Provisos

It has been roughly a few months since I had finished The Wticher 3: The Wild Hunt and so I didn’t immediately get to reviewing the game because I was undecided on whether I should cover the game in an exhaustive manner or whether to just do a brief retrospective and give general impressions of the game in general with the focus on story and gameplay relationship.

That being said, the latter won out due to the personal circumstances that dictate this sods life for the most part so I figure that, by now, everything that has been needed to be said about Withcer 3 has already been said in exhaustive detail of which I wanted to engage in my review initially after playing it.

So without further ado, on to my review.

Not so epic, but quite epic still.

Video Game Fanfiction? I guess.

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is the last of the trilogy series of games that have seen dramatic technical changes throughout the itereation of the series. It has been also the flagship intellectual property of CD Projeckt Red (CDPR), the Polish developer and publisher that has taken from transferring the stories of Andrzej Sapkowski into the video game form with varying success throughout each installation.

And although some would argue that The Wild Hunt is the best of the three, I’d would like to point out a few things that could have worked better, starting with the story lines.

In the first two installments, you are playing a Geralt that shouldn’t be alive. You see, in the books that Sapkowski wrote, Geralt died with a pitchfork stabbed through his abdomen by a farmboy during a pogrom of which he was trying to defend some non-humans (elves and dwaves).

So what makes the video games? A fan written storyline? Perhaps, but then again when you have Sapkowski in tow to supervise the writing of the storylines and questlines, I think you can say that there are now an “optional timeline” that will be likely to be now something where you have two camps of Witcher series fans: those of the books where Geralt is dead, or those that have played the video games and Geralt is alive and well retired from the witcher trade (sort of).

As being someone that subscribes to the inclusion of the “optional” timeline from that of the books I can empathize why I would want to and it all leads to how The Wild Hunt quickly abandons the story arcs that lead to the point of continuation.

In the first two games, Geralt has amnesia and goes about engaging in Witcher work (slaying monsters and solving people’s weird problems) but the draw is that you’re trying to solve the main story line that attributes to solving a more personal problem, your amnesia.

And it becomes a thing that you have to as the player to keep in mind the entire time that you play both The Witcher and The Witcher 2: The Assassin of Kings throughout - which I found both tiring and made me nervous throughout the game because I had to keep in mind, essentially, the vunerability of Geralt throughout.

Geralt has come back from the dead and has been operating up until Witcher 3 on limited potential and without memory of anything that had other had known prior life. With everyone around him insisting that he should have died when he had and that his appearance since Witcher 1 is short of a miracle; this implies strongly that it wasn’t Witcher 1 or 2 but Withcer 3 where you, the player, has been rewarded for having fought to survive up till this point to reach along with Geralt; the “plateau of existence” so to speak of which now you can enjoy Geralt as he was presented in the books. You still play as the mutant before - a mutant, yes, but a weakened one that was to choose very wisely and take his time to get around to figuring out just what in the world was going on around you. Although, to be honest, that’s coming from a person that played the games first and not have read the books prior to playing the games. But again, the trek from the first, second to finally third game, feels like a reward in of itself when you start with the foreknowledge of what you have experienced prior.

So, back from the dead, abilities and memories restored to you, what’s next for Geralt? Well, again, find his lover of questionable certainty, Yennifer, and then his adoptive daughter, Ciri. This sudden change in priorities does come a bit abrupt as a bit rushed considering the events that transpired at the very end of Witcher 2. And yet, it was fitting because, honestly, I just wanted to know what life was like being on “the witcher’s path” was going to be like more or less, and coincidentally enough, so did Geralt.

Gameplay Mechanics:

World interactivity and player progression

So what this means is that the game mechanics with regards to combat, inventory management, item effects, weapons, armor, mystical, and mutant abilities, are all refined to a point of polish that focuses on the casual gaming community that plays on consoles rather than on PC.

But the balance is quite striking with that in Witcher 2, the emphasis was simplicity with the only “role playing” aspect where you had to think carefully things was motivated by having items, equipment, weapons, and abilities be very expensive. And as such, you were constantly on the verge of being very broke all of the time and so it made for the game to be a tedious grind fest to where it was so bad, that you really were expected to make the most in the very first chapter to make some decent money - but good luck keeping a savings for some rare equipment that would pay off in the end.

On the other end of the spectrum you had Witcher 1 where the emphasis was on complexity of the role playing like that of found in game slike Neverwinter Nights in where you had an almost Dungeons & Dragons inventory management system and all being focused on a meticulous focus on preparation before going to combat with a marathon of semi-powerful enemies that were on your expected level or with a single particularly strong enemy, making the game feel like a traditional single-player RPG but with a party of one to manage inventory and stats development.

