The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

In the Witcher series you play as Geralt of Rivia, a mutant human who specializes in killing monsters. He's your archetypal lone gunslinger who strides into town with a smoky voice, seems world weary and despite claiming to be neutral somehow gets tangled up in the massive schemes concocted by the big players in the Witcher universe. At the start of the Witcher 3 the Emperor of Nilfgard tasks Geralt with finding his adopted daughter Ciri, a child of the elder blood (she can literally control time and space) who is being pursued by a group of elite inter-dimensional elves known as The Wild Hunt. It's one giant search across multiple zones encountering old friends, reuniting with lost loves and getting embroiled in all manner of hijinks that encircle the goings on of the larger world like the on going war between Redania and Nilfgard or the increasingly powerful Church of the Eternal Flame who are burning mages at the stake. It's an enormous game split into separate episodic chunks and could quite possibly be one of the best RPG's ever made.

Story is far and away the main focus of the Witcher 3. It's why I love RPG's so much, they have to give you a compelling reason to keep going amidst these incredibly long beasts of a game like the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dragon Age or Mass Effect titles and narrative is the crux that these games often rely on. It feels a lot more pronounced in 'Wild Hunt' though as there's just so much of it, and it's all quite good! Nowhere is this more evident than the game's starting zone. The lengthy prologue set in White Orchard (I must have spent seven hours here before moving on) condenses everything you need to know about the game's structure into a fairly smallish map that's packed with quests and stuff to do. It's does a great job of not making the player feel overwhelmed and the interconnecting quests rewards the player for doing everything by forming a much clearer picture. In one quest you'll find out someone was killed by an angry lord, in another you might just figure out his motivation for doing so. If you complete this zone you should have a good idea about whether this game is a must play for you or not, you're generally getting the same thing throughout the rest of the game but on a much, much larger scale. Suffice to say I was hooked and felt surprisingly attached to the characters, their motivations and the world at large after just a few hours of questing. Pass this point and the world fully opens up (or at least the first of the two massive area's in the game) and you are free to do whatever you want, provided you don't stumble into late game content of course.

The world of the Witcher 3 is vast, so prepare to be overwhelmed.

The main story of The Witcher 3 took me roughly 50 hours to complete, and this is without counting an array of secondary quests that oftentimes will tie in and change events of the main path. It's quite the marathon but you'll never once feel like you've had enough, there will always be something going on that will keep you hooked and sink into that 'just one more' mentality. It's very Game Of Thrones-esque in it's mature bent so expect to see a lot of tits and gore and the way it manages to juggle a massive cast of characters with diverging plots is impressive. The similarities also continue with a grim fantasy world with a land that's oftentimes beautiful but would be awful to live in: the oppressive Church takes advantage of peoples fears, there's a war going on and the battlefields are littered with corpses, women and peculiar folk are often mistreated/abused...yep this all sounds like the familiar sh*t hole we know and love. Add to that Charles Dance as the Emperor of Nilfgard (who's Tywin Lannister in everything but name) and I think it's safe to say that the Witcher is the closest you're going to get to a GOT style game. The Witcher isn't entirely as serious though, you can still have a laugh among the oftentimes tragic tales being told. 

In terms of structure, the story is very episodic. The various strands are divided by area, so you're only really focusing on one part of the map for that period in an effort to find out what activities Ciri got up to on her travels. The structure for the first half is somewhat repetitive: to hear someone recap Ciri's misadventures (segments where you play as her) and advance your search you either have to a) find them, which involves a lot of convoluted shenanigans or b) do them a favor first, which involves more convoluted shenanigans. This might seem frustrating but all the distractions are a lot of fun and intriguing like finding a Baron's missing wife, taking part in a play or solving a bankheist with the help of a troll. Ciri is essentially a carrot on the end of a stick, a Macguffin that ties everything together. Once you DO find Ciri though and head towards a big climax, you're probably thinking the game's close to finishing. Nope, still got a good chunk of game after that. I was surprised to find that the titular Wild Hunt despite having the game named after them only really show up in the last 15 hours or so and barely have a lot to say other than standard baddie talk. Having a main villain that's poorly defined was a flaw in 'Dragon Age: Inquisition' but it doesn't register here, there are better villains littered all over other parts of the story (shoutout to the Macbeth-ian Crones, they were great). Despite playing as Geralt most of the time 'The Witcher 3' is really about Ciri, just like how 'Bioshock: Infinite' was really all about Elizabeth and 'The Walking Dead Season 1' was all about Clementine. Geralt is basically a supporting character in his own game, and I like that. 

