The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
A long, exhaustive critique and/or love letter.
This essay will contain spoilers, lots of it, except for the last two subtitles: those are discussions of the design of the game, thus no story elements are discussed. I did not want to make this a simple review, there are plenty of those around. Instead, with 200 hours clocked in, I wanted to write an in-depth critique of the Witcher 3, examining both it’s high’s and low’s. This means that I will have to talk about the story and characters, thus spoiling the game for anyone who hasn’t played it. If you haven’t played it yet, leave, buy the game, finish it, then come back here. Trust me, it’ll be worth every minute of your time(the game that is, I can’t make promises for this here collection of assorted words).
…Something Begins.
As I was exploring the wilds of Skellige, I happened across a man asking for help. He informed me that someone has put a powerful curse on his son, a curse which would eventually kill him. Naturally, the people’s savior as I am, I offered to solve his problem. Things quickly turned out to be not-so cut and dry, as they usually did in this game. The curse was put on him by an bitter ex-lover, who he shamed by leaving her for another woman. There was no clean way of solving this, so I chose to persuade the man to return to his former lover in order to avoid anyone’s death. Hours later, as I was exploring a village, I happened on the aforementioned couple and saw the results of my choices. I saw a man who was basically blackmailed into being with a woman, who he not only didn’t love, but who wanted to murder his son, in order to save the life of his only child. Suffice to say I did things differently on my second play-through.
This wasn’t a major quest, it wasn’t even a larger side-quest. It was one of those exclamation-mark quests which you can easily miss, simply by not stumbling on it in the vast open-world(s) of the game. And that is what elevates the Witcher above all other choice-based games. Hell, even all games. The meticulous attention to detail. This permeates every aspect of the game. Every choice you make, every action you perform(or not perform) have clear and apparent(or sometimes not-so apparent) ramifications. Did you help a poor soldier who the villagers left to the mercy of Drowners? Then, 20 hours later, you might just meet that soldier again, this time offering you money. Money, which belonged to the villagers he exacted revenge upon by killing them to the last. Did you set the spirit from the Whispering Hillock free? Well, you traded the life of four orphans(who’ll probably die of starvation later anyway) for the life of an entire village. Oh, and the Bloody Baron’s wife dies too. And subsequently the baron hangs himself. I hope you’re happy. However, this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only reason for the Witcher 3 becoming the new king of RPGs.
Crime and Punishment
I’ve waited for this for a long time. For a game to have a proper system of choice and consequence. Well, even calling it a system would betray the achievement of CD Projekt Red. Previously, choices in games have always followed some easily identifiable(most often binary) system. Bioware choices have always fallen into the good-evil dichotomy(at least since Mass Effect). Bethesda games have been guilty of either having the same problem(Fallout 3's karma duality) or just plain and simply not being able to deliver a good system. Even if you take Skyrim’s individual story-lines(Thief’s Guild, Dark Brotherhood, etc.) on their own, they still rely more on the player’s cost-benefit analysis of the situation, rather than their moral judgement(There is this element of humanity missing from the characters which makes them only slightly more human than the pedestrians in GTA, thus removing most of the moral quandaries arising from dealing with actual human beings). Aside from that, no choice you make in Skyrim has any actual consequence in the game at large. It doesn’t impact other story-lines and there aren’t any serious repercussions to any of them. You can even make conflicting and contradictory choices. I for one, sided with the Empire, and then went and assassinated the Emperor in the Dark Brotherhood quest-line… and no one bat an eye. And that is not even mentioning the fact that both Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas make a very common mistake: in trying to appear “mature” in their storytelling, they opted to create a bad-worse(or sometimes bad-and-equally-bad) dichotomy of choices. This is something the previous Witcher games have been guilty of as well.
