The Witcher 3 Critique

[Music] a lot of people have called the witch of rare masterpiece if that's true if it is a masterpiece it's a very very flawed one The Fool its flaws there is something special about it and a lot of people have said a lot of things about this game most of which is in the form of praise and has resulted in certain narratives about what makes this game great and I think those narratives have got a lot of things wrong The Witcher 3 is a great game but it's not great as an open-world game it's open mode has many problems and a lot of the modern trends that have led to people starting to feel disillusioned with the concept of open-world games are present there it's also not an amazing RPG opportunities for role-playing are quite limited and the RPG systems that have come to define the genre arrive a shallow or poorly implemented The Witcher 3 also doesn't have an amazing main storyline there are plenty of valid reasons to enjoy it story but the main storyline has serious problems and it falls apart of it towards the end of the game of course The Witcher 3 is a great game is just not necessarily great for the reasons sometimes attributed to it I want to expand on those statements but before that it really is worth considering how The Witcher 3 has been and continues to be talked about all great games generates a certain degree of hype that seems to subside a bit over time but the height for The Witcher 3 still seems to be going strong this game has generated a huge amount of passion and that in itself is a great thing but I think it's violated discussions about the game at times as with all things that get a lot of praise and attention The Witcher 3 has become somewhat polarizing this is resulted in things like YouTube videos that seem praised for the game in somewhat hyperbolic ways as well as a certain level of backlash against the game for being overrated perhaps it's a part of internet culture that opinions seem to get exaggerated and people tend to gravitate towards extremes but in the case of Witcher 3 I think that this course the surrounds this game has meant real critiques of its flaws have been somewhat lacking The Witcher freeze flaws are real and they are many but they don't necessarily take away from its good forty's people can get too caught up with review scores and with a certain mindsets that they breathe where everything has to be rated and Metacritic scores are everything people make the mistake of assessing games of starting as 10 out of tens and then subtracting points for each floor or they try to line up the good in the bad parts of a game in some imaginary mathematical equation that is meant to produce some meaningful and objective numerical representation of quality thinking in these ways can lead you to missing the point of it Metacritic scores do tell you something but they certainly don't tell you everything too much emphasis on scores and objectivity can lead you to seriously undervaluing how good the good parts of a game are and they can also lead to a certain defensive nasaan it comes to admitting the floors and things you like as if by admitting for their existence your love for something has to be lessened as a result but that's not true a lot of the greatest things in life are also heavily flawed because the be truly great involves taking risks and pushing limits and exposing yourself to failure the greatness never comes from playing it safe and focusing solely on minimizing flaws so it's important to look at both sides to acknowledge bifur game's flaws and it's shrimps and to know that each of these doesn't invalidate the other the different reactions people have to this game make sense both the ones calling it a masterpiece and the ones calling it overrated it just depends on what parts of the experience matters to you different people have different values for different things and this leads to different opinions and people don't need to agree with one another but it's always good to understand each other and so it's my hope for this video will explain why some people love this game so much as well as explaining why others don't because to really understand this game you need to look at both but before this video truly gets underway there are two more things I need to cover the first is to at least acknowledge how the witcher 3 fits into the story of setup react i don't want to spend too much time on this as there's too much to say about the witcher 3 already as this is something I covered in previous videos I think it at least deserves being mentioned The Witcher 3 was a huge success both in terms of reviews sales and fun reception it went on to win a large number of Game of the Year awards apparently more than any other game although there's reasons why that statistic may be misleading but it's still an incredible achievement especially when you consider how fast adapt reacts have come and how they manage to consistently build on their successes despite many things going wrong along the way they've won themselves many fans not just for the games they've produced but also their willingness to support their games with regular patches DRM free versions and free DLC and all these things were continued by The Witcher 3 and while who knows what the future has in store for now the love they received thus seemed fairly well-deserved the final thing I need to say is this video will contain many spoilers for the which are free although spoilers for the other Witcher games and the book should be kept to a minimum the official press release announcing The Witcher 3 included the announcement of his fight from the world that was promised to be larger than any other in modern RPG history I remember reading this announcement as a which of them and being nervous at the time open-world seems very risky and hard to pull off it's strange how that was only five years ago because in that time open worlds have not only become more common but somehow they now seem safe and the entire concept of open world games borders on being formulaic and sterile the reason for that is in part because of the rise of what seems best described as the Ubisoft model the Ubisoft model can be loosely described as an open world to a checklist of things to do structured as easy to find points of interest on a map but each have one objective for the plants are complete and you unlock these map markers through interacting with some kind of watchtower this open-world design was popularized by Ubisoft's flagship series but its influence has spread further than that and it almost feels like these games are becoming their own genre and this is what the witcher 3 resembles it's an open-world that follows the ubisoft model pretty closely the points of interest are easily comparable the mini-map but even resembles far cry and watchtowers do exist they're just the chords Motorsports it's nice you don't have to climb them but they really do function in the exact same way interacting with a notice board unlocks question marks you can then move to one after the other without any need to actually explore or think for yourself the entire Ubisoft model of open-world designed has some obvious flaws it's boring to explore overly easy to complete tasks in and it gets very repetitive after a certain amount of time and these criticisms apply to the wish to freeze open world but the Ubisoft model is supposed to serve a purpose they provides a content delivery system allowing you to see the best parts of the game world or making incremental progress towards some meta objectives and getting small rewards on the way I'm not really a fan personally but some people like this and find it satisfying in hey that's their opinion but the witcher 3 fails at this going from question mark to question mark and clearing out each area is not very satisfying it's not rewarding it doesn't show you the best content or parts of The Witcher freeze world's and worst of all it's not particularly fun and players will learn this maybe you explore the whole of white orchards I mean it's not that big and at that stage in the game the things you're seeing are all new nothing has had a chance to be repetitive and you may even be getting some in-game rewards in the way of cleansing items you may even find a few nice details like a letter in a bandit camp that humanizes those bandits and makes the world feel a bit more real but then you get to the main map and suddenly going to every question mark is taken a long time and the admittedly very impressive large scale of the world might start to give you second thoughts on this approach what's more these points of interest may start becoming repetitive and you realize there's only a few different types these are bandit camps monster nests guarded treasures abandoned sites places of power and a few variants of these but all of these play out in the same way there's one fights and then you loot the area for your rewards the fights is rarely interesting and the reward is very rarely worth anything with places of power being the only real exception as I at least get a skill point the note I found that the first Lander camp was great but by the time you get to the 10th note or the 20th even they start to seem a whole lot less impressive and that treasure they might promise if you follow them feels less like a reward and more like an unnecessary chore one more boring task stopping you getting back to the good parts of the game the world doesn't look good in fact it looks great but you may start to realize you're barely looking at the world as you travel around because your eyes are glued to your mini-map and you never need to look away from it to find things in the world is everything important has been marked for you but maybe you're someone who really likes points of interest and maybe the main map of the game isn't enough to put you off maybe you even take a break from going to points of interest and tell yourself you'll come back to them later but then you get to scaliger and Skellig is amazing it looks gorgeous but as you travel around you start to realize something there's a hell of a lot of question marks out there in the water so you go to some in your slow boat and you realize they're just a few chests with nothing of interest inside and then you look at your map again and you realize just how many of these there are and maybe you start to think yourself about how long it will take you to go to the mall and the thought of doing so makes you buy a little inside and then you ask that obvious question what the hell would the developers thinking by making all these question marks in the ocean there is no way they could expect players to enjoy going to all of them and then finally it hits you this is a really argument to play The Witcher 3 the developers didn't intend for you to go to every single points of interest or to treat them like a checklist and these aren't designed to show you the best content in the game because all of the best content takes place in quests instead they were designed to fill the world up with content and the way they do their show setup reacts in experience with open wild design you're not meant to play The Witcher 3 like a Ubisoft game and once you realize that you may will enjoy the game more because there is so much content in this game that the filler points of interest aren't needed and they work better as side activities fees to stumble upon than as a checklist you need to finish the entirety of so playing this game like a Ubisoft game may not be very fun but there are more ways in which open worlds add to a game experience these are by allowing exploration giving the player freedom creating a fun sandbox for the player to play around in and lastly adding to immersion The Witcher frees open-world fails of all but one of these let's go over them one by one exploring new worlds is in some ways the open-world dream but most games fail at making exploration engaging because exploring is easy and everything worth seeing is clearly marked as it's the case in the which are free where there's almost no reason to explore as points of interest are clearly marked and when points of interest aren't very interesting how likely is it you'll