If you’ve read anything on this site, you know that I rag on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a lot. I’m certainly not the first person to say that it’s got the whole “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” issue and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Given Skyrim’s massive success you could be forgiven for thinking that all open world RPGs are going to feature the same lack of depth (Fallout 4 didn’t help), but creators are always going to strive for something more.The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the example of that supreme effort; a polished and deep titan of a game. I’ve put around 23 hours into the game and only completed about 8% of it, making this a first impressions rather than a final verdict.

This dude is a little too handsome. I am uncomfortable with his rugged charm. Somebody save me.

In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you play as Geralt, a genetically modified monster hunter for hire known as a Witcher. Geralt, having regained his lost memory from the first two games, is attempting to track down Yennefer of Vengerberg. Yennefer, Geralt’s former lover and powerful sorceress, sent him a message about wanting to meet again after all these years. It turns out that she is working for the Emperor of Nilfgaard and attempting to locate his daughter, Cirilla, whom Geralt helped train as a Witcher.

Last time Geralt saw Ciri, she was a kid. Now she's being chased by a mystic and powerful league of war omens. *sniff*, they grow up so fast.

Ciri, as Geralt calls her, is being pursued by the Wild Hunt for some unknown reason. 23 hours in, and that’s all I know, but it’s an interesting enough mystery to keep you hanging on. Don’t worry if all of these words look like nonsense; The Witcher 3 does a great job catching you up on the story and lore. I played the first game almost to the end but not very much of the second game.

The Witcher 3 has a leveling up system similar to a lot of RPGs, with four branches of skills to upgrade: combat, signs, alchemy, and general skills. You can experience by defeating monsters and completing quests. With the recent Blood and Wine expansion, you can acquire over 100 points to invest, but the combat tree alone takes 91 to fully upgrade. Specialization becomes necessary very quickly, which increases the replay value and gives you a new experience each time.

You only have twelve skill slots, so you must build Geralt carefully. The other four slots can hold mutagens, which are collected from downed monsters. They can increase attack power, sign intensity, or health.

The Witcher series has always had engaging combat, and the third (and final) game is no exception. Geralt carries two swords, one steel and one sliver. The steel sword is used for all human enemies as well as non-magical beasts and the silver sword for magical monster opponents. You have two kinds of melee attacks, heavy and light. You can block attacks or parry them with the right timing, dealing some extra damage. You have a dodge and a roll you can use to evade attacks as well as crossbow to knocking certain flying enemies out of the sky.

You can also perform various finishers on stunned opponents.

If you can hit an enemy’s back you can deal critical damage, but they can do the same to you. Your exact attack movements change depending on the distance you are from your intended target, which can take some getting used to. Geralt’s movements feel weighty and your swings have enough momentum that you can feel the consequences of making a particular attack choice. Combat feels very grounded, but never slow.

While this is pre-rendered footage, it's pretty representative of what combat feels like.

Besides your normal melee attacks, Geralt can also use five signs. The signs are sort of like magic shortcuts, taught to Witchers as a less powerful one-handed substitute for the more powerful magic that mages wield. Geralt can use Aard, Yrden, Igni, Quen, and Axii. Aard knocks enemies back with a telekinetic wave, Yrden creates a magical trap on the ground to slow or paralyze enemies, Igni sends out a wave of heat to set enemies aflame, Quen creates a temporary shield that lets Geralt absorb some damage without losing health, and Axii allows Geralt to stun an enemy temporarily and influence other characters in conversation.

Here we see Geralt slowing down a group of enemies with Yrden, then knocking them down with Aard.

Upgrading the signs increase their usefulness even more. Igni, for example, has a chance to reduce your enemies armor and Axii can be used more effectively in conversation. The varied uses of the signs make you feel like they’re an integral part of the combat and world, rather than just another way to dispose of enemies.

The last third of the tripod that makes up The Witcher 3’s combat is potion and weapon/armor crafting. The crafting in Witcher 3 is expansive to say the least. There are a simply ridiculous number of materials, schematics, recipes, and diagrams to collect. Each potion you consume adds to your toxicity. Consume too many, and Geralt will lose health continuously until the toxicity depletes. There’s also a new kind of potion, called a Decoction, which you can only make after you have killed a certain kind of monster. The Decoctions last for around 20 minutes at a time and give Geralt a much more powerful effect, like increased damage resistance every time Geralt is hit in battle.

Each non decoction potion usually has about 3 uses per meditation period. You'll find a huge amount of crafting materials just from bouncing around the world, so don't sweat finding them.

In a change from The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings and The Witcher, you only need to brew potions once. After you’ve brewed a potion it will be refilled automatically during mediation, provided you have the alcoholic base necessary. Given the massive quantity of alcoholic base around the game world, you shouldn’t ever really run out. For non-alchemical diagrams, you can visit a crafter who will build armor, weapons, ammunition, and more for Geralt, provided you have the materials and coin to spare.

The most impressive part of The Witcher 3 is its quests. The tight focus of the main quest keeps the whole thing grounded and sidesteps many of the usual fantasy tropes nicely. The main quest is nice, but the sidequests are what steals the show. There are few mainstream games that have as much polish in their main story as The Witcher 3 puts into its sidequests. The game throws a number of scavenger hunts your way; quests to find special weapons and armor scattered about the world. I think this an interesting way to keep gear from getting dull. As you level up, you’re constantly looking forward to being able to undertake higher level quests, scavenger hunts, and Witcher contracts.

