EDIT BY BAMUL: I moved this older post to a new thread because I liked the idea behind it, but felt that it deserves its own place. This way we can compare the endings each of us got and discuss the game's story in general without worrying about spoiling anything for others... though I'd still recommend using spoiler tags even here in case someone accesses this thread by accident. If you're reading this and you haven't yet finished W3, you should probably back out of here real quick. Original post by Potarto below. Yup, they did a great job with ambiance and atmosphere. 86 hours into the game, I finally finished it. There are still a decent number of Witcher Contracts on my list and a few Bulletin Boards I have yet to go back to, and the game does restore the moment before the final mission so you can go back to exploring and whatnot, but this game has already stolen enough of my time at this point. When you guys do finish the game, and if you feel like comparing, here's what I got for the ending. *ACTUAL MAJOR SPOILERS, DO NOT QUOTE* Spoiler Main: Ciri Becomes Emperor - Geralt Retires with Yennefer - Emhyr lives, conquers North, restores Temeria - Baron leaves with wife in hopes of recovering her health - Cerys rules Skellige - Keira and Lambert run off together *ACTUAL MAJOR SPOILERS, DO NOT QUOTE*
Took me over 191 hours... :lol: I got a completely different main ending, but many of the side details relating to characters other than Ciri and the fate of kingdoms were generally quite similar to yours (so we must have taken similar decisions in the smaller parts of the main quest). Details in spoiler tags below: Spoiler Main: Ciri becomes a witcher - Geralt retires with Yennefer - Emhyr lives, conquers North, restores Temeria - Radowid is assassinated; Talar, Roche and Ves survive; Dijkstra dies - Keira and Lambert run off together - Vesemir (and no one else) dies at Kaer Morhen - Cerys rules Skellige - Spirit in Velen is freed, orphans are saved, Anna is punished and dies, baron hangs himself I've embedded a video of it below if you want to see what the last part of my ending actually looks like (loaded last saved game and turned on English subtitles/UI); I recorded it in 900p, but YouTube downgraded it 720p. The compression is actually quite horrible with this, and ShadowPlay records audio at a really low quality, but at least it didn't fuck up the frame rate or anything. EDIT: looks like it plays only in 30 fps here, so if you want to watch it in 60 frames per second you have to view it on YouTube. [YOUTUBE]Ap8IToM6pnw[/YOUTUBE]
Gonna drop spoiler tags for the rest of the posts here since the title clearly says so. Sounds like the only main decisions we differed on were setting the Spirit free and choosing to take Ciri to go see Emhyr. I figured that setting forth a murderous disembodied mutated organ inside of a tree probably wasn't a great idea, considering the series' history of having other-wordly creatures try to trick you. Also chose to take Ciri just because eh, I figured it was her choice and if Emhyr was as obliquely pragmatic with Ciri as he was with me then she'd probably not be a fan of him anyways. Ended up refusing payment and winning Ciri favor points as well. Also I tried to get with Triss, but fucked up by trying to seem more grounded and mature, but after some reading apparently just opening up to her like an emotional teenager is how you get her into the lighthouse. Oh well. As for our same choices, we had the same general idea. Radovid was a dick, Djikstra's sudden change of character was not something I was a fan of, didn't feel like letting Keira die for no reason, and Cerys seemed like a more grounded choice than the stereotypical blood-thirsty young viking. Also wow, Ciri sounds pretty much exactly the same in Polish as the English version. Good casting I suppose.
A reasonable assumption, however the spirit doesn't actually trick you even though she does turn out to be not quite what she said she was. If you free her then she does indeed kidnap the orphans, but you can later find them all safely cared for at the orphanage in Novigrad (along with a note saying how one day they appeared there out of nowhere with no recollection of how they got there). The baron's wife isn't killed by the spirit - she is cursed by the witches for not keeping an eye on the orphans. You can lift the curse (which I managed to do), but this results in her death (once again due to the witches). Of course, Anna wouldn't have been cursed in the first place if the spirit hadn't taken the kids away, but still. I didn't take her to Emhyr because, knowing what happened in the books, in my head I just couldn't even picture Geralt ever doing that (and when I play the game I do make the decisions I personally want to take, but also trying to be in Geralt's shoes in those situations). Not to mention Ciri wouldn't have wanted something like that to happen; Emhyr was practically a stranger to her when compared to Geralt and Yennefer. Ciri becoming a witcher is actually one of her early childhood dreams, so that ending put a smile on my face. Playing as Geralt, I wanted to do my best to keep her away from the influence of the mages and Emhyr, whilst ultimately treating her like an adult and letting her make the decisions. Pretty much. She had a crush on Geralt for a long time (she is one of the youngest mages in the series). In the books she only had a seemingly short romance with Geralt, who didn't want to continue it (truly loving Yennefer) but Triss always did try to bring it back. Triss has always been a fairly likeable character in the books. Interestingly, they make her seem a bit less likeable in the first two games, whilst the Triss in the last game reminds me much more of the Triss I remember from Sapkowski's novels (only even more likeable). However, I think Yennefer is a much more interesting character in the end (even though at first I disliked her in the first book she appears in) and before W3 her relationship with Geralt has always been deeper and more meaningful than the short romance Geralt had with Triss in the novels. But Triss is such a nice person in W3 that it was still quite hard to turn her down. Yep. Though I gotta add that I actually liked