By now, dear reader, you’re probably wondering: “wasn’t this about the Witcher 3?”. It is. But I simply felt I had to illustrate the landscape of choice-based games(Telltale’s games are still in my backlog, so I won’t talk about those) and how they worked previously, for you to truly appreciate how they work in The Witcher: Wild Hunt. Gone are the good-evil dichotomies. Gone are the bad-worse dichotomies. No longer are you notified of the consequences of your choices in an end-game slideshow. No, this time around the choices are genuinely mature and their consequences are felt naturally, as opposed to the developers poking your eyes out with them. At times you are given a choice where there is clearly a right one: will you kill the Botchling or turn it into a helpful Luberkin? At times there is a right choice, but it isn’t readily apparent and you’ll be made to sweat trying to decide: will you let your friend(and possibly lover) to be tortured in order to get the information you need, or will you try to use an Axii sign to dissuade her would-be torturer(which may or may not work and consequently blow your cover)? At times you’ll even face the bad-worse dichotomies: as is the case with the “In the Heart of the Woods” quest. Sometimes you can change the course of events, mold them to you liking. Other times events defy your every attempt, and may even end up radically different than what you would’ve wanted. Some things you have control over, others you don’t. And the most brilliant part is you never know what will happen. You can’t game the system, because there is no system (there is no Ciri approves +10 nonsense in the game, instead whether people approve of your decisions is conveyed by way of subtle body language cues and the tone of their voice, achieving which in a video-game is downright mindblowing).
And yet, when I reached the end of the game and saw the full extent of my choices and their consequences, I understood all of them. I knew why everything happened, I understood the connections. In short: the logic of the choices and their consequences made sense to me. And I liked the ending I got. This is, again, something that has not yet happened to me in a videogame. There were always some not particularly logical consequences of your choices in previous games I played, which forced me to read/watch wiki articles to actually play the game the way I wanted it to. Here? I just play it, and I’m feeling, simply… bliss. I am content.
The Tale of Graying Batman
Or rather, the tale of Ciri, through the eyes of a gravel-voiced narrator.
Brilliant choices and consequences, however, would be nothing without a complimenting brilliant story. And I am happy to report that the developers have delivered on that, exceeding my every expectation. The main story follows Geralt and his search for his surrogate daughter, Ciri. She is a Child of the Elder Blood and is being pursued by the Wild Hunt, elves from the world of Aen Elle, because her powers would allow them to open a portal from their world to the world of the Aen Sheide. But I’ll not recite the story here, since if you got past the spoiler warning, you probably already know it. But I will go on to praise it.
The world and the story of the Witcher reminds me a lot of Game of Thrones. Except it’s better. It still feels strange to say that, since even a year ago I would’ve considered such a statement sacrilege. But not anymore. While both are a realistic(or nihilistic) depictions of the Medieval landscape, both featuring the horrors of war and politics prominently, the Witcher has something that Martin’s works don’t: in the seas of bile and gore that the two works of fantasy are, the Witcher puts a few beautiful little flowers. It’s not much, but those little personal character moments, those few shining rays of light in the darkness elevate the Witcher above the misery-porn, which the Song of Ice and Fire books are slowly starting to become.It’s not that I don’t appreciate Martin’s style anymore, but too much torture without any relief can become too much to bare.
Relief, on the other hand, is something the Witcher offers plenty of. The greatest moments in the game are not the ones where you affect the outcome of wars, it’s not the ones where you meddle in politics and actually achieve what you want(even though those can be pretty satisfying as well. There’s nothing quite like watching Radovid get his eyes burned out, poetic justice and all that for the King Joffrey wannabe), it’s the little things. The dry humor, the banter between Geralt and Yennefer, the battle of wits between Geralt and Djisktra, Priscilla’s song of a sorceress’ love for the White Wolf, the moments between Geralt and Ciri: the one where they snowball fight, the one where they childishly trash a laboratory, the time when Geralt finally finds her and thinks she’s dead, only to realize she’s not. These offer a stark, and much appreciated, contrast to the death, rape, plunder, evil crones, malevolent spirits, tragedy, deceit and assassinations which make up the world of The Witcher.
