Do you need to play the first two Witcher games to understand The Witcher 3?

[dscross]

I'm thinking about getting The Witcher 3 on PS4 since everyone seems to recommend it. Trouble is, I haven't played the previous titles so I'm unsure I'd understand what's going on. I'm not going to do loads of reading around them - Ive enough on my proper reading list without that.

Does the game do a decent job of bringing newbies up to date or you need to go back before playing Witcher 3? It's unlikely that I will buy it if this isn't the case because I don't have an Xbox or good enough PC to play the old ones.

 

[dscross]

No. Most games aren't like TV serials. Sequel or not, they're designed to be accessible. That goes for The Witcher.

There are definitely some that would have have taken away from my experience if I hadn't played the previous games in order - The Legacy of Kain series, for example. I'll take it from your response the Witcher isn't one of these though.

 

[Zhukov]

Nope.

The plot is entirely new.

There are a few returning characters but the game does a perfectly adequate job of catching you up and none of them are much worth bothering about anyway.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

No, the story can be understood just fine without any prior knowledge of the franchise. The main quest in particular is actually a pretty straightforward story at its core.

Outside of that, while having read the books and played the games helps to understand the setting (history, background events) and some characters motivations, all of this information can be learned ingame through conversation or reading ingame books.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Don't know about the first, but I've heard it's more sloggish than the second, and the second was very sloggish indeed. There's probably some good story in there somewhere, but there's too much unintuitive faffing and clunkiness to get to it. The third pretty much improved on everything gameplay wise while remaining a standalone experience. Save yourself the timesink hassle unless your patience is that of martyred saints.

 

[sanquin]

The only thing you'll be missing out on is Gerald's connections to some characters that were in the previous games as well. Other than that, nope, not needed.

 

[Dalisclock]

I played through all 3 games over the past few years, with a 6 month gap between 1 and 2 and then went straight from 2 into 3.

My answer is: Sorta.

First out, the first game is very, very rough and hard to get into. The presentation is pretty awful and stilted(and this is the "enhanced edition" I played), tt doesn't start getting interesting or playable until the halfway point and even then it's not up to par with a lot of other games, even from the same release era(KOTOR and Dragon Age both put Witcher to shame on gameplay). The story is the best part but you might as well just read up on it or watch a youtube summary.

OTOH, Witcher 2 feels like it's a lot better put together on all fronts. The plot directly leads into the Witcher 3, feeling like game of thrones in a way(and the choices that affect the narrative tend to be some variant of Mortons Fork, where someone is going to suffer regardless. The combat is a lot better then the first(though not as good as the third). The high point is a branching narrative that, based on a decision made at the end of Act 1 of 3, act 2 and a big chunk of act 3 will play out very differently with a different cast of characters.

Playing Witcher 2 gives you a lot more insight into the world of Witcher 3 then the first game does, but it's not required. Along the same lines, most of the choices you make in 2 don't matter in 3(despite the game import mechanic) and almost nothing from the first game is even mentioned.

TL;DR Skip the Witcher. Play Witcher 2 if you feel like it.

 

[SupahEwok]

90% of the references and history of Witcher 3 draws on the books, with maybe 10% from the previous games (the 2 main callbacks to previous games are 2/3rds of the characters from one faction, and 1 standalone character who's life or death was determined in W2). You don't really need to know anything going in though, the writing is usually *just* explanatory enough to know what you need to without being hamfisted.