The Witcher 3 Review
A critically acclaimed game, a game that is dubbed to be a serious contender to be the greatest RPG of all time. Does it live up to the hype and praise? Or does it fail to live up to expectations?
An open world so authentic and immersive that it would give Rockstar a run for their money. Made by a small studio in Poland with nowhere near the budget that the big name franchises have, and yet the game world has so much detail, diversity and attention given to every corner that you would usually only find that standard of quality in Rockstar games. The open world in this game is on par with anything Rockstar has made.
An open world so authentic and immersive that it would give Rockstar a run for their money. Made by a small studio in Poland with nowhere near the budget that the big name franchises have, and yet the game world has so much detail, diversity and attention given to every corner that you would usually only find that standard of quality in Rockstar games. The open world in this game is on par with anything Rockstar has made.
The game is huge, but not just huge, packed with life and things to do. The countryside known as Velen is huge and has variety. Later you then reach the main city, which is bigger than you think, known as Novigrad, it is very detailed and packed deep with life and content. The game feels big enough and then all the sudden, you travel to Skelige, which is a whole new island of mountainous countryside, it looks amazing and has some beautiful sites. Skelige sort of looks a bit like far cry 4’s game world. Then on top of all of that, the icing on the cake is Kaer Morhen, the home place of Witchers, which is a small little map but bigger than you think, it looks stunning too. The world is fantastic and packed with variety. It really is a beautifully crafted world that goes on for miles. One of the best open world’s I have ever seen in a video game.
When it comes to RPG’s, I can be particularly fussy in how the game will interest me.
For me RPG’s have to have three things that will make them a great game.
A great, diverse open world, a deep and intuitive skill and level progression system, and an interesting theme/story. This game has all three of them.
Something that I have never seen a game do so well in is how it creates a story that lives and breathes in every aspect of the game world and how the decisions you make in both of the side missions and main story can change and influence each other. For example (without spoiling the game) the Barron’s story starts as a main quest and once you receive your info about your missing daughter Ciri, you then can move on but have the option to continue helping the baron find his wife in a side mission. However, the choices you made before in both side missions and main story could very much change the outcome of how the baron’s story ends up, and it is very likely that if you have a chat with your friend that played the same mission, you may have not had the same outcome.
Villagers can change their attitude towards you and say relevant things based off of your decisions. This amount of depth carries through the story to the point where it is extremely unlikely that you will have the same experience and even the same ending as you did before/as someone else. People will die in one persons game and live in another persons game, and the same people that died in your save, could become to be big characters with more quests for them to play that play a part in their story in someone else's save. This is all influenced by the decisions you will make as you go through the story. That element is genius about the game.
For me RPG’s have to have three things that will make them a great game.
A great, diverse open world, a deep and intuitive skill and level progression system, and an interesting theme/story. This game has all three of them.
Something that I have never seen a game do so well in is how it creates a story that lives and breathes in every aspect of the game world and how the decisions you make in both of the side missions and main story can change and influence each other. For example (without spoiling the game) the Barron’s story starts as a main quest and once you receive your info about your missing daughter Ciri, you then can move on but have the option to continue helping the baron find his wife in a side mission. However, the choices you made before in both side missions and main story could very much change the outcome of how the baron’s story ends up, and it is very likely that if you have a chat with your friend that played the same mission, you may have not had the same outcome.
Villagers can change their attitude towards you and say relevant things based off of your decisions. This amount of depth carries through the story to the point where it is extremely unlikely that you will have the same experience and even the same ending as you did before/as someone else. People will die in one persons game and live in another persons game, and the same people that died in your save, could become to be big characters with more quests for them to play that play a part in their story in someone else's save. This is all influenced by the decisions you will make as you go through the story. That element is genius about the game.
