Decisions in The Witcher 3 should be classified as a form of torture. Many times throughout your adventures with Geralt of Rivia, you’ll be presented with moral conundrums that often have no “right” or “wrong” answer. If handled improperly these split-second decisions will leave lingering effects that can haunt the player for the rest of their experience.
Decisions like these elevate Witcher 3 beyond other RPG’s that have obvious, often idealistic choices that dumb down the story and make it feel all to unrealistic. Witcher 3 is a treasure trove of morally ambiguous decisions and here’s ten that might make you lose some sleep at night.
10 Best: Kill Whoreson Junior
To kill or not to kill Whoreson Junior, that is the question. While Junior is one of the four major crime bosses in Novigrad, he also abuses and even mutilates women under his care. Junior even gets mixed-up with Ciri, injuries her and her friend Dudu and delays her quest quite a bit.
Geralt is not happy to hear this news coming straight from Whoreson’s mouth. You have two options, kill him, allowing for Dudu (a shapeshifter) to take his place and bring prosperity to the city – or the more unpopular letting him go – resulting in his slow death as a beggar. While the latter seems like punishment ripped straight from Dante’s Inferno, the former has more overall benefit to all parties involved.
9 Worst: Not Throwing The Baby In The Oven
Who would’ve thought that throwing a crying baby into a piping-hot oven would be the “right” choice in Witcher 3. While exploring Skellige, the witcher will come to a point when he will have to help one Crach’s children become the next ruler of the country.
If you decide to help Cerys an Craite – which we’ll soon find out is the right choice – the player will have to help her cure one of country’s rulers of a curse. In doing so the player will have to make a rash decision to throw that guys baby in a roaring oven and trust that Cerys knows what she’s doing – thankfully she does.
8 Best: The Next Ruler Of Skellige
Speaking of the next ruler of Skellige, let’s talk more about our girl Cerys an Craite. Daughter of Geralt’s friend Crach an Craite, helping Cerys to reach the throne is one of those decisions that’s a no-brainer in The Witcher 3.
The competition to become the next ruler of Skellige quickly becomes a competition between Crach’s kids and Geralt in a way gets to choose who wins based on who he helps in their quest. If the player chooses to help Hjalmar wins, the original quest is failed but he becomes ruler and decides to attack Nilfgaard constantly, suffering heavy losses in the process.
7 Worst: Iris Von Everic And The Rose
Switching gears to The Witcher 3’s first DLC expansion, Hearts of Stone, players will constantly find themselves fighting what the ideal choice is to bring the tragic story to an end. One of those decisions comes via a dream sequence that Geralt is thrown in to where he must interact with Iris Von Everic – the wife of the DLC’s antagonist Olgried Von Everic.
At the end of the nightmare Geralt must endure, he must choose whether to take Iris’ precious rose, thus freeing her from her tormented dream. Or leave her with her last good memory of her husband, but leave her in that state of purgatory.
6 Best: Setting Keira Up With Lambert
Keira Metz was maybe the best character that CD Projekt Red could’ve placed to usher us through the initial moments of the Witcher 3 (though take “initial” with a grain of salt as it’s about 5-6 hours into a 60-hour game). She’s charming and friendly yet betrays Geralt the first chance she gets for a selfish endeavor.
Geralt then must decide what to do with Keira, convince her to drop her self-absorbed pursuits and head to Kaer Morhen or kill her – and other decisions in-between. Sending her up to the witcher fortress is for the best however, as you spare the sorceress and set her up with your pal Lambert.
5 Worst: Romancing All The Gals
Geralt, the bachelor of Rivia is a stud with the ladies, but if the player chooses to sleep around with both main love interests – Triss and Yen – it’ll blow up in his face. Instead of enjoying the spoils of romanticizing these gals, both ladies will collude and scheme to give Geralt what he rightly deserves for being a “player.”
In what is one of the most bizarre, hilarious and slightly tragic cut-scene in the entire game, Yen and Triss teach Geralt a brutal lesson about cheating. It’s a scene that really is best viewed, or experienced if you’re doing a scumbag Geralt playthrough.
4 Best: Sparing Oligerd Von Everic
As mentioned, Oligerd serves as the main antagonist for much of the Hearts Of Stone DLC. He tricks the witcher into killing an Ofieri Prince, thus imprisoning Geralt and igniting the events for him to strike up a one-sided deal with Gaunter O’Dimm. Essentially he screws Geralt over big time.
The entire DLC is spent with Geralt being screwed over by Oligerd and O’Dimm saying “See, told you that guy’s a scumbag.” But by the end the player will hopefully come to see how tragic Oligerd’s story is and will hopefully help him to put a temporary end to the evil that is Gaunter O’Dimm.
3 Worst: Everything Regarding The Bloody Baron
The Bloody Baron’s quest is one of the best stories in a video game period. While it shows up fairly early into the game, it’s one of those quests that reviewers and players couldn’t stop talking about, even though they still had to chug through 50 more hours of story. Where the quest shines the punishing morally grey decisions that the player is presented with.
Whether it’s killing a demon tree, but in doing so allowing orphans to be eaten by sadistic witches; or letting the Baron’s wife die in peace, thus inciting the Baron to hang himself in the courtyard the next day. Every second of this massive quest to find the Baron’s wife and child is riveting and sensational.
2 Best: Reuniting Lost Sisters
Can’t round this thing out without talking about the DLC expansion that has put full $60 dollar games to shame, Blood and Wine. With an expansion so large however, the player is likely to be sweating bullets by the end, hoping not to unravel all their hard work until this point. It’s very easy to do it too; take the final scenes of Blood and Wine where Geralt must be so precise with his speech or both sisters Syanna and Anna Henrietta will die.
It’s one of those, you better save before you get to the showdown kind of moments. It’s fun to screw up however and watch the bloodbath that ensues.
1 Worst: Deciding Poorly For Ciri
The Witcher 3’s bad ending isn’t like most bad endings in video games; endings that usually scold the player for being the antichrist and show how your video game world is truly now a worse place because of your actions. No, bad endings in The Witcher 3 are great in their own right as they’re epic in how much tragedy is conveyed.
The world is saved, but if Geralt doesn’t save Ciri, he’s alone, resentful and quite bitter. Pay close attention to the choices revolving around Ciri throughout the game. Let her make her own decisions, become her own woman and be there when she needs you most.
NEXT: 5 Video Game Characters That Would Make Great Witchers (& 5 That Belong In The Wild Hunt)