find interesting things outside of those exploration isn't worthless in The Witcher 3 I'll come back to the positive sides of it later but this game certainly isn't worth playing for the sake of exploration next on the list is creating player freedom with a world as huge as the witches is it must be great to just be able to go where you want and find something to do right well no enemies and quests have specific levels and fighting enemies higher level venue is incredibly slow and difficult if they are a substantially higher level than you this gets better later on but in the first half of a game it's clear you're not designed to fight enemies to high level and that makes where you can go and what you can do surprisingly restrictive the main quest is theoretically not linear in act 1 but in practice the game's design encourages you to take a fairly straightforward path and you will also probably follow that same path in subsequent playthroughs the game is designed to reward you for doing on level quests staying in on level areas and punish you for straying too far this is not Skyrim no matter how many times people try to make comparisons between them and the enjoyment of the freedom the elderscrolls gives players for its design can't be found in the which are free next up is the open world serving as a fun sandbox for the player to create their own enjoyment from playing around with the in-game systems if you're unsure what I mean by this Fink Grand Theft Auto or something like Just Cause even before GTA online existed a open world in the series served as a space for you to make your own fun in still cars kill pedestrians get chased by the cops make a last stand in some remote corner et cetera this is sometimes referred to as imagined gameplay but no matter what you call it it doesn't apply much to The Witcher freeze world the final thing on the list is whether Witcher freeze open-world succeeds imagine an open world is much more immersive for most players for alternative structures as it provides a better illusion of realism and The Witcher 3 can certainly be immersive its world looks real enough and there is an incredible attention to detail its world is busy with many NPCs moving around seemingly going about their lives there's a fantastic sense of scale something most games don't come close to with Novogratz the main city in the witcher 3 actually feeling like it's a suitable size for a city i'll talk more about the world later but the witcher 3 can certainly be an immersive experience if you play along and don't question things too much as an immersive experience it's not particularly deep there's plenty of things that can break immersion like being able to loot every house of lawless items while those NPCs who live there stand and watch you without the slightest concern well almost every house for some reason there is a system in place where taking items counts as stealing sometimes it's not often and when it does happen it will probably take you by surprise when a bunch of high-level guards suddenly one-shot you in fact it's pretty annoying as it's a rule that's applied so inconsistently and I've been killed when I was simply trying to talk to an NPC because I accidently looted something next to them it almost feels like it was a system that was planned early on and then abandoned later but the developers didn't want to simply scrap the work they've done sorry laughter intact in a few places it was already implemented but anyways stealing is a small thing and The Witcher 3 mostly works of providing an immersive world particularly when you consider the size events and the immersion it brings maybe enough of a reason to justify making the witch a free and open world game for some people that immersion is a really big deal however that alone is not enough to say that The Witcher 3 is a great open-world game it is a great game with an open world open worlds can offer many different things but The Witcher frees open world fails at most of them by now you may have noticed that the gameplay footage you're seeing doesn't have the mini-map turns on this is footage from my third player of the game and for both my second and third playthrough I had the mini-map turned off I think I first heard the suggestion from super bunny hopps video on the game and for some players this is worth trying out when you replay the game there are a couple of things I feeling to say about this play the first is this is not at all how the game is designed to be played and doing this on your first playthrough would be frustrating as a result I have seen occasionally suggested that the game is designed to be able to be played with no mini-map and that's isn't true very occasionally an npc will give you directions but when they do they are usually useless like this why it's not away past the hill you walk and walk and then you're there got it no I don't got it which way which Hill where the [ __ ] am I going however even a description like that's rare as most times you get no directions at all the game just assumes you will know where to go because it assumes you will have your mini-map turned on traveling around the world without a map is not that hard you can often follow roads or use landmarks like crows perch or Bald Mountain to orient yourself and finding your way around by yourself can be fun traveling around this way is also more immersive and encourages you to really look around and thinking the great-looking environments the problem with playing this way his quest objectives can be hard to find you could always open your main map to check objectives they're something you'll be forced through often when doing quests but doing this is time-consuming and sometimes you'll have to do it multiple times but playing without the mini-map does make the open world a bit more interesting you no longer have to think of points of interest as checklist you can just do the ones you stumble upon then not worry about the others exploration stops being quite so brainless and as you travel around you can keep your eye out for interesting locations and then go to places you see and doing this feels so much more organic and natural sometimes your curiosity can even be rewarded by finding things outside points of interest like when following a stream to see where it takes you leads you to finding a chest navigating the world doesn't always work well but learning your way around and orienting yourself can occasionally feel surprisingly satisfying and if you do get lost your main map is still there however the most interesting thing about playing without the mini-map is how common this suggestion seems to be amongst fans lots of people do this and lots recommend for others to try it and that must tell you something about The Witcher freeze open-world it shows there's a real desire amongst plans for something more from the games world a desire to capture that real feeling of exploration even if only a little bit a desire to have some challenge in navigates in even if it's only small a desire to have an excuse to truly look at your surroundings and take in the great sights of the world as a result you can't help but wish The Witcher frees world was designed slightly differently and I think just a few small changes could have really improved the experience all that would need to be done is changing the mini-map to be a minimalistic compass that only shows north south east and west as well as the players current objective this way players won't travel around staring at the dotted line on the mini-map but we still have an easy way to find objectives and orient themselves also remove question marks from the map and instead only show points of interest after the player has been to them this will discourage players from treating them as a checklist and will make finding them feel rewarding some players may want to travel to every single point of interest that would still be possible if I use an online map and seen as how common smartphones are these days playing that way shouldn't be much of an inconvenience for players who wish to still do so anyway I don't want to spend too long speculating on what could be done differently it's too easy to wish for things and once you start it's hard to stop the reality of game design is also a lot more complex than the hypothetical side of it however I think the fact that so many people play with the deliberate disadvantage of having the mini-map turned off is proof that there is something wrong with the Witch of reeds open-world design and I hope I've explained why some people have a problem with the witches open world from a gameplay perspective next up is the Witcher free as a role-playing game I don't want to waste time getting into definitions of an RPG but I generally don't think defining what an RPG is is that important and I disagree with people who say things like fallout for instance an RPG because of X&Y reason in my opinion if a game calls itself an RPG and most people also refer to it as an RPG then that's a good enough reason to consider it as such after all definitions aren't absolutes and they do change over time of course that doesn't link all RPGs goods RPGs in regards to The Witcher 3 I don't think it's a bad RPG but I do think as a role-playing game it's quite shallow although for what it's worth the which every certainly isn't the only modern RPG that that description would apply to some people like to argue over what is and isn't an RPG but I'd much rather recall everything that seems like an RPG an RPG and just accepts that a game can be classified as an RPG and that RPG can be a great game but that doesn't guarantee that that great game is a great RPG anyway enough semantics there are three reasons why I think The Witcher 3 is a shallow role-playing experience opportunities to roleplay are limited the RPG systems in game like loot and experience points are very poorly implemented and lastly quests require little thought to complete the first of these is the most obvious but it's also the one that is less of a floor of the game and of a design choice Geralt is a defined character whether you prefer to play as a define character or a custom character is down to personal choice each has their advantages and as a defined character Geralt is great however this obviously limits role playing as you don't get to roleplay as a character of your choosing you also don't get to choose what role your character plays Geralt is always a Witcher and that is quite a narrowly defined role with a lot of meaning behind it Geralt also has a clearly established history and the way in which he reacts to events in game is always heavily constrained by his personality this is not a criticism just a statement do you get some choice in how Garrett reacts to events and how dialog is shaped and you do get to play the role of Geralt of Rivia which are extraordinaire you do get to role play but that role-playing is limited I'll talk more about dialog and characters later but let's move on to the next points in the list because they are both criticisms first up is the game's RPG systems or RPG mechanics these allow for character advancement and this has always been an important part of role-playing video games the best examples of this are experience points loot and money these offer player progression systems that reward you for completing tasks in-game and allow for your character to grow as you become higher level and get better gear and these things are not well implemented in The Witcher 3 at all let's go over experience points first as said previously the player level and monster level are both very important in The Witcher 3 due to how levels scale therefore leveling up should be very important and feel very rewarding except it doesn't because it's incredibly easy to get over level and even if you only do a very small amount of side quests as I did on my third playthrough you will still get very over levels by the time you leave novigrad this is a problem as it reduces difficulty substantially although the level scaling option for enemies that was added to the game helps alleviate this the bigger problem is once you are over leveled you get almost no xp for completing quests or