The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Why It's Probably One of The Most Addicting Games Ever

I would like to consider myself fairly interested in the fantasy-open-world game genre.  I started with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  I became addicted almost right away.  It was the first game that really showed me what games could do in an open world setting.  I easily put over 600 hours through 5 different characters in the game, and I truly embraced the aspect of Role Playing.  I would play as a true paragon of the Fighter's Guild, or as a rough and tough assassin of the Dark Brotherhood.  It was truly a breath of fresh air from the extremely linear, but still good, games from the past.  Then I got on board with Fallout 3.  It was probably even more amazing than Oblivion  to me.  The post-apocalyptic wasteland setting mixed with 1950's American Culture frozen in time was just so interesting and captivating.  I also put a crapload of hours into Skyrim and the original Fallout and Fallout 2.


That being said, I feel The Witcher 3 is better.

Source: GameSpot

The Witcher is an interesting universe.  I had never played any of the prequels, so I really never knew anything about the world.  I actually only bought the game because I was longing for a strong open-world experience on next-gen (the loss of my PS3 and all the games when I traded them in hit me pretty hard).  I had played Dragon Age: Inquisition and loved it, but it too was just a bit too linear for my taste.  I didn't have a problem with the combat system, but I know a lot of people thought it was too clunky for consoles.  The story-telling, I thought, was pretty superb, as BioWare has always been good with that (i.e. the Mass Effect series, which I also adamantly played).  Video games have moved beyond just your average shoot-em-ups (albeit they still exist, I'm looking at you Call of Duty and Destiny) and have moved on to telling epic stories than can pan out almost any way you want.  While some truly open world games like Oblivion and Skyrim will let you do almost anything you want, the story itself suffers for it.  Say what you will about them, the storylines as a whole were extremely weak.

The Witcher 3 does not have this problem.

Every single quest that I have done has involved an intricate story that felt like it was scripted out, thought out, and executed with precision.  Almost every other game I have played has had countless quests where the objective is to 'go to place x and kill/collect y number of thing z,'  While those kinds of quests can be fun, they often lack in substance.  There is typically no reasoning behind why you are doing it, or if there is reason, it tends to be fairly weak.  In The Witcher, this has yet to happen.  I bought the game almost exactly a week ago and I have put almost 50 hours into it so far, and not a single quest I have done follows this formula.  Every one has had an intricate backstory that can be traced to a larger, in-world problem.  The quests are often so well-written that you don't even realize you have put an hour or two into them.  While it could probably stand to have a little less 'witcher sensing,' which is basically the Detective Mode from the recent Batman games, they still tend to be interesting and involved.  Just last night I started playing at 6:30PM, and had to pull myself away from it 5 hours later because I had things I needed to do before bed.  It is so well-put together, I really can't describe it here.  The quests make it so addictive that it is just amazing.

The main characters in The Witcher 3

However, like every game out there it does have its flaws.  Combat to me was tricky to get a hold of.  I am used to games like Borderlands 2 where your character will go exactly where you want him to with no hesitation.  Geralt in The Witcher is not like this.  He feels like a human.  While that is an amazing feat from a programming perspective, it is also kind of annoying at first.  It is like we are controlling ourselves with puppet strings but have all the limitations of real life to think about.  He can't just do a 180 degree turn on the spot, it takes time.  His actions are not instantaneous, you need to think about what he is actually doing and how it will chain to what you want him to do.  From what I have heard, it is a lot like the character control in the Bloodborne and Dark Souls games.  Combat is unforgiving, and you quickly learn you have to be defensive.  I have jumped between difficulty levels quite a few times for fights I just couldn't win, but that's mostly because I had a hard time getting used to the combat, of which there is quite a bit.

Other than that, and the few generic complaints that plague every massive open-world game, like reused assets and the like, my biggest complaint is Roach.  Roach is the name that Geralt gives to every horse he has ever owned (which probably makes it easier for the emotionless witcher to remember), and he is one dumb creature.  Honestly, his controlling is pretty bad.  Maybe I just don't like the feel of a realistic horse, or maybe I just don't know how a horse is meant to feel, but I do not like it.  If you are in an open plain, then yeah galloping across the land is easy, but god forbid you ever need to navigate with Roach, it is really hard to do.

Those two complaints aside, I wish that I wasn't taking summer classes so that I could play this game more.  After the first few slow missions, the game picks up extremely quickly.  While its a shame the game starts so slowly, it had to be done to ease the newbies to the universe, like myself.  I strongly recommend this game to anyone who is even remotely a fan of open-world games.  Give it some time.  At first, I wasn't sure if I even liked the game.  Then, after I forced myself to spend about 3 hours with it, I feel in love.  Just as much as Geralt with the smell of lilac and gooseberries.

If you can only pick up one game for the next few months, I'd strongly recommend it be The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.  It might not be perfect, but its the closest I've seen to it in a very long while.