The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone | The Ultimate Analysis

hearts of stone was the first big DLC expansion to The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt that launched on October 13th of 2015 prior to this CD Projekt RED released many DLC items such as new game+ new side quests new finisher animations alternative looks fortress again and ciri and armor sets all of this set the standard very high going into hearts of stone and I like many others I'm sure had high expectations I went in tarts of stone after finishing the main campaign at level 33 and while it didn't offer much in the way of new gameplay concepts it built me up and tore me down with its narrative and the characters that it presented and that is the point of hearts of stone the story hearts of stone is meant to show what can happen when you pursue your own passions and desires in spite of those around you who care about you it serves to our mind garel and the player that love and partnership is delicate and can't be bullied it aims to tell a compelling story with memorable characters and it succeeds completely in doing so now while blood and wine is meant to be a gameplay focused expansion hearts of stone is a story focused expansion and for this reason I'm not going to focus much on the actual gameplay in this video things like combat difficulty or the balancing of bosses I will mention it when it is absolutely necessary but I will not be reanalyzing what I already discussed in my previous video on the core game this is the second video in a three-part series I'm doing on The Witcher 3 and the first looked at the core game this one will look at hearts of stone and the next we'll focus on blood and wine in this video I'm going to be going over the narrative of hearts of stone with a fair amount of detail I'm also going to be looking at the characters with a fair amount of detail and then I'm going to discuss my interpretation of how these two things interact my goal is to offer you the chance to learn more about these characters and if you haven't played this and aren't going to the opportunity to experience it with me I will say however if you have the ability to play through this expansion yourself do it it will absolutely be well worth your and this critique will still be here when you return this video will basically be one giant spoiler and so take heed now and click away if you don't want it to be ruined I also want to say that I expect this video to be long and so I've included chapter timestamps in the description box I also should clarify that I played through this expansion twice for this video to try and become as well-acquainted as possible with these characters I did not play through every dialogue option but rather I played the way I think that 90% of players are so we'll go through these quests and I recorded the over 30 hours of gameplay I accumulated over my two runs cut it up and I'm going to use to create this video but enough babbling let's get started [Music] hearts of stone is comprised of five main quests the first being Evil's soft first touches then dead man's party then Open Sesame scenes from a marriages after that concluding with whatsoever a man soweth these average out to about two hours of peace depending on your pacing some will take longer some will be shorter and depending on how you approach the dialogue sequences and the decisions within them it could take you longer or shorter but that's no surprise if you've played The Witcher before as with most large narrative based games it's going to give you what you put into it if you give the game your time and your focus and your attention it will give you back a great experience but if you're just flying through and not really paying much attention to what's going on just going from point to point check going to checkpoint going through the checklist that some NPC that you can't remember the name of gave you you aren't going to have a great time and so I highly recommend that if you're going to go through this that you take your time with it and despite playing through this twice for this video I have really tried to take my time with this DLC as I went through it some sequences got me a little cagey and a little irritable because I already knew everything that was going to happen and I could spot all of the little tricks that the developers had played in terms of narrative than line switching and all of that but I really tried to take my time and pace with it and absorb it the way that the developers would want me to now I've bounced around as to how I want to approach this section of the video for a while actually ever since I started playing through hearts of stone with this video in mind I've been debating how I want to handle it if I want to walk you through the entire narrative explain what happens and if you don't want to see it you can just skip or if I am just going to give a brief overview and talk about gameplay and those types of things but after realizing how heavy this entire expansion is on the narrative on the characters I've decided that there is no way I could adequately critique or offer my opinions on this game without giving proper context by explaining the ins and outs of the narrative and so buckle in we're going to go through the entire story of hearts of stone with even little details that I'm sure you didn't even catch unless you are paying very very close attention we're going to go through all of it so get ready and of course as I said there's timestamps below so if you don't want to watch this and you want to jump forward to a later section go ahead but this is probably going to be the bulk of the video hearts of stone doesn't open up in any sort of magnificent way it starts out like many other quests that you do in the game you go to a notice board outside of the seven cats in and you're looking for a contract when a bloke comes up nails another notice on the board that is far more interesting than the others that Geralt is looking at this piece of paper simply states that an individual by the name of a weird von everich who is living close by at the Garen estate is looking for someone to kill some sort of dangerous monster lurking in the oxenfurt sewers sounds simple enough but this has a special blue coat on it in the menuing system so if you're the player you know full well this is not going to be as straightforward as Geralt probably thinks it will be but nonetheless Geralt goes over to the Garen estate and blissful ignorance looking for this old geared who is offering the contract he encounters a bunch of people who call themselves the wild ones on the lower level and it's only assumed that these are members of some sort of gang or group that we can only assume all geared is the head of fun little note you can actually see them throwing knives at a picture of the toad that you're going to be dealing with in just a moment this is the quote-unquote monster in the sewers that ol geared is hiring you to deal with this may seem trivial right now but it's going to be important later when we hook all of this together so keep that in mind Jarrell is taken up stairs to meet old geared and this is when we see him for the first time it's our introduction to the character of ol GERD von abric we see old geared standing resolute analyzing and taking in the beauty of a stone statue he briefly comments on how it's impressive that a statue of a naked wench can be seemingly beautiful but he says that he used to enjoy this type of thing but no longer does and then he pushes it over and it crashes to pieces needless to say at first this can be a bit of a baffling introduction to all geared after all this is the main character of hearts of stone this is the person on which everything every narrative plot point hinges within hearts of stone and so to introduce him analyzing and then pushing over a statue has to be very very intentional and it is it may not make much sense now but by the end of the dlc you'll understand why they did this and we'll come back to this when we get there anyways after the statues destroy you walk out of the room and then you speak to old geared about this contract that he posted on the board outside of the seven cats in he tells you that there's some sort of beast that's causing a lot of trouble in the sewers of oxenfurt and that he would like you to help get rid of it naturally we haggled a little bit to get a higher payment which we succeed in and then we're off to oxenfurt and hearts of stone has officially begun so we head to oxenfurt hop in the sewers get down there and we start finding some bodies and once we find the bodies we soon after find shawnee who's a character that men people are not going to be familiar with going into the DLC long story short she is a doctor she is a hottie she has a red head there is literally nothing that you could dislike about this woman she's awesome moving on when you encounter Xiaomi she's trying to resuscitate a soldier who was helping her get through the sewers to collect a venom sample from whatever this beast is essentially it is poisoning the water wells all throughout the city and many people are getting sick including the soldiers meaning that it's a matter of utmost importance that she find the venom and create some sort of antidote while in the sewers to find this antidote her and her group were attacked and basically everyone died except