The story doesn’t just stop there, it can influence the way villagers and the game world responds to your actions either in the main story or the side missions. This makes the decisions you make feel so much more meaningful as you know different decisions could influence and change the game world around you. Villagers will often call you a freak of nature and will discriminate against you because you are not a normal human and are a Witcher with un human like abilities. Do certain things such as contracts or secondary missions however to help the village, and that could change. Get into a bar brawl and massacre everyone, and watch how everyone panics and looks at you in fear and disgust. It adds such believability to the game. From solving murder cases in a Sherlock Holmes like manner using your Witcher senses, (which by the way is a fun intuitive little game mechanic I haven’t seen in a game done in this simple effective way), to playing the local hero from slaying monsters in exchange for money, to helping cases of vendetta, to going on the hunt to find Ciri. The game has so many types of quests, and some of them are crafted so well, which keeps it exciting, and better yet, like said before about the story, you have the choice on how the quest will pan out based off the decisions you make throughout the quest. The sheer amount of variety of types of quests is great. Secondary missions/side missions in this game are equally as interesting and important as the main story, they should not be treated as just a little thing on the side to do. The amount of attention given to every single quest is very applaudable. The game has a fairly serious tone to it, but at times can have a sense of humour to it, particularly in Kaer Morhen later in the game, which had some pretty amusing moments. It’s nice to know that the game’s script has some charm to it and isn’t always serious like you commonly see with RPG’s.
On the contrary, the story does have parts that are slightly dull, and I can sometimes lose track of what is going on because of how disinterested I am. Some of the missions can often lead to fetch quests where you must do someone a favour for information, or do someone a favour by fetching items or killing a few things from the kindness of your heart (not really I just want the xp). The developers obviously want to maximize gameplay time, so some quests can either be long winded or not needed and are literally only done because you want the xp, not because you wanted to. This sometimes can make you feel like you don’t necessarily have any idea on what cause you’re fighting for sometimes, despite how Gerald acts. This makes me the player feel slightly disjointed from the story at times.
Now that is not to say the story is not believable, as the story fits the game world fantastically, its just at times I don’t always feel connected to the story, but this could be because medieval fantasy settings are often not my type of thing. Don’t get me wrong the game frequently impresses and has plenty of enjoyable quests, it’s just at times there are quests that are uninteresting, and although you can argue that it gets more playtime for your monies worth, it can sometimes feel like a drag.
When the story shines in this however, it shines bright and captivated me, and for someone who doesn't always enjoy the medieval fantasy story style with some exceptions of some games, for me to be very impressed by the story as a whole, is a huge feat to throne upon. I also must bare in mind that I have not played the first 2 so there is slight patches in the story I don’t understand but the game does a good job of explaining things to newcomers and the story doesn't have too much to do with the previous games, so you are not handicapped by not playing them.
Overall, the story is epic, a very long winded story, but a story that keeps you guessing and ends up being an epic tale of Gerald and Ciri, with other characters coming into the frame.
On the contrary, the story does have parts that are slightly dull, and I can sometimes lose track of what is going on because of how disinterested I am. Some of the missions can often lead to fetch quests where you must do someone a favour for information, or do someone a favour by fetching items or killing a few things from the kindness of your heart (not really I just want the xp). The developers obviously want to maximize gameplay time, so some quests can either be long winded or not needed and are literally only done because you want the xp, not because you wanted to. This sometimes can make you feel like you don’t necessarily have any idea on what cause you’re fighting for sometimes, despite how Gerald acts. This makes me the player feel slightly disjointed from the story at times.
Now that is not to say the story is not believable, as the story fits the game world fantastically, its just at times I don’t always feel connected to the story, but this could be because medieval fantasy settings are often not my type of thing. Don’t get me wrong the game frequently impresses and has plenty of enjoyable quests, it’s just at times there are quests that are uninteresting, and although you can argue that it gets more playtime for your monies worth, it can sometimes feel like a drag.
When the story shines in this however, it shines bright and captivated me, and for someone who doesn't always enjoy the medieval fantasy story style with some exceptions of some games, for me to be very impressed by the story as a whole, is a huge feat to throne upon. I also must bare in mind that I have not played the first 2 so there is slight patches in the story I don’t understand but the game does a good job of explaining things to newcomers and the story doesn't have too much to do with the previous games, so you are not handicapped by not playing them.
