Review: The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

I have spent so much time so deep in a gritty fantasy world these last few weeks that I never knew if I’d find my way out again. The world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is so huge, and so complex, that it’s almost daunting at first. There’s so much to explore and such a huge world to get lost in you don’t know where to start. You just have to ride off on your trusty horse, Roach, and immerse yourself.

I spent more time in this world than I have in a game for a long time, a truly scary amount of time in fact, but now that it’s over, and the Wild Hunt has been defeated, I find myself thinking I wish it hadn’t ended already.

The more you play The Wild Hunt, the more exciting it becomes. The story starts with our hero Geralt of Rivia tracking his lost love Yennefer of Vengerburg across a broken no man’s land between two clashing empires. You ride through green plains, chasing giant soaring Griffins and hunting down bandits, and get to know the plight of the common man on the street whose life is shattered by the war, in ways both simple and huge. From mothers weeping over sons lost in the endless battles just over the horizon, to merchants getting rich from selling the belongings of the dead, everyone has an agenda here. It’ll be hard to go back to playing other RPGs after this, when the simplest quest has so much thought behind it. A quick example from the games very start: a Dwarven blacksmith in a rural hamlet has been forced to make weapons for the enemy Nilfgaardian invaders camped nearby. He had no choice in the matter, but one of the local human population used it as an excuse to commit a race hate act against the Dwarf, and burn his smithy down for being a traitor to his country. You find the arsonist, he’s just a hateful drunk who lost his family in the war. Does he deserve to hang for the crime if you turn him in? Will he commit more acts of aggression against undeserving people if you let him go? Regardless, if the Dwarf is assisted by Nilfgaard in repairing the damage done, the locals will hate him anyway. 

The sort of depth found in this little side quest is all through the game, with complex stories and lives touched upon in every little facet. Those who’re familiar with the previous Witcher games know to expect to confront issues with your own choices, issues like war, politics, sex and racism alongside the expected quota of slavering monsters to dispatch with your swords.

This is the final story in the world of the Witcher, and it has a lot to live up to. Seven books and three award winning games worth of characters and storylines have come to a head here, with a lot to do, and no time is wasted. From adventuring among the hills of Kaer Morhen with Vesemir and the other Witchers of the School of the Wolf, political intrigue with old enemy Sigismund Dijkstra, and guerrilla warfare alongside Vernon Roche, you’ll meet almost every character you remember, or forgot entirely, from previous incarnations of the source material. This can, of course, be overwhelming for some gamers, with a bit of a cutthroat attitude to lore present, and not much explanation given to times when the audience, especially English speakers who still haven’t had three of the books in the series translated yet, may have no idea who some of these characters are. This is noticeably present with the game's dominant story thread, the pursuit of Geralt’s ward Ciri. The complex relationship between Geralt and Ciri, and indeed Ciri and the majority of characters in the game, can be difficult to follow for those no well versed in the source material.

Not that the story is difficult to enjoy without this knowledge, of course. When characters are greeted as old friends or hated enemies by Geralt, it’s easy to take in stride and go along with it, as the subtext of dialogue is sharp and well written, without the need for distracting exposition or details. Indeed, it’s probably a lot better to simply wonder what a characters past might be than have a novels worth of prior plot-line shoved at you in awkward expositional dialogue. 

All the favorite characters have returned, with Geralt himself remaining exactly as Dandelion continues to describe him: Gruff, violent, yet possessed of a heart and humor like none other. Favorites proudly return, like the king of take-no-shit Dwarven one liners, Zoltan Chivay, and the endlessly patriotic Vernon Roche. Another enjoyable facet is that even amongst all the returning characters we know and love, the minor new characters are standout too. Like the inexplicably likable Nilfgaardian General Morvran Voorhis who’s just friendly as hell in a story that seems to be going on without him.  

The character I felt that, regardless of prior knowledge, we all needed to know more about, and indeed, should have seen more of in the game, was the emperor of Nilfgaard himself. To give him his full title, Emhyr var Emreis, the White Flame Dancing on the Graves of His Enemies, is the enigmatic despot behind the events of the second game. Where the average fantasy story would cast Emhyr as the clear villain, Geralt’s complex history with Emhyr places him in a unique position within the grey area of morality.

Masterfully voiced by Charles Dance, Emhyr is a brilliant character, equally supremely confidant and tortured, demanding of subservience yet righteously just. Each time Geralt met with Emhyr at his grand palace (after being washed and shaven and taught to bow properly in His Eminence’s presence), I enjoyed the scene, and wanted to see more of him and Geralt’s interesting interactions.

The same attention to character really can’t be said for the stories main antagonists however. The titular Wild Hunt, a foreboding army of semi-mythical Elven warriors, aren’t present enough to really seem significant. A huge part of the games run time is lived in fear of them, either running from them, chasing them, or searching high and low for information about them, but when we actually get to meet them, they aren’t all that impressive. There are some moments, like seeing what a Wild Hunt General does when he has a lot of drinks and an entourage of eager Succubi, but the majority of the Hunt, indeed even the arch villain Eredin himself, are absent in screen time as well as real personality.