other activities if Geralt is six levels or higher above the quest level then XP reduction kicks in and you get almost nothing if you're five levels higher however you still get full XP the reward doesn't scale proportionally to your level the result of this system is almost everyone will end up either leveled and then they get six levels higher than the current content and they hit a sort of soft cap at six levels higher nothing is given XP so you stay six levels higher and tweedy higher level stuff where the process repeats once the game gets going it effectively forces you to be six levels higher than you should be at most times while only giving you a real X period for small amounts of things you do it's stupid and seeing for XP gained after completing a quest doesn't feel rewarding it feels almost insulting being either leveled makes combat boring so most players will find that force that under difficulty upon so in this situation and this also means fighting enemies and completing points of interest provides no meaningful experiment in them feel pointless as a result this is bad design that could easily be avoided by simply reducing the amount of xp for quests in general and making XP reward scale proportionally to the players level but hey there's more to life than experience points and more to RPG progression than levels there's also glutes and money lutes in game sucks outside the early portions of your play free the best gear available is always the crafted which again both quest rewards and items found in the game world are always scaled below your level and so they are nearly always worse this even applies to the supposedly important items you get through the main questline he Erlich great Berlin stone fist services winters blade thought it was a legend Forge in Muharram tempered in dragon fire we didn't the uncrate family for centuries and now it's yours and it's only level 22 it's complete trash but swords and armor aren't everything what about the other stuff you'll eat and you will loot other stuff over and over and over again well the good thing about other elites is most items don't have a weight so you can loot everything freely and not have to worry about getting over encumbered in fact in 1/100 our play fer of The Witcher 3 I was over encumbered a lot less than in a 25-hour which are to play free so that's an improvement most items he eats are useless they although the game is cover at giving the impression that that's not the case different items have different colors that make them at least look valuable and you will loot plenty of blueprints and formulas that do seem to have theoretical value until you realize how useless non Witcher Gary's and how regularly you pick up the same blueprints and recipes over and over again you do find a few useful items like alcohol lesser red mutagens or repair kits connects etc but the process of looting areas and gaining items is still pretty boring the main progression system is crafting and it's handled well enough most things you need can be easily bought but there's usually one or two items per recipe that come from specific enemies and act as a gating mechanism you'll probably find these items automatically as you progress through the game but the process of continually checking and improving your blade oils and potions as well as that's all important which again is reasonably satisfying even if it's nothing special money is the final reward system and it's also not great you get some money from completing quests as well as selling items you loot money is useful but the problem is it never feels useful there is nothing interesting to buy as all the good stuff comes from crafting that doesn't mean money is useless as crafting can be quite expensive every step of the crafting process has small costs and they can add up if you haven't been bothered to so much lutes or do many side activities but money doesn't feel useful as you're unlikely to pay much attention to crafting costs you'll likely just accept and ignore them and you're never in a situation where there's an expensive item and you feel a desire to save up for it but to come back later once you have more money you use money in The Witcher 3 to pay your adventuring bills of crafting costs and repairing not to go on adventuring shopping trips to buy interesting stuff which means that money always feels boring and valueless neither XP loots nor money feels rewarding and so the in game progression systems that are a feature of most RPGs fall flat in The Witcher 3 the scale system is a slight improvement on the previous games however there is a decent amount of choice although those traces are fairly small and don't allow for many radically different playstyles the way equippable skills synergize with each other and we've equipped mutagens is nice at least that is once you've unlocked more slots later in the game and have a bit more freedom despite this the character advancement and progression is overall fairly weak in the witcher 3 and if you play rpgs because you enjoy leveling up and gaining nice loot the game has little to offer you the last reason for why this is a shallow role-playing game is how quests playout The Witcher 3 holds the player's hand heavily in its quest design you may want the one that has silly with being an RPG so let me expand on this a bit when playing traditional role-playing games eg pen and paper the most defining characteristic isn't but you get to play the role of some other character it's that you get the freedom to tackle problems the way you want to your only is limited in your actions as your imagination or so they say but that's where the magic comes from the results in collaborative storytelling where you have a huge amount of freedom and that's what makes it enjoyable braw playing video games have long tried to emulate the aspect of traditional role-playing games and obviously their ability to do so is severely limited due to the more restrictive nature of the medium requiring the player to think about their actions should be an important part of an RPG this can be done by giving them choice in conversations as the whichever it does but it should also be a part of completing quests quests should feature multiple solutions or require at least some problem-solving on the plans behalf The Witcher 3 does have examples where these apply but they haven't far - you've rarely implemented multiple solutions the quests can be difficult and in a game the size of The Witcher 3 it's somewhat understandable why this isn't always possible but it was done a lot better in The Witcher 1 and 2 however creating quests that require so little problem solving is inexcusable you will spend a lot of time in which every day in detective work and almost none of it involves the player time and time again all it amounts to is hold down the Witcher sense button press a to interact with things highlighted in red sometimes follow bright red markers and let Geralt do all the thinking for you most of the time the highlighted objects are made so obvious it's almost insulting take this example in the quest the tower full of mice hmm what could this mean I know what am I supposed to do maybe you use the lever with the bright Reds handprint next to it wow I worked that out all by myself so finding clues is incredibly easy but some what about what you do with them that's the real detective work anyway Eve writes well there are two quests in the entire game where the players skills of deduction are brought into question in a meaningful way tower full of mice and carnal sins I'll talk about them later and when I get the quests but why lean Eve a quest the detective work is implemented especially well they do still both stands as some of the best quests in the game and part of that is because the player is asked to actually think and there are possible consequences for not doing so I'm not advocating for things to always be difficult to find or for complex puzzles in each quest just for quests to require a small amount of thought from the player I don't mind if a game holds my hand a bit but in The Witcher 3 it's often excessive compare the autopsy in The Witcher 1 there are several things you can do to prepare yourself that affect how the quest plays out like reading books or talking to other people there's also multiple outcomes and working out the cause of death does require the player to think a bit it's not perfect but why can you thought for yourself felt really good it made me feel like a detective but it's not just that quest there are other examples to take when you need to find a virgin stair in The Witcher 1 during the side quests Beauty and the Beast there are no quest markers and the game doesn't tell you who to go to ask you have to work it out there's multiple sources one of which is Siegfried's and asking him leads to a nice moment and a satisfying feeling for the players having worked something out themselves and there are certain examples from The Witcher 2 or from many many other older RPGs an RPG should make you feel like the role you're playing if part of the role of a Witcher is being a detective then the player should get to feel like a detective sometimes not just feel like a spectator watching Geralt be a detective it's worse than that by almost all the detective work involves using your Witcher senses interacting with red things and letting Geralt do everything else it's usually linear requires zero effort or engagement from the player and is impossible to fail this isn't just bad role-playing design it's bad game design it's boring quests make up for this in other areas but gameplay wise they are boring I suppose at least listening to Geralt do his thing can be nice I mean questing in RPGs can get lonely and Geralt commentary can be nice to listen to but gameplay matters in games and this is bad gameplay some people may not agree with this they may prefer detective work to be easy and mostly automated maybe they've played the game for the combat and the story and that is a perfectly valid perspective something I've heard mentioned in regards to the Uncharted series is the need for a difficulty setting outside of combats as no matter what did quit accepting you play Uncharted on the puzzles and platforming remains easy and this idea is actually being implemented in the new Tomb Raider game and time will tell how that works out but this is something I wish The Witcher 3 had the game would have to be designed slightly differently but The Witcher senses could be toned down objective markers could be slightly Vega and quests could feature more dialogue choices that aren't always correct and all of this could be controlled by a separate difficulty option so those who wouldn't enjoy these changes could be unaffected I'm sure this would require a reasonable amount of work to implement but I think it would be worth it for many players as it stands there are good reasons to criticize the role playing in The Witcher 3 and there are areas I hope setup react improves on in the future but The Witcher 3 doesn't deserve the title of best RPG ever made because so many other RPGs do role-playing better The Witcher freeze combat is a surprisingly contentious topic I don't agree with Isis I leave this game has bio combat it's functional looks good and is an improvement on the previous games in the series as far as action RPGs go I'd even say The Witcher 3 has better combat than average although that average is admittedly lower than it perhaps should be anyway The Witcher 3 has great combat animations with plenty of visceral kill sequences and visually there's good monster variety there is one main problem with it and a few smaller problems aren't also mentioned the big problem is the lack of choice when in combat twice in combat is an undervalued part of what makes combat enjoyable players should be regularly choosing between whether to attack move or dodge what attack to do which enemy to attack when to use special abilities and so on reaction times and executing complicated button inputs are usually a small part of success than making the correct choices to overcome the current situation The Witcher 3 does give the player main options however it