for Shaunie what do you know but Pleasant coincidences aside Daryl and Shaunie continue to go through the sewers until you find the monsters lair where Geralt sets a trap it's been discovered that the monster likes alcohol and blood so you pull a body douse it in what we can only assume is dwarven spirit or somesuch alcohol and Geralt sits and waits until the Beast arrives now one of the things that old Gear tells you when you initially are acquiring the assignment is that some people believe that this giant toad like monster that you're going to be fighting in the sewers is actually a prince trapped in a toads body and that if somebody were to come in wouid perhaps then he would turn back into a prince and then whoever did that would be saved and so apparently there's been instances of very very lonely women going down there and getting killed by this monster because they're hoping to find a priest a little funny but it's something that Geralt clearly dismisses as absolutely ridiculous now once the monster appears you do see that it is in fact a giant toad looking thing it's horribly disgusting it's terrifying whoever did the character design for this did a wonderful job my goodness I don't even know what to say but you dance around for a little bit you fight them depending on your difficulty and your level going into this initial fight you could have a really easy time or a really tough time it mainly depends on how many side quests and how much of the main story that you've gone at this point in the DLC my guess is for most builds this is going to be a fairly tough fight and a time-consuming fight you're going to be chopping away at this guy's health bar he doesn't have very varied attacks but they are there and they are dangerous so you just have to stay focused my first time I took this on way back when took about 10 minutes of chopping because I had broken weapons and wasn't able to repair them I also didn't have enough swallow or potions in general or even food to recover health and in general it was a bit of a disaster so make sure that you are properly equipped before taking this guy on but nonetheless after you defeat in the last slice that Darryl throws is right down the belly of this giant creature and all sorts of gross putrescence goes flying out Geralt is overwhelmed by it and is knocked unconscious or whatever it is that it does to him he loses consciousness and it is at this point that you see this monster turned back into a man and you see a bunch of old fury guards come up to you and take you away you wake up in a boat and you're instructed by another prisoner in an adjacent cell that you killed the O fury prince who happen to be in that toads body and that you're going to be hanged once they reach their destination apparently the only reason they didn't kill you on the spot was because according to their laws the king has to decide and because you killed his son seemingly he would want to witness the execution I guess that's understandable but locked in a cage and stripped of all of his equipment and materials Geralt seems to be in quite a pickle and there doesn't seem to be much of a way out but at this point a character that we ran into in the first half hour of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Gunter Odom appears on the ship he declines to explain how he got on the ship and how he hasn't been caught yet but he does offer a way out if garel is willing to return the favor right afterwards you don't have any way of disagreeing with this proposition naturally because there would be no DLC if you did you just be executed once you got to the elf fairy Kingdom so you agree and before you know it the boat is turned into chaos a storm hits and Geralt wakes up on a beach being dragged by an old fury soldier and it doesn't seem to have done much good but garel being garel whips up some chaos can fight the guys kill the mage dude even though that is optional you can just run away if you want to but I'm a little bit of a masochist so I decided to go and kill them all and then head to meet Gunther I went straight to meet Gunther in my playthrough and when I arrived there it was in the middle of the day and there were children gathered right where I was set to meet him and they were singing a song and I found this very interesting because it sounded familiar and yet foreign at the same time I'll play it right now so that you can hear what I heard and see if you can make the same connections I did are you actually reaching me for you choose me be repaid and II will come for you all can we come no smile to control you you can stare you embalm I blow in a fire - come on Tommy cottage pie now this may not seem like a significant point and it may just seem like a randomly generated or dynamic game system which spawns kids singing different songs or doing different things in the world as you go through it but this is very very intentionally placed this is actually the Gunther o dim theme this is the song that plays not only when you are interacting with Gunther Odum but also at the very end of the dlc when he either wins or loses your little game it's very small detail but one that I found really really cool and I couldn't help but point it out here but anyways we meditate till midnight and meet with contro dim who instructs us that we need to pay him back by helping to complete three tasks by acting as a sort of proxy on his behalf for Gunther o dim in short there is a contract or a pact that Gunther has with all geared but all geared is trying to find a way out of it and the only way that they can complete their contract is if three tasks and or three wishes are completed these wishes can only be given by ogeid van everich himself and so you don't know what you're getting yourself into until you go back to the Garin estate upon arriving you see that the house is on fire and everything seems to be weirdly calm even though this very expensive home is lit up you approach them and then you see two of the Wild Ones dragging out a third and they're apparently executing him it's not extremely clear why they are doing this but they're going to decapitate them right then and there in the courtyard now Gerald can actually choose to intervene and stop them from killing this man or he can leave them be and let them do their thing both of which have their own consequences and result in my playthroughs I chose to actually intervene and save the man and this will actually generate a boss battle between Geralt and old gear you'll get to fight him you eventually take a big swing and chop old Gertz head clean off which was very very intense and I do apologize for the footage there's a couple mods installed that I forgot to turn off before this boss fight with blood effects boosted and also Geralt hair is a little messed up but if you can ignore that then you see that old geared gets his head cut off he pulls it back on and this is when you realize that he is immortal now if you were to choose not to intervene and let them execute this man that's fine but a disgruntled woman will come out and stab all geared in the back thus proving his immortality either which way you just won't have the mini-boss battle that you have if you go with the other route either way after one of these two options has been fulfilled Gunther Odom comes out and explains what exactly is going on and gerelds role in this new pact ol GERD offers the 2 first wishes and tells you once they've been completed he will offer up the third and final wish the first wish was to show his brother ol Gertz brother that is the time of his life the problem of course being that Wladimir old Gertz brother has been dead for quite some time and so this offers the first major hiccup in DLC you have to figure out how to show a dead man the time of his life the second request is to retrieve Maximilian verso Dee's house now not much context is given to this specifically as to whether or not this is an actual place or if this is an object or is if this is some sort of bead that he needs to bring it's not clear he simply says we need a new place to live bring me Maximilian Brody's house so at that point you go off and you just have to go and try to figure it all out as you go along the first wish that I tackled was the one where he asked Geralt to show Vladimir his brother the time of his life now luckily we met Shani earlier on in the dlc and so we go to her to ask if she has any insight into this matter turns out she does she knows where the family crypt is she knows where Vladimir is buried and perhaps there's some way of summoning its lauda mirror so that you could perhaps show his ghost the time of life a little bit of a twisting of the words but it'll do so you arrive at the crypt and you perform a blood summoning to actually call upon the spirit of Vladimir von everich he appears and you explain the situation to him that you are to show him the time of his life and he makes a very good point how can he enjoy the time of his life if he can't feel or pick things up or experience the physical world it doesn't make a whole lot of sense so you have the option to suggest perhaps bringing in somebody that he could possess take on their body and live through them for a few hours Vladimir likes this idea in fact he likes it so much that he decides that garel would be a good fit for him no pun intended and so he actually possesses garel right then and there