Because of t his, you have an instance where you have the first two games not being able to get it right and introduced some quirky gameplay that was going to require the player to mold themselves to the demands that both Withcer 1 and Witcher 2 had to offer.

And that’s where Witcher 3 comes in to where the game really doesn’t demand anything much of the player except to do some grinding for levels and even then the amount of grinding is such where it doesn’t even feel like it is grinding: you are free to traverse and fight any enemy you see before you throughout the world of the game of Witcher 3 but you are going to encounter enemies that are too leveled above Geralt’s statistics to even try to fight against (but again, not impossible to defeat if you tried).

So as a result, you’re forced into a semi-linear experience that is reinforced by the leveling system inherent to the playable character. But this is no surprise as this falls within the game designs of Witcher 1 and 2 in that you have a world that is rich and expansive enough to give illusion of vast freedom as would be offered by an open-sandbox game, such as anything from the Grand Theft Auto series, but not as much given the technical limitations to consider given how rich the game world is in detail are the assets in comparison to what would be otherwise be the case for a typical open-sandbox considering the detail and hardware requirements to run them and have them ready at runtime for when they’re called up on to serve in a particular scene of which the playable character happens to be present within the game world.

Graphics

Color Palettes and Places

There is no question that graphics are one of the most beautiful that can be beheld for an open world game. The thing about Withcer 3 than that of any other open world games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V, is that there was the issue with regards to the variation of color palettes that often times stays relatively the same from one area to the next. Or, if there’s stations of time (morning, midday, afternoon, night), there was a relatively same set of colors that were shared between the stations in order to, I guess, achieve a sense of consistency throughout the entire experience of the gameplay.

The The Witcher 3 doesn’t really do that, instead, it uses different color palettes all the time depending on the particular place at a particular time. But given that it’s an open world game, it’s still going to have one thing in common with the aforementioned games and that it is that depending on the kind of areas that you’re, you’re going to get some color palette scheme that is going to remain consistent so as to impress that “you’re in X place type and therefore you’re going to have to expect Y thing(s) to happen”. I know that may not seem likely to make much sense in terms of relevance but it becomes something you can’t help but notice once you’ve reached your 10th Elven ruin in The Witcher 3.

To elaborate further, inThe Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, whenever there would be some type of dungeon that I would have to go to like, say, a cavern type dungeon or a ancient elven ruin, there would be certain color palettes that would apply. For caves, it was browns, khakis, and mustard yellows. For ancient elven ruins, whites, teals, and lots of metallic shimmers and gilding of gold or silver.

The latter of the two would be more interesting at times but after 100 hours in, the color schemes and uses were starting to get less something to admire, and more of a cue to what expect going into the area. And another 30 hours after that, it started to get somewhat boring.

Similar case with the Witcher 3 except that it doesn’t get boring for one simple reason: the game doesn’t rely on static color pallete sets as much. Unlike the Oblivion, Witcher 3 simply goes about in attempting to generate as many color variations as much as possible by sometimes playing around with the dungeon types layout and presentation with in combination to light source placement. And this is an interesting take because sometimes, like sayin photography, you can edit images that have been intentionally, or incidentally, been taken under certain lighting conditions which allow for color manipulation result in very interesting results (e.g. make an image that was taken in the afternoon look like it was taken in the morning). When combined with environmental designs that will require the player to use a torch or light some ignitable light sources within the environment, this further gives variation to what would otherwise be a growing monotonous experience dungeon to dungeon.

This game is, even without graphical mods such as EMB, very good looking and, what’s more, even with something set in medium settings for machines that are as old as mine (built in 2010 with parts that debuted in 2008 and 2009), it still looks very good.

The thing that impresses me is the amount of detail to the textures are used and compression/decompression of assets in the time in realtime for players with less-than-powerful PCs and the game engine’s ability to scale in real-time with the provided hardware resources it has to work with. To point: things look pretty almost regardless of the settings and the type of hardware you have on your PC, making the game a definitive example of getting “the most bang for your buck”.

Sounds

Music

If there is anything to be said about the music is that it’s indeed, quite nice. But I have to say that it sits sometimes as something that I used to hear episode after episode of Hercules and The Legendary Journeys or Xena: Warrior Princess.

And that is the case during moments where you’re in, say, a small humble, safe village in where the music tones down to where you hear the usual drones of wind instruments that sound more synthesized than anything else. And that’s funny because all of the instrumentation of the game was done with no synthesizers, unlike Withcer 1. But aside of this particular quality I took in my casual listen, the music is simply very good and does provide for what the game needs when it needs it - which is your standard hyperbole that takes cues from orchestral suites from the Romantic period which is standard for any fantasy themed set pieces.