doesn't utilize these in interesting ways instead there is one style fits all approach to combat sand that understandably gets boring in such a long game let's look at what options you have firstly you have two types of attacks fast and strong ideally in a game with two types of attack each would be better in different scenarios with the strong attack being higher risk because it's slow but higher rewards as it does more damage initially in The Witcher 3 the fast attack is far better as a damage difference between them is minimal so there's no reason to use your strong attack the real problem is that the upgrade system heavily encourages you to upgrade only one style as upgrading both is too expensive and pretty pointless so almost all players will pick one type and then only use that attack as the fast attack is initially far better for most it will likely be fast attacks they choose and then they play the whole game only using the fast attack upgrading the strong attack does actually lead the two attack types being more balanced and in combat you'll probably find yourself using a mix between fast and strong attacks as strong attacks will then do great damage but are still too slow for some situations this makes combat more enjoyable but it's an objectively worse way to play than just upgrade in the fast attack because despite the upgraded strong attacks could damage using only your fast attack works in every situation and still does good enough damage while making the game considerably easier The Witcher 3 should have made strong attacks do more damage initially so a feel worth using while also changing the upgrade system so it no longer forces play at the fabled on attack type and lastly certain monsters should be weak reached like attack as this was established by the series previously and adds more variety to combat movement in combat also provides multiple options to the game's credit and Geralt has a lots of weight to his movements in combat now which is an improvement on the last game which had a huge problem with Geralt weightlessness there's also two different dodge options the small dodge and roll the small dodge is far more useful however with only a few enemy attacks requiring you to roll to avoid them like the earth elementals ground-pound attack and these same attacks can usually be avoided by doing two smooth dodges anyway instead however the bigger problem with dodging is it's incredibly easy you dodge instantly if I'm pressing the button even if you're mid attack animation this is different to some other action games like the series that everyone wants to compare every game's combat - these days in that game you can only dodge once your attack animation is completed and that means attacking carries a certain level of risk that's not the case in The Witcher 3 though you can dodge any time so there is never actual risk to attack him the advantage of this is it makes combat fluid and that may be appropriate to a witch's combat style but it does mean there is never a need for queues between whether to attack or large as you can always thought whenever you need to if you react in time this also means that enemies haven't been giving very big whined ups to their attack animation until the process of watching for the start of enemy's attack animation today with the budget successfully doesn't happen much in the which are free dodging is less about watching enemies carefully and more attest of your reactions and the process is overall too easy and repetitive next up is signs signs are a fun concept and changing between them is quicker and feels a lot better than in The Witcher 2 it seems like setup racks have got a bit better at designing a controller friendly UI in this game as menus are also generally better designed than in the widget a high-low signs also don't present much choice as there is little reason to change them much or experiment just like with fast and strong attacks the upgrade system encourages you to pick one and focus on that which once more is counter intuitive to creating choice and variety in combats there is also the problem of Kuenn Kuenn is overpowered very overpowered other signs can be very strong once upgraded but quayne needs not upgrading it takes no skill to use effective the iPad you can just use it at the start of a fight and refresh it anytime you take damage its activates me instantly as well brainlessly spamming Kuenn as needed is incredibly effective in challenging fights in my latest play Fuhrer wasn't using Kuenn to make the game more interesting but still at times like a stock and fight like against this ice elemental ten levels higher than me this is on death march after several deaths I gave up and used Kuenn and the fight was a complete breeze what's so annoying about Kuenn being overpowered is the exact same problem existed in the witcher 2 for the same reasons and the developers didn't learn from us and change or thrown down when to fix the issue anyway signs aren't the only tool witches have at their disposal there's several other things but none add much and there are problems oils are useful but that implementation is really annoying you can apply them in combat and so if you use whales regularly you'll find yourself pausing the game at the start of each fight to go through some menus to apply some blade oil it's slow and boring and kills the pace of fights oils can be very effective once upgraded but using them is still annoying maybe they were meant to encourage players to learn about their foes so they know which type of oil to use but all you need to do is check an enemy type is open the bestiary this may waste more of the player's time but it doesn't add challenge in any way or make oils interesting and so oils don't add trace in combat to beyond the choice of whether you can be bothered to go to the effort of traversing through menus to apply them each fight then there's potions you can apply them in combat to the problems of The Witcher 2 system are gone the downside is there's little reason to use many different types of potions as you only have a few quick slots you'll probably find yourself using swallow + 1 / type and ignoring the rest throughout the game potion usage is completely instant with no animation so there's no need to be careful or aware of your position to find a good time to use them they're always just the button press away so there's not much choice in which patience the use and also this with choice involved in using them in combats the captions are similar to potions but with a bigger range of effects and again there is little incentive to experiments and use a variety of them due to few quick slots and some of them being both powerful and universally useful so you probably pick one or two if you went for an alchemy build and then stick with them throughout the game which is again boring the crossbow exists but its main role seems to be an anti-air gun there's also bombs but they don't add much although there are definitely a few interesting ones that can at least be fun to utilize so The Witcher 3 gives you a large range of tools to play with but it gives you very little reason to utilize those tools beyond discovering a single approach that works for you and then just stick in with that approach and I've heard of some players not eating doing that much and just ignoring things like oils and decoctions completely for the entire playthrough which is easy enough to do on most difficulties because the game is so goddamn huge with so much content the fact that fights play out the same way over and over again where a single tactic being all you need means combat will get boring eventually enemy variety doesn't help there are many different types of enemies and they look great but fighting them can be very similar outside of rapes most enemies are ever of the big and slow type or the small and quick and they don't feel very diverse when you actually fight them there's not much difference between say a drona and the Necker or a siren and a harpy and the most boring enemy type is unfortunately also the most common humans more variety and human enemies would have been nice but two-handed hammer guys are good addition but shield enemies and enemies that block a lot just feel like they're slow fights down and in general fighting humans gets old quick when it comes to monsters the bestiary shows a really impressive amount of enemy weaknesses but utilizing those weaknesses makes very little difference yaadon is great against wraiths and axe is great against al Ghul's but most of the listed weaknesses matter very little fast attacks dodging and Kuenn just so happens to be great against almost everything so there's little reason to care about weaknesses and little reason to try and change your strategy dependent on your opponent enemies specific weaknesses were always an important part of a series and I wish they were more important here the way in which knowledge of enemy weaknesses is given to the player has also changed in the previous games weaknesses were in the bestiary but the player had to earn that knowledge either through reading in-game books or killing a certain amount of enemies in The Witcher 3 all you have to do is kill an enemy once and all information is then unlocked which is through easy unlocking enemy weaknesses could have been part of an additional progression system killing enemies of a certain type could have led to unlocking weaknesses and stat boosts against those enemies making combat more rewarding despite the small amount of XP it currently gives while we're on the subject of hypothetical changes and things the earlier which again stood better I miss having to prepare for fights having played the previous games the concept of preparing for fights beforehand feels like a very important part of playing as a Witcher knowing your enemy has been built up as a big of how witches slay monsters its execution in previous games had its problems but I wish there was more to it in The Witcher 3 in every Witcher contract in this game you're actually told what you'll fight before you encounter the monster as if a game is specifically letting you know to prepare yourself but there isn't much you can actually do to prepare you can still meditate but the only reason to do so is to refresh your potions the auto refill of potions is a smart idea both as a time saver and there's a nice bit of psychological encouragement to get players to use their consumables rather than hoard them there's no other reason to meditate before fights though I wish the meditation screen was where you applied blade oils and that they're limited charges were removed as applying them in combat feels bad and gets very tedious so instead you'd choose which blade oils to use when meditating and then they would stay in effect until you meditate again the Cochran's could work the same way there are too few quick slots for them anyway and that would at least encourage players to use a greater variety and choose a specific the Coxon to fit the upcoming fight small changes like this would go a long way to capturing the feeling of playing as a Witcher where knowledge of enemies and careful preparation are meant to be vital for success to reiterate very I'm not saying combat is bad it does the job looks good and does offer some enjoyment it may even receive less criticism if the game wasn't so long but the large amounts of content in the game makes the flaws in the combat system more noticeable the lack of variety and depth can make it repetitive as each fight does play out very similarly most of the time in the end of combat still feels good enough for most players and luckily there's a lot more but this game has to offer to make up for the weak gameplay before moving on to look at what makes this game good there are a few smaller criticisms that may not be hugely important but that I really feel I need to get off my chest because after playing free play free some of the smaller things have started to really annoy me and I feel they need to at least be mentioned like the repeats and character models it's a big game and it's bound to happen but that they really need to have two guys or the exact same model standing