Choices also have considerable impact in 'Wild Hunt'. While you can't define Geralt as a character much, he's not a blank slate for the player to mold, the decisions you make in dialogue options do change the game in big and small ways. How you choose to handle Ciri will determine which of the three endings you get and it's not as simple as the 'good' or 'bad' choice. I got the bad ending unfortunately (let's just say I was extremely depressed for the rest of the day), and that was playing the goody two shoes. In other choice based games you can generally be guaranteed a happy ending so long as you play the nice guy but that is definitely NOT the case here. A lot of the time I didn't even know I was making choices, that's how well integrated they are. It's a bit like real life in that regard, with all three endings being equally valid and satisfying in my opinion. 

Taking down this brute is going to be tough.

If you were to ask me before playing 'The Witcher 3' what I thought of Geralt I'd say he was a pretty bland loner with a cool voice and likes to get busy with the ladies. My biggest complaint with 'The Witcher 2' is that it was hard to connect with Geralt due to his inability to give two sh*ts about anything. He's difficult to pull off as his mutations stop him from crying and he's not the kind of guy who's going to to make a big speech about his feelings. 'The Witcher 3' solves this by making the quest to find Ciri a personal one and making him a lot more expressive. He's a lot more open in this game than at any point in 'The Witcher 2' and has matured a lot since then. He's also capable of humour, and can be quite funny with his dry remarks. Overall he's been made into a lovable character now, so my worries about him as a protagonist were unfounded.

The rest of the cast are also stellar, every character you meet is so well drawn and voice acted that you end up falling in love with them too. They're all just so f*cking good: off the top of my head Ciri, Triss, Yennifer of Vengerberg (what a name), Dijkstra, Dandelion, the Red Baron, Priscilla, Kiera, Lambert, Cerys, Vesemir, Roach, Thaler....(I could go on) were all really, really well written and acted. I also appreciated the naturalistic dialogue, in the sense that human beings talked like real human beings in thus game and didn't feel like they were going to burst into a philosophical debate anytime soon.  

Quests in The Witcher 3 are very meaty and can technically be completed in whatever order you choose but the game 'locks' you out of them because you're often severely under-equipped for the job: trying to complete a level 24 Witcher contract as a humble level 4 is suicide, so you should wait a bit. Don't wait too long though, if you're six levels above the recommended level requirement for a quest you won't be getting any experience. It applies to main story quests as well, they give you a ridiculous amount of xp and you will find yourself struggling to complete both side and main quests in the 'correct order' before you outlevel them. This weird system of giving you all of the quests at the start (most side quests are acquired through notice boards or accidentally bumping into someone on the road) that are all way beyond your current capability is a little anxiety inducing for people who crave precious xp. It urges you complete the main story missions at an even pace so don't count on wondering off the beaten path for 30 hours and feeling detached when it's time to get back into the story (Dragon Age Inquisition had this problem). No, in this game you will always be moving forward in the seemingly never ending quest to find Ciri and that helps a lot keeping me as a player invested in the long run, main story stuff keeps happening and I'm not getting distracted by tasty side quests. 

The game benefits from a really great cast of characters. Expect a lot of badass women.

