I apologize. Heart of Stone gets better. *Spoilers*

Some of you may have seen a post I made about how the opening of the Heart of Stone DLC is terrible. I couldn't see how any comeuppance was worth having to put up with this bunch of dickbags called the Wild Ones. I hated all of them and wanted to start smashing their faces in right away.

And yet I sensed that the game seemed to want me to admire or sympathize with Olgeird. I think they wanted to recapture the success of the Bloody Baron. Note to the writers. The thing that separates the Bloody Baron from Olgeird is that BB genuinely can't help himself. You get the sense that he has been too hot blooded for his own good all his life and that he ended up in the wrong position for the wrong reasons.

By contrast, Olgeird is smooth and in control. He has a level enough head to not be a dickbag and yet a dickbag he is. He gleefully destroys art, curses people to fates worse than death, tortures and murders people, hurts those closest to him for his own gain. But I think the game expects us to like him cuz he's a REBEL! Or something. Or we're supposed to sympathize with him because he kind of sort of loved his wife.

Anyway, I'm getting off track here. The point is, with this kind of presentation, I most games wouldn't give me the satisfaction I'm looking for. But they manage it here.

For me things first turned around when being possessed. I hated it at first. They were forcing me to play as one of their new dickbag characters. But I found ways to humiliate him at every turn. I picked fights and then put down the controller to let him get beat up, I lost competitions, I set up Gaunter O'Dimm to tell my dickbag ghost why he's a dickbag. In short, if you're paying attention, you can get your revenge. And in the end Gaunter does something very satisfying to Voldric.

The best part is the end where you get to watch Olgeird dissolve and then you get your pick of a prize (not spoilers, he tells you as much).

But what won me over was the third wish. Snark above aside, I genuinely loved their presentation of Iris and her painted world. I loved the fights leading up to it, I loved the atmosphere, I loved the way they achieved the effect of being inside a painting and I was moved by Iris' story. In the end, [Spoiler](s/ "I found I couldn't take the rose. Even if it meant risking being stuck in this pact. Though I suspect it might have been the wrong choice, I couldn't let the sad beauty of her world fade.")

Think about that. Look at the first part of my post, see how much I hated Olgeird, and realize I was willing to risk losing to him because of how much the game made me care about Iris.

And in the end, I got a pair of shades and an all black outfit New Moon outfit. I've resisted the aging hipster vibe Geralt sometimes gives off* but with this outfit, I'm all in.

So if you find you have the same problem with the beginning of the main quest, show more patience than I did and hang in there. Whether you like these characters or not, the game will give you something.

*I give him the elven rebel haircut and a full beard so his hair actually looks halfway appropriate for his age instead of looking like a hippie or biker who never grew up.

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I apologize. Heart of Stone gets better. *Spoilers*