2390: Hearts of Stone

I finished The Witcher 3’s first expansion pack Hearts of Stone this evening, and I’ve come away thoroughly impressed. In fact, I’d be inclined to go so far as to say that I enjoyed the tightly focused (and somewhat shorter) experience that was Hearts of Stone’s main story considerably more than the main story of Wild Hunt and all its various distractions.

Hearts of Stone benefits from not trying to be too grand in the story it tells. It concentrates largely on a single character — one Olgierd von Everic, who happens to be the initial contact to start the expansion’s questline — and proceeds to weave an interesting, mysterious and thought-provoking tale with a few enjoyably Silent Hill-esque twists along the way.

Hearts of Stone, I feel, benefits considerably from playing it the way I played it: ignoring all other sidequests I had in my journal and simply ploughing through the entirety of the main story from start to finish. Perhaps I would have felt less lukewarm about Wild Hunt as a whole if I had tackled its main scenario in this way; certainly for a good 90% of the Wild Hunt main narrative, I was considerably outlevelled for the challenges it offered, making even supposedly climactic encounters rather trivial at times. (I tried using the “enemy upscaling” option, but this led to ridiculous situations where starving wild dogs could rip me to shreds at a moment’s notice rather than Geralt slicing through them like butter, and consequently turned it right back off afterwards.)

Anyway, hard to say in retrospect; certainly I can say with confidence that the best way to play Hearts of Stone is to play through the entire main story without getting distracted along the way, since this gives it an excellent sense of pace and progression, leading to an absolutely brilliant final area that was far more interesting and enjoyable than pretty much anything in the main game.

Hearts of Stone also fixes a few other issues I had with the main game, most notably certain instances of combat. While I got through Wild Hunt using the same old combo right the way through, Hearts of Stone had some really cool boss fights that demanded careful dodging and timing of attacks as well as observing enemy attack patterns. Some of the encounters were even vaguely puzzly; a late-game encounter with a wraith that jumps in and out of paintings proved to be particularly memorable for this reason.

The best thing about Hearts of Stone is that it concentrates on what the whole The Witcher series has always done best: tell interesting, personal stories with bags of characterisation, filled with shades of grey morality and some agonising decisions to make. Olgierd makes an excellent central character as he’s quite a piece of work, but not quite enough for him to be considered loathsome beyond redemption. On the contrary, Hearts of Stone’s tale has such a driving force behind it because it’s clear that there’s a chance, however small, that Olgierd can find redemption and peace if only all the pieces fall into place.

The other highlight of Hearts of Stone is Gaunter “Master Mirror” O’Dimm, whose exact role I shall refrain from spoiling for the benefit of those yet to play the expansion. Suffice to say that from his initial mysterious introduction through his occasional enigmatic appearances at various points throughout the main story, he proves to be an extremely effective character whose intentions are never entirely clear — at least until you discover the truth about him, that is, but you’ll have to find that out for yourself.

I got to the end of Wild Hunt feeling like the more I played The Witcher 3, the less I liked it; it was starting to feel a bit like a chore by the time I beat the main game, but Hearts of Stone has reinvigorated me, and now I’m very much looking forward to jumping straight in to Blood and Wine, the pastel-coloured fairy-tale adventure in the land of Toussaint that has had me so intrigued ever since I first saw how different its vivid screenshots seemed in comparison to the drab colours of the main game regions. It certainly has a lot to live up to after Hearts of Stone, mind you, so let’s hope it delivers.