The standout villains of the piece are without a doubt the secondary ones, the trio of sisters known as the Ladies. Three brilliantly creepy figures straight out of an old European fairytail. Either stunning naked young women one moment, or shockingly disgusting malformed crones the next, these three are by far the game’s most striking and memorable antagonists. They are introduced in an incredibly eerie scene talking to Geralt through a sinister weaving depicting their playful fairer selves, and yet the voices do not match the lovely faces we’re seeing by any stretch of the imagination. Each one has such brilliant, grotesque personality, I would have been happy to see the crones as the dominant villains all their own. 

The more I played the Witcher 3, the more I wanted to. It gets bigger as you go, with the world expanding from one rural hamlet to moving freely between an open countryside, with villages, cities, and swamplands to explore on foot or horseback, to mountainous Nordic islands that you can transverse by sailboat. As you explore in your search for Ciri, you’ll find yourself picking up Witcher contracts along the way, hunting down monsters for pay. Be it following the steps that led to a gruesome murder of a young woman, and summoning her angry spirit to lay her to rest, or following the bloody remains of a ruined miners camp to a Troll’s cookpot, many of these contracts are wildly different in style and scope. Some have great red herring twists, and some can be solved by simple dialogue alone (or by careful application of a bit of coin here and there).

There’s a string of new mini games to test yourself at, like fist-fighting or horse-racing, and an extensive card game, along with a seriously infectious card collecting aspect to it that swiftly becomes a serious habit. I can’t tell you how many times I ran into a new character, be told they were a powerful druid or a storied warrior, and immediately asked myself ‘But will they play gwent with me?!’

The whole game style has evolved significantly on from the Witcher 2, to be a little more RPG than action, almost a blending of the styles of the first and second games. Character development is more in depth, with many paths to take along the way, and far too many to reach out into in a single run. By the time you reach the endgame, you’ll only have enough attribute points to explore one of the five possible branches, and probably only half of it at most, so your Geralt may be wildly different from your friends. Geralt’s signs have been retooled significantly, making each one of major use in their own way, and some so good that an entire character can be built around use of one sign and its various abilities. Each sign now has multiple uses and upgrades to branch into, leading for a bit more variety in your spell-casting than in previous games.

Combat itself is also a whole new beat from the last game, with AI being a bit sharper, and a lot less vulnerable to hacking and slashing like a madman. Enemies dodge and weave, and counterattack, and you’ve got to be quick on your feet to dodge swipes and claws from monsters, and similarly quick to block and parry melee attacks from human opponents. The game is merciless on the harder difficulty settings, and it’s good to see a lot of rewarding ways to explore approaching combat than just pounding ability points into sword mastery.

Throughout your journey to find Ciri, you also get the chance to live through fragments of her own adventure trough her eyes, letting you play as Ciri in these scenes. These are a fantastic change from the gameplay as Geralt, as each character plays quite differently. Geralt is strong, efficient and methodical, whereas Ciri is impulsive wild, and incredibly powerful, and the game-play works as such, with Ciri moving at great speeds, teleporting around the battlefield in flashes of green light. It takes a moment getting used to at first, but soon you’ll love the chances you get to play as Ciri. CDProjekt Red have promised a wide assortment of downloadable support to the Witcher, and any such content featuring more time to play as Ciri would be incredibly welcome.

Any game this huge is not without its flaws, and the Witchers are all fairly merciful in the long run. I’d have loved more interaction with Eredin. For the final villain of a story this huge, he just wasn’t complex, and curiously enough, in a series that prides itself so much on breaking fantasy clichés, Eredin was very much the stock ‘dark lord’ archetype and not much more. 
Some curious issues seem to pop up in what I can only assume comes from the censorship of the game for the North American market. It doesn’t change the game at all, but certainly impacts scenes in an awkward way. Don’t have a character be told to strip naked, comment on the act of stripping naked, and then act as if they’re naked in the scene, when they are actually wearing underwear through the whole scene. It’s just weird, and makes you feel as if you’re playing an edited version.  

Some graphical bugs seem present too, but these end up simply being hilarious more than anything else. Occasionally the AI will bug out during a cut scene, and a character or object will turn up where it clearly isn't supposed to. In one choice example I encountered, during a heartfelt exchange between Geralt and Ciri, Morvran Voorhis wandered into the background where he stood there photobombing the drama for a while, before wandering off again to god knows where. It was great, but nevertheless ruined the moment somewhat. 

Upon finishing the Witcher 3, I realized I'd spent a long time lost in that world. I'd hunted down dozens of monsters, helped Elves and Dwarves and Halflings and a man named Dudu, I'd foiled political plots and battled dimension traveling Elves on a frozen pirate ship, and slept with as many sorceresses as I could. I would have tried to sleep with Dandelion too if they'd let me. I've played all three games, two of them several times over, I have lovingly read Sapkowski's original novels, and I even met a very beloved friend on the Witcher forum years ago. After I'd done all that, I still want more, and that's the best thing I can say about the world of the Witcher. I just don't want it to be over already.