Most Underrated Game: One Year Later

Nah, there are way more than three. And you can combine them all however you see fit. The buffs vary depending on material and masterworks. And you can tint. There are some fun gambesons but mostly the game is built around the boring witcher gear. 

...and don't get me started on weapons in TW3. There is like steel sword and silver sword. I had a nice axe once but compared the Axe of green edges, the Song of the marshes or Greatest hits. Meh. 

Never underestimeate the power of tinting. 

I would agree I like The Witcher 2 more then the third one.   The only reason why I never finished it was that I got bored with the combat, while I just never had interest in The Witcher 3.

Yes, and DA:I started great, which cannot be said from TW3..

I do have a question about that free downloadable content.  How do you think people would react if BioWare released that same content the same way including NG+? To me it would be completely different with comments about how lazy they were not to put it into the main game or that they left it out to try and manipulate players into thinking they were getting something special.

Oh, no doubt it would have gotten those comments because it's pretty fashionable to dump on BioWare for seemingly the minor of perceived transgressions.  Same with CDPR adding the storage chests post-release...instead of "nice job, CDPR's really responding to the community", it would be "how could BioWare not think of this before".  It's why 9+ scores puzzled me.  It was obviously a deep, well-though out game but there was facial glitches, missions that could you not complete, missing features like the storage and newgame+ that seemed obvious to include, among other thing.  A lot was cleaned up post-release to make it the tight experience it is today...which, obviously, they should...but they garnered a lot of good will at release by including the soundtrack and other goodies in with the purchase.  CDPR is the critic's and fan's darling right now...let's see how long it lasts.

Actually, the advice is really to not try to complete the entire Hinterlands map before moving on to other maps like "Storm Coast", "Forbidden Oasis" and the "Fallow Mire" but, yeah, the beginning of "DA:I" is pretty great.

Well, the opinion of "filled with bland fetch quests" are simply that...an opinion.  Primarily, there are certain areas of the Hinterlands that can't be completed at a beginning level and would require you to leave and revisit when you've leveled up.  

"Our section editor, Andy Kelly, never left the area."

No one told him he couldn't leave the area.  Was Andy ever prevented from leaving the Hinterlands?  Was he not given a map?  Access to other areas on the War Table?  

"Inquisition's locations are places to return to over tens, maybe even hundreds of hours. You're meant to get a feel for them and move on—coming back later as you hop around the world. You'll find surprising stories out there, but you'll also find objectives that you can build upon on each return. Trivial tasks that, when completed a bit at a time, provide a nice reward when they're finally pieced together."

Maybe they'll do a better job of explaining the maps to Andy next time

And just about the rest of the other places in MEA.

Me either.  I actually thought the Eos quests were solid almost across those board.  After the radiation is removed there are a couple of find the downed satellite type ones, so there are some fetch quests, but its hardly overloaded in them. I guess find the bodies one is a pain, but I liked the quests on EOS. 

It's a beautiful book! Like you said, the Dark Horse artbooks are really nice, I have quite a bit of them. The Last of Us would be a great one to have in the collection!

Sure and some of them were duds that were just there to fill time.  But on the other hand one of the fetch style quests is one of my favorites quests in quite a few games.  The one where you come across a body of someone who was trying to set up beacons, and all you do is set up the rest of the beacons.  But at each one you get some kind of motivational speech with a ongoing story. It end up being one of the most moving and depressing stories in the game for me, and it used like 10 lines of dialogue to get there. So even fetch quests done right can be a solid addition to a game.