now luckily Vladimir is a bit of a team player he understands that this is all in fun and games he's dead he doesn't have a whole lot to lose or to gain from this so whenever Shani wants to speak with Geralt he steps out this can actually create for some really really funny and engaging moments where you see Geralt taking on this persona that you would never see or have expected in the core game Geralt striding around flirting with women so transparently that at times it's even painful it's really really hilarious and it's a brilliant way of showing what Geralt could be like in another universe anyways after Geralt and Vladimir figure this out Shani reminds Geralt that he had agreed to go to a wedding with her earlier that day so they decide that going to a wedding would be a good place for Vladimir to stretch his legs or gerelds legs maybe if that's the more proper term I don't know so they go to the wedding and you have a great time there's all sorts of different games like herding the pigs or you can jump in the small pond and you have to find the lasas shoe to prove your commitment to or really fun creative stuff like that that makes you feel like you really are at a wedding in some sort of foreign culture that you don't get why this is a thing but it is so I guess we'll partake my favorite thing out of all of these is when I tried to beat the dwarves or as flawed calls them midgets at Gwent and I absolutely suck egwin so I lost very quickly and then you get to wear the ass ears for the rest of the DLC if you want you can wear them and slot them as an extra item it really is pretty great but after doing all of these little things for the wedding you have the option to go in and you go in and dance with Shani and this is one of those moments where once again we see what Geralt would be like if he were more of a free spirit if he wasn't so emotionless and perhaps if he didn't have such a at least on the outside heart of stone which perhaps is what they're going for to show how built up Geralt has become over the years and to try to pull him out of that habit but you dance with Shawnee in one of the moments that was probably up there as one of my favorite themes and the entirety of the DLC just this moment where Geralt even though it's Vladimir but it's still Geralt dancing around with Shawnee King free-spirited just having a good time it's not something that you see garel having or doing really at all at whether it's in the core game or even in blood and wine you don't see him having a good time or a laugh or running around just partying and it's a really refreshing thing to see now while at the wedding you can also speak with Gunnar Odom who shows up randomly seemingly to just prove that he is omnipresent he's always there he always knows what's going on and when you speak with him he starts out his conversation again similar to looking at the statue at the very opening of the DLC it seems innocent enough he's discussing the secret ingredient to gingerbread with an old woman and he insists that it is time it provides the right crunch and the moisture inside the cookie blah blah blah but the point of this at least the way that I took it was a reference to old geared sticking clock and how he was running out of time and how valuable it was it's very possible I'm completely miss reading that and if I am please let me know how in the comment section below maybe he is just wonderful Baker and he understands the secret to gingerbread or perhaps it means something else let me know anyways the wedding wraps up a lot Aamir has had a great time and so he chooses to cuddle and Geralt hanyan used the blood to write a letter that girl can give to all geared as proof that he completed the task and then gun Tarot dim shows up banishes Vladimir back to wherever he came from and all of sudden Shani gets a little bummed out that Geralt has to go and abandon her and then the player has the opportunity to win back Shani now this was at least the first time for me that I noticed hearts of stone using previous dialogue if you paid attention to pull together and make a coming sequence easier the players prompted to get something that will cheer Shani up and you can just walk around and grab something randomly based on what you think she would like but earlier when you first arrived at the wedding Shani made a comment about one of the flowers on the trees and how she used to make little bracelets and toys out of it when she was a child now if you were taking mental notes when that was said or if you look at the character sheet in the menu system then you'll realize that that is the best gift you can get her you bring it to her she gets cheered up right away and then after a little talking you and Shani go off into a boat have a little fun and Shani says they need time to figure out what they're doing she leaves and then Geralt can get back to what he was supposed to be doing all along which is fulfilling those wishes instead of having boat sex on a moonlit Lake and boom what do you know we are 1/3 of the way through hearts of stone and we're only 25 and a half minutes through this video I got to pick up the pace my overall thoughts on this quest specifically dead man's party is that I think it's one of the best quests in any of the DLCs that CD Projekt RED put forward but also in the core witcher game this quest shows a side of Geralt that you would never see and it's fair to say that it isn't Geralt but it also provides more context to his character and you can see why he doesn't behave that way normally and what it would be like if he did it would have been easy enough for the developers of hearts of stone to just go and find some NPC that they could pull in and Vladimir possesses them and then you see this homeless dude acting in goofy ways dancing around acting super professional and and very put together and supreme as they say but no they chose to have Geralt be the body in question because it's entertaining it's funny it's interesting and it's something that you would never see normally in the core game or in blood and wine as for the moonlit Lake sex that Geralt has with Shawnee it's actually pretty hard not to get this you have to be a real jerk to her to avoid having sex with her in the boat and my guess is they felt like they had to add at least one sec seeing into the DLCs and so Shawnee was a perfect contender but it would have been nice to see a little more challenge or perhaps you needed to get the right gift in my first playthrough of hearts of stone I didn't provide her the right gift I gave her some sort of weed and she still let me bang her so it's a little disappointing that that doesn't have higher consequences it's more of just a memento or the fact that you get some unique dialogue and she flirts with you a little heavier but nonetheless it didn't really matter if you got that right or not but that's about it for the first wish of ol GERD von everich we have shown his brother the time of his life despite the fact that he's dead we can bring that paper that Vlad and mayor signed back to old gear to prove that we did it it's in his handwriting there's no mistaking it for anyone else so we're ready to move on to the second wish now the second wish that all geared von avrech wants to be fulfilled is fairly straightforward he simply tells you to retrieve and bring back to him Maximilian bore Saudis house he doesn't offer any further instruction to this such as where it is or how to obtain it or how to move this sort of real estate he just says to bring it to him so naturally you jump into it and you figure that the first place you should look is at the bore Saudis auction house in oxenfurt now you'll see this as we go through it but I do want to just say that I find this quest open sesame' to be the low point without a doubt in hearts of stone it isn't awful but it doesn't offer any sort of interesting narrative plot twists and turns sure it's got a couple characters it throws in there but they aren't really likable and they're gone before you can blink an eye so there's no point in getting attached to them there's no backstory there's no reason for you to like them they simply are there for you to complete the quest and that's it vladimir von everich is a name and a character that will forever be in my mind it's hard to forget that same with Shani we're not going to see her much for the rest of the DLC we technically don't even have to interact with her for the rest of the DLC but she is memorable this entire wedding quest was very memorable but this quest is just a bit of a drag basically you go to the auction house you get in with the help of a little dwarf [ __ ] friend according to Vladimir and you go in there you talk with some people you meet an old lady who happens to be the long-lost friend / lover of the old witch er vesemir from the early parts or first half rather of The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt she knew him when she was young and he saved her and she fell in love with him and they basically had this falling out where he had to go away because of family stuff bla bla bla bla bla typical sad story she's an old lady she collects witcher gear and if you want to then you can buy some blueprints from her to build the most powerful armor up to this point in the game but other than that there's nothing really interesting that happens you interact with a few other guests one of