T w e n t y S i d e d

Enough futzing around trying to find Yennewhatshername. It’s time to start the main quest.

The Witcher’s 3’s main quest is called “Collect ’em all” (to complete it, you must collect one of every Gwent card in the game) and your first opportunity to start it is by talking to traveling Oxenfurt Professor Aldert Geert at the tavern in White Orchard. He’ll give you your first Gwent deck (of the Northern Realms faction) and play you in a pretty easy match.

This probably won’t surprise you much given the playthrough’s ground rules, but I’m a Gwent man. I got less satisfaction defeating the game’s various villains than I do when I scorch the everloving bejeezus out of an overpowered monster deck. It’s the only card game to successfully make me cackle.

Now I understand that not all of you reading this are into Gwent as much as I am, so I will also spend considerable time covering the game’s various side quests, like the one where you help Ciri save the world from a magical-entropic apocalypse. And from here on in I’ll warn you when there’s a “Gwent part” coming up, so you can skip it if you’re so inclined.

Today’s Gwent part is gonna be pretty short, because there’s not much to say yet. Gwent is a game where you deploy cards in three rows (melee, ranged, and siege) with the aim of outscoring your opponent in two out of three rounds. The twist is that you keep the same set of cards for all three rounds, so it can be advantageous to strategically throw a round if it leaves you better cards to win the following ones. The professor gives you a barebones deck and plays you in a match that mostly serves as a tutorial.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Witcher 3: Vizima”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.

When I left off last week my plan was to get some XP by doing quests that had little to no combat. I did the one where you find out who burned down the dwarf’s smithy, the one where you make a potion for a victim of a griffin attack, the one where you get the old lady’s pan, and advanced the griffin contract a few steps (which only requires you to fight a few wild dogs, with Mislav’s help). I won’t cover them in too much detail. For one, if I cover every quest in detail this series will be a thousand entries long, and for two, I think many of you reading this have already played the game anyway.

Instead I want to write a bit about what they all add up to. White Orchard is a setting with a very focused hook – the tension between the Temerian locals and the Nilgaardian occupiers – and pretty much everything that happens here explores that tension in some way, and how it intersects with people’s everyday lives. At no point during my time in White Orchard did I feel like I played through a quest that was just there as filler. (I’m talking about actual quests here, not bandit camps/monster nests/etc) Seeing it from a critical perspective, it’s startling how easy the developers make it all look.

It’s also unique in that it explores the aftermath of a military conflict rather than the conflict itself. Were the Witcher license to be acquired by, say, Activision, I can pretty much guarantee you that the dramatic opening battle cutscene would have been the part you played, and the state of the countryside afterwards likely wouldn’t have been mentioned at all. CD Projekt does it the other way round, which is a good illustration of how – for lack of a better phrase – Sapkowski-ish they are.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Witcher 3: White Orchard, Part Two”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.