Aaryn Flynn says: We Have Learned From The Mistakes of Inquistion....

Personally i'm not in favour of skipping/delaying because of worries of isolating the sexual component of the relationship from the romance dialogue arc or shunting sex to end of game.
Equally i'm nervous after bad way DAI approached this that it'll equate to having some romances as sexual and some as chaste.

Ciri in particular interests me, I like the idea of Geralt creating this sort of surrogate family, and I like her characterization arc, even though it has "chosen one" sort of plastered all over it. Triss and Shani also come to mind immediately. I was also entertained by Dandelion again, he's a good sort of comic relief. What we got from Vesemir was also good. 

Thats off the top of my head. A lot of them I found to be more entertaining or interesting over Geralt, who was more subdued. Maybe that's the point, I don't know, but it does make Geralt look a bit bland in comparison. 

Honestly, I should throw away assumptions, but the first two games have left me so cold that the third Witcher is kind of a low priority. Maybe someday I will get to it, but for now it's on a backburner. 

This is actually quite prevalent in a lot of story media.  The problem the game makers have both in TW and all bioware games is that since you are playing a character such as geralt or shep or the warden etc they have to steer that character into a bit of blandness both writing and voice acting wise because if they go too far with the character the people playing it will disconnect and say ' I'd never do that, or say that'.

An author who is pretty classic for this is Dickens, his heros or heriones are usually the least interesting people in the book but he make sup for it with just great villains and great ancillary characters.

I am getting close to finishing TW3 and it is the 1st Witcher game I have played, I hate combat too much in #1 I have #2 now and will play it after I finish 3.  I think 3 is well worth it in my mind, it has a lot of interesting side characters.

See, it's odd. I didn't find Shepard boring as a character, for a comparison sake.

The first game Sehpard was very bland across the board, but the second and third game gave Shepard a lot more personality, and it was one that was malleable to the point where it can be dynamic for a RP challenge. A full on Paragon-style Shepard for example had a lot of opportunities to sneakily gain an advantage, but it would be struggle to not do that, especially with interrupts prompting the player to do that. 

Maybe the Witcher 3 does do this, but I probably need to play the game more to see it fully. 

Yeah, never understood why people think Geralt or Witchers don't have emotions. That's just the whole 'what the general populace' think of them. They very obviously have emotions, there just not viewed as human cause people are bigotty assholes.

Rather ironic since Geralt is not supposed to not have emotions.

I feel youre right here. Really how can you know, without hindsight, that lots the available quests in the region would be prove pointless? With all the hype about 'your choices having consequences' and no solid grasp about where the storyline may take you, the safe bet is to put in the work. Best example are the shards, with which I never bothered after half the first playthrough. How is one supposed to know they arent necessary to fight an important sidequest boss linking to the main storyline or what not? 

I think it would have been less of an issue have the devs made a better job at managing ingame expectations (like making it clear what youre working toward when taking on a sidequest). They definitely lost track of what a first time player can and should expect of the greater universe presented to them. Hell, id prefer a more straightforward experience the first time around, letting me get engaged in the main storyline, and more options to choose out of on subsequent runs so I can get more of what I enjoyed.

Anyway I dont see from a good eye calling it 'completionist drive' when I feel it actually stems from a lack of clarity about what to expect will or wont be useful later on. 

This seems obviously true.

I tend to play on Hard.

True. Of course, that fight is optional.

Spam was hardly necessary. Paralysis explosion once and the fight was usually yours.

Aside from dragons, most enemies could be immobilized before they hit you.

I meant out of combat. Having health and stamina regenerate between encounters removes any need for tactical decisions to take strategic considerations into account. This was an explicit goal of DAO's design - BioWare wanted all tactics and no strategy - and DAI undid this.

When BioWare announced that health wouldn't regenerate in DAI, I immediately asked whether mana would, because I was hoping it would not. I was disappointed by the answer.

That's certainly true. DAI was laughably easy.

I don't like the idea of taking damage being a character objective. Why would anyone do that?

I generally think that Warrior classes should be the best at using weapons and the best at using armour. Rogue classes should balance their deficiencies in those areas by having non-combat and other utility skills. Modern games, though, are typically too combat heavy for that to work.

The difference in damage output between warriors and rogues in MMOs not only goes the wrong way, but also is way too big. Those class differences are extremely hard to defend in terms of world coherence.

Really?

The emotionlessness was something I liked about Geralt. It's annoying that it's not real.

He wasn't emotionless. It was more like the image of himself he sold to people who didn't know him mixed with a lot of sarcasm.
Personally i enjoyed that. His conversations with Dijkstra on TW3 are really interesting with them throwing sarcastics remarks at each other.

This is probably a big part of why I prefer the pre-cinematic games, but I generally want to be in control of that aspect of the character I'm playing.

The old games couldn't render faces meant that the game never decided what the character's facial expression was. I want that level of control back.

Going cinematic hasn't given us anything.

I dunno. Whenever I read about The Witcher it says that he (and all witchers) are not supposed to have emotions. *shrug* Maybe it's me, but if I wanna read about that, I can go and read a Dexter book. And have it in the present day.