Dima wrote:I never played a Witcher game before. Do i need to play 1 and 2 in order to understand the story? I don't want to start the game and keep asking myself ''who is this'', ''when did this happen'', ''am i missing something here'' etc.

The Witcher 3 is pretty much a self-contained story. There are characters from previous games and references to events in those games, but the game itself provides plenty of backstory so you'll understand what's being talked about. Backstory can appear in the form of cut scenes, character bios, or journal entries, but the game does a pretty good job of explaining what's going on. I've only played a bit of The Witcher 2 and none of the original, but I have no problem understanding the story.


Anyhow, I just finished the first segment where you get to play as Ciri. I fucking love it when a game lets you play as a different character during a flashback, I hope there's a lot more of this.

I wasn't sure how to respond because I've played the series since the first game when it came out, but if Iron had no trouble...

Yeah, to say that Witcher 3's story is self-contained is arguably under-selling just how self-contained it is. The most central characters of the story besides Geralt himself are introduced in this entry even though Geralt has deeper history with them than he does with anyone in the two previous games. So even players who played the first two games (such as me) were like "Who the hell's Yennefer?" and were on the same footing as new players in getting to know her. Whereas, Triss appeared all the way back in the first game -- which, clearly, changes the dynamic, and I suspect that new players are more likely to choose Yennefer as their romance option whereas players like me who played the previous games are probably more likely to stick with Triss if we chose her in a previous game.

Heck, it's not even limited to Yennefer and Ciri; a lot of characters pop up in Witcher 3 who never appeared in a previous game but have significant history with Geralt from the novels (or so I assume), including ones you spend a lot of time around, such as Dijkstra. Geralt and these characters will usually discuss relevantly characterizing events in their shared pasts that help bring the player quickly up to speed.

The dramatic step up in quality between entries that I mentioned earlier contributes to the self-containedness of the third game, oddly enough, because it has the side-effect of essentially changing the characters between games anyway. Triss from the first game bears almost no resemblance to Triss from the third game outside of the very basics of her appearance (such as hair color), because first-game Triss is just not as much of a person -- as is true of the entire cast. I played two full games with Dandelion, Zoltan, and Triss before Witcher 3, and I still didn't feel like I'd really gotten to know them until the third game, when the increase in quality of writing, acting, and their character models and animations made them more "real" than they'd ever been before. (But then again, it's hard to say how much of that can be granted directly to Witcher 3 and not to the series as a whole for building them up to that point.)

There are bonuses to the experience for players of the previous games, such as the example I gave of how the opening scene was directed, but if Iron is any indication, you'll be fine even without that.

I see. I am planning to upgrade my PC in the next months and TW3 is one of the games i want to play after the upgrade. It seems that i won't have a hard time understanding the story.

Thanks for answering, fellow members.