Le Saboteur said:
I'm curious if anybody has seriously considered that fan petition to bring the series to the small screen via HBO. With six-million copies sold in the first six weeks, that seems like a solid foundation for a series. I don't even think Game of Thrones hit those kinds of numbers until season three.
I guess the usual response would be to look at all these movies that started out as video games, and how they're, well, uniformally crap. And the reason is obvious. Most video games that people agree are good, are good because they have good gameplay. Their story content, on the other hand... well. To put it simply, when you have a highly interactive visual medium and transform that into a visual medium that is not-so-interactive, you're stripping away the bits that made it so good in the first place.
But when you have a game that - apart from being a good game - receives acclaim for its narrative content as well? Hmm, I guess that's different. There would arguably still be some meat left in
The Witcher franchise even if you remove the gamey parts. Not to mention it all began as a series of books*, and those do have a better track record of being adapted to the screen than video games**. Then again, said books - while highly revered - were largely obscure outside Eastern Europe until someone chose to turn them into a damn good video game. So, how would their cultural quirks translate to a more global audience if it doesn't come with a good game?
I guess my stance is that it could work, but regardless, there's more to consider than merely the games' sales figures.
And oh, there is a
movie in the works, based on not on the games, but on the early books. So I guess we'll have a better inkling soon enough.
*There actually IS a TV series already. The Poles made one out of the books, but as I've heard, the best words to describe that one are "flaming turd".
**Come to think of it, why aren't there any good Game of Thrones video games yet? Only ones that are considered mediocre at best.
Le Saboteur said:
I'm currently at ~67 hours in and I've come to something of an impasse. I've just (perhaps unfortunately) lost Triss* to Kovir and hit let level 19 in the process. If I keep running around Novigrad, I'll be wildly over leveled for the rest of the game and if I continue through to the end then I'll be wildly over leveled for everything else afterwards. Assuming, of course, that the side quests remain open.
I don't know if you've noticed yet, but the game actually rubberbands the XP rewards to your level. Only significant gains come from doing stuff that roughly respond to your current level (the "green" quests) or activites you're grossly underleveled for (the "red" ones). Once a quest or activity "grays out" because you're overleveled for it, you gain little to no XP from doing it. The biggest XP rewards are also always tied to the main quests, so even if you do tons of side stuff, at worst you're constantly only
slightly overleveled for your next main quest.
So I'd say that as long as you meet the level requirements, you should definitely do the side stuff when you come across it and not worry about it too much - that won't turn the game into a curb-stomp cakewalk. But if you just plough through the main story, that will eventually overlevel you for most of the SQs, meaning your only motivation for coming back later is seeing the story content. (Of course, in a game like this, that alone is plenty motivation.)
As for losing Triss, that may or may not be unfortunate, depends somewhat on where your priorities lie. I don't wanna spoil too much, but you might wish to watch which creatures you skewer with your trouser sword. In the previous two games there were no repercussions whatsoever, but that may be a little different now that Yen is around. She's the canon love interest, after all.