Except that there is a distinct adherence to what maybe Tchaikovsky would do in his compositions and that is to attempt to blend folk music with orchestral arrangements. But in addition to this formula, the direction that the music composer, Marcin Przybylowicz, is to give the arrangements a “Hollywood” sound. Which, given the time of the The Witcher 3’ s production, meant incorporating heavy use of bass percussion and horn sections playing sustained notes along with, perhaps, some choir used in select fashion.

The most striking thing, though, is that given that the The Witcher 3 is a Polish video game production, the incorporation of Bulgarian folk music - which I could assume is not quite as Slavic as that of Poland’s, but has a distinction that could tap into the same “primal” sounds that Tchaikovsky tried to incorporate with Russian folk music in his compositions, which makes The Witcher 3 soundtrack have distinct feel that is similar to Kenji Kawai’s score for the 1995 Ghost In The Shell animated film - in where he incorporated Bulgarian folk music influences in his orchestral arrangements.

But Bulgarian influence is more overt in Przybylowicz’s compositions: when in combat, the game uses a Bulgarian wedding song for combat - but for the non-Bulgarian ear, this song sounds more than foreign, it sounds otherworldly . But the only complaint is that it uses the same themes, two of them to be exact, almost all the time. With some rendition variations here and there as far as instrumental takes and some vocals versions used interchangeably between battle to battle. But even with slight variation with thematic renditions, the themes are still the same and I don’t quite understand why was it very important to play it by the numbers when it came to writing these themes.


Sound Effects

The weapons, ambient sounds, and environmental soundtracks are all that play in a way that I can only best describe as a light tapestry of sound that compliments the particular places that you may happen to be. And it is with such success of execution that you can’t help but be influenced by it in the manner that you end up playing in a particular area of the world that you happen to be in.

For instance, when you’re in the first area of the game, the village of White Orchid, you have all the sounds of activity on behalf of the peasantry: from the walking, work, and movement on top of certain terrain (dry road, farm, or wet earth). And this is all done with subtlety that is less obvious than that in Witcher1 where it only took just a clear step towards a building or particular specific area to where you could then hear the ambient soundtrack kick in at once - really just a simple trigger action event that plays as a result where your playable character is positioned within the world.

In the Witcher 3, this is more gradual and comes at you where you don’t even notice and take for granted - just like in real life with the accustomed ambient sounds of, say, the neighborhood that we live in around our home!

In places like Elven ruins, you hear the sounds of air passages and some bits of water drops going into puddles or small, very small, bodies of waters. You get the impressions of dampness, of spaces of dry, and the impressions of walls comprised of a brick and some earth. To get this much from sounds, ambient at that, is cause to give kudos to the sound engineers and programmers.

The most important, of course, is, in addition to environmental sountracks and effects are the ones used for weapons. Swords, crossbows, and magic projectiles, are things that are given some bombast that’s characterized with bass and stereo panorama that is somewhat constant despite the moves to make sound effects more spatial (which can sometimes cause for tinny playback at time with some video games). Witcher 3 doesn’t really disappoint at all when it comes to this but the moments where “metal meets metal” - that’s to say that swords by enemy non-playable characters, are going to meet, the sound is somewhat not as satisfying to me and makes me try harder to get to the real sounds that I want to hear that do have a lot more presence: the cut of sinew. Sounds of cleavage are where the real meat and bones are in the combat of the game and it’s what makes the combat really come alive. So what does this mean for the player? I think it motivates, as it did with me, to try to engage combat with enemies in the game as fast and as aggressively as possible - quite literally aim for the jugular at once.

There are some moments though where the sountracks for ambience do annoy me: for instance when I’m at an inn or area there are some looping that is audible so I guess the important thing is to, if you’re anything like me that catches these things and subsequently gets annoyed easily by repetition, get whatever you need to do quickly wherever you are at the inn and get out as fast as you can. There are places like barbershops, herb and food stores that have only just casual ambient sounds and music scores for the general area of which the location is at that don’t distract from what you’re focusing on.

In Conclusion

So at the end would I recommend The Witcher 3? Yes, definitely, play it through and through and take your time and, once you’re done, play it again, and after that, play it yet again with mods (EMB mods I would recommend for people with seriously high end PC hardware). If you have not played the prior two Witcher games that’s fine but I would recommend to do so in order to really appreciate where the Witcher 3 stands in comparison to the prior two entries to this spectacular trilogy.

And so with that being said, I move on to the next set of titles to later review.