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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I see what you mean and can get down with that. The writing in 2 is in general much tighter then 3. It’s a shame that compared to 3 relatively few people have played it.

    Personal opinions aside as an open world RPG by itself Witcher 3 is pretty good, it’s was a breakout success and remains a popular game for good reason. As a follow-up to Witcher 2 though it’s pretty disappointing. Switching over to an open world does the storys pacing and stakes no favors, and it feels like CDPR is limited by following up the book series and trying to utilize its characters. As evidenced by Witcher 2 and the Hearts of Stone expansion for 3, it seems like their writers are much more comfortable writing their own original stories and characters. 3’s main storyline doesn’t introduce anyone nearly as interesting as Letho, Roach, and Iorveth, except for maybe the Baron, who like the others is an original character.

    Additionally everything 2 spends time building up for 3 has pretty disappointing payoffs. The Northern Realms politics were a focus for 2, in 3 they are overly simplistic and somewhat nonsensical. Radovid is depicted as a cunning, competent, and ruthless king in 2, but goes blubbering mad off-screen between games. The Wild Hunt is barely a presence in the games storyline despite being it’s namesake and Eredin is a flat and boring antagonist. I understand why Witcher 3 is so popular, but as someone who was a big fan of 2 and was incredibly hyped for it, I found it to be incredibly underwhelming.


  • God I hate the “Interactive Movie” genre. Uncharted, Last of Us, God of War. Pretty much most of Sony’s exclusives. They’re all the same boring 3rd person mechanics, and uncultured “gamers” will go off about how “amazing” the story is because they haven’t read a book since high school and only watch blockbusters. If you’re not going to do anything interesting with the game mechanics or add any actual interactivity to the story then whats the fucking point of making it a game? They just seem like a refuge for hack screenwriters that couldn’t make it in film and lazy game devs who are out of ideas.


  • Witcher 2 is the most underrated entry in the series, and has by far the most interesting story to tell. I’m shocked you find 3’s story complicated as its pretty simplistic in comparison. Yeah it has more characters from the books involved, but the game tells you pretty much everything you need to know about all of them. Overall I enjoyed 3, but as a followup to Witcher 2 its pretty disappointing story-wise. Both games have shit combat, so if you’re not invested in the story/world they aren’t worth playing.






  • Serious answer. TNG has a lot of shit like this. Leftover plot hooks that completely lack follow-up. Far too many to wrap up in one season of modern prestige TV.

    It’s just how TV was back then. You wrap the story up in 45 mins. Maybe some things get revisited, if the writers and producers don’t forget about them and the actor is available. Serialized stories were the exception not the rule back then.

    Honestly I feel like this makes the Star Trek universe seem bigger. Every character has a lot going on and not everything that happens to them revolves around one storyline. There’s a whole galaxy out there full of things constantly happening! A lot of these would be followed up in books. Iirc it’s mentioned in one that Worf and Jeremy exchange letters regularly and he does visit on occasion. We just accept that this happens off-screen because Worf has a life beyond the brief glimpses into it we see. Modern TV is too tidy, with everything tied to one or two storylines and everything being wrapped up tidily with maybe one or two cliffhangers. It makes fictional settings cough Star Wars cough seem small and insuler.



  • Deep Space Nine is the most idealistic Star Trek, even moreso then TNG. Don’t get me wrong I love both, but for the characters of TNG utopian idealism is easy. DS9 on the other hand tests its characters ideals. Its about maintaining Utopia in the midst of overwhelming adversity. Its characters question their idealism, sometimes they even compromise it, but in the end they are not found wanting. Its aspirational AF especially for the times we are living in.

    Unfortunately it seems like for some of the lesser creators in charge of modern Trek cough Kurtzman cough all they took away from DS9 is darkness and edge. They are cynical and don’t really understand or appreciate the importance of idealism in Star Trek. They just saw Sloan as some kind of badass superspy and probably thought Bashir was lame and didn’t understand his problem with Section 31. At least it seems like positive Idealism has been re-injected into Trek through SNW. We as a society need it now more then ever.