I’ve been on and off playing witcher 3 the last couple months. Just got to the skelliga main quest where Yennefer tells Geralt to get out of his armor and wear something nice to some social event (which btw doesn’t make sense, my armor is way better looking than the tunic options). It reminded me of the quest where Triss asked the same thing so I decided to check online if doing so would ruin my Triss romance.
Only to learn that I had already failed the Triss romance because I picked “We can try again” instead of “I love you” when she was at the harbor. Up until that point the vibes between Geralt and Triss has been “we had a thing in the past but it’s no more” so I thought that option was right for getting them together again. I had assumed that had no immediate effect but was just one of many dialogues that eventually lead to romancing Triss but nope, that was it apparently. Much discourse online about how there used to be a bug that let you romance with “We can try again” but nobody’s talking about how that’s the more reasonable option.
And also I’m just now realizing that Novigrad was the Triss area and Skelliga is the Yennefer area and there will be many quests there to get to know Yen, which makes me think did I do Now or Never too early? But like, once you go to the party with Triss the city is just in chaos so I felt obligated to follow that questline to the end. Also there’s the relative low levels of those quests and the way Geralt seemingly gets stranded in Skelliga when he travels there that made me think everything that’s not a red skull on novigrad comes before Skelliga story-wise.
When I first heard that you need to choose between Triss and Yennefer in this game choosing Triss felt like a no brainer since she’s been around the last 2 games and declares she’ll never leave Geralt’s side in the last one. And it rubs me the wrong way how Geralt acts all hot around Yennefer unprompted but doesn’t act warm around Triss even if you try to. I get that Yennefer was his wife or whatever in the books but like the last 2 games still happened and in the beginning even Yennefer says Geralt and Triss had a nice thing going.
So do I go back to end of now or never and change the answer? Do I go back further and leave novigrad when it was in chaos? Even further before the questline began?
But also also while looking up how to not fuck up romance I read that apparently Yennefer’s endgame quest is amazing and Triss’s is an afterthought… and I do want to play the good quest instead of the bad one…
Sometimes you think you say the right thing, but you didn’t, and you’ll have to live with the consequences. This is a major part of the Witcher games, that your actions have possibly unforeseen consequences that you’ll have to live with.
Accept that Triss has made her choice. If you don’t want to be with Yen, then don’t be with anyone, that’s completely fine.
Don’t go back. Geralt’s relationship is… complicated. Personally I’m a Yennifer fan, mostly because of Geralt’s history with Triss. Triss knew that Geralt’s memory was gone a while back and took advantage of that, even though she knew that Geralt really was with Yennifer. So… I was always salty.
That being said, this is a game I recommend playing again someday. So just choose Triss next time. Enjoy Yenn, IMO they compliment each other well vs Triss who is just obsessed. Triss’ relationship isn’t as healthy
For me Yennefer seemingly popped into existence at the end of the last game but even then it wasn’t clear what she was to Geralt. I guess that’s a way to interpret the “took advantage of” line but to me it sounded more like it was about how seemingly half the women in this world is trying to seduce Geralt and Triss succeeded… She didn’t strike as particularly obsessive neither. If that’s why Geralt is upset at her I don’t see why he’s not also upset at his other friends who turned a blind eye and didn’t mention Yennefer.
Anyways I’m more upset about the game seemingly overriding my choice with Triss than ultimately ending up with Yen. I’m not sure how to to roleplay a Geralt who up until this point didn’t care for Yen but suddenly divined that he fucked it up with Triss so she’s the only option left…
And I don’t know if I’ll ever fully replay this game, it’s simply too long
Totally fair gripe, and I have the same one with choice trees in most games. I don’t mind little stuff that doesn’t affect the longer game, but holy shit, if choice A or B is going to wildly change the outcome of the game / who I’m dating / if a character lives or dies / etc, either make it super obvious or flat out tell me! I’d LOVE to have a little info icon next to dialog choices that would say “FYI if you choose this option you’re straight up rejecting any future romance with this char” or something. Immersion breaking? who cares! so is save scumming and a ton of other game mechanics. It’s all for fun anyway, I’d rather know what I’m doing and not waste time.
Sorry, rant over :D
Stuff like this is why I’m struggling to get back into cyberpunk
I love the game but I feel like every decision has some far reaching consequence which is nice that my choices matter but please tell me about this gameplay altering descion
The whole triss vs yen thing was lazy fanservice added by CDPR. If you read the books, it’s clear Geralt is destined to be with Yen. The books make this abundantly clear. It also makes it crystal clear that Geralt thinks of Triss like a little sister, not romantically. There was absolutely no reason to have that in the book. It’s straight up stupid fanservice and made the game into kind of a meme in my opinion.
I really don’t care about the book. If anything his relationship with Yen feels like pondering to the book audience without much of a setup or explanation in-game
I mean… The game has numerous book references. It expects you to have read then. Half the characters and references are from the books. So not sure why it’s the yen part that specifically bugs you :-)
As far as I understand the games aren’t book cannon right? Then let the books not be game cannon. It is unreasonable for the books to be required reading between witcher 2 and 3 or even to expect the audience to know to read them.