them who was really good at Gwent if that interests you and then also another who is a paint or art dealer and he's looking at all of these paintings now initially he assumes that you as a Witcher have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to paintings but you can demonstrate your skill by pointing out the vendor noob portrait which is of course the portrait in the center and when you do so he's very impressed and offers to give you a little advice and he tells you that a van role painting called starry night over the pontar is going to come up on the auction block and that you should buy it and take it to a book dealer in the City Square who will buy it for a lot because he is a huge fan of van ROH this young seemingly unimportant painter now we'll come back to this later but I do want you to remember the name van ROH but with that said moving on so the auction starts and there's three items that you can buy course there's the painting there is a rare statue of an eagle that potentially has some sort of valuables inside of it and then there's also a pair of spectacles that you can buy that once belonged to the hired assassin known as the professor which is actually referenced to the first Witcher game which is kind of cool the head guy the owner of the auction house Horst Borsodi comes up to you asks what you're doing here you weren't invited you'll express whatever you want there's actually no dialogue option to not get thrown out of the house you're going to get kicked out no matter what you do so you get thrown out and then you meet a stranger who says that he can help you get Maximilian boar so DS house and how he knows this is that he was actually at the auction but disguise some house maybe he was one of the guards or something I don't know but he says it can help you in to meet him at an herbalist shop outside of oxenfurt and this is kind of something that you have to agree with because if you didn't there would be no DLC so yeah you meet with him and immediately start planning a heist of sorts you're basically going to break in to the boar so DS auction house into the basement of it where all the good stuff is held and steal the house now the game tries to pull a bit of a gta5 type thing here where it gives you the option to choose between the people that you want and you can you can take the people that you want to pursue my first run-through I picked the chick to be my sort of Acrobat who's going to climb stuff and on the second run-through I also did that but you can either choose a locksmith or a demolitions expert to be your door opener as you see fit and on my first runs where I chose the locksmith and it didn't cause many issues but on my second run through I tried picking the demolitions expert and when you first come to meet him to hire him you see him sitting on top of his house with a torch and a bunch of explosives around him and essentially what happened is that he had settled down and gotten out of the explosives business after he found a wife and started having kids but one day his wife and kids up and left him all alone without any explanation and he became incredibly upset and depressed to the point where he was about to commit suicide by blowing up the village now you can actually talk him down from this or you can let him blow it all up the way you talk him down is by being very forceful and blunt telling him that he's a coward and trying to draw him down by means of his pride my first time encountering him I tried to be nice and just understanding but he saw me as weak and blew me up anyways again another instance where a little bit of thought on my end would have helped me solve this the right way on the first try realizing that this guy was very hardened and had a sort of dark past might have meant that he would have respond better to this sort of taunting in the sense that he would want to come down and kick my butt and at which point he did he climbed down and starts punching you I let him beat me up I don't know if that's the right way to play or if you're supposed to be him up but the fact that I was beating up a [ __ ] I felt I felt wrong I let him beat me and then he feels better and he decides to join you at this point you go to a chef try to get him to poison or at least make sick a bunch of the rue de nian soldiers who would be normally guarding this area you have to pay him about 500 coins to do this or you have to use your signs to convince him otherwise but either way you get past it a bunch of guards are gone and you can begin the heist you break into the auction house and when you get down there you realize that this stranger who for whatever reason wanted to break into the basement of the boar so today's auction house now isn't just in it for the money but he's actually you all Borsodi he's the brother of Horst the guy who threw you out earlier and at this point you can choose how you want to respond basically there's four options here on the one hand you can side with you all door on the other you can side with Horst now whichever one you side with you will fight with that person against the other until everyone is dead it doesn't matter which brother you pick either which way the other one is going to die after the fighting is done you speak with whoever you chose and it's revealed that the Maximilian Borsodi house is actually a small casket looking thing with some papers in it now what later turns out that this is a will that the elder Borsodi vote and instructed them on reading upon his death now this current point in time when you're interacting with these brothers it doesn't really seem important old gear told you to retrieve the house he didn't tell you to retrieve the papers inside the house so why bother getting it so you can either leave it be or demand it if you demand it the other guy dies and you've just killed everyone you could take the papers and the Maximilian Borsodi house back to old geared now when to get back to old geared he explains that the reason he wanted the papers was because it actually stated in the will that once a year these two brothers Horst and you all had to meet up and shake hands they couldn't do what they ended up doing which is that Horst basically exiled his brother because his brother while the true heir of the fortune he also gambled it all away and spent all of the money on [ __ ] and partying and so the younger brother felt that this wasn't fair and took the money for himself again exiling you old and in this case you all broke in and wants to kill his brother as revenge and take back his inheritance now the reason the old geared wanted the will is because if he turned it into the proper authorities then it would turn out that of course these brothers had not been meeting once a year and shaking hands or in all reality by the time that you got the contract and the will you would have killed those two brothers so there's no one to own the auction house and that means according to the will that it is to be auctioned off and the profits would go to an orphanage and hospital and this isn't necessarily because ole geared is a good guy as he explains I couldn't give a rat's ass about the making method with a the six I wanted one thing revenge the more Saudis what's your gripe get kicked out of an option worse there Vic with me through my home are you really in trouble with the vast if I wasn't cup G is Evan my family litigants in debt of our investments in the Silliman a bad crop would be a lawsuit lost you know how it is when it rains in poems we needed put a few weeks to recover the horse Borsodi had acquired our death all of it demanded it be repaired immediately a plebeian I begged I tore open my shirt is thrush off now my talking to a wall I went to the auction so those perfumed prints by my father saw my mother's death match my brother's horse jockey ah passed and a pretty pile selling our mementos no surprise the animosity you feel for him that will start my irises pellets Elizabeth public responds you and our betrothal would no more they found her another suit one from beyond the sea the anger I thought have gone mad went to the tap drank around a second abroad then have another chunk and then then I asked the wrong blow fell so while you didn't have much choice in this quest at least your final choices as to how they interact with the will do have some sort of impact but after that you're done with the second main quest personally my least favorite which is why on that initial slide where I showed you all of the quests I made it the smaller one of these wishes because to me it's less impactful and it's less meaningful but that's just me and boom we're ready to take on the third and final wish which is probably my favorite up until this point in hearts of stone the narrative has been pretty light-hearted you go to a wedding with a very beautiful girl dancing around acting like an idiot doing lots of fun stuff and then once that's done you have a slight Lowell when Gunther banishes this guy back from whence he came but then you get back into the fun by planning a big heist and then that kind of collapses when somebody dies or many people die at the end of that one but now we're going into a truly heartbreaking sequence as I said at the beginning of the video the entire purpose of hearts of stone is to show the delicate nature of love and how you cannot take the ones that you care about for granted ol GERD