Hangout: Geralt of Rivia and the Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jun 9, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 36 comments


Link (YouTube)

Supposedly you can beat Witcher 3 in 25 hours if you only play the main quest and skip every cutscene. My play-through took around 80 hours and barely scratched the surface of the side content. I suppose the best-case for a proper play-through would be in the neighborhood of 50 hoursNaturally a first-time player spends some time getting lost, not taking the best shortcuts, hunting for things, taking on needless extra tasks, etc.. Since Spoiler Warning covers about an hour of gameplay a week, this means it would take us an entire year just to do a “quick” play-through of the game that barely skims the surface.

So enjoy this hangout, as it’s probably the closest we’ll get to a Witcher 3 season. I’m sorry I missed it. I’d love to have discussed the game, assuming I could get a word in between people prostituting themselves for the Wendy’s sandwich menu.

We’ve said before that we’d like to do hangouts monthly. I think making a policy of doing them at the top of the month is a good idea. Also, I think we should give Witcher 3 another shot next month, assuming Josh is up for it.

I just finished my play-through of the game. I think the main plot is overlong, and the layers of ancillary quests are a little too deep, but I was really happy with the ending.

Also! Brace yourselves: Tomorrow we begin the next Season of Spoiler Warning. If you’re just coming off the Hitman Absolution episodes, this will probably cause some whiplash.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Naturally a first-time player spends some time getting lost, not taking the best shortcuts, hunting for things, taking on needless extra tasks, etc.



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36 thoughts on “Hangout: Geralt of Rivia and the Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich

  1. WILL says:

    It’s going to be KotOR 2 and we’ll get a cool 200 part analysis of all its themes and deconstruction of RPG cliches, Star Wars Universe and progression/influence systems.

    Or not.

    1. goldenalchemist says:

      This is what you’re looking for.

      http://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/

      1. WILL says:

        Already saw it. That one part where he explains Kreia might be the Handmaiden’s mother is downright brilliant, never noticed it on my ~10 playthroughs.

  2. Redingold says:

    Man, seeing this reminds me of the delicious taste of Wendy’s® Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

    Witcher 3 looks pretty nifty, but if I get it, it won’t be until after Arkham Knight comes out. Looks like a good way to occupy my entire summer, though.

    I tried to play the first one, but didn’t get into it in the slightest. How essential is it to know all the backstory before jumping in?

    1. Jake Taylor says:

      It’s not essential at all. Actually, 3 is the best jumping-on point for new players since it’s a lot more newbie-friendly (in that it actually takes the time to explain everything to you). The game itself does a pretty good job telling you about things, and if you want to know more there’s the standard codex-type stuff in your menu so you can read profiles of characters and the like.

      I would say play it first, and if you really like it maybe give 2 a shot (the first game isn’t nearly as good as either of the sequels). You should be fine, and won’t feel like you’re missing out on much; it’s not like trying to play Mass Effect 3 first or anything.

      1. Humanoid says:

        Yeah, it’s fine but you risk the Shamus-Dandelion effect where the context of the game itself can’t quite underline how important a character should be to Geralt. That particular section of the game is pretty much a who’s who of the previous game, and though you can get a few paragraphs about each character either in the ingame character summary or in the booklet that comes with the game, it’s still going to take a while to warm to them.

        In the grand scheme of things though, 2 or 3 are both fine as starting points, the first kind of stands alone, both narratively (it’s referenced far less in subsequent games) and mechanically (since it is, after all, a top-down perspective game built on the NWN1 engine).

  3. At the hour mark (57:00 to be specific) they point out how someone had been waiting an hour into the stream for the twitch page to reload…which was me. I’d actually hadn’t been staring at the screen, but was dicking around tumblr on a different tag. Having used twitch all of maybe three times, I was not aware you needed to refresh in order for it to reupload a new stream and merely assumed it would start up automatically and that the audio kicking in would alert me…aaaaaand promptly forgot about it for an hour. All because I don’t know how twitch works. I weren’t too happy ’bout dat. |:(

    1. What’s worse is the “loading video” it shows you at the bottom of the window. LIES!

      1. YES! THAT’S EXACTLY WHY I THOUGHT I COULD GET AWAY WITH THAT!!! TWITCH, YER ON MY LIST YA HEAR ME!?

  4. Jonathan Scinto says:

    Whoa, Glitch is a fellow Spokaneite?

    I hate it here.

    And wow Josh, you managed to really screw up the Witch Hunter ruse. Basically you just pick the options that make Geralt seem like a dick, play on the hunters biases against mutants.

