Does a game have white people with pointy ears and purple fizzy stuff coming from a woman’s hands or from the edge of a twig she found? Yeah, I don’t like it. The word fantasy to me is ruined by the entertainment industry, because while the word itself is to conjure ideas of abstract and unusual worlds based on your own preferences. The general consensus among TV networks, movie studios, and publishing house executives in each respective industry doesn’t understand that and just makes it short-people and pornography. Something that is otherwise known as the HBO special.

When it came to the 2015’s high-fantasy RPG hit, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I was not starting with a clean slate. In fact, you could have said I was biased against it from the minute the gate opened and I was sent out like a whippet after a robot rabbit (kill the wabbit!), at that point, I hated RPGs and fantasy to the nth degree. Of course, if you’ve spent time listening to my opinion on games in recent years, you’ll know I’ve moved from my position. I’ve had more character development than some Doctor Who characters of late. I’ve said it before, but what I think contributed to that in large part was Dyslexia hampering my opinion of RPGs before the mid to late 00s onward.

I won’t hang on to it for long, but flowery language, fantasy naming conventions, and generally an idea of having to read something laboriously lengthy is something I have little interest in. Yeah, something tells me there was a contributing factor in my distancing from the genre of Peter Dinklage and breasts glistening in the pale moonlight by the ocean blue. So what was it that made The Witcher 3 so different? It is a game with breasts, short men, and lots of stabbing of standard fantasy characters, there had to be something about it that’s different.

You play as a man with a voice so gruff David Hayter sounds like Theodore Seville, all you do is your job, and you can stick two fingers up at the main quest and play side quests with a better story than even the best of Game of Thrones. I’ll say it now, even the worst of The Witcher 3‘s side quests can outshine a majority of Game of Thrones, no matter how many times Ed Sheeran appears in the show. Geralt stands up alongside Kazuma Kiryu as two men just getting on with a day that keeps smacking them in the face. He isn’t so much as eye-rollingly smug like all these teenagers with their memes, but you can feel the dejected “this guy” with every line.

In fact, I think the reason The Witcher 3 and Geralt himself caught my imagination is that it is medieval Columbo. The world around you is engulfed by the catastrophe of war and ruin, but as much as that gets tangled up in your story, you have your own goals. It doesn’t take long to pull you in with the basic details, it tells you the reason for some monsters hanging around, and you are introduced to the major players all within 45-minutes of play. This sets you up for 50, 60, 70 hours of adventure through a world that is grim, a wound ripped open by the war, and with every detail, you’ll see the desperation of people just looking to get by. There are villagers going hungry and being tormented by monsters only a Witcher is good for.

Ok, the main quest is a bit of an odd mix. You spend most of your time finding a woman, but not always the same woman. For about the first few hours you are tracking down your wife, well, the medieval equivalent of that for two fantasy people who seem to never spend any time together. Then you spend far too long hunting your daughter, who’s not actually your daughter, but if I am quite honest, Emhyer var Emreis can die in a ditch. While it seems like an oddly simplistic story and would historically suggest a damsel in distress, The Witcher 3 works better if you work off of those assumptions.

With every disinterested huff and puff from Geralt, you can feel his impatience with everyone he deals with. Match this with quality writing, strong quest lines to follow, and the world built not only by typical RPG dialogue trees but through the design itself, it is hard not to be pulled in. There is one quest (in particular) that is so beautifully written, and it is hard to say beautiful given its contents, but that’s exactly what it is. The Bloody Baron, a quest that shows this world in all of its glory and horrors, with exceptional writing exposing the raw nature for which the game will display its characters.

If you’ve played at least a little bit of The Witcher 3, that may make it sound like misery porn. My point is more so the ability to put characters in those uncomfortable and horrible places, but do it well, and do it with enough character to make me as a player feel connected while also advancing the plot. As much as you are seeing and hearing horrific things while characters are breaking their heart to you, the world’s grumpiest man, it can show why you need to be good. Alternately, it can ground the world in characters alone instead of the massive war ravaging the lands.

