How? I talked to all of them, just a standard reply, come to pappy and I'll rip off your melon and shit down your neck.
I talked to the bartender, only the standard conversation options, shop and how's life.
Then it's a cut scene when I talk to Vasemir and either converstion option leads to an automatic fight to the death with the locals, labeled bandits.
The doors are suddenly locked, I can't even drop my sword, just stand there and wait for the cut scene or speed it along.
300xp and Yen shows up, oh well just slaugthered half the locals let's go.

I don't mind playing a total bastard from time to time, yet the game presents itself like I can be nice and can make a difference. I've declined all rewards so far and always try to mediate for positive outcomes. Yet next to that it also presents these opportunities to then completely ignore all your attempts to do something about it, and now makes me slaughter half the locals. That's a failure for a RPG for me. It won't let me play the role it was fine letting me play during the side quests.

JRPGs are fine, the characters I play there don't suffer from split personality disorder.

Btw I'm only complaining because I'm invested in the world and characters. I also bought Andrzej Sapkowski's Time of contempt, Blood of elves and Baptism of fire as I'm curious now what the inspiration was behind the game. Plus maybe it will make clear who this Witcher is supposed to be :)

hmm well I am not sure what point exactly in the game you talk about.  I just got an option to offer them drinks. Maybe because I invested in that mind skill?

It's at the point where you leave White Orchard. I figure it's a game mechanic to indicate that there's no going back to White Orchard, end of that chapter. It just feels very forced.

Maybe it's a compliment to the game for reaching the next uncanny valley. It's not just character looks and movements that have to deal with that (like the trees that border on looking posessed instead of blowing in the wind), but also personalities. Geralt mostly acts real enough to become a living character, yet that gets rudely shaken up by these kind of gameplay mechanics to force the story along. In any other game I would simply laugh at the disproportianate violence and happily play the industry standard kleptomaniac psychotic mass muderer role. But as games start making characters more believable instead of the usual charicatures, they'll also need to apply that to their actions.

I started over, didn't like the character I was playing (although that was mostly in my mind)
Fresh start, now I play it like a standard RPG, min max gameplay, kleptomaniac murderer for hire. I did everything in order this time which went fast a second time. Plus now I could make the swords from the quest diagrams. Plenty money, easier without a conscience.
I still didn't get the option to buy them a drink, off with their heads. (I did get that option in Velen in the inn where that lvl 35ish quest is)

I was looking for next-gen rpg gameplay, instead it's a lovingly made standard RPG. The movement is still clunky, stands out even more while doing things fast. Same with pop in and frame rate, very noticeable that characters in the distance operate at a lower frame rate. The vistas and weather are awesome anyway.

Catastrophic pop in,  lag on the inventory, awful loadings ( if you play in the highest difficulty, you know that ) , too much technical issues like the character who appears in front of you after 10s or broken not allowing you to speak with them, ...

There is a lot of major flaws killing the immersion, even if the game is very good, i would put it at 85 on metacritic because of that, at least on console, maybe on PC without most of the technical issues, the experience is far more satisfying

Complete turnaround from me! I still find the combat and traversal to be problematic but THAT WORLD! Loving it.

Same, now getting to addicted to it...Want to find more gwent cards and players....    

Kind of sucks that I am one of those players who goes into a city/village and want to check out everything.....And some of those cities are so huge... now 6 hours checking a city's corners and now yet checked half of it...oh my .....

I've given up on checking every corner for now, it gives me a headache even considering it. I haven't played Gwent yet.

My whores are glitching in witcher 3.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxF1UB9ZcnE

Should have done a sex scene >_>

Im glad to hear that :)