    1. Humanoid says:

      I haven’t watched how Josh did it, but I also screwed it up by being a bit too condescending, even though technically I was telling the guards the right message.

    2. Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich says:

      I am.

      I agree.

      Let’s escape.

    3. Galad says:

      If the Witch Hunter ruse is what I think it is, I had to alt-tab and kill the game because I like Triss, and didn’t want to listen to her suffer. That being said, I was told later on that it leads to better character development and quest outcome if you do let her do that ‘small’ sacrifice, so I’ll be doing that on a subsequent playthrough.

      Also, to give you a sense of time, I finished the game on Sunday, and, doing all side quests, except a dozen or so that came up when I was too high a level, and all contracts except the two high level ones, it took me 118 hours. Truly worth the full price tag and more.

      1. Although if you are to pursue a Geralt/Tris path then it’s an asshole move to let Triss suffer like that. I don’t know the Geralt character well enough but I’m guessing he’d rather have his knuckles bruised from beating up all the hunters than let his friend (lover) get hurt.

        Though you could do three “character” playthroughs I guess. “Nice” or “Neutral” or “Whatever it takes” Geralt.

        1. Galad says:

          It’s probably better to think of it in terms of endings, and the most important part of the endings is what happens to Ciri, Geralt, and Geralt’s love interest, if any. As far as I’m told there’s 5 endings in total, probably not counting less important details, like who gets to rule Skellige.

    4. Ledel says:

      To be fair, Josh was probably distracted by thinking about the delicious Wendy's® Spicy Crispy Chicken Sandwich.

      (Also, a good portion of the stream was asking for some action to happen, we were hoping you could stab that Reuven guy but took what we could get)

  5. The Rocketeer says:

    If I was Josh, I would refuse to acknowledge any of this had ever happened.

  6. Kalil says:

    What about the option of, instead of hitting the main quest, setting a more ‘realistic’ goal for a spoiler warning season and doing one of the larger side quest chains?
    (Haven’t played the game, so don’t know how feasible that is, but if it has side quests along the lines of the faction quests in Skyrim it might be possible to cover a somewhat self-contained arc?)

    1. Humanoid says:

      Could just do the Witcher 2 and see where it goes from there.

    2. Just recording a month worth of Witcher 3 stuff?
      That might work. Josh could just play some sidequests (I’m guessing that even when he has completed the game there are still some sidequests left over to do).

      This would allow talking about the game without specifics (just Josh joshing about while the gang opinionate on Witcher 3) and Josh would act as a tour guide, maybe plop into a town/area and the gang would talk a little of the design/mechanics there.
      With a completed main story almost all the games signposts should have been found so fast travel can be done to almost anywhere.

  7. Sorites says:

    I can’t wait for the speed-running community to beat The Witcher 3 in two hours, then declare that record “okay for now”.

    1. That would be difficult as CD Projekt RED provided one of their testers with “inside” info so that he could basically take all shortcuts and and stuff.
      Now I assume they did not exploit glitches in the game (which ideally should not be there/should be fixed) and that took like 20-25 hours (I forgot the exact number).

      Any faster than that would involve exploiting glitches or flaws in the design of the game or using cheats/trainer.
      I’m sure people will try though just to see if they can best the QA tester’s time.

      (Miss-)using AI path-finding to help kill enemies quicker/safer is something I’d consider OK as that is simply using a designed mechanic of the game. Glitching through walls on the other hand would not be part of the game mechanics.

      So I don’t think a speed run would be much shorter than what the devs tested.
      A “glitch” speed-run on the other hand, who knows, and it depends on the version (the devs are releasing patches almost once a week to tweak/fix stuff people report and point out or suggest).

  8. shiroax says:

    Hey Josh, what ending did this use?

    If you go with save Triss, are there still witch hunters and mentions of Triss in danger?

  9. I was really happy with the ending
    Did you get the father & daughter ending? IMO that feels like the best ending as it would make both Geralt and Ciri happy. (mild spoilers) Ciri doesn’t seem that interested in becoming the next Empress, and Geralt do not really care about fancy politics and prefers just to do Witcher things and complete Ciri’s training.