The real reason Witcher 3 has raised the bar for all other RPG's is in the quality of it's side quests. To be frank the secondary quests in Witcher 3 would be considered main quests in most other games, they get really involved and are great at messing with your expectations. This is a quest I've made up but let's say a guy wants you to get him a fancy trinket, which is a classic boring fetch quest premise. In most RPG's you would simply return with the pearl and be greeted with a simple thank you from the quest giver. The Witcher 3 goes three steps further: you return with the trinket only to find out that the quest giver is missing. If you use your Witcher senses you deduce that someone kidnapped him, probably because they want the trinket. When you track his scent to the abandoned location where he's being held. It turns out he's being held hostage by a troll who ATE his kidnapper and can be persuaded to let the quest giver go free. When you finally give him the trinket, it turn's out it's for his wife who has amnesia. THEN the quest ends. See what I mean? The quests constantly constantly mess with your expectations, turn out to be a lot more meaty than what you might think (a rabbit hole of content if you will) and generally reward you for your time and effort in retrieving said trinket. After experiencing all that, why would I want to go back to the standard fetch quests? Sure it's still technically 'go from point A to point B and kill some dudes in your way' but it's been disguised by a good team of writers to the point where I would do the quest with or without the reward at the end just to experience the story. 

I could go on a while about how big this game is, the whole 'OMG it's close to 200 hours long!', my long list of completed quests or it's incredibly dense open worlds but that's quickly becoming norm these days. There are games with as much content as 'Wild Hunt' but none of them have a narrative as consistently rewarding, satisfying or intricate as this game, it's revolutionary in that way. It's just so big and so good that you wonder how on earth developer CD Projekt Red managed to make a game of this size but have the story be as polished and focused as more linear experiences. It also appears to have been done for a fraction of the cost: Witcher 3 was made and marketed for roughly 60 million euros, whereas other big hitters like GTA V had a budget of 250 million $ and somehow 'Wild Hunt' is bigger, better (arguably) AND longer than that game. What the hell?! It puts other game's to shame and made me realize how shitty other titles are in comparison like 'Dragon Age: Inquisition', a game that I thought was really good BEFORE Witcher 3 came out. Now I see it as an average 30h story that's been stretched out to 100h by ten extremely pretty open area's full of boring fetch quests with characters that while good, have nothing on Witcher 3's cast. The bar has been set so high by CD Project that I never want to see another fetch quest or grind heavy RPG again in my life, and I regret wasting my time grinding away in other games like DAI. CD Projekt Red as a developer are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, they have spoiled me rotten.

Skellige is incredibly pretty. And yes, you can climb that mountain.

Visually and aesthetically the game impresses. Every medieval town you walk into has a really good 'lived in' feel, there's generally a lot of mud and dirty faced villagers going around. The big city of Novigrad captures the city feel perfectly, it's dense enough and full of twisty paths and tall building's that's it's easy to feel lost. The viking isles of Skellige however are far and away one of the most beautiful locations I've seen in a game. It's snow capped mountains, wooden fortresses and bustling dockyards are gorgeous when matched with an early sun rise. In terms of graphics, this game is definitely a looker. Lighting and weather effects are some of the best I've seen, and character models are all detailed. The material and fabric textures are also very impressive, the costumes are extremely well done. The game does suffer from performance issues and glitches sure, but that's expected for a game of this size at this point. The only real complaint I can give to the graphics is the subpar and jaggy texture detail on a few things like foliage. It's nitpicky but with games like 'Arkham Knight' coming out that raises the bar in terms of graphical fidelity you do tend to get spoiled on these kind of things.

Another big advancement on your typical RPG is the lifelike facial expressions. Facial animations have come a long way since the days of Witcher 2 and despite not doing a lot of motion capture the animators have done an incredible job with conveying a lot of emotion in peoples eyes or subtle facial ticks. Geralt in particular stands out, so much emotion is conveyed on his face at points that it really affects you. Put it this way, when Geralt smiles you smile. The acting on display wouldn't be complete though without a great score to back it up, and Wild Hunt's mix of celtic and slavic tunes are kind of perfect. The game's soundtrack adds a loft of heft and emotion to really talky scenes but also gets you super pumped during rousing combat sequences. It's just all round fantastic and great at fulfilling every role it needs to fill in every single one of the big story beats. Especially when roaming Skellige...oh my god. Dat ambient music.

Geralt has the wounded puppy dog look down.