next to each other in this scene and then there's this model if they were gonna reuse this model so much could they at least have made the kid look a little less weird they say howdy did but that just ain't true howdy don't know how to plow or so nor catch no fish yet everybody sure complete cards how do you can shut the [ __ ] up I'm sick of seeing your smug face everywhere and then there's this effect which I guess is meant to simulate the winds and make it look like each character's hair's blowing but it always happens even indoors where there's no wind why is gales hair always moving like this it's so noticeable and distracting and then there's the beard but glorious beard the grows in real-time exemplifying the pinnacle of gaming technology clearly the most important feature of the game which justified the huge focus gaming journalists placed on it in their pre-release coverage and it constantly clips through any card outfit you wear and I mean constantly and there are bugs in this game still many many bugs which you would expect for a game this size but I have no idea why some people act as if this game is uniquely bug free compared to certain other RPGs when it's just not okay but for more important topics I want to look about the story characters and settings together as a little link before that bow there are a few other things I want to discuss that are both important and preserving of recognition there are other things worthy of praise that I won't be covering because I think they speak for themselves things like the graphics a soundtrack or Quint these are important aspects of again but the reason they're good are pretty obvious and I'd rather talk about aspects that may be more underappreciated the first of these is dialogue I've heard an estimate from a set up rack developer that The Witcher 3 has 35 hours of content that is pure dialogue but that number seems a somewhat conservative estimate to me regardless you will spend a lot of time in conversations in this game listening to conversations is an activity that can get boring in video games its passive and we play games to play them not just sit and watch some games try to get around this by creating walking and talking sections in the hope that the activity of walking is enough to make players feel engaged another way to engage the player is by giving them choices and conversations to actively involve them in dialogue and to allow them at least some opportunities to shape how things play out this is what happens in The Witcher 3 and it's a big part of how a game with 35 hours of dialogue prevents those sections from feeling boring there's regular tracing conversations which succeeds at engaging the player in what's going on these traces may change a few lines of dialogue but often they have no further consequences than that they creates a small space for role-playing but it's a space that's quite constrained and you'd be surprised when you listen to both options are presented choice how consistently both options feel like they fit Geralt and lead to similar outcomes choice in conversation hasn't been the signs with facilitating role-playing as its main priority as is the case in some other RPGs that tend to feature more dialogue options that can be much more varied than those presented in the which are free instead the which frees dialogue has been designed to be good and it succeeds it is well written maybe not in a literary sense but dialogue is surprisingly enjoyable conversations also flow perfectly even when you have choices that expand on topics conversations still never fall into that unnatural territory of other RPGs where conversations stop feeling like real conversations they always feel real and sound natural even when you're presented with multiple choices they also allow for a great amount of personality to come free from the various characters you encounter even faraway MPC's tend to feel well realized dialogue is full of witty banter and memorable lines it feels worth hearing even without considering the impressive of the sheer quantity of the high log in the game the overall level of quality is really high and it's not just because of the writing the presentation in conversations is just as good there's a large range of camera angles with lingering shots close-ups and nice framing there's loads of animations that don't just seem like stock animations we see repeated regularly but feel hand crafted to fit what's happening and then there are the faces how did we come so far this was 2007 and it's only been eight years there's such a range of realistically depicted emotions shown on the characters faces now and almost no junk enos and this isn't a 10-hour game it's a hundred hour game with 35 plus hours of pure dialogue which makes this consistent level of high quality very impressive there's a reason not every game has been able to pull such a feats off sorry my face is tired from dealing with everything the small details help make dialogue so good but small details are important in many other places in The Witcher 3 the small details in this game play a huge part in making it what it is and there are so so many I could talk about to illustrate this there are many examples of environmental detail which both help bring these landscapes to life and reinforce aspects of the story but that's something most people will notice themselves if there's one thing I'd really like to highlight it's how many really well hidden details there are in this game the players might not notice I can only show a tiny fraction of what there is and sort of prove just how expensive these details are and to share something while sharing I want to take a minute to show you this PDF created by andreas might offer with the help of a Witcher 3 Facebook group it's a 160 page PDF showing the most hidden details in the game and there's a link in the description if you want to check it out if you like me you find it a fun read over I'd recommend reading that's only after having replayed the game at least once because finding these small details yourself on subsequent playthroughs can be great in fact after my first player of the game I was pleasantly surprised when going through the game a second time with how much I'd missed but after 2 for a play freeze I thought I'd seen pretty much everything the fact that on my third playthrough there were still plenty of surprises was pretty amazing I'll give just a couple of examples that aren't quite so well known amongst fans to show what I mean you first meet the mage Moritz at the Viggo buds ball where who look down on Tracy's offer to help him escape the city however you can meet him again later outside the glory gates and novigrad where he's been captured by witch hunters and is being burned alive on a pyre that's not all though you can actually use art to extinguish the fire and after killing the witch hunters you can actually save him if you do this before Chris's next quest Now or Never he'll even be there during the escape and this is all incredibly easy to miss another great example is during the first flashback of serie where you meet the little girl in Belem here you investigate the corpse to determine what beast is ahead but if you tried to rush through this investigation Siri gets it wrong and incorrectly concludes the wounds are caused by a fiend instead of a werewolf and this results in her creating the wrong type of oil and being disadvantaged in the upcoming fight this example is so great because this is just the kind of thing you might do if you're replaying the game and assuming you don't need to do the whole investigation as you've seen it before and then the fact that the game reacts for this makes for one hell of a surprise it's a great thing to find organically finding these things adds a lot to the replay value and create some really memorable moments but it also shows just how much care went into making The Witcher 3 a lot of these examples and not things most players would notice they didn't need to be included in the game and there isn't much reason to include content most players point see but they were included nevertheless just sort of people who did replay the games or search every corner of this world were rewarded and they do make the world feel more real and more interesting small details that are well hidden are effective because of players expectations whether that's the expectation that the game would not feature so much reactivity to a seemingly insignificant detail all the expectation that having played the game once you've seen everything already expectations and uncertainty play a much larger part in the witcher freez narrative success than this lay the use of expectations and uncertainty are central to the games quest design and its storytelling success firstly let's look at choice and consequence in game there are four big decisions you make that affect the ending slides but there's far more smaller sections of choice and consequence for out the witcher 3 however there's far far more times when you're given a choice in a conversation that has no real consequences at all the thing is you as the player don't know when your choice will have low consequences when it will have small consequences or when it will have huge consequences the fact that some choices do matter is enough to make all choices seem like they matter because you know these choices could potentially be important and you have no way of mind when they won't be when you're told to bow before the emperor of nilfgaard and you have to decide whether to do so or not you don't know this doesn't have any favour consequences so you still have to weigh your decision carefully of course this could be said about other games featuring choice and consequence and that's true the same rules apply but the which are free that Liberty takes this further to illustrate this let's look at three examples of decisions you make during the first section of the game in Vallon the first example is in the main questline during the nilfgaardian connection where you go to the inn at the crossroads and run into the bloody bounds men who tried to pick a fight with Geralt if you give them their wish you'll kill them and later in the quest bloody baron you'll then not be allowed into the keep by the guards and have to find an alternative way in sight if you manage to de-escalate the situation at the end and leave the bandsmen in peace instead the allowed entry to crows patch during this quest with regards mentioning your previous actions this early example shows a player how seemingly small actions earlier in the game can have bigger consequences later on the next example is from the fantastically atmospheric and winter esque side quest a tower full of mice where you investigate the ghostly tower on fyke Isle at the end of this quest you meet the ghost Anabella who by then truly tragic and really disturbing circumstances you can men agreed to help her by taking her binds to her lover doing so reveal she's a plague maiden she kills her lover and is set free in the world to spread plague as she pleases the player is left feeling like they have [ __ ] up big time of course there is a choice you can refuse her request and there are a couple of small clues earlier but she can't be trusted like when Geralt questions her her changing her story it's enough for you to see something's wrong if you replay the quest or to look back at sand kick yourself for not realizing the first time but it's not enough to leave most players to the better outcome because the choice itself is presented in quite a misleading way it's deliberately made to not look like a choice there's only one yellow option given to the player here and the good choice simply looks like it's for not advancing the quest yet and if somehow you get the better ending on your first time during the quest it still doesn't seem like a good ending because the ghost lover still dies it's a tragic quest that is designed to make the player mess up and feel responsible it teaches the player how your actions can cause bad things to happen if you're not very careful the third example is the ending of ladies of the word where the player has to decide whether to release