Overall, the story is epic, a very long winded story, but a story that keeps you guessing and ends up being an epic tale of Gerald and Ciri, with other characters coming into the frame.
This isn’t a perfect game, as with any game; it does not go without faults. On the console it technically struggles at times with choppy framerates and the average framerate isn’t the butter smooth 60fps that you would want to see on this generation of consoles. From my understanding it is also a very demanding game on the PC, and you would need a very high end PC to run it at smooth frame rates on adequate graphic settings. The game is a resource demanding game but from the scale of detail and size of the game, it is understandable. There is a fair amount of various bugs and glitches but again is understandable in such a big open world game as many open world games suffer from that. I won’t be discussing too many negative points that can be patched. Already the developers have shown great support by listening to the community and rolling out many patches.
One criticism is the authenticity of the cut scenes and characters at times. Animation of certain things can be a little bit amateur in certain cut scenes. Voice acting is superb on the most part, however there is at times some inconsistency. The world seems to be based off a medieval Britain, the majority of voice actors are British with all different varied British accents. I love that the British voices are not stereotyped and all feel authentic with a variety of Scottish, Yorkshire, Bristol, Irish (in Skelige) and London accents being spoken throughout the game. With that being said there are some characters voices that just do not fit in the world. For example Triss, she is an interesting character, the dialog isn’t actually at fault, but her voice acting is which makes the dialog and character seem stupid at times. It is a shame as the character is likeable but the voice acting is poor for her character and it is a very noticeable American accent that just doesn’t feel like it fits when in comparison to all the other characters accents. Gerald, the main character you play as, has a cliché husky “bad ass” voice that never seems to raise in any situation and always has a monotone. It seems very off at first but admittedly his voice does grow on you.
One criticism is the authenticity of the cut scenes and characters at times. Animation of certain things can be a little bit amateur in certain cut scenes. Voice acting is superb on the most part, however there is at times some inconsistency. The world seems to be based off a medieval Britain, the majority of voice actors are British with all different varied British accents. I love that the British voices are not stereotyped and all feel authentic with a variety of Scottish, Yorkshire, Bristol, Irish (in Skelige) and London accents being spoken throughout the game. With that being said there are some characters voices that just do not fit in the world. For example Triss, she is an interesting character, the dialog isn’t actually at fault, but her voice acting is which makes the dialog and character seem stupid at times. It is a shame as the character is likeable but the voice acting is poor for her character and it is a very noticeable American accent that just doesn’t feel like it fits when in comparison to all the other characters accents. Gerald, the main character you play as, has a cliché husky “bad ass” voice that never seems to raise in any situation and always has a monotone. It seems very off at first but admittedly his voice does grow on you.
The game hasn’t got as much production value as other open world games, which at times can be noticeable. Comparing this to the benchmark that Rockstar set for open world games numerous times and yet again with GTA V, it is rare you will ever hear the same random dialog from over hearing a random persons conversation which can be amusing, you never see the same character model. The Witcher on the other hand, has recycled character models at times, most of the time it will just be a random NPC though and not a main character, repeated random dialog will be noticed throughout too from the NPC’s. In certain quests certain things will be said but it wont be shown on the game, for instance when Gerald is complaining about someone’s boat being bad and how the water is flooding in, whilst on screen the boat looks exactly the same as all the others and there is no water in the boat. These are some of the things that happens where you can see how they clearly did not have the production budget of the likes of the huge franchises. It is not a big deal though and it is merely something I am more pointing out rather than criticising.
Some of the characters are not as memorable or as fascinating as other games out there, but it still does a good job in delivering a deep rich character driven story and some of the characters are very likeable. With that being said, I do however think this game has much more memorable and interesting characters over other RPG's such as the likes of Bethesda games in my personal opinion.
The Witcher 3 has arguably the best historical world I have ever played, although it is fictional, it feels like a very authentic medieval Britain, apart from a few modern quirks within the game, everything on the most part is realistic, however I like that there is slight modern touches to the world and people, such as certain language people use and the way people dress. It feels like a fictional world based off real life historical settings but with CD Projekt Red’s own creative touch to it, which is fantastic.
