I've been a Witcher fan for many years. I've read many of the books, I've watched the atrocious Polish television series, and I've beaten the first two games more times than I can count. I frequently speedrun Witcher 2 on Dark Difficulty, and I can pretty easily complete a playthrough in three sittings. In short, I've been a big fan of this particular fantasy world for years and years, and with the release of Wild Hunt, my dreams have finally come true.
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an absolute joy. From the opening moments, it's clear that this is something special. The storytelling, character interaction, and worldbuilding is a master-class in game design. The audio work utilizing Wwise is enthralling. The voice acting is impeccable. the combat is crunchy and visceral. The world itself feels more alive and utilizes space so brilliantly it feels like it coalesced over centuries rather than being designed in years. This game is very much greater than the sum of its parts.
You play as the titular Witcher Geralt of Rivia, a genetically and magically mutated monster slayer. The life of a Witcher is to travel the land in search of monsters that terrorize the villages and cities of the world and solve those problems in exchange for money. Geralt has a long and very complex history throughout the books and previous games, and I am not going to devote another thousand or so words to sum up how and why he is in the situation that he is in, but to keep it short- he has regained his memory after escaping the Wild Hunt (which occurred prior to the first game), solved the mystery of the kingslayers and the Lodge of Sorceresses (the second game), and now he is on the path looking for his long-lost love interest Yennifer of Vengerberg and their adopted daughter Cirilla. Emperor Emhyr of Nilfgaard, who has invaded the northern realm of Temeria and Velen, has summoned Geralt and Yennifer to find Cirilla, who is his biological daughter. You see, Ciri is a direct descendant of the elder races, and as such, she has power over space and time, able to warp reality. The Wild Hunt is a flying cavalcade of ghostly elves from another dimension that wants to find her to use her blood to invade our world and herald the end times. Yeah, it's a complex plot, but it's not thrown at you this fast in the game. Suffice to say, there are lots of twists, turns, cloak-and-dagger double crosses, and devious plots. The story is fabulously focused on Geralt himself though, and if you've had previous experience with the character, he fits the time and place superbly.
And what a time and place we as gamers are treated to. I've had many discussions with friends who have no experience with this series who have asked me one question in particular: how does it compare to Skyrim? As many other people have said, I don't think that's a fair comparison for either game. Skyrim and Wild Hunt are certainly both open world games, but Skyrim is a sandbox where you create your own character and role-play as that character in a gigantic world that can be as insane as you want. That's where its charm comes from. In The Witcher games, you are playing as Geralt in Geralt's world. Geralt is a man with a history, a personality, and real relationships. You are taking the reigns of this complicated man and vicariously experiencing his world as him through his eyes. There are simply certain things that Geralt wouldn't do, like murder his best friends. In that way, the world does restrict you from the wanton destruction that you may be fond of in games like Skyrim, but that's because Geralt as a character has certain principles that perhaps the player doesn't share. I personally love this approach to storytelling because Geralt's previous experiences and stories that we as observers haven't seen still play a role when he speaks to his friends and allies.
The world itself begs to be explored. The empire of Nilfgaard has taken advantage of chaos in the northern realms brought about by the slaying of King Foltest of Temeria, Demavend of Aedirn, and-depending on your choices in Witcher 2- King Henselt of Kaedwin. Exploiting the resulting power vacuum, Nilfgaard marches across the Yaruga river and besieges the region of Velen, just south of the Pontar. To the north lie the cities of Oxenfurt and Novigrad. Just beyond them lies the only kingdom left to stand up to Nilfgaard, the kingdom of Redania ruled by the mad king Radovid. This is a time of desperation, where the peasants of the feudal society that's now crumbling around them are trying their hardest to maintain whatever semblance of normality that they can. Orphans cower together in huts, either abandoned by their parents or left alone after the armies killed their families. Bandits skulk the roads preying on travelers, and the neutral cities of Oxenfurt and Novigrad are turning away the refugees, refusing to take on more societal strife- resulting in ghettos and refugee camps surrounding the metropolitan areas. All the while, Geralt of Rivia has to navigate this heartbreaking environment in search of clues as to the whereabouts of Ciri.
