The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
One of the hairiest adventures ever. But the best?
IN MANY WAYS, TheWitcher3 has that classic “difficult second album” feel, despite being the third in the franchise. The original game was a buggy, unremarkable RPG that surprised us by spawning an outstanding sequel. Few of us really expected Assassins of Kings to be the incredible game it was— it’s not just one of our favorite RPGs, it’s one of our favorite games.
So, Wild Hunt has a lot to live up to, but with most of the same team, a new game engine, and a huge scale, it could be the best fantasy adventure of this generation. But developer CD Projeckt Red is playing a dangerous game with TheWitcher3. It was only at 20-odd hours in that we were actually feeling it. It seems to be a case of the Dragon Age: Inquisition malaise, rather than the immediacy of The Elder Scrolls.
By that we mean it hadn’t grabbed us by the balls and dragged us into its world until we’d already spent the best part of a full day immersed in the Northern Kingdoms. And, considering this world’s seeming preoccupation with genitalia of either gender, that’s something of a surprise.
The beginning is a slog. That shouldn’t come as a massive surprise to anyone who played the previous games, but we truly thought, having made such progress with the second game’s Enhanced Edition, CDPR would have made it a priority to nail the early exchanges of this vast RPG threequel. You really do have to stick with it.
It feels a bit of a mess at the start. We spent a huge amount of time sat back in our chair, watching convoluted, seemingly endless, one-on-one exposition about a girl who was apparently our Burt Ward—who everybody seemed to know and fear, and yet we hadn’t a frickin’ clue about. A man shouldn’t have to check out his own bestiary to figure out who his adopted daughter is.
I’M GERALT. YES, I DRINK
So, there we were, kicking our heels, waiting for it to be our turn to actually do something more than click a few dialog options. And when the time came, we realized we barely could. Check us out, we’re Geralt of Rivia. We kicked some serious assmeat when the assassins and kings were duking it out last time around. We’d regained our legendary battle skills and notorious magical hoodoo—after a little forgetful interlude— and winded up using dragon bones for toothpicks. We were double-hard.
Now a couple of town guards can give us pause for thought (such as, “where did our left arm go? We’re sure it was attached to that bloody stump...“) because suddenly we’re back to square one. No-one mentions the fact Geralt obviously suffered a major stroke at some point between the last two games, only now getting back to his fighting weight. At least in Assassins of Kings we had the handy amnesia subplot to explain away the RPG-necessity of leveling.
Then there’s the sultry sorceress loveinterest (no, not the redhead), we’d been relentlessly chasing in the previous game, who just casually appears out of nowhere in one of the biggest gaming anti-climaxes since Colonial Marines launched. “O hai, Geralt. Good to see you. Now go quest after some goat, horse about for a bit, and we’ll catch up later,” says Yennefer.
That was us for the first six hours. Gnashing teeth, whining about how the writing wasn’t as good as Assassins, and cursing the continual teenage titillation of tessellated ta-tas. Then it seems to come to its senses. Or maybe we do.
This isn’t Assassins of Kings, it’s a very different game. For all its branching storylines (it was the first game to make us replay just to check out the other side of the story), TheWitcher2 is still quite linear. You follow the story, via a few quest-hub locations, to its conclusion. Wild Hunt has a very strong story thread, which thankfully finds its feet, but it’s far more of an openworld adventure along the lines of Skyrim.
But there’s less impetus from the plot to actually go out and explore. That’s partly because you’re a defined character, rather than the standard TES tabula rasa, but also because the story has such an urgency behind it that it feels like a betrayal to step off-track and go exploring.
It’s so rich you’ll end up with gut-ache from gorging yourself on it. Not to mention insomnia from the compulsive one-more-quest mentality it eventually engenders. It’s a vast undertaking. The instant you open up the full map, packed with question marks begging to be answered, you’ll find yourself lost in a bloody, engaging, often surprising, and satisfyingly tough game world. As much as you’ll find the classic MMO-inspired Fedex missions and slaying heavy-going at times, you also get some really intriguing quests and storyline to play through, too.
Combat is a huge part of Wild Hunt, and much improved over Assassins of Kings. At once it’s become easier and more rewarding, too. Especially as the increasingly compulsive leveling grind gathers pace. There’s an impressive amount of finesse you can bring to battle too, with the ability to leap, dodge, and counter, and a little light mage-work for good measure. It’s not quite at Assassin’s
Creed levels of buckled swash, but it makes for some seriously satisfying swordplay when you get it right. It’s also the first RPG in which we’ve not leaped from our horse at the start of every fight. Mounted warfare in bullet-time ballet is actually enjoyable.
BAD HAIR DAYS And it’s mighty pretty. We weren’t that taken with the visuals right at the start, but once you’re in the wilds, the game becomes truly stunning. That all comes at a cost though, if you throw the settings right up.
At Ultra, our 4K Titan X rig struggled to maintain 30fps, and our R9 290X machine batted around 40fps at 1440p. And that’s without Nvidia’s suddenly controversial Hairworks getting involved. With it you’re dropping a whole lot of perf for a little extra hairy fidelity. Though there is a lot of hair involved, including a dynamic facial fuzz system for Geralt, no less.
TheWitcher3 then recovers from a shaky start to become a rather excellent adventure (Wyld Stallyns!). It’s definitely not perfect, but any RPG of this scope is going to have its share of face-palming “argh!” moments, and any Witcher game is certain to have its bugs. We’ve only scratched the surface of this world, but we’re sure going to lose a lot more of our life to it. We just hope VERDICT we don’t have to chase down any more frickin’ goats in the process.