Von Erichs love life is a perfect example of this he had a girl that he loved that her name was iris and she loved to paint and they were a perfect match and he wanted to marry her but his family fell on hard times and when his family fell on hard times iris his family decided that she could do better and shouldn't marry this broke dude that didn't have anything to his name and had no real ability to provide for her so they plan to have her married off to an old fairy Prince which is the point where old gerd started to really go insane and when his motivation start to get a little fuzzy all geared wanted to just run away into loped with iris but iris didn't want to leave her family behind she loved her father she loved her mother she didn't want to leave them behind even though they were demanding that she married this foreign prince and so Oh get this Prince and unknowingly had him turned into a horrific beast and guess where this beast went to yes the sewers of oxenfurt the guy that you found and killed in the sewers is the same prince that irises family was going to have her married off to now it's not clear exactly how this prince was turned into a giant toad looking monster but it is safe to assume that based on what we see as we go through these coming scenes old geared started practicing some dark magic or calling upon pretty dark forces and perhaps that was his last move of desperation and these dark forces responded by giving him exactly what he wanted which came back to bite him now the deal that old geared made with the devil was pretty straightforward after he realized that the prince was a real threat to him and iris he decided that he would do whatever it would take to regain his status in society and his family's wealth so that he would be allowed to marry iris a seemingly justifiable cause perfectly reasonable he loved the girl she loved him back and he wanted to be with her and he was willing to do whatever it would take in order to accomplish that the problem was that he made a deal with Gunther Odom a character whose initials literally spell out God he made a deal with a very powerful and dark force that was willing to give him what he wanted willing to give him wealth fortune Fame and power and respect exactly what he wanted but at the cost of his soul when the pact was completed another something that Gunther Odom also slid in that pact that ol geared seemingly went unaware of was that he was allowed to turn old gears heart to stone meaning that he would never truly appreciate the thing that he had just sold his soul for his heart turning to stone can actually explain the opening sequence when we meet him when he's staring at the Statue and comments saying that he used to enjoy these types of things but now it has no impact his heart has turned to stone he can't bring himself to care about anything whether it's a stone statue or his once true love now the player can know some of this going into the final wish but it's unlikely that the average player would be aware of all of this unless they were really paying attention to all of the dialogue everything Gunther Odom was saying and the character descriptions and the environmental storytelling that goes on around old geared especially in the opening sequence Oh geared third and final wish is for Geralt to find and bring him the violet Rose that he gave to iris the last time that he saw her in order to accomplish this Geralt goes to the von everich estate which has long since been abandoned seemingly for years and he goes in there and he actually finds some weird things there's two people who were trying to break into the house one of them is calling for the other the other seemingly is missing things happened to him and his partner is freaked out you going to investigate and find that the body has been carried away by a very large ominous force an individual that we will later learn is called the caretaker this monstrosity is yet another result of old gears meddling with the dark forces and his job is simply to take care of the house to mend and tend to the garden and to protect iris no matter what as long as it takes now when you encounter the caretaker naturally he believes that you are a threat to iris von everich and so he fights you and this was one of the more interesting boss battles in all of the DLC and to be honest in all of the witcher 3 wild hunt there's a mechanic where the caretaker actually summons up what we can only assume are the bodies of all of the people throughout the years that he's had to kill to protect iris and the house and the property and they come back to life sort of in Ghost form and he can consume them to regain HP and any damage he outputs on you is taken back as regained HP on him so you have to get very good at dodging and also very good at taking out unlocking first of all from the caretaker and also taking out those smaller enemies on my first playthrough I'm not sure what I was doing wrong I think all of my gear was under leveled while I was properly leveled and so it took way longer it probably took 15 to 20 minutes of me chopping and hacking but on my second playthrough I was able to get through the caretaker pretty easily with a properly managed character after you defeat him you meet two pets it's a cat and a dog these don't look like regular animals and they're not they're from another realm as they say something that Geralt wouldn't be able to understand and apparently they came from the same realm as the Undertaker they are monstrosity x' in their own right but they seem to know a lot about what's going on you're letting to the house and you see this race that is fighting you and causing all sorts of trouble and it turns out it's the restless spirit of iris this isn't necessarily iris herself but it is her inner anxious and frustrations in life and it's coming out because her soul is not at peace so you fight it and then you find Iris's body crumpled on the bed dead from the looks of her corpse she's been dead a while and the rose that Geralt was looking for is long gone probably turned to dust over the years Geralt and his newfound animal posse decide that they need to give iris a proper burial and perhaps that will set her soul at peace and then Geralt can summon her spirit and ask her where he can obtain the Rose if at all you bury her body outside by a tree next to the gazebo where she used to paint portraits of the house and this is something that's very important and this is why I asked you to remember the name van ro it turns out that iris actually had a pen name for all of her paintings she wouldn't sign it iris von everich but rather would sign it simply van ro and so that painting that we bought back at the auction house for so little 20 coins is all you need to purchase it it actually was originally painted by iris and it's underappreciated even though it was her true passion but at least there's one person this bookstore clerk that really appreciates it he actually will give you 500 gold instantly for it without asking any questions and he'll give you a couple items as well there may be a deeper connection between iris and this individual I'm not sure if there is please let me know in the comment section below I would love to hear about it so after you bury her you can place her sketchbook on the grave and I recommend that you do you'll get some unique dialogue later on and then her spirit actually appears after you say your final words and summon her and she leads you into the painted realm as it's said and this was one of the most visually interesting moments in all of The Witcher 3 The Witcher 3 is a beautiful game especially once you install a couple lighting mods and perhaps boost the particle effects you can get incredible shots just walking around in this game but what truly amazed me was that it honestly looks like you're walking and running through a painting they fully realized what they were trying to do and what this realm is is basically irises imagination this dream realm that she created while sitting outside with all geared in those peaceful times painting portraits of each other and of the landscape but this dream realm isn't all fun and games it's also haunted by all of her deep most fears you run into things like bees you run to spiders you run into creepy figures but it all culminates in her utmost fear which we'll get to in a minute you go through this painted dream realm and you see different frozen memories and you have to complete them quote-unquote by placing objects that have been strewn throughout the scene in the proper person's hands or in the proper place to complete the image of the memory and then it will play out in front of you as a sort of cutscene now these memories go from the moment that they were first married and follow through their relationship all the way until the last moment you initially see a very sweet old geared leading iris into the house where he encourages her that there's no need to be afraid because he's already swept out all of the spiders he thought of it and he cleaned it out for her so she wouldn't be afraid clearly this is not the act of a man with a heart of stone he truly cares about iris in this moment but as we go through we see different moments where old geared says that he doesn't want to speak to her because he has to do work in his study turns out that this is satanic work that it would eventually burn down a portion