A lot of the main quest prior to finding Ciri is time wasting to the extreme. The entire Novigrad part consists of trying to figure out what happened to Dandelion, which means the most basic of fetch quests as you run around all of Novigrad to talk to people about Dandelion. Special shout out to the section where you have to talk to all the girls he supposedly seduced. Similarly, the Bloody Baron is also a giant time waste, as he's basically blackmailing Geralt into solving his problems only to go "Eh, she was here, have no clue where she went". That, incidentally, is the resolution to Dandelion's quest arc too and it is not a good picture when two out of three of the first main quests are red herrings that force you into prolonged quests that ultimately have no pay off.trunkage said:
I like the Witcher 3, but the writing for the main quest is not all that strong for the first half. Consider that the first half of the game really doesn't have much to do with the latter half, being essentially one massive lead-up to the actual plot of the game, which was hinted at some 20-50 hours prior in the prologue and first Velen quest and then never shown again until you get to the actual main quest on Skellige and get on the trail that actually leads you to Ciri. Had it been any other game, it would have been lambasted for not respecting the players time in the extreme.
