Once again, the GamesRadar+ RPG Club demands blood as we set out to explore standout missions in The Witcher 3 Remastered. Which perhaps makes it all the more appropriate that, when asked to write about my favorite mission in The Witcher 3, my mind immediately went to classically-eccentric side quest "The Oxenfurt Drunk".
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Well, actually my first thought went to The Bloody Baron storyline, but everybody writes about the Bloody Baron, and how much is there really left to say about it at this point? But there's a small side quest I love almost as much, partly because it does so much to make me realize the thing I want to see most in Witcher 4.
An optional Witcher Contract found and set in the titular town, The Oxenfurt Drunk has Geralt find the killer behind multiple victims drained of all their blood - gee, I wonder what esoteric horror could be behind this! The twist is he discovers in the wake of a bit of corpse-prodding autopsy that every victim was well over the limit to drive and horse and cart, leading to the realization that this particular vampire has a penchant for blood with a high alcohol content. I won't make the Bloody Mary joke if you don't.
Twenty minutes later, Geralt is drunkenly staggering around crime scenes with a dozen vodkas inside him, trying to lure out the Ripper-Tippler with a series of bawdy tavern songs and a coquettishly exposed neckline. It feels like the kind of atrociously bad idea that a D&D party would come up with, and I mean that as an honest compliment.
So yeah, it's a fun little quest – the Contracts are reliably the best part of Witcher 3, to my mind – but it also shows the one place where I think the game had so much more room to flex. Namely, in all the investigation and intelligence that makes Geralt far more than some burly hired goon.
If Witcher 4 is going to shake up any part of the formula – or even introduce an optional difficulty mode – as we wave in Ciri as the new hero, my greatest wish would be for something that really gamifies the intellectual side of monster hunting.
As it goes now, the usual pattern is that Geralt finds some yellow glowing tracks and follows them until there's a tuft of fur, a mangled corpse, or a Resident Evil-style lab note. Then he stares at the clues before telling the audience he's deduced that the monster is a Lesser Striped Whifflepog or whatever, at which point the Pokedex entry for the Whifflepog appears in the Bestiary as if summoned by voice command, telling you exactly what tinctures, oils and spells are needed to kick its head in most effectively.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/laying-a-boozy-trap-for-a-vampire-lush-in-witcher-3-is-one-of-my-favorite-quests-but-it-also-shows-the-missed-opportunity-that-witcher-4-needs-to-pick-up-on