of the house and there's also moments such as the one where iris is so distraught about this entire situation that she decides to speak with her father and file essentially divorce papers little gear doesn't like this idea and slams iris his father into a pillar breaking his neck or splattering his head open one of the two either which way iris his father drops dead right in front of her and at that moment she decides that she no longer loves o GERD because the old gear that she knew and married is gone old geared is not shaken by this and says that iris will remain at the house forever she will never leave she is bound there the following memories are really heartbreaking iris is a prisoner to the man that she once loved and unfortunately old GERD while it still seems that he cares about her in his own twisted way he's incapable of truly feeling love for her who were truly caring about her he has a heart of stone he's been cursed and he's incapable of actually loving her all while going through these scenes you are fighting Iris's deepest held fears and you have to try and free her from these so that she can rest in peace her greatest and utmost fear however turns out to be all geared himself this fear initially presents itself as a distorted disgruntled and horrifying monstrosity of a human being but after it crunches its body and bones back into place it turns out that it is in fact old geared though with horrible wounds so perhaps this means that ol GERD is actually somebody that she deeply deeply cares about but she's afraid of him being injured or killed or facing some sort of painful fate or it means that he is actually her deepest darkest fear himself I think both of these options can be true to some extent though I think it makes more sense that she's terrified of what ol GERD has become if she were terrified of just old geared himself I don't think he would take on this form but the fact that he takes on this very violent distorted form represents in my mind the idea that old gear has changed and it's a distorted twisted version of his true self or maybe I am just looking too much into it and iris is true deepest darkest fear is all geared becoming a contortionist for the circus it's possible but probably unlikely now this is ultimately the final boss fight we do have a sort of final puzzle that we'll do in just a moment but this is the last time that you're forced to fight in hearts of stone and it was a little disappointing and it's possibly because my character was leveled up about one level ahead of where I was supposed to be by this point in the DLC but even that I wouldn't think would make a big difference especially on the harder difficulties but nonetheless it still was relatively straightforward and easy to do you simply go from old gear to old gear chopping them up until the health bar is gone and boom you're basically done and then you actually get to meet and interact with iris herself or at the very least herb ethereal essence listen to me talking about ethereal essences this video has gotten too long I think that's what this means anyway you speak with iris and it turns out that she does have the rose in this realm it may be gone in the physical world but when Geralt entered into this dream realm and defeated her fears it actually bloomed again just as she sort of real woke from the deep slumber that she was in although it was not a restful or peaceful slumber it was slumber nonetheless and here you're given a choice you can either take the rose and bring it to old geared at the cost of Iris being basically eternally banished or eliminated she will go into whatever the next world is whether it's a void or some heavenly place she doesn't know but she's afraid of the darkness and afraid of that void but she's willing to give you the Rose if you ask for it the other option is to let her keep the Rose and continue living odd infinitum in this sort of middle state this purgatory state although it's not quite purgatory because she's still aware of the deep and inherent sadness in this realm she's a broken human being and she's a fundamentally sad individual here and so there is an argument to be made that taking the Rose is the better option because you free her and your animal pals at the same time eliminating this dream realm that has at the same time haunted her for so long but on the other hand you could be damning her to that void that she is so terrified of and so this is one of those moments when you really have to think about what you most important and what you would do in this situation I personally chose to take the rose I the way I at least interpreted this was that I was going to release her sort of from this world that was drenched in sadness and depression for her and so hopefully it would be at the very least peaceful and if she was going into a void and there was just going to be nothing at the very least she wouldn't have to live in such sadness she would just be living in nothing in a void and so in my mind I did the right thing but the fact that there's an argument against that I think just shows how deep and intense the writing of this DLC is the fact that we can argue for days on end over the significant elements of these decisions at the very end even though there's only two real options it's pretty awesome but nonetheless if you decide to let her keep the Rose she will give you a painting with her inside of it sort of her life force put into it if you want to think about it that way that you can give old geared and this will also fulfill the wish because the flower is painted in it apparently that's enough and he's willing to overlook it but whatever I prefer to complete the quest and actually bring him the rose but you do what you're going to do but nonetheless I took the rose and then I was ready to confront old geared and Gunther Odom for the finale the finale of hearts of stone is pretty straightforward it's in a quest called whatsoever a man soweth and it's all about the consequences of these characters previous actions Jarrell goes back to me told geared at the alchemy in but he doesn't find him there instead he finds Gunther Odom sitting on the table criss-cross applesauce ready to talk there's a drunk in the bar that's being very annoying however and Gunther claps his hands twice and time freezes what do you know once again this simply reinforces the Gunther has immense power over space and time and this is not somebody you want to get on the bad side of you talk with Gunther and establish a meeting place at the temple of Lil Vani where you're going to bring all geared in to give him the road completing the third and final task at which point gunther Odin can come in and finish the job after you finish this talk Gunther takes a spoon which for whatever reason is an item that he uses a lot if you remember also on the boat way back at the beginning of the dlc he actually snaps the spoon in order to make the storm come and it's a weird thing i don't know what the significance of the spoon is but it is something that he seems to use throughout the dlc and throughout his scene so if you have a reason or a theory behind that or if it's explained somewhere that i missed please let me know in the comments but nonetheless he takes the spoon and shoves it into that drunk guys eye socket before unfreezing time causing this man to drop down dead freaking out everyone else in the bar you speak with old gears representative and tell him to have his boss meet you at the temple of Levani at which point you travel there and you meet all geared give him the rose explain everything that happened at which point old geared expresses regret over the whole iris situation if that's what you want to call it and then Gunther Odom appears walking down an invisible flight of stairs in front of the moon in what has to be one of the most badass entrances of any villain in the history of ever Gunther is essentially here to finish and complete the contract the pact that he made with ol GERD von everich said that he would need to complete three wishes with the use of a proxy Geraldine that proxy and that after those three wishes were complete that they would have to stand together on the moon and then the contract would be complete and null and void going forward the nice thing about the temple of Levani we're gonna had Geralt bring ol gear to is that on the floor covered in dust quite conveniently is the moon at least a mosaic of it and that fulfills the contract then and there this means that at that moment Gunther Odum has fulfilled the pact and is able to claim ol GERD von avrech soul for himself now here you can choose to intervene or not to if you choose to intervene you're going to go and have to challenge Gunter oh dammit is own game a game of wits where he's going to give you a riddle and you have to solve it in the allotted time in order to save your life or rather your soul and old weird soul at the same time or you can go with the other option which is to leave Bunter to fulfill the pact and it's his business after all certainly ol GERD hasn't earned any mercy at this point but if you choose to let Gunther dim do his thing and claim old geared soul then you will have the option to select one of multiple gifts you can choose to be swift as the wind to never go hungry again to retrieve a bottle of vodka that's always full or to be rich which is actually just five thousand crowns