb ballads cheese metal bands insist on including on every album even though everyone skips them.

 

Just beat the Oxenfurt Monster. Man, that thing was tough. Not as tough as that damn level 30 spider queen, but tough. For being a level 35 quest, it wasn't as rough as I thought it would be. Fighting it in the forest allowed me to dodge behind trees and even use Roach for guerilla tactics.

 

Can't recall if you've already finished this Ezio?

If not, going to ahead of the first expansion?

 

I've been on a leveling grind before starting the Brothers in Arms: Skellige quest. But I think I'm about done with side quests now and will be returning to the main story.

 

Say that reminds me - is that werewolf on Skellige's Most Wanted now killable?

 

No idea. Haven't done it. Not because I don't want to, but because I haven't found the quest yet.

 

https://www.vg247.com/2015/09/21/former-witcher-3-developers-form-new-studio-wickerman-games/

Two developers that worked on Witcher 3 are starting their own company, Wickerman Games, to develop video games inspired by table top RPGs.

 

Just started the Isle of Mists quest and man, sailing through Skellige while being constantly attacked by sirens is so damn annoying, especially since I keep falling off the damn boat in combat.

 

Yeah, that does irritate.

 

I minimized my Time In Boat (TIB, if you will) as much as possible throughout Skellige for precisely that reason. No way around it on Isle of Mists, but I think there's a warp that isn't too far from the mission objective?

 

There's a new Geralt and Ciri theme available now, which I bagged tonight - it's a nice bit of work.

 

New trailer for Hearts of Stone which shows a bit more of the story:



Looks great. Sadly I'm smack dab in the middle of Phantom Pain, but I'm sure I'll get around to this at some point.

 

Just played the battle of Kaer Moren. Those cutscenes are great.

 

Da-amn, just watched IGN's Hearts of Stone review and it looks to add a ton of stuff!

 

There's also a massive patch so it damn well better.

 

Ok, yeah, you said massive - I still wasn't expecting it to be 17.25GB!

 

Six hundred items in the changelog, it's madness. Amongst other things they literally added new cutscenes. On the one hand I feel utterly spoiled, on the other hand... I beat the game and I'm not going to see these changes, yet I have to eat this hard drive opportunity cost? Ugh.

 

Well then, that's what the New Game+ option was really for!

 

My Xbox One says it's 16GB, but that's still absurd. I know they're putting a lot of stuff into the patch but the size of patches these days is getting silly. Guess I won't be playing this again for a few days. :/

 

All those gigs of update data.... And that frigging werewolf for Skellige's Most Wanted is still unkillable!

 

My god, they played me like a damned fiddle!

Yeah, developers are using broadband and hard drives as an excuse to not bother with decent compression techniques and it's some garbage. I don't know why they assume 500 GB - 2 TB is some theoretically unlimited data dump size.

 

Fortunately, the Hearts & Stone download is just over 4GB, BUT you have to have that monster 17GB 1.10 update in place first!

 

Why the hell developers think open world games and races are such a good mix baffles me. It is a complete arse of a combination.

Case in point, it makes you conclude you need to race the merchant to access the Runewight, then as soon as you start that race you veer off course because it's entirely open - and no, you don't need to do the useless crap, the guy's just in the tent!

On a better note - did an Abandoned Site - those are always satisfying.

 

I won most of the races except for that one against the woman in Skellige. The course is just awful and Roach is constantly stopping because of unseen obstacles. It's an infuriating race, especially if you've already beat all the previous races and this is the only one standing in your way.