Really? I never noticed that. It may also be because for story purposes, you need to stay on Roche's good side at least initially, and it would have made for lousy gameplay if they actually let you go "Allright then. Good luck, Roche, I'm heading to town, meet up with me later if you live." Not that I think Geralt would do that, but... They essentially had to have the scene play out the way it did, so to remove the option of you walking free made sense in that way.

Well you were never given the option to let Geralt take the offer. He refuses offcourse. I am sure they had their reasons for changing it

LOL

In the end its everyone's choice.
Elves hate humans, humans hate elves.
True, it would appear elves actually have a good reason for their hatred.
Still, I chose to side with humans in both W1 and 2, simply because I am human and in the end, so is Geralt (mutant or not) - hence I will stick with them, even if they are proper wankers.

*BIG SPOILER WARNING*

The elves behind the Wild Hunt are from a world where humans were hunted to extinction. Those elves' main motivation is to find a way to transport their brethren from Witcher's world to their before the Great Cold, i.e. upcoming ice age.

It's quite possible that we will visit their human-less world somewhere in the future.

*END OF SPOILER*

Now first off, I dont totally disagree with you, I find it hard to feel for the scoia'tael in the witcher 2 as well. I totally fell for their veiws in TW1 until the swamp scene when their true intentions came out (but that was The Witcher 1 and as I said in my reveiw of TW2, it doesnt accurately carry stories and concepts from TW1 over all that well for those that havent played it).

BUT, a few things!

1) Geralt is not human and holds no sway to any human leader or land or principle beyond loyalty to ones freinds and to the Witcher brotherhood (a principle totally missed in The Witcher 2 I might add)

2) You say Roche fights for Temmeria and king. Well the Scoia'tael fight for the elvish nation as it was before humans took over in principle but more recently they fight against the monstrousities done to their brethern by the humans of all nations!

Ever heard the saying "One mands hero is anouther mans terrorist"? That principle is very much in play in this setting, or is suppose to be.

I dont know if you played the first game or not but CDR made one huge mistake in this game. They said you didnt need to read the books or play The Witcher 1, but they were wrong. So much in TW2 I understand ONLY because I played TW1 many times and because I read the english language translations of AS's stories.

The Witcher 2 lacks immersion and much of gaining immersion is setting the stage, setting the tone of the enviroment/atmosphere. Playing on ones emotions.

While TW2 is a billion times and billion times a billion time better then ME2 (and that might be understating the seperation of quality between the two games), they have one common mistake.

If you dont go in with preconceived notions that your going to care and want to care, neither game makes that very important emotional connection.

In Mass Effect 1 I seriously struggled with the choice on who to sacrafice and who to save the first time I played the game. I struggled with so many decisions because the immersive story made it hard on me. When Ashley confronted Liara and me on the bridge and forced me to choose, I must have reloaded that scene a 100 times (well not really but a few) flip flopping because I literally wanted both of them as my lover.

In Mass Effect 2 I went with Miranda cause she didnt swear every word (im not 15 year old so I dont think a vulgar mouth on a female all that impressive) and she was drawn nice. Immersion and desire and emotion, nothing like that even entered the senario. I had no emotion, I didnt care. And when Miranda sided with me over the smoking man (oh sorry wrong sci fi series) I didnt swell up with pride or anything cause Bioware had outright failed to connect with me in their story.

Same thing for The Witcher 1 and 2.

When I was presented with the choice to save Triss or Foltests daughter and heir, it should have been a hard decision filled with emotion!
I hate to say it but what ran through my head literally was
Do I want to see Triss naked again vrs saving the little girl might make for a interesting story in TW3.
I really hate admiting that but CDR had completely missed target regarding immersion and emotional connection that the decision wasnt really all that hard to make.
In the end I went for better story and saved the girl.

and thats where the Scoia'tel come in, your suppose to understand and feel for their plight so when they do these nasty viscious things you try your hardest to justify them in your mind. To rationalize them.

TW2 just outright fails to establish that emotional/immersive connection!

Even when you have to choose scoia'tel or Roche, its not a passionate hard decision.
Personally I listened to Ior at the ruins, ran into town to listen to Roche and decided I didnt care enough either way and Roche was right there and saved me a trip back through the forest. THATS how I ended up choosing Roche the first time! Kinda sad to admit!

I love TW2, I do, but im very disappointed in CDR about their game mechanics and their lack of immersion.