None of this is to say that you’ll focus more on the story than anything else, as the gameplay is still a large part of this whole lark. Going into it, it may sound strange to know you’ll have two swords (one for each enemy variant) alongside spell (sign) casting and some more typical high-fantasy RPG aspects. However, the variation in enemy type doesn’t take that long to get your head around. You use silver for your fantasy types and steel for anything you’d actually be able to go out and stab if you were enough of a psychotic. While the sign casting is something you can get by on with only shielding with Quen and blasting fire with Igni. The rest are useless.

Though that’s mostly focusing on the combat, which kind of breaks away from the Columbo thing I mentioned earlier. Think of it like Columbo crossed with medieval Batman: You enjoy solving people’s problems, but by pressing one of two buttons to attack when required to, then when looking for clues, you employ your desaturated detective vision. It may sound like I am actively trying to reduce the concept, but that is plainly because it has become the default in every other game. It is effective and is utilized well enough, but it is like butter between two pieces of bread. If you don’t have a condiment, then it is useful but otherwise boring.

What I suppose I am attempting to explain is that the gameplay (more or less) is playing it safe. This isn’t a horrible thing to do, given this is a full-blown RPG spread over such a rather comprehensive map and many hours of side-questing and story. All the same, it doesn’t blow your socks off. It’s purposefully there not to offend or be off-putting, instead, it feels like a piece of comfort if this is your first experience of the series. Going back after the fact showed me two things: It is not just Cyberpunk 2077 and Saints Row 2 that CD Projekt Red can’t wrap their heads around working properly, and that the first game was not made for human consumption.

Sure, my genitals will be hoisted aloft into the parapets of the nearest garrison by the PC-centric Klingons that enjoy WoW‘s UI, but maybe this “dumbed down” action-focused gameplay is better for audience appeal. It allows for console ports, two of which are coming next year to at least one console that might run it at 60 fps in Novigrad. Yes, if you’ve played the PS4 or I assume the Xbox One version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you’ll be wondering why Geralt doesn’t take himself on a quest for some better performance in built-up areas. While a majority of the game runs reasonably well for consoles, there is a significant issue both loading the city and running the game when in it.

As much as it sounds like I am complaining about everything but the story, I do enjoy a fairly substantial portion of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It was one of the RPGs to get me into the genre and did so with enticing characters, comforting gameplay, and a world that despite its darkness has some shining lights of fun, hope, and wonder. That said, when everyone is asking me to play medieval Yu-Gi-Oh!, there is a bit of playfulness in the theming. If I am quite honest, I’ve never liked Gwent and after tidying up the Gwent quests when returning to my completed save, I still don’t like it.

Spin it off into its own game all you like, but it is a very simple and very boring game. As something to flesh out the world a little more and give the in-game characters something to do as a sense of escapism for their horrible lives that isn’t purposefully catching dysentery, it is good. Is it enjoyable as a game on its own? No, it is a strategy game for children and once you understand its mechanics, you can practically spam specific cards and win easily. As long as you have more cards in hand than your opponent, the chances of you winning are greatly increased ten-fold. In other words, have a ton of spies and you can almost entirely cripple them.

That said, Gwent is entirely optional among the myriad of conversation trees and switching between your stabby sticks. While there are some comparisons between the HBO special and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I’d much rather suggest The Witcher 3 for better writing, a better world, characters that are empathetic, and an all-around better experience. By no means is it a perfect experience, as years on, there are still visual bugs and grievances such as performance. Honestly, if the fact I can enjoy it while formally holding the position of death to RPGs (kill the WPG), it might be worth checking out at the very least.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

$39.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Fantastic writing throughout.
• Brilliantly realized characters.
• Combat and gameplay that doesn't get in the way.
• The unicorn.

Cons

• Performance issues and minor bugs.
• Gwent, full-stop.