so it's not that much money when you're at level 35 or 36 it's honestly not so don't go and pick that one or if you have not completed the main quest you can also request for help finding ciri he can't tell you exactly where to go because I would kind of spoil the entire point of the main quest in The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt but he will walk you through how to get the good ending what he says is that you should one make ciri laugh when she feels defeated and he also says that Geralt should never make ciri feel like he sold her out in any way he also tells Geralt that when serious scared Geralt should encourage her but not act in her stead so leave her to do her own thing encourage her strength don't let her be defeated he also instructs Geralt to make sure that he allows ciri to vent her frustration when she gets betrayed inevitably and lastly that when she wants to grieve a friend Geralt should grieve with her now if you do all of these things which will make sense once you complete the main story of the witcher 3 you will get the best possible ending which is honestly a nice touch now the other option of course is to resist and to offer your soul as collateral in this double or nothing sort of bet with Cointreau dim Gunther says that he agrees but he has to play by his rules and essentially you enter some sort of middle realm that he's in control of and he gives you a riddle that you need to solve he says that he's hiding or he is going to be in or part of in some way this item that the riddle described so it's a little weird but as you go through you'll probably figure out that oh it's a myriad something about a reflection that you hated as you look at it and blah blah blah it makes sense but when you get to the end of this maze that is also filled with tons of temptations which actually calls back to that song we heard earlier if you look at the lyrics to it those lyrics actually read quote your wishes he grants as he swears to adore you gold silver jewels he lays riches before you dues need be repaid and he will come for you all to reclaim no smile to console you he'll snare you in bonds eyes glowing a fire to gore and torment you till the stars expire I'm not even taking into consideration how awesome that sounds to read out loud I highly recommend that you try it it's awesome this actually is a direct reference to this final quest Gunter is actually laying out gold in many cases right in front of you or in a cave that you can actually run off to all in an effort to distract you and there's even a case where Geralt thinks he sees Shawnee hanging from a cliff and if you go up to rescue her it turns out that she's just a figment of his imagination meant to tempt Geralt away from his main mission which is of course to solve the riddle now once you get to the end of this little area then you can take into consideration something that the two animals back in that painted world told you which was specifically beware of the one called the man of glass stand in his way and you need a fate worse than death seek salvation and glass that can't be broken now again this is another instance that if you are listening carefully to what the characters in this world are saying perhaps even taking notes then you can have better endings or an easier way of getting through it now after I heard the dog say this I got pondering and I didn't think much of it until I got to this glass sequence and thought of it when I heard the riddle read off and this pushed me over the brink to thinking that it wasn't a mirror that he was described but rather some sort of reflection such as water or a small pond something like that and so I started looking instead of trying for the mirrors which would instantly shatter whenever I approach them I looked for some sort of pond or little stream and sure enough I found that there was a little pond area but it was dry and upon using my Witcher senses I could see that if I broke through this portion of the wall then water would come out and sure enough that's where Gunter Odum is you pull him out declare that you've won you banish him and this is where you see his eyes glowing just as was described in the song we heard earlier sung by the children he declares you the winner but that he'll be back and then he gets banished sort of kind of maybe I don't know then we get a nice little cutscene showing the old geared can feel pain again he's free but he can feel all of the regret all of them emotions all of the guilt over what he's done what he did to Iris it's real now his heart isn't stone anymore he has actual regret and feels truly broken as a result of it but ultimately he is indebted to Geralt for saving his soul literally so his payment he gives you his sword and says that he's going to go off and live his own life start anew and try to make the most of it before his time runs out and boom that's the end of hearts of stone now I would like to discuss the characters a little bit more just to give full context to each of them so that this story hopefully wraps up and makes a lot of sense starting with our protagonist ol GERD von Evert now all geared up first especially after the first scene where you either fight him or where he takes a sword to the back seemed like a bad guy he seems like he's going to be the antagonist and perhaps controlled in is going to be your sort of ultra powerful sidekick taking down this evil force but no it turns out that Gunther Odum is the one who has the power to take and damn your soul but ol GERD is simply the victim now this is something that I was a little baffled at and conflicted over so much so that I went on to our discord server and talked to a lot of you viewers about this very topic in our debates room I was conflicted because I wasn't sure if old gear deserved to have his soul claimed at the end of the dlc or if he deserved a chance at redemption and forgiveness needless to say ol GERD has performed many terrible acts over the course of his life but for a good portion of his life he also wasn't completely in control of it he was damned to have a heart of stone it wasn't a willing choice of his he wanted simply to marry iris but he was allowed to at the cost of losing himself but at the same time I don't want to let him off the hook completely for everything that he did to iris because some part of him surely has to be responsible I've heard people argue that he is actually a prime example of somebody who is so selfish that he's willing to damn those around him think of Joel from The Last of Us an individual who cared so much about himself that he was willing to potentially dam the rest of humanity just to get what he wanted now in the case of old eared I wouldn't say that this is a direct comparison the reason I would say this isn't a direct comparison is because we don't actually have any evidence at all that iris didn't want to marry old GERD and that she did want to marry the OL fairy Prince as far as we know she loved the idea of marry being the old fairy Prince and wanted to marry Oh geared after all she was happy when they first got married as we saw in the memory sequences the only thing that upset her about eloping is that her family would be left abandoned without knowing where she was or what she was going to do and she didn't want that and so I don't think it's fair to compare old gear to Joel from the Last of Us because in that case we don't know what Ellie would have chosen but in this case we know that as far as we can tell iris didn't want to marry the old fairy Prince she wanted to marry old weird as well she had fallen in love with this man and the problem and the reason why she wanted to divorce later on in their marriage was because he was no longer the same person in my estimation old gear von everich is a well-intentioned victim of his own ambition what I mean by that is that old geared was well-meaning he wanted to simply marry iris and give her everything that he good good he wanted to give her a mansion that she could live in provide her pets that she could have provide her a caretaker that would always protect her no matter what he wanted to give her all of these things and he was willing to even bargain his soul in order to accomplish that and at least to me that seems like a real act of love gambling your soul for somebody that you love now you could argue that this was more of an old geared sided agreement he wanted iris it wasn't necessarily iris whose choice that old gear damn his soul for her but then you get into a whole discussion over love being a selfish thing at its core and that's a little too highbrow for this video right here simply put o Geer wanted to give the world to iris and the only way he could do that was by meddling with dark forces that eventually came back to collect their due and he got in some deep trouble as a result for this reason I think that the good ending where you actually choose to intervene and save old GERD is in fact the good ending and this is because you are actually giving this guy a chance to redeem himself in many ways and you also are willing to acknowledge that while he did make a very stupid deal with the dead it's still something that he can come back from he can still live a life or at the very least lived the life that iris would have wanted him to let me know your thoughts on all geared he's definitely a polarizing character and I've been shocked at how