or kill the spirit in the whispering hillock you're asked who you trust more the spirits or the cranes of crookback bog neither of which seem trustworthy and each hint that opposing them could have negative consequences and there are for both options it doesn't matter which she helps someone innocent will die as a result if you free the spirits it will kill most of the inhabitants of bound Warren which is something it's hard for the player not to feel personally responsible for the Barons wife will also die and finally the Baron take his own life as a result of your choice if you instead kill the spirit the Crone's will take the lives of the children in the bog and the revelation when you next see them is one of the game's best moments that moment where they're discussing true form is revealed and you realize the spirit was right about them it's really well done the character designs are incredible and really drive home the fates of the children with the bloody child-sized arm sticking out of one's apron or the cooking accessories carried by another it's genuinely horrific to think that you've doomed these kids to this faint this part is so effective it's so goods I'll have to come back to it later anyway you're given a choice in this quest and both options have bad outcomes very bad outcomes that are designed to make the player feel guilty and peach the player not only do choices matter but sometimes there is no good option but it doesn't matter what you do you can't avoid bad outcomes it's a harsh lesson for the player to learn not only do choices matter but this game is also willing to take moral grayness to an extreme and to force you to have blood on your hands even going as far as to trick you in the tower full of mice to make sure you fail oh you wanted a happy ending did you well [ __ ] you welcome to the real world there aren't always happy endings people don't get what they deserve and things don't always work out oh what's that player choice is supposed to empower the player you say things are meant to be fair Bronk this game isn't trying to empower the player or create the deepest role-playing experience out there it's trying to tell a story choice and consequence is used like seasoning it does its job by adding to the experience and is just enough so the player can always taste it so you don't forget it's there so things don't feel bland and it's not designed to be fair let me talk about the lover example there are two minor side quests that maybe you aren't familiar with the first is at the mercy of strangers in Belem you can find a man tied up next to a river having been left there to be killed by drowners if you save him you can meet him again later as a formal refugee camp where he and some other bandits have killed and robbed the refugees well perhaps you shouldn't and freedom you might think to yourself in another quest crime and punishment you will find a man named York chained to the rock at the edge of the sea and scaliger this is a formal punishment in scaliger reserved for the most serious of criminals just as in the previous quest he'll tell you he's innocent and the chance to save him after this scene can come across a funeral in the village of Rogner where you can meet York's younger sister who will tell you the truth of what happened she had lives that her uncle who she didn't like had molested her and in retaliation York had confronted and killed him in a fit of rage suddenly you're being chained to a rock and eat alive by harvey seems quite tragic but you don't believe him that right you didn't think after completing the previous quest that the massive strangers that maybe you shouldn't trust people left to die and therefore decide that this time you won't make the same mistake twice he didn't think he could outsmart the game by learning from your previous blunder they did well if he did all I can say is welcome to the world of The Witcher there's no cosmic root of the universe making sure everyone gets what they deserve even for you the player and both the world and quest designer made more interesting as a result but enough on choice and consequence we also need to look at the stories these quests tell and how they utilize player expectation it's no secret for the subversion of tropes and fairy tales is a big part of the witch's series it's what a Witcher is a cynical take on the monster slaves seen in storybooks a role usually played by charesse lights or destined orphans is instead reimagined as Rufus professionals designed for the job that are not loved and adored by the public as a result of their monster slaying but are instead hated and feared there are countless examples of how the witcher 3 pays homage to various folklore and fairy tales and also how it subverts elements of them and of the fantasy genre so we have snow white references a twist to take on Hansel and Gretel and inspiration taken from polish legends and so on however even outside the more of these examples there is a sense that almost every quest was designed to not feel narrative ly straightforward there's always some twist or some reveal that the monster isn't that much of a monster or the innocent aren't quite so innocent and that's great it's a big factor in making quests entertaining it's very rare for a sidequest to feel like just another fetch quest or like Villa they each seem to have a story worth hearing and that consistent level of quality to the stories they tell is something that often gets praised however some quests will even use your expectations of a twist against you let's look at the side quest the black pearl it seems a simple quest where a man in lists gerelds helped to help him find the Black Pearl in scaliger so he can give it to his wife the way in which Geralt is given the only difficult task diving down to actually get the power and then has to save the man from drowning makes it seem like Geralt is being taken advantage of and that the man is incompetent or untrustworthy when you're told you have to wait in through your return to novigrad for your reward you might start to get suspicious there's been no twist so far so one must be coming you think to yourself I bet he's not going to pay you all that his wife will call him an idiot and the whole thing will be revealed to be pointless and then you go see him but neither of those things happen instead he tells you the sad tale of how his wife has been losing her memory and doesn't even recognize her husband anymore the black pearl was part of a promise made in earlier years that the man hoped might jog her memory and reverse her condition of course it won't but you certainly can't blame the man for trying it's sad and it hits you hard because moments earlier you were expecting something completely different what happen and maybe expecting the worst from this guy your expectations were used against you to make the story more impactful it's clever storytelling and it turns a simple quest that had felt like a bit of a time waste into something quite moving and memorable for another great example let's return to the quest ladies of the woods and the lovely crookback bog if you played the witcher 1 & 2 you may have certain expectations on bromance and sex in game and to be fair the last time you met a witch in some backwater area things did play out somewhat differently so when you see the ladies of the woods on their tapestry and they look a certain enact flirtatious with the player about some people's minds may have started to wonder if his quest might end somewhat differently in fact just before you do meet them are you even here moans and then you do you actually meet them and if you have been hoping for some wild witch orgy I bet you're regretting that wish and their sexuality is played up in the same they continue to flirt with you they make suggestive gestures and it's revolting but it's all the more so if you went into this expecting things to be different subversion of player expectations is great but sometimes entire quests can be much more or less than the player expects quests aren't always neatly structured the way the player would expect them to be and as a result you can never be quite sure what they're going to offer or where you'll end up I provide both an example of a disappointingly short quest and a surprisingly long one to explain what I mean firstly there's the quest fencing lessons where Geralt agrees to help Rosa var etre with her swordplay after you meet her in the main quest when searching for dandelion because you find this quest through the main quest you might expect something quite interesting and substantial from it after all for many of the biggest the most impressive side quests they are connected to the main story or the characters you meet during the story so the player is less likely to miss these bigger quests and you may also develop certain expectations upon seeing the two attractive identical twins even if you aren't expecting to sleep with them you may think you're in for some fun mistaken identity hijinks at the very least but the quest doesn't play out that way at all after Zhu Ling her browser runs off encounters some drunks who even have to deal with and afterwards Garrett will scold her for being naive and she'll leave never to be heard from again for many players it's a complete letdown and maybe this quest is the way it is as a result of cut content but the result creates an almost jarring ending where the players expectations were completely not met and I like that deliberate or not the feeling that not every quest delivers on his promise is interesting disappointment is a common part of life and the fact that some quests failed to deliver is realistic of course thinking that way is easy in a game full of quality side quests I doubt I'd feel the same way if a large number of quests felt unfinished underwhelming but when it's only occasional it leaves an interesting impression but there are a couple of great examples of the complete opposite happening of expectations being far surpass than of simple quests leading somewhere truly surprising my favorite of which comes from The Witcher contract The Phantom of ellsberg it's a standard Witcher contracts where you investigates a haunted lighthouse kill some wraiths and discover the lighthouse keeper has a secret and is a very naughty boy however during the quest Geralt meets a couple of locals who dislike outsiders and one thing leads to another and you end up in a fistfight that becomes something more and ends with all participants except Geralt being killed on leaving the tavern the other villagers confront you and you end up being arrested and taken to the prison of er madman Lugo's this begins the quest stranger in a strange land and it's a fantastic moments as you were just there in a normal Witcher contract by this point you'd have realized which our contracts are the more formulaic and less important type of side quests so your expectations are set deliberately quite low the way you end up in jail is also great at showing the player what life for a Witcher can be like how things can go wrong even when you're only trying to help and when in jail you're already caught off guard so you'll be wondering what the hell will happen next it turns out you can escape fairly easily and this leads to another side quest Cave of dreams which is great in its own right with some really memorable dialogue and scenes there's even a fourth quest and unpaid debts which you can also do if you escape the jail with the help of one of the prisoners and it all started with a simple Witcher contract it's a terrific question that not only offers a big surprise but there's a great job at showing the player what life on scaliger and life as a Witcher can be like this can all be quite easy to miss for the player and has limited time to trigger intrusive story events but still the developers decided it's worth taking the risk the players may miss this sequence in order to tell the story they want to more effectively which is great another example of something similar as when helping dandelion in the quest cabaret which ends with Priscilla being attacked starting the very memorable side quest carnal sins where you investigate