Having the personal featured prominently, with the political and world-changing stories relegated to the sideline, was a great decision. And it is personal, even though the personal in this case is also a world-ending-changing massive thing, stuff. After all, Ciri is the key to an invasion of an army of elves from another world, at the same time being the key to stopping the loosely-defined White Frost, a world-ending macguffin thing, stuff(it’s not exactly clear what it is, it’s something which reminds me of The Avengers’ Tessaract macguffin in the way it works. Maybe if I read the books I’d understand, but then again, I’m not critiquing a book). This personal nature of the story makes me care about the plot and it’s characters more deeply than I have ever before in a piece of interactive art. Something which is only helped by some of the best written, most memorable characters I’ve seen in a while. The Bloody Baron or Keira Metz alone trump anything I’ve seen in video games, and I’ve played plenty of them.
The personal nature of the game does not mean that the politics and intrigue from the previous game have been left out. But these no longer make up the main story. Instead they are part of the side quests. Side quests, which, if not for their place in the “side quests” section of the journal, would be indistinguishable from the main quests. This is another brilliant achievement of CDP Red, making the entire world and all the storylines contained in it feel, and be, so interconnected. Little side-quests, which you’d never imagined would make a difference, suddenly have a great impact on the events of the main story and the conclusion of the world’s fate. These quests come in various forms, some affecting the fate of nations, others affecting the fate of villages, various people or close friends. You might even miss some of them, purely because you haven’t traveled to a particular part of the map. Although, those don’t really have any serious impact on anything, they are merely fun and interesting(nothing’s quite like getting the severed head of an elf as a reward from a troll you just saved). Speaking of interesting, I have not a single clue… I cannot possibly fathom… I am unable to comprehend how the developers have managed to put in so much detail and attention into the tiniest and most insignificant of quests. It seems as if every last peasant has his/her own little story, full of humanity. The characters in this game are not “NPCs”, who, when you go up to them, say 5 words and task you with gathering 5 herbs, which are right outside their own house(looking at you, Dragon Age), they are truly human characters, each with their own vices and virtues. And the fact that they made this happen in a giant open-world game is all the more admirable. While most developers would cynically fill the game with menial fetch-quests to be able to claim “200 hours of content!!”, CDP Red went above and beyond to make sure each and every minute of the hundred or so hours it took for me to complete the game is filled to the brim with interesting and varied events and characters. They even redefined how we talk about game-length(or more aptly: re-emphasized how we should be talking about game length).
The Fault in Our Games
That is not to say the game doesn’t have it’s problems. Even the story, amazing as it is, has it’s own stumbles and shortcomings. There are certain things which should’ve had a larger impact on the story. One particular case is Geralt’s interactions with Triss and Yennefer. You can have one or the other as a love interest, which is decided in their respective quests. You can even start a relationship with both of them, as your’s foolish discovered. I thought that this was a Bioware game, where there is a clear and spelled-out point-of-no-return where you have to make a choice between them. But this is not a Bioware game, and I ended up with a threesome. Suffice to say, the threesome is a bad idea. The problem with this love triangle is that your interactions with them don’t really change based on who you ended up choosing(aside from a few “screw you”-s if you ended up with the threesome). As soon as you finish their respective quests, the love story ends. There are no more unique conversations or interactions with either Triss or Yen, and the conversations during the main quest-line default, well to the default, as there are no others. Other characters even mention your relationship kerfuffle, but that is a default template as well, as if nothing has changed in the game. It all feels kind of weird, that even though Geralt professes his love to one or the other, the dynamic between them doesn’t change, you merely get a different epilogue slide. There were some other minor oversights in regards to character interactions, but nothing worth mentioning.