many people hate him or loved him it's really shocking and I think it just stands either the writing in this is really really good or it's really really bad to the point where people can't even agree as to whether or not he's the bad guy in this DLC so either it's really good or it's really bad I would like to hear your thoughts down below either which way now before getting to the big guy Gunther oh damn I do want to discuss Shawnee and Vladimir just briefly now Shawnee we don't know much about her before we start this quest and afterwards you speak to her and it turns out that she's been called away to the Eastern Front to act as a medic and she wants to do this because she's a type-a personality and wants to help change the world she's a good person and that's what she's going to do good verb but it is simply the game's excuse for her leaving the story so she's not a constant player that they would have to explain why she's not participating in future scenes or why she's not going to the final battle if you haven't completed the main quest it's just how they take care of all of those little loopholes as for Vladimir Vladimir again not much is known about him all we know is that he was the brother of old GERD von everich and he was part of this noble family and they would go raiding and pillaging typical cool guy stuff but also that his death was directly related to this pact that ol GERD von avrech signed now in addition to gaining a heart of stone there was another element of the payment for old gears wish to become rich and Noble once more one of the caveats was that he had to decide one person to essentially give up or allowed to die before he could obtain this gift and his two options were either iris or Vladimir and of course he chose Vladimir and so in one fell swoop all geared gained back his money his power and his nobility but at the cost of causing his brother to die the very next day and eventually damning his wife to same fate and lastly the guy we've all been waiting to talk about Gunther Odum now in addition to having the initials of God we're also talking about an individual who has marvelous power that goes unexplained for the majority of this DLC however it is explained in a sequence we haven't yet talked about there's an optional objective before you go to the final rendezvous point to meet with all geared and Gunther to settle the contract in its entirety and you can basically go off and meet with this old man who's been studying Gunter Odum excessively for at this point over a year now this professor is named professor shakes lock and he's somebody that shawnee apparently knew at the oxenfurt academy and basically he's cloistered himself inside of his house or his study he tells Geralt that old geared had hired him to research Gunter Odom's identity and he wanted him to find out how old GERD might be able to get rid of him because he wanted to end the pact and gain his heart back and be free but he couldn't find a way to do it through spells and incantations so he hired this professor to figure it out for him the professor says that he quote pored over countless tomes delved into obscure incidents and analyzed folk legends and came to believe that in short Gunter is quote evil incarnate he then goes on to explain that Gunter Odum is just one of many names belonging to this being that is inside of Gunter he says that Gunter as an entity has been present in societies and cultures for millennia he's nothing new but he's always had throughout all of these cultures and all of these thousands of years he's always had an interest in playing these little games on people and allowing them to damn themselves now you might have noticed that the professor looks a little strange especially with his eyes now this is actually because just studying Gunter caused him to go blind which had in turn attracted the attention of Gunter himself who obviously is very powerful and soon learned what the professor was trying to do so then Gunter went and drew a circle with a pentagram on the floor as what he called a reward and then he would tell the professor that he would be safe as long as he would remain in the circle however Gunter being the a-hole that he is made the ceiling beings above that circle weakened and so if the professor were to ever step out of the circle the house would collapse and the bookshelf would fall killing the professor now the professor was in this study for apparently a year before he was sick of it and apparently heavily considering suicide at least according to his journal which you can pick up and read after but once Geralt finds him again this is an optional quest you speak with him and he tells you that Gunter Odom has one major weakness and that is his own wit Gunter is convinced that he can outsmart any human and that if he creates a riddle or a game of sorts he will always win apparently one person previously has been able to best him but no one else other than that I'm not sure who this person was that was able to best him if you know please let me know in the comments I must have missed it but nonetheless Geralt can use this information in that final interaction to challenge control him to his own game and hopefully if you do it properly beat him at it now after this interaction the bookshelf starts to fall over Geralt can hold it up but the professor will always flip on the bottle and break his neck now my one issue with this entire little section being optional is that you go to this professor's house and he reveals the secret to dealing with Gunter that if you challenge him to his own game he can be defeated and gotten rid of the problem is that you don't have to do this you can actually go straight to the temple of little Vani and make the same choices say the same things it really has no impact other than providing narrative context to Gunter Oh Tim as a character so it's a little baffling that they were willing to let this slide there's probably some reason for making optional that I'm missing but I would have liked to see this made mandatory because I know at least a few people are going to race to deal with Gunther outright and miss this least somewhat important narrative expositor moment now as for the name of Gunther Odom and the nickname of master of mirrors or being a mirror salesman before he gained this power or something like that I've heard excuses all over the place and explanations all over the place and I'm honestly not convinced either which way there's probably some really cool reason why he's called the master of mirrors or mr. memory in some dialogue sections as you find but I simply couldn't find it I've heard people say that it's because he mirrors encouraged narcissism and narcissism is the core of many sins and so he encourages it by selling those mirrors maybe that's true I don't know but there's a lot of excuses or at least theories on this I'm not convinced either which way though so let me know your theory down below I'd love to hear it but that's about all I have to say and I'm aware that this video is incredibly long but I wanted to do this expansion justice because I honestly loved it the writing and the characters in my opinion make up for the lacking difference or changes in gameplay variety and there are things that were added to the game that were an attempt to create some sort of gameplay dynamic shift one such mechanic would be the aspect of rune words which quote according to the developer significantly affects gameplay and each rune word will impact a different aspect of in-game mechanics and will allow players to experiment with various strategies and tactics and quote now these are not crucial to the game you can also get through this expansion entirely without using them at all they're not really needed and for this video which took on a much more narrative feel I didn't feel as though they were necessary and I'm sure there were many other things that are in this expansion that I did not mention but I felt I should stick to the main story in the main characters because that's what I remember and that's what I think really shines in the expansion I can wholeheartedly recommend this expansion but only if you're a more narrative player and you aren't looking for big changes and shifts in the gameplay mechanics if you're looking for that you're not going to find it but that's about all I have let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below or tweet them at me or join our discord links in the description of course we have a great time over there and we'd love to have you the third and final video in this series I'm doing on The Witcher 3 will be on blood and wine but don't expect that to be out anytime soon I do need a break from The Witcher after this entire experience of playing through the core game multiple times and then playing through hearts of stone multiple times I think I need a break go play some stardew valley or something but if you have a game you would like for me to critique or analyze let me know down below as well I am always open to suggestions but with that said thank you for watching I love you all and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 519,165

Rating: 4.8713937 out of 5

Keywords: LukiePoo, Talk Gaming, Analysis, Critique, The Witcher 3, Hearts of Stone, HOS, Expansion, DLC, review

Id: fwGrdTHXw68

Length: 79min 56sec (4796 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017