Some of the characters are not as memorable or as fascinating as other games out there, but it still does a good job in delivering a deep rich character driven story and some of the characters are very likeable. With that being said, I do however think this game has much more memorable and interesting characters over other RPG's such as the likes of Bethesda games in my personal opinion.
The Witcher 3 has arguably the best historical world I have ever played, although it is fictional, it feels like a very authentic medieval Britain, apart from a few modern quirks within the game, everything on the most part is realistic, however I like that there is slight modern touches to the world and people, such as certain language people use and the way people dress. It feels like a fictional world based off real life historical settings but with CD Projekt Red’s own creative touch to it, which is fantastic.
Little things to add, the game also has dynamic weather and time of day, which I like in games as it gives a location variety and a different look each time you visit. Something I wish more games had as it can change the aesthetic of the location. The rain though is quite underwhelming and doesn’t really look that great or even really change the sky lighting in certain areas that much at all which is especially noticeable at night and the rain particles just look weak. Not really a big issue, it’s just a slight thing I picked up on, but I would be pulling at straws to say this is a genuine criticism of the game, it’s just a tiny thing that bugs me a little. That is not to say that the game isn’t a good looking game because it is. It’s a very good looking game, the art behind some of the scenery is beautiful and then the sharp graphics give it that extra polish. The game can really look stunning at times, the art behind it is amazing let alone the graphics. Skelige especially looks spectacular. Although it is slightly disappointing that the PC version looks a lot better, especially the water, and on top of that the framerate is better provided you have the right specs, whilst the PS4 version looks worse and runs worse. Something we should not be seeing in this generation of consoles when they are so new, but its not a big complaint, it doesn’t take away anything from experience really, it’s just a slight niggle I have. AI at times can be extremely stupid, which overall makes it an easy and free kill for you. Enemies at times will just stand still glaring at you waiting to be killed. Slightly breaks the emersion, but it really isn’t anything too much to fuss about and doesn’t happen all the time.
XP is gained through quests and not really through killing enemies, which is an interesting design choice. It essentially makes the players have to play all the story content the developers have to offer in order to progress your character and prevents you from grinding out killing the same enemies or doing the same task over and over again to quickly level up. It makes great sense, however, it does somewhat restrict the freedom of a RPG because you have to keep playing quests and don’t have the freedom to roam around attacking things knowing you will gain that XP you desire. Yet you can still gain loot or needed crafting items from wandering around killing creatures so it does balance it out. You can also be rewarded quite well from wandering around and exploring but often it will lead to a quest which does add a little more grind to the want of loot and XP.
This design choice does benefit the game though, because each quest has a recommended level, and if you do the side quests coherently with the main story, it leads to a better experience of the game. All you would have to do is play the quests based off the order of each recommended level. For example the quest to look for Ciri in Skelige comes up as soon as you arrive at Novigrad, but the recommended level is too high for what your level will be once you get there. So the game will naturally push you to do everything else in Novigrad before you go out there, and the story makes much more sense to do that too. The design of how the story is laid out, where a certain order for you to do the quests in based off your recommended level is actually a very smart design choice that makes it a better experience for the player. Although inevitably you will start out levelling quests so some secondary quests will probably be missed out. If we look at this structure in comparison to the Elder Scrolls games, which I think does not do a very good job at all in structuring the quests and that it becomes messy very quickly. The developers of The Witcher 3 do a fantastic job of keeping it neat.
Speaking of neat, something that is down to personal preference, but the inventory can get very messy with the crafting and alchemy ingredients. You soon learn though that the objective is to simply pick up everything and then when you’re at the crafting screen, you will scroll through whatever items you can and can’t make right now based off your ingredients. Thankfully CD Projekt Red (the developers) removed the weight of all ingredients so that it does not take up any inventory space anymore. This was a much needed patch. So now there is no drawback at all from picking up all the ingredient items.