What is worth mentioning, however, are the main villains of the game: the Red Riders, the Specters of the Wild Hunt. In a world of multi-dimensional, downright brilliantly flawed and sometimes misunderstood characters and villains, such as Letho, Phillipa Eilhart, The Bloody Baron… even the Crones, who in their own weird way, have a few redeeming qualities(like caring for their land and it’s people), the one-dimensional villains of the Wild Hunt stick out like a Troll in Hierarch Square(see what I did there?). The 3 named characters of the Wild Hunt: Eredin, Imlerith and Caranthir are just plain and simply evil… and nothing more(and the unnamed ones are merely cannon-fodder). And not even the fun kind of evil. Just plain old boring hur-dur fantasy evil. There are even a few cliches thrown atop of it, like that old: evil people are sexual deviants(Imlerith is known to engage in the pleasures of the flesh). Granted, they are imposing and there is this eerie feeling to the Spectral Riders. That is, before Eredin takes of his mask and becomes the simply evil villain that he is. The thing is, it didn’t had to be this way. The Aen Elle elves have plenty of reasons to want to migrate from their world to the world of the Aen Sheide. Their world is being threatened by the White Frost. When you visit it, you can read certain reports, which claim that large parts of the world have already been lost to it, and their mages are powerless against it. Aside from that, humans have always treated their Aen Sheide brethren, well, badly would be an understatement. They could have their own reasons for doing what they’re doing and there could have been space for a lot more nuance in that storyline. Instead, they are just evil, and that fact is hammered home at every possible point in the story: they torture people for the sake of it, kill for fun and so on. I was a bit disappointed in that.
There are a few other minor gripes I have with the story. For one, the Scoia’tael are not present in this game, even though they were half of both previous games. I miss their grey morality and sometimes ugly fight for freedom. Besides that, after the end of Act 1, after Vesemir dies and the Wild Hunt is forced to retreat from Ciri, the Hunt never comes back(until it is convenient). They were on Ciri’s trail for years, but now, suddenly they’re giving her some breathing room? They were dissuaded because of a single accidental outburst of her Power? I don’t think so. Then there’s the ending which I got: Ciri becomes a witcher and emperor Emhyr thinks she’s dead. Yet her renown spreads throughout the known world, so how’s that supposed to work? The emperor’s spies suddenly go deaf and blind? It’s a strange concession they made to give the players a happy ending.
But by far my biggest criticism of the story of the Witcher 3, is the lack of continuity from the Witcher 1 and 2. Brilliant as the story is as a standalone, it isn’t in fact a standalone. It’s part of a series. And contrary to what the “import save game” functionality has led you to believe, nothing from the Witcher 2 caries over to Wild Hunt in any significant way. The only two which do, are: whether you allowed Sile to die, and whether you killed Letho. Both show up in the game if they’re alive(but they don’t have a significant impact either way). Then there are a number of choices which had radically different consequences in the Witcher 2, which don’t have any actual consequences in this one. There were 3 possible endings, depending on whose path you chose: If you sided with Roche and helped him all the way to the end, then Anais survives and Temeria has a legitimate ruler, with Natalis at her back. If you sided with Iorveth and helped him, then you have freed Saskia(the dragon) from Phillipa’s control, thus securing Vergen’s future and it’s ruler. If you sided with either of the two, but chose to save Triss in the end, then you have prevented a witch hunt and have established the conclave of mages. In this scenario, Anais dies, and you’ll have the option of killing Saskia, or leaving her as a thrall of Phillipa.
None of these choices matter in the Wild Hunt. The witch hunt happens regardless of what you did. Anais is never mentioned, Temeria gets conquered and Natalis disappears, again regardless of the outcome of the Witcher 2. Aedirn(where Vergen is) is again, conquered by Nilfgard, regardless of etc. Henselt is dead and Keadwen is absorbed by Redania, regardl… you get what I’m saying here. The most egregious oversights are Saskia and Iorveth. Neither of them is present in the game, regardless of your choices in W2, and neither of them gets even a mention. Even though you meet Phillipa Eilhart, and, at least in my playthrough, Saskia was still under her spell. Conspicuously, you don’t even get to ask her about that dragon she still has at her beck and call. It sure would’ve come in handy in quite a few fights(maybe that’s why they omitted her). Retconning choices is one thing. But not even deigning to explain the retcon… that’s just low.
