There's a game you played and loved but never finished — or never felt you got closure on, in one way or another. And, suddenly, there's a compelling reason to go back, like a patch or visual refresh. But trying to start a big, complicated game in the middle is disorienting and hard work.
You have to remember how everything works, what the buttons do, what's happening in the story, what all this stuff in your inventory does, how you set up your character build, where the useful vendors are, and so on. It can be quite a hump to get over. You're not in the flow anymore, and the flow can be hard to find.
You could always start again, but that means losing all of your previous progress. I'm in this position right now with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I'd like to go back to the game to check out all the changes and improvements in the new, free Remastered update.
I'd also like to be poised and ready, immersed in the character of Geralt and his world, by the time the new expansion Songs of the Past drops next year. But in this case, my dilemma is more complicated than choosing between picking up old threads or starting again. I've played this game a lot — mostly a long time ago — and started new saves a bunch of times.
I've got a bewildering variety of starting points to pick from. This is a problem of my own making. I'm a serial restarter when it comes to RPGs, which is one reason I have at least 25 World of Warcraft characters.
Some people love endgames; I love a clean slate, the feeling of gradually piecing my playthrough together, the sense of all that possibility ahead of me. But The Witcher 3 is hardly a sandbox — it's a story-led game with a linear main questline and a clearly defined lead character. There might be a limit to how many times I can face White Orchard.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
