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TNA Lockdown | 04.15.07

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Biscuit Reviews The Witcher III Wild Hunt (2-year Anniversary Review)

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is perhaps my favorite game to come out of the PS4/Xbox One/Wii U-Switch console era. It’s won tons of awards and was game of the year for many people in 2015. I didn’t get into the Witcher series until Witcher II: Assassin of Kings was a free download for Xbox Live members in 2016. 

After I finished Witcher II, I immediately went to Witcher III and my god, talk about an amazing sequel. It was bigger, it was better, and for being the end of Geralt’s story, it did a great job for making newcomers such as myself, not feel lost at all.

I’m going to be spoiling the game so if you haven’t played Witcher III, definitely play it before going into this review.

The story of Witcher III, revolves around Geralt of Rivia, a witcher looking for his adoptive daughter Ciri alongside his on and off again lover Yennefer of Vengerburg.

Geralt will travel through large open world zones during his quest. Velen took inspiration from the Polish and Northern German countryside, Novigrad is reminiscent of the Polish city of Gdańsk during the medieval era, and finally you have the Skellige Isles, taking inspiration from Ireland. Each of these areas are massive and beautiful to look at. It’s easy to forget that you’re in a world currently being ravaged by war or filled with monsters until you stumble across areas that give you a stark reminder that there is a war happening.

One thing that I love about the game is how it handled decisions. There’s no clear good or bad decision, everything has a shade of grey. Sure there are choices that sound better in the short term, but it could have long term ramifications that could come back to haunt Geralt. One example is Triss’s quest line in Novigrad. Sure, you’re helping mages escape the city to where they no longer have to fear for themselves, but by doing so, you give the witch hunters a new target to pursue, which are non-human races such as elves and dwarves. However, if you don’t help mages escape, than later in the story Geralt’s dwarven friend, Zoltan, can help him with a jailbreak. If you do help the mages, Zoltan won’t be able to assist Geralt due to not wanting to face the wrath of the witch hunters.

Even the types of decisions you make are fantastic as well. All of these choices are actions that Geralt himself would make and do in that situation, it’s just a matter what you believe would be the overall choice he would go with. With many choice based games, dialogue options cover many aspects of a character archetype, because normally, you are making a character and are taking that character on the journey. In this case, Geralt is a character, he has his own beliefs, likes and dislikes, and dialogue choices reflect his specific personality rather than a personality a player would create.

It’s also why some aspects in gameplay are limited such as crafting. Geralt is able to craft oils and potions on his own as long as he has the formula and the ingredients. Applying the proper oil and drinking the necessary potions are necessary for fighting monsters in this game, which I’ll discuss more about later. When it comes to making armor and swords, Geralt has to seek out a Blacksmith to make these items as Geralt himself doesn’t have the kind of skill set, therefore he has to seek out a person able to build these items.

I also love how story quests and side quests interact with one another. Main story quests could go differently if you’ve done some side quests that relate to that specific quest and vice versa. Also the fact that side quests have just as much weight as the main quests make them feel more important and worth doing for that extra bit of lore or for that impact it could have on the main story.

As well polished and built the Witcher III is, it does have some minor glitches being an open world game. Sometimes you’ll find objects just randomly floating in air. Occasionally the input to talk to NPCs won’t work and you’ll have to either step back and walk forward to have the prompt reappear or just reposition Geralt himself for the NPC to talk to you. The fact that Geralt can either die or get heavily damaged from ridiculously low heights is also highly annoying and instills a fear of any small dropping points.

Another issue I would like to point out is that it’s not exactly the most socially inclusive. A lot of the main women are highly sexualized and sometimes feel that they’re nude for the sake of it. There are moments where you can choose anti-LGBT dialogue options when you encounter those characters, which I found exteremly baffeling that it was an option considering Ciri is bi and Geralt seems supportive in the dialogue they exchange. I get it, it’s a choice, you don’t have select those options, but the fact that they’re there to begin with just leaves a bit of a bad taste. Let’s not forget the entire ocean of white people in this game. I’m sorry, but including two people of color in a DLC just doesn’t cut it. Does it break the game for me? No, but I think not acknowledging that this exists within the game is even worse.