Spoilers end here.
Open Your World
There are endless arguments over the benefit of an open world vs. a more linear game. Some are decidedly on one or the other side of the argument. I’m on neither, changing my allegiance on a game-to-game basis. I decried Dragon Age when that went open world(because they turned a great sort-of-linear game(Origins) into a boring open world filled with fetch quests), but I will give props to the Witcher for doing open world right. Well… right… the best I’ve seen would be a more appropriate description. Fact is, the Witcher managed to not only keep the quality of it’s storytelling, but also improve on it in many regards, when it went open-world. But was it truly worth it?
I can’t decide. For one, no linear game would have this much content packed into it. The most I’ve seen in a linear game was a mere quarter of the content. Far as I’m concerned for that reason alone it might have been worth it. Aside from that, open worlds immerse you in a way linear games simply cannot, because you’re constantly bumping into invisible walls and following too linear of a path. But the game does have quite a few of the open-world design’s drawbacks and annoying conventions.
It is particularly annoying to see the dissonance between story and what the player is doing. Sure, this is a problem in more or less every game, the player having the ability to run in circles for hours just to mess up continuity and flow, but it is an even greater problem for open worlds. The story of the Witcher 3 is clearly time sensitive. Ciri is in danger, and you have to hurry to try and save her. But at the same time there are plenty of various activities in the world: side-quests, favors for friends, gwent and even horse races to partake in. And the game not only doesn’t punish you for taking your sweet time saving your surrogate daughter from a possibly horrible fate, but actually rewards you for it. (spoilers) You can only get the “best ending” if you did certain side-quests, like the quests leading up to the assassination of Radovid, or helping out Keira Metz, who’ll go on to save Lambert and ride off with him into the sunset. You’ll have to help out Triss and Yen in order to secure your future with either of them, and so on. (end spoiler) That’s not even mentioning the loot and benefits of leveling. This all directly contradicts the impending doom against which you’re fighting in the main quest-line. I’m not saying it would’ve been better to have a time limit instilled on the player(it most certainly wouldn’t have), or have less quests, but it would’ve been nice to justify the running about within the context of the story, rather than have the two contradict eachother.
Somewhat related to the previous paragraph: pacing. As usual with open-world games, it is completely missing. Another thing I’m disappointed not seeing, given the fact that this videogame was a game-changer, as it were, for many other elements of game design. But we can’t have everything, now can we? The Witcher isn’t a pure sandbox game, per se, but it does allow quite a bit of freedom in how the player wants to approach the game. Certain quest-lines fail at certain points in the story, but only the bare essential ones. It would’ve been nice if the developers took it a bit further and instilled certain soft barriers, by way of leveling and/or quest design, to nudge the player in the direction of something resembling pacing. But this is not what’s happened. Instead, the levels are all over the place. The most revealing example of which is that the highest level monster contract is in the lowest level area of the game(a level 35 Arachas in the starting region of Velen). You’ll find level 20 creatures in an overall level 5 area of the map, forcing you to jump back and forth between places and travel great distances(in context of the game only, since there is fast travel available, not requiring physical travel) to clear a single question mark from the map. Again, instead of dealing with an impending event at where you are right now, you’re traveling halfway across the world and back again for some loot and a few XP points.