The game's graphical style never fails to impress and enthrall me. All allegations of downgrades and console-related compromises aside, the game still looks marvelous. Trees sway in the wind, muddy streets of the refugee camps glisten with what I doubt is mud, and the weapons on Geralt's back look absolutely wonderful down to the last detail. The facial animations are astonishing, with wrinkles forming in characters faces when they furrow their brows, raised eyebrows on cue in conversation, and a liveliness to the animation that sells the emotional impact. I should say now that I built a new rig specifically for Witcher 3, and my GTX 980 is certainly up to the challenge, but I have also played on my GTX 670 rig and on my friend's Xbox One, and while the Xbox One version certainly doesn't measure up to the PC version at ultra, it's a passable port that I won't shame anyone for choosing to play. Switching settings around on my GTX 670 rig to the point where the frame rate hovers around thirty, I will say that the PC version does have a few graphical bells and whistles that the Xbox One version lacks, but I've come to expect that over time, and while the PC version should certainly be your first choice if you have the rig for it, the console version will undoubtedly be a fine experience.
And "experience" truly is the word here. You aren't just looking for Ciri in this world. You're a monster-hunter first and foremost. Many communities and villages around the world have notice boards or concerned citizens who will have plenty of work for a man with a silver sword and the ability to metabolize monster poison. The amazing thing about the side quests is that some of them unlock quest lines that take hours to finish, or result in a difficult choice with consequences you can't foresee. In one monster quest in the Skellige isles, a small community was being terrorized by a Leshan that had taken up residence in the forest that bordered the village. Hunters were going missing or being straight up killed by the beast. The elders of the village insisted that it was a forest spirit, and that it should be appeased by returning to the old religious traditions that brought bountiful game and honored the forest spirits. The warriors and hunters demanded that the beast be killed. Geralt learns that the beast is in fact a Leshan, and that the monster would be indestructible unless a human in the village that had been marked by the monster was either killed or exiled. I elected to tell the warriors that the woman who had been marked by the best should be exiled rather than killed, and that she cannot return or the Leshan will return after I've killed it. They seemed to understand this, but then said "we have to get rid of the beast's allies." I scoffed at this and went off to kill the badass monster. I returned to the village and was met with a bloodbath. The warriors and hunters had twisted my words as justification to kill the village elders, believing any who worshiped the forest spirit to be in league with the monster. The game is full of these unforeseen consequences, as you are primarily dealing with human beings with their own agenda, and they'll try and twist your words and actions to justify some unbelievably horrifying things. One thing to keep in mind is that many of these side quests and monster contracts are actually better than some full games I have played, and some of the outcomes of your choices are heartbreaking and truly sad. There is no good and evil here, only shades of grey. People will die, and it will be your fault. Be prepared for that.
And how the game would suffer if all that monster fighting wasn't a blast. The combat is crunchy, deliberate, and strategically blissful. As in the previous games, you have a silver sword for monsters and a steel sword for pretty much everything else. Witchers also have simple magical signs that allow them to conjure fire, perform a Jedi mind trick to entrance people, create blasts of air to destabilize opponents, create magical shields, or slow the advance of monsters. Learning how and when to employ these signs is part of what makes combat such a joy. Some enemies can only be attacked after walking through a Yrden trap, while others will be stunned and severely damaged by your fiery Igni sign. Also making its debut is the Gabrielle, a small hand crossbow that allows you to easily ground flying enemies or harass enemies from a moderate distance before closing in. Close combat involves carefully monitoring a number of things simultaneously, especially at higher difficulty levels. Your stamina controls your ability to run, roll, and use signs. Successful kills at later levels will fill adrenaline slots, which you can use for quickly popping a sign without worrying about stamina. You're able to drink potions during combat in this game (in Witcher 2 you had to drink them before combat), and you have to monitor your toxicity levels, as quaffing too many potions is fatal. Aside from all that, you have to carefully time your parries and dodges so as to destabilize an opponent or get behind them when they start their attack. Landing successful hits is exhilarating, and slicing the head off an opponent or hacking their upper torso in half has a visceral satisfaction that's so rare in games these days. The potion system itself has gotten a number of significant changes as well. In the previous games, any time you wanted to use a potion, you had to make it first by collecting ingredients from the world. Each ingredient would contain a combination of base substances, meaning that an ingredient could potentially be used in a variety of concoctions. This time around, you need specific ingredients to make each potion, bomb, or blade oil. At first I was aghast at this change, but for the open-world structure, I came around to the changes in the system. You see, Geralt isn't making the potion itself with these ingredients, but making the alchemical base. Once you have made the base, you have it forever, and any time you meditate, all your potions get refilled if you have a distilled alcohol item in your inventory. This system makes a lot of sense, because it doesn't kill the flow of the game to force you to wander around looking for verbena or white myrtle to make a swallow potion.