    I just finished my play-through of the game. I think the main plot is overlong, and the layers of ancillary quests are a little too deep

    So Shamus’ main complaint and takeaway from the game is that Witcher 3 is just too much game. *laughs*

    I can’t fault that opinion though. There is a lot of replayability too, but that Dandelion quest is gonna get on folks nerves in the 2nd or 3rd playthrough.
    I think 3 playthroughs are needed (potentially four).
    You can do “Good” Geralt, you can do “Neutral” Geralt you can do “Asshat” Geralt and you got 5 (6?) “endings” that I’m aware of (mild spoilers) Geralt/Ciri family ending, Ciri the Empress ending, Ciri self sacrifice/death ending?, Geralt and Triss (Ciri ending is then only Empress/Death?, Geralt and Yennefer (Ciri ending is then only Empress/Death?

    Oh and it’s (as far as I’ve seen on youtube) possible to two-time Triss and Yennifer (mild spoilers) with hilarious results when they find out, I suspect any further romance with either after that, is no longer possible so that removes two potential endings.

    1. Piflik says:

      I am not entirely sure, but I think Ciri’s endings and Geralt’s endings are not correlated. You can have any combination of them.

    2. Shamus says:

      Hm. I don’t know what ending I got then. Because:

      Ciri lived and Geralt got her a Witcher sword and told the Emperor she was dead so she was free to travel around. The two of them rode off together in pursuit of some Witcher contract. But then in the epilogue it said Geralt and Yen traveled together. I found this a little confusing.

      1. Ben Cranks says:

        Interesting I got the ending where Geralt and Yen went off together into quiet obscurity and Ciri became Empress, Temeria became a vassal state (thanks to my killing Radovid and Djikstra). I actually think this is the best ending while Ciri may not have wanted to be Empress I felt her growth throughout the game was leading her on a path to accepting that role. Her comments about being able to freely travel through space and time making everything almost meaningless to her I interpreted as an acceptance that she needed to embrace a life with consequences in one world.

        Overall I felt it was the ending most aligned with Geralt’s thoughts about ‘wanting to find you, not make you do anything’ (paraphrased) as the happy witcher wandering seemed more like what Geralt wanted to me than Ciri. I can’t decide if it was hackneyed to replay some of the Ciri/Witcher moments in that last cutscene or really effective but either way it got me real bad.

        Pretty satisfied with my ending overall but I reckon I’ll give it at least one more go to see what happens if I allow Djikstra to kill off everyone else and try and persuade Ciri to go witchering into the future.

  10. Ben Cranks says:

    Josh why that hair? I skipped the tutorial to escape it’s douchiness as soon as was humanly possible!

    1. Humanoid says:

      That’s not the tutorial hair though? One thing that did shock me though, you can request muttonchops at the barber, why oh why wasn’t Geralt sporting that look already?

      1. Ben Cranks says:

        Wait where are these muttonchops? Was this the hair DLC thing? I hadn’t installed that as I’d seen a news story that suggested that the beard growth would stop if you installed that DLC. Still bitterly disappointed I couldn’t get his beard to grow to ridiculous wild man from Donegal levels of magnificence but I’ll take what I can get

        For the tutorial I meant the opening sequence with a young Ciri not the bit in the pocket map with the Griffon.

        1. Humanoid says:

          I have it installed but see my beard growing, and I definitely remember shaving after installing the DLC. Maybe it’s that if you choose one of the ‘exotic’ beards like the muttonchops it stops growing?

  11. Wide And Nerdy says:

    I look forward to this season because (especially if they have Mumbles) they have every conceivable angle covered. I like the seasons where they can get analytical and between Mumbles being the preeminent Batman scholar and Shamus and Chris both having already done varying levels of analysis of the Arkham series, this should be a good season.

    As for me, Arkham Asylum was good but Arkham City was my favorite because you could hop in and beat up thugs and bullies for however much free time you have at the moment and then run around gliding and grappling.

  12. Ooh, I have an explanation for the mage hunter nose straps! See, one of the hunters went to the wrong brothel, and then his lambskin condom broke during the annual hunter orgy and now they all have syphilis and are doing the mercury cure and have lost their noses! The straps are holding on the very realistic falsies.

  13. bigben1985 says:

    Here’s a question for Josh (and anyone else who read some/all of the Witcher novels)

    How much does reading the books make the games more interesting? I highly suspect that one doesn’t miss much, but I’m a few minutes into the hangout and you met a character that’s in one of the books (and possibly one of the games). Plus I’m a sucker for backstory and lore, and I’m this close to hunt down a copy of the books…

    I would ask the same for the previous games, but I decided to play through them all anyway :D

  14. I really wish Twitch would save the chat. You can actually run the chat in an IRC client and save the whole chat log, but you’ve actually got to have it running the whole time to get everything, and there’s no way to play it back with the video. :(

  15. Dude says:

    I think Glitch should join the Spoiler Warning crew. :D

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