This design choice does benefit the game though, because each quest has a recommended level, and if you do the side quests coherently with the main story, it leads to a better experience of the game. All you would have to do is play the quests based off the order of each recommended level. For example the quest to look for Ciri in Skelige comes up as soon as you arrive at Novigrad, but the recommended level is too high for what your level will be once you get there. So the game will naturally push you to do everything else in Novigrad before you go out there, and the story makes much more sense to do that too. The design of how the story is laid out, where a certain order for you to do the quests in based off your recommended level is actually a very smart design choice that makes it a better experience for the player. Although inevitably you will start out levelling quests so some secondary quests will probably be missed out. If we look at this structure in comparison to the Elder Scrolls games, which I think does not do a very good job at all in structuring the quests and that it becomes messy very quickly. The developers of The Witcher 3 do a fantastic job of keeping it neat.
Speaking of neat, something that is down to personal preference, but the inventory can get very messy with the crafting and alchemy ingredients. You soon learn though that the objective is to simply pick up everything and then when you’re at the crafting screen, you will scroll through whatever items you can and can’t make right now based off your ingredients. Thankfully CD Projekt Red (the developers) removed the weight of all ingredients so that it does not take up any inventory space anymore. This was a much needed patch. So now there is no drawback at all from picking up all the ingredient items.
There is also a fair bit of romance in this game, romance that you have the choice to take part in or not, as Gerald constantly runs into romantic affairs, you have the choice to play a role in how his relationship with people will pan out. This is something I have never seen in a game before, something that is done very well. It is not in your face about it, it's just subtle moments of romance that comes into play in this dark world you are in, and I like it because it's very cleverly done and is surprisingly quite enticing. It’s not cheesy and its quite grown up about it but done in a neat way. The pacing of the character development between Gerald’s relationships with people is spot on. The romantic encounters flow naturally along with the narrative and this is from the excellent character pacing.
The combat is tactical, and very satisfying. The blows and deaths are as brutal and gory as ever and combining a mixture of spells with quick dodges, fast attacks and then that crucial power attack or special attack that does critical damage. It all feels intuitive and fresh. It is not a button basher, it is tactical but not slow paced and so tactical where you really have to think, it’s very natural. Oh and smashing people’s head’s clean off whilst riding a horse is bitter sweet… when it works. A pretty significant flaw with the gameplay is how at times it can be very clunky and buggy, especially in combat at times. It’s not game breaking, but it’s slightly annoying. Thankfully though the combat is enjoyable enough that the clunkiness can be put up with.
Oh I haven’t mentioned Ciri properly yet? The main story revolves around finding her. She is Gerald’s adopted daughter, he trained her as a child at the Witcher camp, Kaer Morhen. She posses a rare source of supernatural blood known as the elder blood, which a faction called the wild hunt are after her from which you learn the reasons of events as you progress through the well paced story. Every time you bump into someone who can tell you what happened to her when they saw her, it goes into a flashback where you play as her and fight your way through where you are travelling. It is a cool design choice, rather than hearing about her as Gerald, you get to play as her, you get to actually feel and understand how powerful she is. Gerald is a great fighter, and you improve as you level up, the sense of progression is great, you are capable of taking on a room and group full of enemies. Ciri however, is capable of dealing with a whole army. 10-20 people can be taken out, because of her speed no one can deal with her. Her ability and power reminds me of Neo from the Matrix, Actually experiencing this makes her a much more memorable and an exciting character rather than just hearing about it. There are moments that really made me think of Neo from the Matrix, which is awesome.
Witcher contracts are interesting. You take on a contract to kill a monster typically a challenging boss and then get paid in return, but not just get paid, the loot you can sometimes get is very rewarding. It is a nice touch to the already deep content filled game. Some of them are just fetch quests either and tell a fairly interesting story.
