I lost a guy in a cage too, literally lost. I could not find the key anywhere, decided to return later. When I came back the cage was empty, still locked, still white on the mini map, no one there. That was at the Pontar crossing.

I had the opposite of protected npcs today. Dandelion's cabaret quest turned out to be rather long and convoluted. At one point I had to chase a muderer at the Vogelbud residence. So I run outside and all the guards start chasing me. Mistaken identity I'm sure, so I avoid them. Can't find the killer anywhere, exits are locked, can't use witcher sense since the presence of the hostile guards force you to have the sword out, which also prevents you from climbing and jumping. I go back inside to look for traces, a guard follows me however and again I can't use witcher sense. Now all the doors out of the house are locked as well. I knock the guard out of the way a few times with aard, yet can't do anything. In the end I give in and kill the guard, cut scene, indeed mistaken identity, the killer was supposed to escape for the rest of the story. Stupid, sorry about your innocent guard I was forced to kill.

I found something more aggravating than Ciri, horse races! Horrible AI, badly marked routes forcing you to 'drive' by minimap and immediate fail if you accidentally leave the path like a Gran Turismo driving test. I got dq twice during the final race over tons of criss crossing little paths. After completing it (had to reload) everyone starts fighting anyway (same as failure) yet I'm not allowed to help? Can't hit anyone, he just does his 'come on' gesture, while there is all out war around me. All for more useless money, over 20k now. (And effing Dandelion rather makes me kill a bunch of people instead of simply accepting a loan, and I'm not allowed to gift it of course)

I made it though the secondary Novigrad quests, the murder mystery was pretty interesting despite some of the gameplay bits. Now I still have a bunch of scavenger hunts and contracts left. At least they're out in the country, no more Novigrad. Waiting for 5 seconds or more everytime you want to talk to someone, or for the rest of their body to load, or the walls of the building you just entered, it's a mess since 1.04.

Yeah, those guards are expandables, I figured what was going on and started chopping heads right away - fuck it, game made me do it. ;)

Haha, that end of race - oh dear, eveyone is figthing and you're waving your fist at them - those restrictions and gameplay funneling are ridicilous at times for open-world game.

Off the top of my head, there is this RPG called Arx Fatalis, it's made by Arkane Studios, same guys who made Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Dishonored - in it you can pretty much kill every last living being, whever you like (if you're skillful enough), and still finish the game. No restrictions, just smart game design. I wish more devs trying harder to make worlds like that.

Sorry to hear about the bugs - it's really smooth sailing on PC.

I loved the might and magic games. I played 4, 5 and 6. That was a true completionist dream, kill every living thing in the game and they never come back :) Damn you could get so powerful in the end you could take out an entire zone with one spell. Too bad they went with Aliens and silly blasters at the end. The Herous spin off was pretty great turn based strategy as well. I never played Dark Messiah though, WoW still owned my life back then.

At least it's not crashing, it has that over Fallout NV. Yet in hindsight New Vegas ran pretty damn well compared to W3.