The Ten Best Quests From The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s second expansion, Blood and Wine, gives you a lot of quests to undertake. The difference between it and most other open-world games, though, is that almost all of them are worthwhile. The Witcher 3 as a whole loves to turn every menial task you perform into a story worth hearing, and that’s what lets anyone get lost in the immense world it creates: not because you’re trying to level up or want the sword you’ll get at the end, but because you genuinely want to see what happens next.
Blood and Wine is better than most full-featured games I’ve played this year. In case you’re tempted to skip it in favor of some of the other big games that have come out the last couple of months, here are ten short stories to help convince you to go back and visit the world of The Witcher 3 one last time.
Warning: spoilers follow
10. “Fists of Fury: Toussaint”
I hated most of the “Fists of Fury” quests in Wild Hunt, but Blood and Wine’s iteration of this quest is a lot more interesting. Instead of simply fist-fighting a bunch of strongmen, you fight one of them, must counter three hits from the second, then insult-swordfight the third, and fight your final opponent drunk. It won’t rank among the greatest quests in all of The Witcher 3, but it manages to be more entertaining than it should be, given that these quests have been awful in the past.
9. “Turn and Face the Strange”
This could have been a simple “here’s a new layer of upgrades!” quest that introduces you to mutations, which give you new perks to choose from and unlock more slots to place your upgrades in. But no, it has to go and get all tragic; the way you unlock more powerful mutations is by using the research of a man who was trying to cure his son of them. The quest goes to great lengths to let you know you’re using another man’s tragedy to your benefit, which makes the subsequent tutorial on how powerful the new mutations are feel a bit tone-deaf. Still, it’s a quest worth doing even if you don’t care about making your character stronger, and shows how much effort Blood and Wine puts into contextualizing all of its elements.
8. “Portrait of the Witcher as an Old Man”
Another quest I could just as easily see being an episode of a Witcher TV series, “Portrait of a Witcher as an Old Man” has some strong comedic chops and gives you nice little souvenir for your troubles. A painter catches sight of Geralt, admires his features, and wants to paint him. After looking for a location and finding his lost paint, you get to choose a pose for Geralt to take: on horseback, standing firm, or lying down. No matter what you choose, Geralt ends up naked, and the painting costs 1000 Crowns (which is a lot). It’s a nice break from all the serious curse-lifting you have to do elsewhere, and the quest is worth it to hear the painter go on about how his cat can not only paint, but is actually a hack.
7. “Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Granite!”
“Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Granite!” is about what you think it is: a pair of stones have gone missing from the crotch of a statue said to grant sexual virility. People cherish the statue because rubbing the stones seems to make them better in bed. The quest has a couple of great moments (such as waiting for the thief to finishing using them), but the best part of the quest is when the caretaker of the statue begins telling you what’s going on while the camera angle has him blocking your view of the stones. At first you might think it’s to maintain an M rating, but then he moves his head, revealing the forsaken statue’s front-hole.
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