The Witcher 3 has a ridiculous amount of content in this game, and in today’s world, where it seems like you get less content than what you pay for, The Witcher 3 has an unreal amount of content and it makes you think how much effort the developers put into this game and it makes you wonder how staggering the effort must have been behind the scenes. I would say this game has over 100 hours easily, maybe even 200 hours. With many many hours put into this with still more stuff to do, it really makes me feel like the purchase is fully justified. One thing I do find is that it is not a pick up and play game, it is a game you need to devote a lot of attention to and does not always have that addictive nature to it depending on what is going on in your game, at times though, it can really hook you. The game late in is epic, there were some awesome moments with Ciri, in a DragonBall Z esc manner to it. After that, just when you think the game is over, it stills asks you to do more. A lot more. That element of surprise was good and again amazed me on how many hours you can get out of this. It also has a slight Sci Fi theme that plays off the knowledge that we have in the modern day about other planets and aliens etc near the end. They can achieve this through magic portals that open up “new worlds”, which you get a glimpse of this experience. I found that very clever and surprising. It is refreshing to see a bit of Sci Fi like this that is set in the medieval times with swords, instead of laser guns and futuristic stuff. The Witcher 3 is by far the longest game I have ever played, everytime you think the story is over, it throws in another curveball. It can feel like it drags on for too long at times, but another way of looking at it is there is more playtime from it. The story and content filled world was a fantastic experience
The Witcher 3 has a ridiculous amount of content in this game, and in today’s world, where it seems like you get less content than what you pay for, The Witcher 3 has an unreal amount of content and it makes you think how much effort the developers put into this game and it makes you wonder how staggering the effort must have been behind the scenes. I would say this game has over 100 hours easily, maybe even 200 hours. With many many hours put into this with still more stuff to do, it really makes me feel like the purchase is fully justified. One thing I do find is that it is not a pick up and play game, it is a game you need to devote a lot of attention to and does not always have that addictive nature to it depending on what is going on in your game, at times though, it can really hook you. The game late in is epic, there were some awesome moments with Ciri, in a DragonBall Z esc manner to it. After that, just when you think the game is over, it stills asks you to do more. A lot more. That element of surprise was good and again amazed me on how many hours you can get out of this. It also has a slight Sci Fi theme that plays off the knowledge that we have in the modern day about other planets and aliens etc near the end. They can achieve this through magic portals that open up “new worlds”, which you get a glimpse of this experience. I found that very clever and surprising. It is refreshing to see a bit of Sci Fi like this that is set in the medieval times with swords, instead of laser guns and futuristic stuff. The Witcher 3 is by far the longest game I have ever played, everytime you think the story is over, it throws in another curveball. It can feel like it drags on for too long at times, but another way of looking at it is there is more playtime from it. The story and content filled world was a fantastic experience
Half Life 2, Bioshock Infinite, Burnout 3 & Revenge, PGR 4, Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Last of Us. Games I believe to be fantastic games and some of my favourite games and games I believe really set the bar and some of the best games ever made in my opinion. I think I will have to add The Witcher 3 to that list.
This game is genius. It really is a creative masterpiece, from the unique locations and environments that the fantastic open world has to offer, to the excellent and unique story, to the fine attention to detail put into every quest, where every quest you do has a original well thought out story that pans out. This is without a doubt the best RPG I have ever played. This game has become one of my favourite all time games. It will not surprise me at all if this game is to receive game of the year awards at the end of the year from many critics.
If you are a fan of RPG's, action games, historical games, or are open minded to playing any genre of game, this is a must have, and in fact a must have to anyone’s collection of games. Hands down the best game on the current generation of consoles that is the PS4/Xbox One at the moment.
This game is genius. It really is a creative masterpiece, from the unique locations and environments that the fantastic open world has to offer, to the excellent and unique story, to the fine attention to detail put into every quest, where every quest you do has a original well thought out story that pans out. This is without a doubt the best RPG I have ever played. This game has become one of my favourite all time games. It will not surprise me at all if this game is to receive game of the year awards at the end of the year from many critics.
If you are a fan of RPG's, action games, historical games, or are open minded to playing any genre of game, this is a must have, and in fact a must have to anyone’s collection of games. Hands down the best game on the current generation of consoles that is the PS4/Xbox One at the moment.
Overall Score
9.6/10
Published and written by Madz - 10th August 2015