I've generally felt that in the witcher's world people, including Geralt kill too easily. Like in the ending of Iorveth/Triss path we kill those guards who stand in our way into the meeting and say "it was easier this way".. So maybe I should not really care that the scoia'tael constantly want to kill me, that we kill some fellow humansalong the way whose only crime was that they become soldiers, possibly to protect their families from elven bandits..
In the end I hoped i don't have to fight letho.. I was fed up with fighting and politics.. especially without seeing any side which worth fighting for.

Geralt is 100 years old, and he's seen a lot.

The only reason he wouldn't side with elves, is 'cos he has amnesia.

Mind delivering any arguments supporting your thesis? ;)

What do you mean, thesis?
Geralt is Geralt.

He doesn't get involved in violence if there's a choice.
When he runs out of options, he almost always backs the underdog.

From my understanding of the books, Geralt disapproves of the Scoia'tael's way of slaughtering people and raiding villages randomly - while he despises the non-humans' repression. He thinks that all the Scoia'tael will achieve is provoking even more violence against innocent non-humans.

I'd like to know what makes you think the 'old' (not-affected-by-amnesia) Geralt would choose Iorveth's side no matter what?

Concerncing the general topic:
In my opinion, Geralt's choice would not have to do anything with Roche's or the Scoia'taels' cause. He'd just compare the odds of getting to the Kingslayer and end the accusation of him being Foltest's murderer.

So, the choice basically comes down to:
+Roche, as an agent, has lots of connections, informants, some manpower and plans to catch the Kingslayer as well. Geralt can be (quite) sure of Roche's good will towards him (or let's say: towards Geralt's cause to find the Kingslayer)
-But he is likely to get distracted from Geralt's targets by his sense of duty towards Temeria. Geralt owes him for releasing him from prison and might have to bend to his will to a certain degree.

+Siding with Iorveth ends Geralt's duty towards Roche, grants him some protection from his pursuers and most likely a grateful ally if he helps him freeing his friends. And Iorveth has had direct contact with the Kingslayer, maybe giving him additional information about his whereabouts and plans.
-Geralt will have to fear even more pursuers because Iorveth is a widely-known 'terrorist' and he will lose contact to high political institutions. Geralt can't be sure of Iorveth's plans after freeing the Scoia'tael from the bark.

...add additional arguments to either side.

So, I don't think, it's as much of a ideological matter as it is a pragmatic one.

Well, if we're talking pragmatic, Letho was, surrounded by elves, a dead man.
It was Roche who screwed the pooch.

He follows this up with, "oh sure, we can chase him, but not before you kill this dude for me."

Really?

Geralt takes the path of least resistance.

One plus lore wise - Iorveth tells the story of Loch Muinne, and previous civilization - Vrans
he knows a lot

It's been a week since the last post but...

When you side with Roche you talk about Vrans and Raupenneck too(not as much as you do with Iorveth) and when you do that it is revealed that after Raupennecks attack on loc muinne people found reptilian bones with sword cuts on them in nearby caves which means humans aren't the only race genociding another race, our cutey lil' oppressed innocent elves too once knew how the other side of the fence that seperate the victims from villains/aggressors/inflicter... looks like.

Anyway, to the matter at hand, scoi'atel are somewhat just in some of their actions, not at all of them but in a lot of them. True, attacking villages and killing "innocent" humans is not right but how many of those people are actually innocent? If you choose to give the sword to Iorveth in elven baths(giving the sword to Iorveth in elven baths? this certainly is open for misunderstanding) you learn how innocent exactly most of those people are. True, there maybe real innocents among them but people just see what they want to see and don't like to put much energy into sorting things that look like each other but in reality differ from each other in many ways, generalizing is the easiest way and they take that way and also most of them don't have the intelligence capacity to take another way, to think before acting, be them human or nonhuman(this also is true for the real world, which makes me love The Witcher series even more) Besides in villages where humans and non-humans assimilated with each other humans have nothing to fear from the scoi'atel, they do, however, have a lot to fear from authorities and other peoples who will see them as collaborators with scoi'atel even the nonhumans in their settlement isn't a part of scoi'atel.

The reason Scoi'atel gained popularity so quickly during the "great war" is nonhumans were already being oppresed for many years and when the oppurtunity to be able to be a part of the community(not in the independent northern kingdoms but in the northern kingdoms which are a part of the Nilfgaardian empire) rise they took it. Because Nilfgaard failed so did the scoi'atel, which lead to more hatred towards nonhumans be them an elf from the scoi'atel or the most assimilated dwarf.