My Witcher

EverQuest was down all yesterday, so I didn’t have a chance to continue my doomed quest to finish my SK’s bone mail armor. But that was fine — I had the Witcher waiting for me.

First step was to find those bard song and character model mods I mentioned yesterday. I couldn’t get them working last night, but this morning I went back and carefully followed the instructions, and yay! When I load up the game, I hear “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” on the main menu. When load the save, there’s Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia looking back at me. I can’t wait until we finally meet up with Yennefer to see how she looks.

Must get more mods.

It was a really good thing that I’d read “Blood of Elves” before starting this game. That’s the book to read as it is more-or-less set in the same time frame as the prologue to this game, when Ciri is training with the Witchers at Kaer Morden.

After the prologue, we find that the prologue is in the past, and Nilfgaard’s conquest of the human lands is mostly complete. Yennefer has left Geralt a cryptic message, and he and fellow Witcher Venemir are days behind her, looking for clues to follow.

Right now, Geralt is helping a Nilfgaardian commander by hunting down a griffin that has been harassing the locals. The Geralt I know would never help the Nilfs after what they did to Ciri, but this is some time in the future, and maybe they have accepted current reality.

The combat is very complex. Juggling weak and strong attacks, blocks and parries and Signs is a lot to take in. I don’t think I’m very good at this.

There is a super-easy difficulty level (“Story Mode”), but I didn’t choose that because I do like some challenge. I believe I’m playing on the normal difficulty mode. It’s hard to be sure, because the difficulty level is set in a narrative way.

Anyway, I’m at the first quest hub in the game. I’m loving the story but worry that the tedium of taking on hunts and completing them will obscure the plot — but we’ll see. It’s way too early to be worrying about that.

Right now, I’ve got a griffin to kill.