the attack and hunt a serial killer in novigrad Cabaret seems an upbeat quest the features humour and it ends in this very dark impersonal manner Priscilla's attacker has endured a fright by making her ingest acid and after the earlier scene where you listen to our sing it's hard not to feel angry and personally involved in carnal sins outcome and that outcome can also lead to disappointment if you failed to get the right killer and while that trace isn't handled perfectly this whole quest line really shows you how quests can lead to surprises and disappointments how choices aren't fair and how consequences aren't always what you predict the result of all these things I've mentioned in this section is about quests feel both more interesting as you aren't sure what to expect but also more realistic as there is a sense that anything can happen and the quests won't always follow the rules you'd expect of them suffice to say this games great quests and the stories they tell are a hugely important part of why this game is so loved but they're not the only reason and in this final section of the video I want to talk about the main story setting and characters at the start of this video I said the main story wasn't amazing and I stand by that I want to talk about his problems but I also want to talk about the things it gets right which there is quite a lot of so let's start at the beginning a opening of the game takes place in a dream where we see careworn which looks by similar and a whole lot more impressive than it was in The Witcher on this section does a fantastic job at introducing the plant to the major characters that they may not be familiar with we meet yennefer vesemir and ciri and with just a few lines of dialogue the game establishes their characters and their relationship to Geralt this is important to make the events of the game feel meaningful particularly for yin and ciri as you hear about from quite a lot before actually meeting them the dream sequence ends with an introduction for something else important the main antagonists of the game the Wild Hunt following this the game begins in white orchards which acts as a tutorial section to introduce players both to the open world and the role of witches as professional monster slayers you hunter Griffin and in typical Witcher fashion things go wrong and fight breaks out between Geralt and the locals which serves as a nice introduction to that other part of richer life the dislike and Prejudice directed at them by others nevertheless you do soon finds yin kind of in fact she actually finds you which is a nice surprise and subverts the usual video game trope of having three the one to go find other people over time the dialogue here is also really good and this is a great moment if you already know her character and spent the whole of the witcher 1 them to patiently waiting for her to show up it does feel like your patience has finally been rewarded you go meet amir who has a fantastic voice actor in charles dance but ends up feeling like a character is a bit underutilized but at least for the scenes he isn't he has a great amount of presence next you arrive in Vallon and the moment when you open your map and come to terms with just how big this game is is pretty great looking for ciri makes for a good main quest as it feels immediately personal you're not on a quest to save the world initially at least and that makes for a nice change in an RPG still a main quest line where you're simply looking for someone would get boring if the stories told on the way interesting but luckily they are I don't want to talk about the bloody baron too much as so many other people have done that already but I do want to at least touch on this section I've talked earlier about the importance of expectations and the bloody baron is no different from his name and what you hear about his character the player would expect something quite different from what you find you'll likely imagine him as a tyrant and someone who'll oppose you but in fact he's a tragic figure and instead helps you it's also interesting how much you can learn about him from overhearing NPCs chatter to themselves both his alcohol problem and family issues that talked about and you can even learn the real reason for his title of bloody baron before he tells you himself anyway his characterization is truly excellent the way in which the writers handle difficult topics like domestic abuse abortion and alcoholism is both nuanced and realistic which feels like a very impressive achievement learning about him and his problems makes for a great story that isn't at all what you probably expected by the end of it it's hard not to be sympathetic towards him he has done bad things but he understands that and feels great guilt over them and so despite his sins we don't see him as a villain but instead as a human a very flawed one but isn't it our flaws that make us human anyway the quest involving the lubricant is also really good in it the Baron is forced to look his mistake in the face to see it in all its horror and ugliness and to take responsibility to try to make amends doing so earns him redemption in most players and perhaps also in gerelds eyes making for a satisfying narrative arc that allows us to truly empathize with him despite his misdeeds and the difficult subject matter the outcome of this story feels deeply impactful even if you make the choice that leads to the Baron and Anna surviving it's very hard to imagine a happy ending to this tale when you watch the two of them walk away at the end and it's even harder to not hope for one anyway ultimately this isn't a story of good and bad or victims and villains it's a tragedy a very human tragedy where everyone involved seems sympathetic not despite their floors but because affirm this quest line reaches a level of storytelling few games managed thanks to his complex subject matter and realistic characters I still see people talk about the bloody baron to this day which i think says a lot about how much of an impression this quest line leaves on the player Balan is overall the best area in the game it's a no-man's land in more ways than one by far the two main quest lines but of the bloody baron and the Crone's of crookback bog involved the concept of law and order in a seemingly lawless land the Barons story is deeply personal he's brought ruin upon himself from his failure to enforce his law not over his land but instead over his family the Crone's instead offer their own form of justice to the land they do protect its inhabitants in their own way but underneath their lore it's clear the Crone's represents something rotten and decaying just like the swamp they resided in just like the trail of treats where baked goods reveal maggots upon closer inspection and just like their own hideous appearance that they initially tried to hide with a facade of pretend beauty the build up as you investigate the swamp and the Crone's is really good the player knows something is off they moan of something rotten underneath it all there's plenty of signs of this but the player doesn't actually know what it is and the process of discovery is drawn out for as long as possible before you get to the final reveal which when it does come really delivers the way the Barons story intersects with the Crone's is also handled very well Valon does a great job at showing the consequences of war and of showing peasant life in all its ugliness while combining bees with a heavy dash of fantasy and superstition the various side quests play into its themes of war and baurel order very well making the whole area feel very thematically consistent Nova grant doesn't do as good a job at telling its own story but the city itself is very impressive logo grad is huge and very detailed it's the most immersive and realistic city I've seen in an RPG its streets are cluttered with NPCs in various details there are loads of examples of industry and cities answer and it all feels very alive it's very impressive but I think its story has some problems he spent a lot of time looking for dandelion which is enjoyable enough but it doesn't lead to any great payoff like certain other storylines then the line is once more a bit of an idiot's that's played for comic relief as opposed to feeling like an actual representation of his book character but he's still fun sort of I never understood why his voice sounds so different in the narration sections they after many trials and tribulations Geralt finally learned that yen was in nearby Mishima these sections meant to be an older dandelion or something because despite the difference he sounds great there I want that wise sounding dandelion instead of the useless one we end up with the criminal underworld is again fine but girls involvement once more has little payoff that said Dijkstra is one of the most enjoyable characters I've seen in an RPG in a game full of great banter he adds the best which is quite the achievement relevant is a problem I'll come back to so that just leaves the witch hunts and that's when they've agreed disappoints slightly the hunting of witches seems very extreme as the cruel opening scene of the pyres show us the problem is we don't know how things became so extreme and that makes the situation feel a bit over-the-top and black and white things The Witcher series is supposed to avoid I get that the eternal fire has been established as being a very dubious force but if the reason for their extremeness is simply to show religion as bad and that's both overly simplistic and a bit boring and also I thought the order of the flaming rose in the first game what only is extreme as they were because of the role of the Grandmaster so why has Nova grads got to the point without openly killing any suspected mage and even herbalist sand pellets I also seem to remember in the short story the lesser evil mages are shown as being desirable in civilized areas because their abilities are so useful it would make more sense if the witch hunts were only happening in MIDI Nia I mean radovid has obvious reasons and it makes sense in other countries as people might blame mages for their dead kings and therefore their current situation but the free city of novigrad was supposed to be a haven for mages Trish says just a year ago everything fine so what the hell happened I think there needs to be a reason for the change which is explained to the player perhaps is started off gradually with restrictions to Magic's use following the witches who's ending and that led to some form of retaliation from some other mages and things kept escalating I mean maybe that is what happened but as things are the situation fields under explained and almost sensationalist in its depiction of prejudice prejudice itself is a good topic for an RPG but it was already a focus for both the previous games and they did a better job at showing it in a more believable and interesting way overall novigrad as an area has the weakest story but the city is still a great location scaliger is better however firstly it looks incredible it offers breathtaking sights after breathtaking sight by the time you get to scaliger you may be getting a bit bored of the open world but scaliger looks so damn good that I think it's hard for even open-world cynics to not get an urge to just get out there and explore a bit when they arrive it also makes for a great moment when you realize the sheer size of the place and then realize how much of a game you still have to see even after however many hours you've put into the game already the soundtracks also really good and I know I said I wasn't going to talk about the soundtrack but I at least wanted to mention how each island has its own theme designed to give it its own feel which is an impressive level of detail the story of the region focuses mostly on Giants Galaga culture that culture itself is not very unique Vikings / Norse inspired settings are a common thing in fantasy fiction but it still has a good amount of personality the game strikes a good balance between portraying the harsh side of the culture which can't border on the barbaric like the practice of burning the widows of dead kings at the King's funeral