When you start your Witcher 3 journey for the first time, you will face a choice. A choice which you might not be expecting – I know I wasn’t. What’s worse – how to make that choice isn’t clear.
As the name suggests, the Witcher 3 is the third in the series, and choices made in 2 will affect your game world. Obviously not everyone will have played 2, even if you have; there’s no way to import those saves to the console version, should one of them now be your platform of choice.
To work around that, CD Projekt Red has a system where you will be asked some questions about your past – after you’ve completed the beginning area. With this you can decide whether to influence that conversation (and therefore your resulting landscape), or just go in on a default build.
So before you get to any gameplay, you’ll find yourself setting the usual options such as difficulty level and having tutorials enabled. Then you’ll get a screen posing this question, with these possible options:
Simulate Witcher 2 Save?
On
Off
Back
Now you’re left staring at the screen blankly, a bit terrified – asking; what do I do?
You see, that really is all you get. There is no other information. Does selecting ‘On’ mean you get to simulate the decisions, or will the decisions will be simulated for you?
Or does selecting ‘Off’ mean the decisions won’t be simulated for you, so you’ll get to chose? Or the opposite?
Or do you just select ‘Back’, put the controller down and hide in the corner of the room until you feel able to tackle this obstacle?
It’s safe to come out of the corner now, as with the help of VG24/7 and Gamespot, you’ll soon be equipped with the knowledge to successfully conquer this, the first of many, Witcher 3 challenges.
The short answer on how to go about this is:
Here’s what you want to choose:
If you’re playing on either PlayStation 4 or Xbox One and want to make sure choices you’ve made in The Witcher 2 carry over to the new game, you will want to choose to simulate [ON]. This will cue the scene (which takes place after the prologue) and an NPC will ask you about your past.
If you want to go in clean, or “as CD Projekt intended,” as some players believe, you will need to not select the simulate option [OFF].
Now you know you get to make the decisions, what decisions will you be making?
For an in depth look at that, you’ll want to give this a read: What The Choices Of The Witcher 2 Mean In The Witcher 3. The article contains many spoilers of the previous story elements.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is out now for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.