As mentioned previously, monsters have certain weakness and you are expected to exploit those weakness when fighting monsters. Using the proper tools to easily take down a monster feels great and makes you feel more invested in the world as you have to research these creatures in your bestiary to know their weaknesses. 

Going above and beyond to take on an extra tough enemy or a monster clearly above your level although feels great at first, it’s quickly brought down when the experience gained is very little and the loot isn’t something that equates the struggle you went through. It’s just a bit disappointing that you’re encouraged to research monsters and exploit weaknesses and when you do just that, the rewards just don’t reflect that.

There’s also one quirk with dialogue as well that’s honestly more funny than terrible, but the way it happened just made it more memorable to me.

This instance is going to a wake party with Yennefer in Skellige. She’ll comment on how she likes that Geralt is growing out a beard. Now if Geralt does have a beard in this instance, it makes sense, however if Geralt is clean shaven, Yennefer will still make the comment which I always found that to be a funny little programming quirk. It’s obvious that this response was to happen when Geralt has a beard and the programming within the game was supposed to read that. There are a couple of instances that NPCs will react to Geralt’s appearance and the reaction is appropriate in those moments. But the beard moment, always brings out a chuckle.

Granted for a game as massive as Witcher III to only have a few minor issues, it’s actually rather impressive. However, I will admit that it has been four years since it’s initial release and there might have been more bugs then, but now it’s a mostly smooth experience.

As mentioned in a previous post, I do refer back to this game a lot for professional research as well. CD Projekt Red used a branching writing program known as Articy Draft, a program I use in my day job. I’ll do different decisions, I’ll change the order of when I do quests and just imagine how the branching dialogue looked within Articy and the type of variables used to determine how certain events play out.

One also can’t talk about Witcher III without mentioning Gwent, what is perhaps one of the best mini-games within a game since Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad. Gwent is an easy to learn, but tough to master card game at the start. It’s tough at first as Geralt doesn’t have many cards at his disposal, but once you finally get a win, the dam starts to break little by little. Geralt will begin winning more powerful cards that can be added to his deck. Eventually it does get to a point where everyone becomes a bit easy to defeat as you gain more powerful cards and build your deck for effective strategies. Regardless it’s a game within a game that you can easily get lost in. 

Witcher III also set what many gamers regard as the “Golden Standard” for how DLC should be treated. Witcher III includes 16 free DLC additions ranging from additional quests, items, additional costumes, and Gwent cards. Then there’s the two paid DLC expansions, Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine, which involves two new stories.

Both of these expansions also add additional gameplay mechanics to make Geralt stronger, which you will need to take advantage of for Blood and Wine as monsters and enemies in that particular expansion are a bit tougher than in the main game and Heart of Stone.

Blood and Wine also contains my favorite quest in the entire game. The quest is called “Paperchase” and it’s hilarious. Something about a legendary monster slayer still having to adhere to the bureaucracy of a bank to get a reward for saving a guy years ago is just amazing. It shows that not all great quests have to involve you having an encounter that puts you on the edge of your seat.

The Witcher III is a game that deserves the praise and reception it has received. It has made a mark on the RPG genre that many developers are taking note and implementing in their games. The most famous case being Ubisoft with the Assassin’s Creed series by following a similar dialogue decision based structure and having side quests impact the main story and vice versa. This is a game that has earned its status as a modern classic, which I’m sure will keep that status for a very long time.

As I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone on Tumblr or any denizen of the internet, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt receives a 5 out 5

So far it’s been quite an interesting two years on this site. Frankly, I expected to just be a reviewer that would continuously scream into the void. To my surprise, I’ve had quite a few of you that like and share my posts adding more to the conversation whether you agree or disagree. I’ve also recently passed the 50 reviews milestone as well so the 50 and the two year mark happened rather quickly!

Here’s to the march on getting to 100 reviews...at some point!