Guess what, my Geralt has amnesia, litteraly. As when I played this game for the very first time, I had no clue as to who Geralt was, and so I shaped him in my image. That was part of what made TW1 so great!

And in my first playthrough, my Geralt didn't trust Triss. Simple as that. And the game did a splendid job of sowing this mistrust, e.g. when talking to Radovid.

I didn't know about Yen, I didn't know about Triss' honest love for Geralt, I just had a feeling: This Triss has her own agenda, look out.

So I gave Alvin to Shani, and in the process started a relationship with her.

I really don't care as to how minor her role was in the books, and yes, now that I have read them, she may have started out as a fling; but in the games she played a bigger part, so it's quite irritating for her to be excluded without explanation.

I really don't care about Yennefer. She might have been Geralt's one true love, but he/I just do not remember her. And I furthermore don't care to resettle things with her.

If Witcher3 is about saving Yennefer alone, it would be very boring. I could understand saving her, but to my Geralt Yennefer would be merely a stranger, no emotions attached.

A story that is about who Geralt /is/ as according to the /player/. Not according to the how the books saw him.

I cannot express how much I disagree with this view. As there are players who never have and never will read the books; and the story should make sense to them as well.

It is true that the books serve as the starting point for the world of "The Witcher", yet from there on, you decide who Geralt is.

Well, I my Geralt chosed Shani, and in the way I intended to play him, he should have stayed faithful to her.

That he now wakes up besides Triss is really a slap into the face of Shani-mancers. It's a RPG, gawddamnit!, I want to decide how Geralt behaves.

I can forgive the devs not including Shani in the sequel, albeit I really don't understand it, yet Geralt's action still should make sense anyhow.

I think that if you romanced Shani in the first place, the epiloguge and the interaction between Triss should be much more awkward, straight-to-business-like, instead of him waking up next to her like lovers. It just doesn't fit.

agree with 90% of above post.

To me the import of W1 into W2 is just a waste of time because it ignors major decisions, but keeps minor ones. Not that I regret playing w1 I really enjoyed it.

CAUTION: SPOILERS








The two decisions that import are who you allied with, and whether you killed the future Queen of Redania. I'm at a loss to understand how that is keeping minor decisions and ignoring major ones.

The world does not revolve around Geralt and who he ploughed in TW1. I miss Shani in TW2 too, but it's hardly a slap in the face that she's not there and you wake up with the second-prettiest woman in the Temerian camp (assuming Ves is around somewhere).

Agreed with that too. I chosed Shani and when I first saw the openning scene with Triss I felt so pissed off.

I got a distasteful feeling in my mouth during my first playthrough of Witcher 2 just because of that. It stopped me from paying attentions to all those irreverent kings affairs and the chioice between siding with a single-minded murderer or a repulsive liar, both Iorweth and Roche are unlikeable to me and I got no other choices.

I ended up selling my Collector Edition and thinking to leave this game alone and forget about playing it again.

However only when I knew that I could see Siegfried again in Ch 3 I decided to make a second playthrough. Just becasue he made me remember the good things about the Witcher game series. To see the bonding between characters is what I enjoyed most when reading a story. And that's the part which can make an emotional impact to the readers.

Sadly in the second game our Geralt is such an emotionless jerk...

To me it was always pretty obvious why Shani doesn't appear, or at least Triss seems to be favored. Above all, the games always were true to the books and in those, Triss is a main character who appears in many scenes and most of the books. Shani however has only ~3 scenes in all 7 books. One of the times she's only mentioned because Geralt just had sex with her when Dandelion walked in and that's her whole involvement there.
I don't dislike Shani, but she's clearly only a minor character in the lore and the games reflect that. We can be glad she was featured so prominently in Witcher 1.
I'm usually very happy that the games are so true to the books, therefore I have a hard time criticizing that. But I understand why it sucks for people who imported a save with her as girlfriend.
I also think that the import of saves was implemented quite late in the development cycle and wasn't planned from the start. They probably just wanted to react to BioWare. So I guess it was unlikely they would have had the chance to do very much with it. Again, I wasn't disappointed, because I hadn't even expected to see stuff like Aerondight or Raven's armor again. :)

You're kidding, right? I backed up all of my TW1 saves back in 2007/08 because they said there would be an import option in the sequel. It was planned before TW2 development even began.

