Expectations
After playing The witcher 1 and 2 my expectations for The Witcher 3 were high, but not too high due to the fact that I had seen some dip in quality inside TW2, a game that should have capitalized on the strength of the prior one, but didn’t.
[The Witcher 1]
The witcher 1 made you feel like a Witcher. You were considerably better than a human when fighting, but don’t forget that witchers hunt monsters, and monsters would still pose a danger to you. This is especially clear when you have to face the beast.
One time, after playing TW1 a lot of times, I wanted to see if I could face the Beast without an oil, basically ignoring
> my background,
> what it means to face a beast of such power,
> the stories around the beast itself
proving to myself that oils were only an annoyance that could be easily ignored and with them the game mechanics.
I was wrong. I found myself in a corner glitching to face the beast (if I remember well I had moved Geralt near the house in a spot where the Beast wouldn’t be able to hit me but I would).
Against the beast you were forced to use the oil, because there was a huge difficulty spike that would have thought you that the game doesn’t forgive you for not acting like a witcher, and it had a beautiful alchemy system tailored to your needs. You were to use all the tools at your disposal.
Right after facing the beast, you could choose if you wanted to save the witch or not, putting you in face of your decisions not only in the next chapters, but even in the endgame, basically proving that a game where your decision matters could be made and it was there in front of your eyes.
Same could be said for Alvin, proving that you could even face new challenges and subvert your own expectations, with a dialogue system tailored to that. For example, I remember more than two choices when talking to Alvin, proving that Geralt would act not only as Geralt, but also tailored to the player agency, making the player identify as Geralt and actually caring for him and what was around him.
[The witcher 2]
I liked The witcher 2, because it was really a paragon when it comes to different choices and chances given to the player. The first one is between Iorveth and Roche, basically netting you two different paths with you different point of views, actually expanding the world in new ways and giving the players more insights to everything that is going around him, in a world where political matters become huge right in the end; but you are being used by these political matters right at the beginning, unwillingly and unknowningly.
And where you could see and hope that the amount of choices would make you actually think what to do, because in this game you thought that what would you do would matter, but guess what, nothing you did is really looked upon in the next chapter of the witcher saga.
[The Witcher 3]
The witcher 3 is a really weird game. To be honest a part of me thinks it isn’t a rpg, but more of an action interactive movie where you move from one spot to another making the story go on, but without the urgency or agency a player is supposed to have in such a game.
Thing is that I would like to get invested in it, but the game simply won’t you. This is first, suggested by the limited amount of dialogues choices first, and second by ignoring what you did in the prior chapters.
In the witcher 2 I had joined Iorveth and fred Saskia, but none of these things mattered. For a game that has so many Goty prizes I had expected that they wouldn’t alienate me or at least these players that made such a choice, instead of casting myself in such a world I didn’t make but I was forced to live in.
The witcher was always proposed a game where every choice matters and what you do as an effect, be it now or later, on what happens next, basically making you question yourself. Do I follow the code (be neutral) or do I take a side? Making you realize that even not taking a side could be a bad choice, because you were forced to endure what you had made and making the player question if the code was right or not.
In the witcher 3 these choices do not matter at all, but the issues is that some of the quest would not need such an effect to be cast upon the player, just impersonating yourself in the quest giver could make myself immersed in the world. Stellar examples are “the cat and the wolf” quest and “save my husband” (now I can’t remember then name) quest where you can’t simply act like I personally would, forcing myself to play another agency, another journey, that of Cd Project.
When I go into a game, I don’t need a huge open world with no loading screens to be amazed, but I need sheer quality, quality that makes me question myself and re-write my personal parameters on what a good game should do, not what a good game should have done.
[so, having a huge continent for me is pointless if there is no meaningful content in it. But more to it later...]
Another issue that I’ve found is that not only the alchemy system was watered down, but you are not needed to use oils and so on, even in higher difficulties, basically making you a god amongst humans, especially because apart from your mutations you aren’t much different from humans (actually in game guards have even a higher level than you, proving that the mechanics are not well thought by Cd project).
On top of this, you start once again from Level 1, like if you had never done anything before, but developers weren’t even intelligent about it. Issue is, I shouldn’t need to kill a creature to make the note appear on the bestiary, simply because I’ve already probably killed it in TW1 or TW2. Not to add on top of that, that there are special creatures in the prior game that would have netted you special mutations, that I would really loved to see in this game, even from the beginning, implying that not everything was lost just because they couldn’t think about a smart way to merge mechanics with a good levelling curve.
Monsters are pointless too. There is no special way nor meaningful way to beat them. Drowner, werewolf, warg, wild dogs, wraith, there is so little variety in the way they fight, making you essentially parry against human and dodge or roll against monsters, with a little variety for some fights, when they charge at you.
There are monsters where you just smash, then move to their left, smash, then move behind them, smash, then move to the right: is this a sign of good encounters where Geralt beat their wits, or are these just ominomous (when it comes to intelligence) monsters?
I didn’t tell you the best thing: without mods, you can meet monsters with a red skulls, that are simply unbeatable because developers didn’t think of actually manually deciding their stats, they just make the game arbitrarily set their dmg or health to a certain threeshold just to make the player face unbeatable odds, and on top of that, MONSTERS DO NOT GIVE XP, or at least if they do it is so little and unmeaningful that you are forced to do quests to level up.
And on top of that not only quests are silly, but they are thought like shit. You are supposed to do the quests on the level the developers think you should have done them, making you have to search on internet the order in which said quests are done or face a xp penalty, with people actually defending this system telling “isn’t the experience (note the pun) of the quest enough for a player? Does it have to have a reward”?
Great quests, really: you just use your witcher senses and follow the red items, with Geralt making a remarks on them every time you click E. Does it sound like a game or an interactive movie?
Dialogues are silly too, because none of them surprised me for the creativity behind it, and I actually found myself wanting to skip or skipping things because they were simply pointless. Actually, more than once I found myself thinking that they were made this way on purpose to make the player waste time and think “oh, how many hours Witcher 3 made me play, I’m so happy for the purpose”, because it seems like spending meaningful time on a game is over-rated.
First quest: Twisted Firestarter
As soon as you enter White Orchard, you can do this quest where a certain dwarf asks you if you can find the guy that started the fire that destroyed his forge (and not even well, given that the dwarf is still working).
You just right click the mouse and follow the traces behind the forge until you find the arsonist, which tells you that he did it because the dwarf is getting rich out of the occupation.
You confront him and can choose to get the money from him or bring him to the dwarf. You bring him to the dwarf, he gets hanged and you get the help of the blacksmith whenever you wish.
Okay, let’s put this quest in the witcher 1: bringing the arsonist to justice (the Nilfgaardian invader), would have made people in the village actually start to despise Geralt from what he has done and Geralt would have had to face discriminations from shops (be it higher prices) or people would outright refuse to talk to him. None of this happens at all.
Ideal quest for an interactive movie, but with no point in a world like the one of the witcher.
2/10