Jenny O the Woods, one of the earlier Witcher contracts has it all. A spurned heart, death, lords abusing their power, and a healthy amount of detective work from our favorite Witcher.

Even the smallest, shortest sidequest has a story, choices, and even multiple objectives. My favorite sidequest so far involves running into some peasants in a ruined structure. They claim that their Allgod is displeased with their offerings and has cursed their village. You can offer to intervene on their behalf and speak to this “Allgod”. You quickly discover that their Allgod is in fact a satyr-like creature living under the ruined structure, hidden from the peasants. One hundred years ago, this sylvan “revealed” himself to the peasants by accident through an accident with a fireplace, and has been watching over their village in exchange for healthy food and drink offerings since.

You'll have to forgive his manners; he doesn't get out much.

You can kill the sylvan, try to reason with him to accept the village’s meagre offerings (as it’s all they can give during this time of war), or even persuade him to leave the villagers alone entirely. Each of these choices has a separate outcome and makes you feel more involved with the world. The choices can be difficult because there’s often no clear “right” or “moral” choice; Geralt lives in a world as morally complex as our own. The whole quest takes maybe five minutes to complete, but the amount of polish and detail shines through.

Exploration comes along with any open world game, and The Witcher 3 is no different. As you walk through the areas in the game you can find monster nests, guarded treasure, bandit camps, and more. I really like the Abandoned Sites, which are areas infested with monsters that fill up with villagers once you clear out the unwanted guests. It shows your impact on the world in a tangible way that also plays nicely into the story; normal people can’t deal with monsters, but a Witcher can.

So many places to go, so many monsters to kill.

The bandit camps can get a little tiring, as they usually don’t have anything that valuable and the bandit’s mediocre weapons and armor just weigh you down. The same can be said for guarded treasure, but that’s usually a bit more profitable. Thankfully there’s no pressure to complete any number of these things, so if you’d rather focus on questing there’s nothing stopping you.

Last but not least, I’ve got to talk about Gwent. Gwent is a card-based minigame in The Witcher 3 and the most addictive card game since Magic: The Gathering. There are four kinds of decks, each with several options for leader cards, a number of “regular” cards, and up to ten “special” cards. Your deck must have at least 22 regular cards to play. You draw ten cards and that’s all you get for that match, unless you play cards which allow you to draw more cards. Each regular card has a certain strength and the person with the higher strength at the end of a round wins. You play regular cards in the close, mid-range, and long range combat slots. Some of the special cards affect units in certain slots, while others are more like spell cards in Magic. A round ends when both players “pass”. By passing, you elect to stop putting down any more cards until your opponent passes. You and your opponent both start the match with two crystals, one of which breaks when you lose a round.

Most early matches don't look like this, but you can have a huge amount of strength in the later matches of the game.

There are about 200 Gwent cards in the base game and a series of major quests that revolve around Gwent tournaments. Gwent is crazy addicting. I’m super excited whenever I find a new village because it means there’s a bunch of people I can challenge to Gwent and win/buy cards from. It’s a great way to stop thinking about monsters for a few minutes, though it is a bit thematically confusing. Why are Geralt’s friends portrayed as cards in this game? How does every peasant shopkeeper have enough money to build a deck? Each card costs anywhere from 20 gold up, meaning a minimum of 440 gold to buy a full deck. Another odd thing is that you can only win ten gold pieces per round; why can’t I bet more? But these are all little things; you can't take away the fun from Gwent.

Where are you going!? We just met! I JUST WANTED TO BE FRIENDS.

With a game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the only complaints you’re going to find are little things, but they can add up. A number of times during play, I’ve seen enemies clip through the ground, or go flying once I’ve killed them. I’ve seen enemies repeatedly open and close doors rather than come out to fight me which is hilarious, if a bit annoying sometimes. The menu system is not as intuitive as it could be, though it’s been improved since version 1.0 of the game. There are times when it’s hard to figure out what you can dismantle for crafting parts, or when to stop dismantling, i.e. wolf pelt into cured leather, cured leather into leather scraps, leather scraps into leather straps, etc. You can “pin” a diagram or alchemy recipe, so the necessary items are highlighted in merchant’s inventories, but it would be nice if you could pin multiple recipes rather than just one. There are three kinds of currency in The Witcher 3, though you can only use one. When you find Orens or Florens you have to wait until you find the person who can exchange them for Crowns, which is annoying if logical lore-wise. Lastly, sometimes when fighting in the forest, the trees can get in front of the camera, which can cause you to get hit more than you’d like.

Worth Playing?

Yes.

At the end of the day The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is something really special. It will set that bar for all future open world RPGs, in terms of its depth and size. There are some nitpicks you can throw in there, but it’s a stunning package all together. The amount of polish and work put into the smallest detail will really impress you and maybe cause you to look at other games differently.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Let’s Look At. If not, that’s cool. I’m busy playing Gwent anyway. Speaking of which, wanna play Gwent?

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