A never before seen character from the books showing up in the game doesn’t bother me because they’re new and they’re explored as if they’re new characters. Yen bugs me because she’s a new character to me but as soon as they meet in Skelliga, her and Geralt get back together as if nothing has changed since the books. On the other hand Triss is an established character who has a history with Geralt that I know of, but now both are giving each other the cold shoulder without explanation.
In terms of Triss and Yen the books don’t give context to the status quo. They become the status quo.
The books are canon for the games, yes. The games are not canon. Idk what else to say. I played W2 and 3 originally without having read the books. It didn’t seem weird in W3 because W2 was spent looking for her the entire game. And it gave clues about their history. After having read the books W3 makes even more sense since I understood more about the characters. There is nothing unreasonable about how they did that game. The game is totally fine without having read the books. But I am telling you that it makes more sense if you did.
W2 was spent looking for her the entire game
Witcher 2 was spent looking for Triss not Yennefer.
The books are canon for the games, yes
And I said maybe they shouldn’t be because warping the game story to fit the books is what I’m complaining about in the first place.
If you were fine with how w3 handled Yen before reading the books good for you. But it was not at all clear for me and that’s all I said. Sorry for being brash but it is obnoxious to then get comments preaching about how Yennefer is objectively right for Geralt and Triss is just fan service and the game itself favoring Yen would make sense if only I were to read the books
Huh? Witcher 2 was primarily focused on Geralt looking for Yennifer. Are you mixing up names?
Witcher 2. The game. Assasins of kings. Letho captures Triss at the end of act 1 to get away and Geralt can recue her on act 3. Yennefer is only ever mentioned in name. Please look things up before condescending
I think this criticism is fair to be honest and is one of the things that’s sort of swept under the rug a bit in discourse about Witcher 3. I definitely think the pacing is off just as you mentioned. I’ve heard other people regret their choice of Triss because they had basically locked in her romance already by the time you start doing stuff in Skellige with Yen and start seeing what she’s like.
Personally I think the Yen/Geralt dynamic is a lot better than with Triss, although it’s got its own troubles (nobody is perfect). I like the banter between them and they feel more like a proper couple.
The game as a whole also flows better with Yen as your romance choice in my opinion and to me it feels more like the Triss romance is an afterthought yes. A bone thrown at those who desperately can’t stand Yen.
Geralt (in the books) is deeply in love with Yen and is also bound to her by literal Djinn magic, so it makes sense that he’s always hot for her in the game and I think the attention paid to the Yen side of things is a desire by CDPR to anchor their game in the preexisting lore.
If you’re not dead set on Triss or wildly opposed to Yen I’d say go with it and do the Yen romance. It’s very suitable for a first time playthrough imo.
I really do think they should have flipped the timeline for the two in W3. Even players of the first two games don’t really know Yennefer that well, so her proper introduction to the player comes very late, all things considered.
Not being immersed in their backstory also doesn’t really convey how messed up it is that Triss got together with a man who lost the memories of the woman he was in love with (a woman she knew).
So do I go back to end of now or never and change the answer? Do I go back further and leave novigrad when it was in chaos? Even further before the questline began?
If you think that you’d like to play The Witcher 3 more than once, one suggestion:
-
The first pass through a game is the only time that you can play the game without foreknowledge. You can never experience that again. If you’re going to play without guidance from a wiki or anything like that, really sit in the main character’s shoes, I’d do it that time. Just don’t worry that much about getting your ideal outcome, because you can do another run. Maybe it’ll give some interesting variety, have you experience something you wouldn’t normally have done, with foreknowledge of the consequences of decisions.
-
Then in subsequent runs, you’ve already experienced a number of “spoilers” from your prior runs, and you can try to use that knowledge (as well as knowledge from wikis or forums or whatever) to guide the plot to your desired outcome.
I would like to experience the different paths the game has to offer but I don’t think life’s long eough to play a 300 hr game twice when i could play 10 others I’ve never experienced before
Fair enough. All that’s contingent on whether you’re up for multiple runs through a game.
Highly recommend the sitting in the character’s shoes approach. I ended up
spoiler
killing Keira on the island on my first playthrough because I didn’t pick up on how desperate she was,
and really kicked myself for missing that cue after. Still one of my most regretfully memorable gaming moments.
-
Earlier this year, I was in a similar predicament. I actually told Triss that I loved her. However, that only works if you take advantage of her while she’s drunk at the party. (She falls down while drunk and after you catch her, you can randomly kiss her.) I didn’t and locked myself out of romancing her early.
I would have lost many hours of progress by going back and frankly, I didn’t want to go for that choice. I cut my losses and went with Yen. Since then, I finished the whole game, DLCs included, and I don’t regret my choice. She gets a lot better later on and I came to appreciate her. Her quests are good. I just think the game does a poor job introducing her. I don’t care for either the books or the show and I’ve only played Witcher 2 once on release. With my first playthrough of Witcher 3 only starting last year, I knew literally nothing going in. Up until I could romance Triss, Yen was annoying and arrogant.
Oof I forgot that she was drunk in the party
Commander Shepard tried for both Liara and Ashley at the same time.
Didn’t play that one yet but I did read that in w3 if you try both you fail both but I already failed Triss so…
trying and failing both promts a Hilarius ending though :D