Speaking of question marks, this is just a crime against humanity:
There is nothing more annoying for a compulsive competitionist(it’s an itch I have to scratch), than arriving to a new location and finding one million and one question marks. This wasn’t a massive problem in either the Novigrad or Velen regions, since both of those are filled with quite a few interesting side-quests to keep your attention between question-hunting. But in Skellige? There are hundreds of question marks out at sea, which you’ll have to reach with that slow boat of yours, which, turns out, are all simple loot chests, sometimes guarded by irritating sirens. But that’s it. There’s absolutely nothing compelling out at sea(aside from one fetch quest). They’re just a boring chore. I really wish this vexatious(I just had to use that word, it’s so amazing) staple of open world games would just go away. It would be far better to have randomly generated monster nests or loots(especially out at sea) which the player can stumble upon, than to have the map filled with annoying chores. It would feel much more natural, less “gamey”, and would be far more enjoyable than this. Or maybe even a mix between randomly generated and established ones, but without the question marks. It is a much better feeling to happen upon a location with something interesting going on, than to go there because a question mark told you to.
But at the end of the day, none of these issues dampened my enjoyment of the game in a significant way, even though some of them annoyed me. The story more than made up for the failings of open world design. And there were even some little things in the world, which made me forgive the shortcomings of the game. Like the way the world changes based on your actions. There are monster nests you clear in villages, and later the population will return there(and I’m not talking about the scripted “Abandoned Settlement” side activities). Clear a bandit camp and the roads will come to be populated by soldiers the next time you ride past it. These won’t open up new quests, but they’re just a nice little cosmetic touch, reminding you that your actions in the game actually have meaning.
If you really want to get technical
I guess it would be time to talk about the technical side of things. As games go, it’s solid. It’s not without it’s faults, sure. It still has(as of patch 1.05) quite a few bugs and glitches, even ones affecting minor quests. Movement is a bit weird and can cause quite a few annoyances, especially while riding on horseback or swimming. One of the more vexing things are shallow water controls. You’re forced into slow-walk and forbidden from jumping, resulting in sometimes not being able to get out of the water, having to reload a save. The enemy-targeting system is a bit janky at times. It’s not a problem on lower difficulties, but it will be the end of you on the higher ones. Geralt often times opts to attack the wrong target(the one behind the right target at a slight angle), fail to hit him, and then get killed by the enemy he was supposed to hit. It can get extremely annoying to play the Death March difficulty. But those problems will be more or less cleared up in the near future, so I will move on after only mentioning them, and instead talk about the gameplay design at large.
Aside from the aforementioned target-lock, I’m pretty happy with the way combat works. There is enough variety in combat-styles to keep you interested in it till the end. And, while it does get easier towards the end, it never gets too easy. You never become an all-powerful killing machine, who cannot die no matter what you do. Even at higher levels, slight missteps could mean the death of you, even while fighting measly drowners. The enemy variety as well is something worth praising. By generous estimates it goes as high as 50, all of them having different strengths and weaknesses, all of them requiring different tactics to beat. Some are most interesting than others, some more predictable than others. I for one never really liked golems. They are nothing more than bullet-sponges with a few special attacks you need to dodge, all of which are incredibly predictable: lunge forward, strike twice, dodge or roll away, depending on the type of attack animation you see. But aside from a few lesser quality enemies, overall the game offers a great variety of different challenges. And as an added bonus, the combat system is quite realistic(something which I always enjoy). It makes very few compromises for the purposes of gamey-ness. Though it does make one particularly weird one: eating food in the middle of a fight. And when I say eating, I mean food magically teleports from your saddlebag into your mouth and gets absorbed into your system in a mere moment. This is one of the features of the original Witcher I was never exactly fond of. I would’ve preferred to have potion consumption-only in middle of combat. And food consumption maybe outside of it. And it would have also been better if the potions wouldn’t have disappeared instantly into your mouth, instead having a few second animation accompanying them. It would’ve added an extra layer of strategy to combat, instead of spamming the “eat chicken leg” button, aside from being a bit more realistic. Then there’s the slight problem of the radial menu. This was clearly designed with a controller in mind. But that doesn’t mean that a few extra things for keyboard-mouse couldn’t have been added. Like more than two quickslots for potions(or food). For some reason the numbers 3–7 are reserved for signs(numbers 1 and 2 being reserved for your respective swords). I never used them. However, I would’ve used those buttons for quickslots for potions, like Cat or Killer Whale for instance. It’s really tiresome to navigate the inventory system to find the Cat potion every time I go into a cave.
