Yeah ive got a feeling by freeing it instead of killing is going to have a bad consequences which my friend has pretty much confirmed to me but I still haven't came across it yet as I've gone on a sidequest marathon.

That's what amazes me about this game; on a tiny budget (relatively speaking) they have made a gorgeous, huge, varied, deep, challenging game with good optimization. Kinda makes one wonder what the hell other developers are doing.
It tells me two important things; one being that great games don't have to cost a massive fortune to make and the other being that even if you choose to do things differently, your game can still sell really well and get rave reviews.

So, I agree that others should take note, this is a tremendous achievement by CDProjekt.

Making Far cry 4 for example, releasing on time, on 5 platforms. Witcher 3 cost about 15 million to make btw with another 25 million marketing budget. That's not tiny. Also consider the average wage and living costs in Poland are 1/4th of that in the UK.

Witcher 3 is a great achievement, but no need to downplay the passion of other developers. You don't become a game developer to clock in 9 to 5. Without passion you won't make it long in the game industry.

Level 12 now and just started the barons quest. I'm going to slow down a bit now I've realised, although I'm really enjoying the game, and I am massively loving it, I need to stop rushing to the question marks just to tick them off and just relax and go to them when the time comes And just immerse myself in the game at a more relaxed pace.

Also does anybody know where I can get a good steel sword? I realised last night that I'm looting much better silver swords, my silver is currently 209 ATK, while my steel is around 130 ATK.

I finished the quest chain with Keira Metz today. That was pretty good. Level 8 now.
Then I stumbled onto a giant troll or something, level ??. I got a bit too close for a better look and he did some area effect rock spell, insta dead, roll evade didn't do anything. Quick reminder of the awful load time, ugh.

The glitches are starting to add up, weird day/night problems, a few abrupt sky changes from gloomy foggy rain instant switch to clear setting sun. And one morning daylight never came. Sun was up, yet the environment stayed cast in moonlight. A cut scene fixed it. I got stuck in the scenery a couple times, and for some reason he sometimes doesn't draw his sword.

Velen looks beautiful anyway.

So which of the three choices did you do with Kiera, kill her, send her to kaer morhen (where she will help you) or let her go to radovid 

Just finished the Bloody Baron questline.. My god. The story to that questline was amazing. I felt pity, repulsion, anger, hate, sorrow, and forgiveness toward the Baron in himself. That is not counting all of the other characters involved.

Actually; Poland is about half of the UK in most indexes, and has more favorable indexes on several accounts so that's not strictly true. In median costs; this would entail a budget of around 30 million dollars in the UK, which is still tiny for a game of this scope, size and ambition and with this level of depth. It shows that many are indeed wasting resources (and time) in their production, this is doubly so for sequels that build upon the framework of already existing games (Assassin's Creed series, for instance, or the ridiculous budgets for Call of Duty games).

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp

I'm not downplaying the passion of other developers, I'm pointing out that CDProjekt are going a different path and finding success despite not following all the set conventions for the genre and game development in general. They also have a massive advantage in still being independent; the publisher often directly interferes with the developer's vision and layout in order to ensure that the end product becomes something easily sold to customers.
The industry has become driven by fads and trends and publishers are pushing these on developers in exchange for help with massive advertisement budgets and up-front guarantees on turnover, this is not a good trend for neither developers nor consumers.

There are many developers with a lot of passion, but only a few of them are free to act freely on it and not be under the constraints of corporate structures that hold creative freedom in low regard compared to simple profit.

Why would I kill her? I send her to Kaer Moren but took the notes from her just in case.

64 hours in, still having a blast. I'm currently at level 23 and doing every single quest/treasure hunt/witcher contract I can in order to reach level 27. I'm doing that so that I can equip powerful witcher gear. It feels great to stomp all over lower level enemies in areas I was to afraid to enter before. After that its straight to the story's concluding chapters.