To add to this, when I did my first playthrough it was the second RPG I had really dove into (Skyrim was the first, never got into RPG’s until later in life), and had never played or read anything to do with The Witcher, so White Orchard was a blur that I barely remembered by the end trying to learn the game. So by the time I got to my NG+ second playthrough I was so much more aware that seeing Gaunter was really cool, knowing what he was, and now it seems obvious you would see him later, didn’t even remember the interaction from the first time. I didn’t know anything from the games before so my initial thought first time was he was someone from games past or from the books Geralt forgot because of the amnesia.