Dijkstra as a character probably a bit more (he is a bastard and indirectly responsible for the deaths of many, but an interesting character and sort of a good guy when compared to plotters like Filippa) and I know him much better than Talar, Roche or Ves since Dijkstra earlier appeared in 3 books, while Talar, Roche and Ves were created in the games. However, I felt that ending the war with pseudo-sovereignty for Temeria would be the best option instead of continuing the bloodshed. Many of the problems would end simply by stopping the fight, whilst the limited autonomy offered to Temeria would spare them from the brunt of Emhyr's oppressive regime. Plus there was also the fact that helping kill Radowid felt like justice, whereas leaving T&R&V to die after agreeing to something completely different felt dishonest and scoundrelly to me. Really? I heard very little of the English "Syrri" in contrast to the Polish "Tsiri", but they feel completely different to me. Have a look at this and then this (each is about 40 seconds long). Ciri doesn't sound bad in English, but she just doesn't sound like Ciri to me. In Polish she was voiced by Anna Cieślak and I think Ciri's face may have been partially based on Cieślak's face too. Spoiler
I have almost the same ending as Bamul's expect for me Ciri becomes Empress. For some reason I choose to get her there (most likely my lack of knowlage about the later parts of the saga). I generally loved the main path, but I think the Wild Hunt got way lesser time that they would needed. I read somewhere - the official forums if I remember correctly - that there was a plan for a siege on Novigrad by the Wild Hunts. I like all of the endings, the Empress ending was a bit bittersweet for me, the Witcher ending is the "canon" for me, and I had so big smile on my face, when I saw that. The bad ending, well it is damn depressive. Right now I am aiming for the Witcher ending on my NG+ walkthrough.
Damn, I never knew that. It's a shame that something as large was left out, though I still think the entire last chapter of the game with preparing for the fight and the long epilogue featuring the battles is excellent. Also, on an unrelated note, I recommend finishing reading Sapkowski's saga before getting the second expansion for W3 (the one that will come next year) since it will be set in a region where Geralt had some interesting adventures in the last sections of the book series.
Might be a little late here, but after all, I didn't finish the game until recently. Spoiler I got the bad ending, the worst of 'em all. And I didn't get any details about the Baron or Roche or Dijkstra, as far as I can remember. Ciri died, then Geralt went to kill the remaining Crow that had stolen Ciri's medalion. He then takes the medalion and gets swarmed by a large ammount of monsters, with gloomy music in the background, and that's the last we see. According to someone's speculation, he actually died there. Emhyr was killed, and Radovid Conquered pretty much everywhere except Skellige, where Cerys ruled. What did I do to deserve this ending?! :rain:
Damn, that is pretty bleak indeed. :lol: As far as I remember, your ending is largely defined by the amount of secondary main quests you complete for certain characters at a certain point in the story (and of course the choices you make during these quests), if you know what I mean.
HEAVY SPOILERS FOR SECOND EXPANSION Spoiler I just finished KiW, took me about 30 hours, with overwhelmingly positive impressions as you can tell by reading this. The ending I got was pretty cool - unfortunately Dettlaff had to die, but Syanna and Anarietta both survived and embraced each other in the end, which was wonderful to see. The epilogue sequence with Regis was excellent, though I felt a bit shitty knowing that he had to kill a friend and has fallen out of favour with some of the local vampires because of it too. Still, all interactions with Regis in the game are appreciated, he was always a fan favourite from the books. Finally, after the credits, I came home to Corvo Bianco and found Yennefer there. I've read online that you can find Yennefer, Ciri, Jaskier, or Triss waiting for you depending on what choices you've made in the base game.
Spoiler DAMN IT! When finished with the story, I was left like "Damn, now all I need is Triss here at Corvo, and my life would be complete". Instead I got Dandelion :sad: I got the same ending as you (By the way, the last fight against Dettlaff was just amazing). I really started taking a liking to Anarietta after a while into the story, and even more so her sister. Regis was slightly mysterious to me since I've never played any oif the previous games or read the books, but I just absolutely loved that character, and dat ending sequence with Regis Dettlaff was a cool character as well, one that I definitely would have loved to see more of, but I didn't feel like I got to know him well enough to feel sorry for him. Damn, I'm gonna have to play the main story and this expansion over again. By the way, why do you call it KiW, is that polish?
Did you use the same save that you completed the game on? If so, it's weird that she wasn't there, since... Spoiler As far as I know, the sorceress whom you decide to fully romance in the main plot will appear (Yennefer or Triss). If you haven't romanced either of them and Ciri is alive, then she will be waiting for you at Corvo Bianco instead. If you haven't romanced Triss or Yennefer, Ciri is dead or you haven't finished the base game with that save, then I believe Jaskier/Dandelion appears. Btw, I'm glad you like Regis even though you didn't know him before. I also agree that Detlaff didn't get enough screen time, it actually felt like some scenes were cut maybe, but it was still a shame to see him go. Awesome fight indeed though. And yes, KiW is an acronym for Krew i Wino (the native name of the expansion, Polish for Blood & Wine). It's mostly just a habit and I feel silly calling Polish stuff using English names for it, especially since I played the Polish versions (which is also why I use W3 and not TW3, because W3 = Wiedźmin 3). I realise it can be confusing at times, sorry about that. Fortunately W3 is self-explanatory in both languages heh