Speaking of inventory: holy heavens, is it a mess. Books are in the same place with edibles, potions, oils and bombs, for some reason or the other. Everything involving clothing or weapons are in one place as well, crafting and alchemy supplies have only one conjoined tab, with one extra for quest items and one for misc. items. It is an incredibly daunting task, trying to navigate the bloody thing. And there is no sort functionality. There is one button, which supposedly sorts the inventory, but by what system, I cannot say. In a game where you can pick up every conceivable thing from what-and-wherever, having a system this bad is.. well.. bad. And it really wouldn’t have hurt the game to have a few items cut from it. There is so much extra fluff, so many different items which have maybe one single use, that I’ve lost track of it all from the get-go. I just hoarded a bit of everything, as much as my inventory limit allowed, hoping that I haven’t sold something that I might need for that one potion later in the game. 200 hours in and playing my 3rd playtrough, and I still have no clue what’s what. And there is no storage space either in the game, even though there are certain hub/home areas which you return to often, such as Dandelion’s establishment or Kaer Morhen.
Crafting and alchemy are present in this game as they are in every other open-world RPG. They are bloated, over-complicated systems with little benefit, as they are in every other open-world RPG. Alchemy I can sort of understand, there is a reason for hoarding all those herbs and Griffin livers. After all, Geralt, as all Witchers, is an alchemist as well. Well, sort of understand, since after creating 95% of all potions, oils and bombs, I ended up using maybe 15% of them. There were just too many for me to get around to using them, and too difficult to access due to the bad inventory system. As for crafting, why couldn’t it be limited to merely finding diagrams, I don’t know. In theory craftsman should have the necessary materials to create a sword, you don’t actually have to bring all the various stuff with you for them to be able to craft something. You don’t actually have to raid the pantries of various peasants, in order to have enough steel ingots to craft a sword. It is superfluous fluff on top of other complicated and intricate systems, one which offers very little satisfaction or challenge. A special case can be made for unique items, which require materials from powerful beasts, but for iron ingots? No, just no. It’s time to put the breaks on the over-complicated crafting systems, which every RPG is just dying to shower us with. As a life-long fan of Grand Strategy games, I like intricate and complex systems as much as the next guy(even more, probably). But what I don’t like are complex systems which don’t justify their own complexity, systems which are complex simply for the sake of it, and not because they had to be.
Then there’s my personal little gripe with armors. Even though there is an immeasurable amount of stuff you can craft, there was not much that I personally liked. The one and only armor set I did like was the starting one. Eventually I ended up installing a mod which beefed that armor, so that I could keep wearing it throughout the game. The level 2 feline armor was also kind of okay, but the rest? Well, they’re either outright ugly, or they’re just so full of detail that it makes them unbearable. The artists really went full out on the legendary armor sets. Thing is though, sometimes there is beauty in simplicity. But that is merely my personal aesthetic taste.
Before I move on to the final point, I do have to mention Gwent and just how amazing it is. It is the best minigame I have ever played in a videogame, period. It might be one of the best card games I’ve ever played. Just purely brilliant. Whoever came up with it is due for some fondling time with your’s truly.
And candles. I have to rant about those little buggers. Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to include candles, with which you can interact, on top of goddamn loot chests and next to NPCs… and then had the brilliant idea of mapping it to the same button as all the other ones?!?!.. Who?! There is absolutely no reason for this “feature” to be in the game, aside from bringing out my inner psychopath, who one of these days, is going to visit a certain Polish developer and…suffice to say, that guy will get a fondling session of a different nature.
