On my first playthrough of the Witcher 3, I made a disastrous decision. After completing Magic Lamp, I decided to eschew the Bloody Baron questline entirely and immediately took up Keira Metz's offer to drop by. I then proceeded to obsessively complete every single one of her quests as well as all the quests surrounding Crookbag Bog and the Ladies of the Wood. At the time, it didn't seem that bad -- that cluster of quests are some of the best in the whole game, after all -- but by ignoring anything from the Bloody Baron until after I had wrapped up The Whispering Hillock, I skipped over key parts of the Baron's storyline and ruined one of the great twists of the Witcher 3. So this time around I'm making sure I do things right, by completing the Baron's storyline before venturing into the Bog. So, without further ado...enjoy Bloody Baron (Peaceful Path). [And take a look at the rest of the entries in the series right here!]

Bloody Baron (Peaceful Path)

Main Quest

Bloody Baron is one of those crazy Witcher 3 quests that will either be entirely routine or excitingly complex depending on a seemingly-inconsequential choice you made hours earlier. For my part, I had no idea this quest was branching until I looked it up on the Witcher 3 wiki. Turns out that if I had chosen to get violent with some bullying, unnamed guards in an encounter some missions previous then their friends would have barred my entrance to Crow's Perch and I would have had to sneak in via an new quest line focusing on a dead boy and an old abandoned well. Which all sounds far more interesting than the peaceful approach! Instead, I was nice to the guards, and Bloody Baron proceeded with little in the way of twists or turns. Still -- the power of choice, and kudos to CD Projekt for making good on it.

Bloody Baron (Peaceful Path), as I'm calling it, is about as straightforward as a main mission can get. Your first objective is to head to Crow's Perch; your second is to follow the Sergeant who will take you to the Bloody Baron; your third and final is to talk to the Bloody Baron himself (oh, and you get a Ciri's Story in the middle, but since that's a separate quest it'll have a separate review). No combat, no Witcher Vision, no real choice. Only scene-setting and conversation, all of which, thankfully, is of the highest quality.

Enough has already been written out there about how good the Bloody Baron storyline is, so I don't think there's much more in that regard that I can add here, but I'd just like to point out how well the character is modeled and voiced. On my first playthrough I bounced off the character a bit, writing him off as a Robert Baratheon wannabe in both look and sound. They both had beards, ruddy British accents, drank heavily, and were self-pitying; sure, as the storyline developed, I thought they did an alright job fleshing him out, but at the time I thought he came off as a caricature. This time, however, I feel totally the opposite. I think they sell the character right out of the gate by the incredible amounts detail they put into his face and clothes. He looks like a mess, a guy who's really been through some shit, and from the salt-and-pepper beard to the bad complexion of his face to the tattered, dirtied clothes, you feel like you can almost smell him through the screen. That, coupled with a great ruddy-British voice actor and dialogue that really pops, goes a long way towards making this simple mission a really good one.

I also think this is the first major questline where the writing in the Witcher 3 begins to shine. Up until now we've had good stuff -- the opening with Vesemir and Geralt at the fire and meeting Yennefer in Vizima being the stand-outs -- but it's here that things really begin to kick into high gear. In fact, pretty much every main quest and major side quest in Southern Velen is incredibly written, with the Bloody Baron's signaling a trend that will continue in Ladies of the Wood and create a dazzling B-story in Keira Metz's quartet of quests. Of all the game's many accomplishments, I think it's the writing, the consistently nuanced and subtle character work and ability to create inventive scenarios and situations, that floats to the top and makes that 'Witcher 3 magic' so hard to replicate in other games.

Four White Wolves out of Five