The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Good
In my review of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, I ranted about how there was no physical interaction in the game and how its world was confined to narrow areas, impeding free exploration. I've always preferred more open design for my games, and I thought that the beloved Polish series would greatly benefit from it.

When Witcher 3 was in development, I read about how they were working on expanding interaction and exploration, but I paid little attention because every developer promises that and rarely delivers. However, Witcher 3 did deliver. It delivered everything I was waiting for.

They just got it right this time. They've kept everything that made the series great - strong moral choices in the gameplay, interesting quests, beautifully dark atmosphere and mature themes - and designed a much more advanced, much more generous game incorporating all that. It's Witcher on steroids, mega-Witcher, Witcher with megalomania that has become reality. It's a superbly ambitious game, and it has lived up to its ambitions.

For someone who likes open world design, but is also interested in meaningful quests and a setting imbued with atmosphere and personality, Witcher 3 is a dream coming true. Aside from its lightweight approach to character customization, it is a rich, involving role-playing game that would make a fan of the genre drool. It has a plethora of quests and memorable encounters, like in Bioware games, as well as a vast world to explore, like in Elder Scrolls. It is one RPG that, after many years of experimenting, comes close to the ideal of Ultima. It is modern thanks to its technology and presentation, but it also harvests much of what has been achieved in RPG design throughout all this time.

Witcher 3 has both quantity and quality. Its world is both large and fascinating - it's wonderfully busy, but it's not cloying the player with incessant repetitive activities; it's breathtakingly wide, yet full of points of interest; it strikes a perfect balance between free exploration and meaningful quests. You can spend hours working on those side missions, and discover more and more interesting information about the world and the characters populating it, even when they are not directly connected to the main plot. But you can also just ride your trusty horse across fields and forests, simply searching for monsters to kill.

The beauty of this game is that pretty much every major aspect of it is satisfying, and they all work together marvelously as a harmonious whole. It's a strong plot- and character-driven game full of cinematic moments and dialogues with ethical choices, and yet it doesn't shrink the playing area like many modern RPGs of the same mold. It's a magnanimous open-ended game with many locations to visit, yet it doesn't lower its standards of writing and narrative to accommodate that.

Of course, Witcher 3 is not as overwhelmingly large and physically interactive as the Elder Scrolls games, but it does come close. For the first time in the series, the protagonist is able to jump, swim, ride a horse, and finally bypass those artificial barriers the previous two games had. You don't feel the world's artificial limits any more. You have the freedom to fool around, visit places out of order (after having completed the initial chapter), just explore without any particular goal in mind, take a break from the main quest. This is something I wish every RPG designer would think of.

Witcher 3 retains all the cool elements characteristic of the series. Its combat flows better than ever, and has been enhanced by features such as archery, fighting on a horseback, etc. Alchemy and magic systems are still all in place, so you can drug your hero as much as you want and have him develop some nifty qualities. Speaking of which, the new Witcher-sense ability has turned out to be quite an interesting gameplay element. It is essential for many quests, and works akin to detective investigation, complete with clue-gathering and observations gradually leading the protagonist to the goal.

Witcher 3 is also a gorgeous game. Its urban areas as well as its countryside and wilderness are masterpieces of visual design. Its world is not just big - it's brimming with detail, it's warm and organic, and it almost feels like a living creature miraculously concocted with bits and bytes.

The Bad
Witcher 3 is not perfect, but I think that its flaws are easy to ignore when the good outweighs the bad by such a large margin. The game's shortcomings mostly pertain to small things. For example, inventory management is still unpleasant, what with the tiny icons and bizarre sorting options. There are some bugs and weird occurrences, as well as some bizarre bits of dialogue here and there.

Character customization is generally more varied than in the previous games, but not exactly as deep and as far-reaching as, say, in the Elder Scrolls series. Also, despite the vastness of the world and the increased interactivity, there is still some window dressing in world design. For example, Novigrad looks amazing, but you can't really explore it to the core, because most houses are inaccessible. In a way, it can be felt that the developers weren't completely at home with open world design or physical interactivity - though, naturally, their effort is still incredibly impressive and commendable.

The Bottom Line
Saying that Witcher 3 is the best in the series wouldn't be enough to do it justice. The Polish developers have created one of the best role-playing games in recent memory, an exquisite product that gracefully combines the spirit of hardcore classic playing with modern sensibilities. Play it, savor it, love it.