So what about the game isn't all that great you ask? Well, the Combat is fine and all for what it is but I wouldn't call it 'great'. Any RPG worth it's weight needs to have solid ground on which to place it's marathon long questlines and the 'Wild Hunt' makes sure combat remains rewarding and tense throughout a large portion of it's running time....as long as you've got the difficulty cranked up. I made sure to turn up to 'Blood and Broken Bones' (basically hard mode) when I booted up the game because part of the Witcher experience is that you have to prepare yourself before every fight i.e applying poisons to your swords, drinking potions that give you buffs, crafting better armor, putting points into your 'Signs' (= magical spells) ect... it just generally makes fights a lot more tense and engaging. With the difficulty removed The Witcher 3's combat is slightly lackluster, because you aren't forced into using or exploiting any of the tactical tricks in Geralts arsenal that deepens the experience. Plus to be honest, it wasn't really that hard. The first twenty hours are the best from a gameplay perspective simply because with low level armor every enemy can rip you to shreds if you're not careful, which makes dodging attacks and spamming Quen (a force field sign that deflects attacks) a must. These tense encounters were sadly erased the more the game went on as you inevitably get more powerful and have more tricks up your sleeve. Thankfully a good number of late game Witcher contracts that are all about Geralt tracking and facing particularly tough monsters keep the challenge afoot. Despite wearing good late game armor a few of these nasties gave me a run for my money, but the hand holding detective style of following the blood trail to find the monster gets repetitive really quickly as all you're basically doing is following breadcrumbs.

In addition to Geralt the game also smartly gives you control of Ciri at certain points allowing you to see the world through her eyes and give more her more definition other than a generic Macguffin. She even has her own powers, unfortunately they're far too awesome and OP to be part of the main game. All in all her segments are short but well placed as they give you nice breather from playing as Geralt all the time and introduce you to her a long time before the two eventually meet. As for non combat gameplay the Witcher 3 also features a surprisingly addicting card game called Gwent which could easily be it's own game. There's an oft cited joke online that the Witcher 3 is the best card game add-on ever and it's fairly accurate. Suddenly I found myself spending all of my time trying to 'collect them all' and spending hours battling other opponents to win their cards. So yes, the Witcher 3's moment to moment gameplay is quite good, although taken on it's own it's not quite the reason I love this game so much.

Most games would have you pay for this stuff.

Last but certainly not least the developers at CD Projekt Red deserve a round of applause for being extremely consumer friendly. They've simply gone beyond what was required of them as a game developer: the standard addition of the game comes with a map, a info booklet, a manual, the frigging soundtrack AND a 'thank you for buying this game card' which is just sweet. In addition to the high value for money they've also been releasing free DLC and major updates every week since launch, (they plan to support the game all the way through to 2017!) even going so far as to admit they messed up handling one of the game's characters and saying they will fix it! It's simply unheard of in this industry for a developer to be this generous to it's fanbase, and it's smart. The high quality releases along with dedicated support will gain them a lot of new fans in the long run, and if sales reports are to be believed then this game is doing extremely well. So everybody wins I guess?

This is one of the best RPG's of all time, one of the best games I've played and the developer behind it all could not be more generous and talented. It's easily the best game on PS4 right now and a must play for everyone. Nothing less than an outstanding achievement, the bar has been raised incredibly high with 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'. Now excuse me, there's an incredibly powerful level 30 Leshen I need to slay...

Positives:

+ Great writing and voice acting all round
+ A grimy, Game Of Thrones-esque fantasy
+ Long and meaty main quest
+ One of the biggest games ever
+ Massive open world areas that look pretty gorgeous
+ Characters can be really endearing
+ Fantastic supporting cast
+ Huge amount of interesting and involved side quests
+ Satisfying ending(s)
+ Great post launch support from devs

Negatives:

- Combat gets a bit too easy after the first twenty hours
- Combat without difficulty is a bit boring
- Underdeveloped main villain
- A lot of high level quests are given to you at the beginning
- A few glitches and frame rate drops (to be expected)
- Some blurry textures on PS4