That's why I couldn't finish reading the book....to know Geralt is such a heartless and hopeless womanizer in the original setting. Much prefer the honerable Geralt I shaped according to my liking in the first game:/

For now I'm playing the game, not reading the books. What I can see is this sequel story didn't jointed and doesn't make good sense to me at all so I feel disappointed.

With a little extra effort Shani could've been included in TW2. Makes sense that she might be traveling along with the Temerian army as a medic, depending on Geralt's choices in TW1 the player could start the prologue in Shani's army-issue tent instead of Triss's velvety lair.

Then when the game gets rolling Shani stays behind with the main force while Geralt goes tearing off with Roche and Triss. The game then deletes the possibility of sex-scenes with Triss and inserts some catty dialogue here and there as she and Geralt are compelled to work together.

It's not like the two would hate each other despite whatever bruised feelings remain from TW1...even a jilted Triss would care enough about Geralt to help him with his memories and Geralt would still want to save Triss from danger even if he wasn't boning her etc. etc.

So Shani would be a minor character in TW2, but the player's choice from the first game would be respected to a certain extent...

Oh, I honestly didn't know that. I heard of the possibility to import a save for the very first time in 2010 (November, IIRC), shortly before they announced postponing the release to May 2011. That's why I played the game a second time in November 2010, because I hadn't backupped my saves and I wanted to be ready to play the sequel in February 2011.

Are you sure though, that you stored your saves already in 2007?!? That's when Witcher 1 was just released and they didn't even state that they would do a sequel at all at that point, so I find it hard to believe, that you would have already known about the import feature...

I don't give a flying f what happened in the novels. This is the games, where Geralt starts without a memory and is a blank slate. He can have entirely different love interests. From what I've seen of Yennefer and Triss, I'd prefer to put a sword through both their black hearts and enjoy life with Shani.

The world does not, but Geralt does revolve around Geralt and everything he did including who he ploughed, is ploughing, and perhaps is choosing to be with more than ploughing. It's the way you played him, and yes; it is rather a slap in the face, that such a major part of how you developed Geralt does not carry over in TW2.

Bullcrap. The first game was a role playing game with the brilliant notion of having Geralt have amnesia so you can fill him in as you see fit. If the game was so damn true to the books right down to every last possible or not so possible love interest, Shani should never have been a major love interest in the first game. I. Do not. Give. A crap. No, the first game does NOT reflect that at ALL. The first game you can engage yourself to her. Fiance. Fiance is the proper term for what you could make Shani.

Yes, I'm sure. I played the game in early 2008 and that's when my savegames are from. Of course they didn't know a sequel would be made for sure, but they said they would make some use of your old save files if it was. So I ripped all of my saves to a CD in case I needed them again :)

I keep all of my save games from old games, kind of like digital trophies. :) I still have save games dating back to 1998! (And they would have went back to even earlier, except that I had a major hard disk failure that wiped out all my data. :( )

...and the protagonist centred morality and absolute loyalty returns once again.
This thing is worst than cancer.

On certain level I agree with you…

Personally I found Triss much more realistic and independent than Shani… and chose the first over the second (so I am the one who got what I wanted)… A compare could be made here between Ashley and Liara, one is independent, able to live her own life, holds opinions and knows how to shoot, the other one is… a damsel in distress (personal opinion not absolute truth).

Certain personalities appeal to certain people and in a way it is disappointing that the decisions the protagonist have made were not carried through to the second game. After all if a developer included game import then it should consider a wider range of decisions (especially ones so heavily involving the player character).

If the situation was reversed would I devolve to calling other character names, offer scornful observations about their personality and write countless posts about it... probably not (though who really knows right?).