As stated earlier, the audio design uses the Wwise audio pipeline technology, and their audio crew deserves a standing ovation for how they implemented aural audio effects in the game. I am an audio and recording enthusiast myself, so this is something that really stands out to me. When in the forests during a windy day, you can hear the creaking of branches and the rustling of leaves, or the growls of a wolf in the underbrush just beyond the next hill. The footsteps when on dirt roads crunch and slide with unparalleled realism. The sounds of waterlogged bogs are eerily real. The screeches of monsters taking me by surprise have more than once caused me to pause the game, take my headphones off, and stick a finger in my ear while I wait for my heart rate to go down. And to round all this out, the musical score is absolutely stunning, complementing the on-screen mood and action with tonal deftness that cuts through to the emotional core of the scene, whatever it may be.
Not all is completely perfect here. There is one issue with this game that prevents me from giving it a perfect score, and that problem is Yennifer. I hate this character with a fiery passion. You see, in the books and previous games, Yennifer was Geralt's almost-wife during his life before she was taken by the Wild Hunt and then he gave himself to the Hunt to save her. Fine. That's well and good. Witcher 3 is her first actual appearance though, and she shows up early in the game with no explanation, belittling Geralt and pulling what I've come to call "hollywood strong woman." You see, she is supposed to be a forceful, strong-willed female character, and she embodies that by ignoring Geralt's feelings, belittling him constantly, refusing to explain her thought process, ordering people around, and not caring at all about the people she hurts in the process. We have spent two whole games before this getting to know Geralt, and now the "love of his life" shows up and starts acting like an absolute jerk right off the bat, and I am supposed to care about her. She openly disbelieves him about the amnesia that he suffered after escaping the Wild Hunt, and refuses to explain why she didn't lift a finger to find him after she learned he was back among the living. She destroys a sacred site in Skellige by using black magic and mocks the people who are deeply wounded by it, and generally has a chip on her shoulder the whole time. The game actively suffers any time she is on screen, and through all of this, she occasionally tries to get Geralt to tell her how much he loves her. When a side quest came up that allowed me to say directly to her face that I didn't love her anymore, I couldn't mash that option fast enough. Contrast this to the side quests that allow you to reaffirm your love to Triss Merigold, and the option should be clear which sorceress is worth your time. My only regret is that Yennifer turns into even more of an ice queen once you tell her the relationship isn't doing it for you anymore. My suspicion is that Sapkowski was out of the office when they wrote all the dialogue for Yen, because it's the most jarring and unfortunate departure from the quality of storytelling I have come to know this series for.
Despite that one issue, I can safely say without hyperbole that The Witcher 3 is the new benchmark for open world role playing. While players who are more accustomed to a sandbox approach may find the character-driven narrative too focused, I personally enjoy the character and world to be impeccably good. The whole experience is of a quality that simply must be experienced by fantasy lovers of all stripes. Even the tiniest details jump off the screen, and the game keeps one-upping itself time and again, building suspense to levels that seem almost insurmountable at times. You feel the emotions of the excellent cast of new and returning characters. The world itself has a pulse and heartbeat that makes you want to see this through to the end. You'll make tough choices with consequences that will make you second guess your logic. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is without a doubt as close to perfect as I've seen in my thirty years on this planet. Take that with a grain of salt, as I am a megafan of this series. But in the end, everyone I talk to about it, everyone who has played it, has similarly been glued to the experience and come away in awe of this monumental achievement in player choice and story-driven agency. I have gotten hundreds of hours out of Witcher 2. I am terrified of how many hours this excellent game will steal from me in the years to come.