As a final point, I would like to examine the leveling system. This is one of those video game systems which try to emulate real life, in this case the experience gain and the advancement of self, but end up not really doing a good job at it. I would very much appreciate it, if games could find another way of providing a sense of progression, than arbitrary numbers. Sure, it’s fun, it’s addictive, but I think it’s high time for a change. Instead of not being able to wield various swords, because you don’t have the arbitrary level requirement for it(which, again, makes very little sense: how does killing a few wolves and gaining the small 5 xp, make a difference between being able to wear a certain armor set?.. only in video games), have the economy system manage item unlocks. Or better yet, have the story do it. Have certain craftsmen or vendors unlock in various locations after a certain time, or combine it with the economy system. And instead of arbitrary level numbers which bring different hit-points and damage output with them, have enemy tactics dictate the game leveling. In the beginning you meet bandits and various pirates, who can only fight so well, but later on you meet professional soldiers, employing complex tactics. As opposed to how it actually is in the Witcher now, where the only difference between the a bandit and a Nilfgardian officer is the level number and amount of hitpoints they have. Learning skills could also either be relegated to side quests actually teaching you new fighting techniques, or certain higher level skills unlocking the more you use a particular skill/technique(using Axii on a lot of people would unlock the more powerful versions. This is something, which, weirdly, Skyrim did better). A combination of all these(or similar ideas) could offer a just-as-satisfying sense of progression, and feel less like a software badly emulating real life.
Yes, but that is not the system the Witcher uses. Instead it relies on the old, kill things get X amount of XP. Complete a quest, get Y amounts of XP. Reach a certain number of XP, and you’ll be able to pick yourself a skill from the pool of various, completely unrelated to what you were practicing and getting better at, skills. As far as these kinds of systems go, it’s okay. One of the bigger problems with it are that you can too easily out-level main quests and various other ones(actually following the recommended quest levels to the letter would have you constantly jumping back and forth between various distant locations). The other is the rather peculiar “activate skills” systems. I’m not a particularly big fan of it. For one, it’s quite ridiculous: you spent years studying the secrets of spinning like a maniac with your sword in your hand from the monks of Tibet(the whirl skill), but you can’t use it in this fight, since you didn’t drag it into this little box in your mind, which would activate it. Aside from that, it seems like a cheap attempt to limit the player from becoming OP. Surely there must have been a better way to address that problem. I, simply, have no idea why they thought this was a good addition to the game, but I’m not sold on the feature.
That is not mentioning the fact that this game follows the story of, according to Vesemir, a hundred year old Witcher, who should already be skilled in most techniques of fighting. Come to think of it, Geralt has miraculously gotten a lot worse at fighting than he was at the end of Witcher 2. He defeated a dragon for crying out loud. Suddenly a couple of bandits give him trouble? Something’s fishy about that…(as you might have deduced, I don’t appreciate when trilogies reset skill levels at the beginning of each new game in the series).
Something Ends…
There is still much that I could’ve said about the Witcher: Wild Hunt, but this has gotten long enough. It might seem, from the amount of criticism that I bestowed upon the game, like I didn’t enjoy it. Quite the contrary. This game has become my all time favorite one. It is a masterpiece. A flawed one, but a masterpiece nonetheless. It is a game to which, from now on, all others shall be compared to. Indeed, I could’ve praised it more, but as it is with human beings, we tend to notice the negatives more than the positives. And aside from that fact, I think I noticed the slight problems with this game even more so, because the rest of it is just so brilliant. Well, even if they are problems can be debated, they’re more like “gamey” conventions I and possibly others, would like to see replaced with something better.
At the end of the day, what CD Projekt Red have achieved here is nothing short of miraculous. I offer them all possible forms of congratulations, and my everlasting gratitude for giving me the possibility to experience this piece of art. Thank you. Really… except the guy with the candles. You’re not getting anything, aside from that not-so-fond-fondling session.
(by the way, if you’re not exhausted from all the reading I wrote this other extremely long thing about the Witcher 3 and ethnic representation, and another long thing about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.)
And if you’re not put off by my inflated sense of self-worth and the love I have for my own thoughts, then, at dawn, look to the East for my signal.. on Twitter.