but also managing to show a likable side to this culture the real achievement of scaliger storytelling is how were introduced to an entire new cast of characters who all feel well realized but despite this it doesn't feel overwhelming and it's easy to get invested into this broadside story of succession and islands of politics the quests the Lord of on Vic and possession are two of the best in the game and the way these quests build toward the player deciding the fate of the region is well done and provides good payoff the choice between saris and Yama does seem slightly biased towards seriously there's even a unique place of power here only accessed by following her routes which is really stupid span Riga also could have really done with more screentime and preferably an additional side quests where the player gets to at least interact with him a bit span Riga ends up playing an important part in events and you can make him king but it happens for not involving yourself in is a shame you can't actively support him it would make sense as he represents a step away from tradition that could be appealing to some players but many people won't even realize making him King is an option as for the main story quest time spent with Yen is enjoyable for the great chemistry between her and Geralt but this section also establishes an important part of her character throughout these quests we see yen stealing the mask then using it with little concern for the possible consequences and finally using necromancy to speak to scale this shows the player the lamp he's willing to go to you to find ciri that she'll do whatever it takes for goddess of the consequences and that there are consequences for her by the end of your time in scaliger she is pretty hated by the Islanders and the player understands the importance of ciri to her as a result there's also the romance side plot and this seems a good time to talk about that all things considered it's handled surprisingly well the scenes with tress are incredibly bittersweet and the writers really nailed the feeling of two people with a past history and unresolved feelings it's a shame the game asks the player to decide whoever they want to romance to trust so early as how can the plan though without having spent time with yen also which you probably haven't done at this point it also doesn't allow the player to change their mind later on which they may want to do and the free sim scene that can result from the player's understandable indecisiveness is a bit unfair it's also silly how the game never cares why are you sleeping around this girl - in the past and still allows about consequence in this game but still punishes you for romancing both main characters as for yen the writers did a good job at staying faithful to her character and capturing her relationship of Geralt the way the quest the last wish allows you to decide Geralt feelings while staying true to his character is a bit contrived but it definitely feels like the writers are trying to make the best out of a complicated situation while allowing players the freedom to choose what they want and that choice is very important I know it meant a lot to me personally in fact even on my second playthrough I couldn't help but choose the same thing as it just felt right and that's not a common thing for me I've done a lot of evil deeds in RPGs just to see what happens differently but when it comes to deciding the fate of whom oh boy girl ends up with I don't know that's different man as that's different once you've completed the main quests of Velan novigrad and scaliger you'll find out about uma and head to care more on the scene where the witches drink together is really good I don't think much needs to be said about how it ends up very moments that can make players truly laugh-out-loud aren't quite the achievement I do want to praise the earlier conversation die because it really feels like catching up with old friends it's great and the way the conversation jumps between serious and light-hearted moments is really impressive care more and also gives the player a lot of information about witches and the negatives to their lifestyle whether it's from Geralt monologues when exploring or from Lambert's scathing commentary ultimately you free aval AK who reveals the location of ciri but before finding her you get a chance to enlist the help of allies and that provides a good opportunity to remind the player of all they've done so far as well as rewarding me for having helped various people it's a real shame you'rethe isn't in the game though I know it's because of cut contents and it's hard to complain about that when the game does have so much content included but the consequences of importing is safe from The Witcher 2 are already quite small and that there's one decision that should have had an impact on the third game it's whether you helped your birth or Roche that was the main decision after all it doesn't make sense if he helped you of of my roaches still willing to come to care morale and die for you Roach is honestly really boring in The Witcher 3 probably because the writers needed to make his character work no matter which path you import and he suffered as a result having your birth included in the game and both him and broach acknowledge your past history more would have been really nice for returning players regardless with your allies assembled you can finally go get ciri and the cutscene where you find ty is easily one of the game's greatest moments the camera shots in particular are outstanding here you have spent so many hours looking for sehri that this moment really feels the served like you've earned this reunion and it's easy to feel emotional now it's here the following battle at Cameron is so built up it feels like it's going to be the game's finale there are things you could criticize but I think the developers did a good job at making this a big dramatic set piece it's something a lot of games try and fail at it ends with business death and another touching scene if someone was going to die I guess it was going to be him but it really does feel like his death represents the end of an era he was the last which are old the one who still held to some of the winter tradition and he was a father figure for the other witches his there feels important in more ways than one if he thought the story was almost coming to an end with the batter like a [ __ ] you'll soon realize you're wrong there's still a lot to see the bald man teen section which serie is decent both of the big fights are fun and what better way for a father and daughter to bond and spending some quality time killing supernatural fights together the quest with Avila is even more impressive seeing such different lands is sure to take you by surprise and capture your imagination however as a way of fleshing out eridan and making his motivations understandable this was a big missed opportunity when we do get to the flashback of eridan kill in the previous king all we get is this the king is dead [Music] which doesn't tell number krita's much about eridan at the wall as a result eridan remains disappointing in a series full of really strong characters one weak character would be forgivable unless that character happens to be the main antagonist the Wild Hunt also never seemed very interesting like many things in The Witcher the Wild Hunt is based off mythology but the twist rather not just spectral riders but actually a bunch of dimension-hopping elves has already been revealed in the books so there aren't any surprises to them and they seem a bit weird they're edgy outfits and supernatural aspects seem a bit at odds with their elven backgrounds and any interesting parts of their backstory seem a bit lost without knowledge of the books then there's radovid's and the assassination plot it should be said that the end section of this game was obviously affected by cut content and as I said not long ago it's hard to be too critical when the game is as big as it is but when it comes to radovid's they should have really done better first up is the change in personality he's become more extreme and more crazy which can be a little disappointing but the real problem is at the same time with totally Skye's some great military genius yet when we meet him he seems like a crazy fool how exactly is this guy is supposed to have defeated henselt in a single season exactly we really know henselt snow joke and he was potentially in a very powerful position at the end of the witcher 2 so it's disappointing how bad of it seems to have become exaggerated just to create an extra villain and it's confusing how a mentor somehow by his military genius but it's the quest to kill him that's the real problem it's clearly rushed but it's the end decision that really had sat down Dykstra is a smart guy who knows girl quite well how could he possibly think Geralt would sit back and let him kill Roach in cold blood it doesn't make any sense don't tell me which a neutrality because Dijkstra should be one of the last people to believe that crap also the players hand is completely forced here by this contrived choice this is meant to be the choice to decide the fate of the war I hate me off guards all I want from the war is for them to lose and I love Dijkstra but the choice you're given is whether to approach be murdered Roach who has just come to care more hunter risk his life for you then alone in all the events of The Witcher 2 how can you let him die and if by some miracle you don't care about Roach they also included Tala just to make sure it's even more one-sided like come on why even give the player a choice everyone's going to oppose Dijkstra here because the alternative is so ridiculous so no fur guard win the war great that's great it's not like I spent years looking forward to stopping nilfgaard or anything so really great choice I loved the part where stupid things happened for stupid reasons leading to a stupid outcome that I didn't even want but back to the main story after some more quests we get to the main end in sequence and it's reasonably impressive you get some idea boss fights against Karin fear and eridan getting to control an overpowered serie who one-shots everything is quite satisfying and pork rack dies to add some drama to the proceedings so far so good but the worst is yet to come upon killing eridan you're told Avel AK has betrayed you and considering all the foreshadowing for this that seems very predictable but then when you get there surprise he hasn't really betrayed you he was just set up as a red herring to provide a bit of extra I don't think this works that well as people who haven't read the books don't know I've liked very much and so as red herring he's a bit pointless of course you don't know whether to trust him because you don't know him very well at all so nothing that happens as much of a surprise or shock for book readers it's even weirder by a black isn't a very nice guy he does some bad things in regards to Siri and it's definitely established how he's out for himself in the books but in the game he just seems to have been changed into a morally good character and his complete obsession with series bloodline is just ignored I think him betraying Siri is a lot truer to his character the foreshadowing of his betrayal would need to be toned down but the result would make for a more interesting ending then there's the white Frost like many things in the books the white Frost was left somewhat ambiguous with the reader not knowing whether it's just the coming of a normal ice age but the game does away with that to make it some mysterious supernatural phenomenon but why exactly does it show up at the end of the game we summoned eridan why does a conjunction of the spheres happen and how does that make the white frost appear it's left pretty vague and speaking of vague how exactly does Surrey stop it and why didn't she do that earlier it's all pretty deus ex machina and I guess the player is just expected to go along with it and not question anything too much the story feels a bit like it buckles under its own weight towards the end for non book readers things get very convoluted what we have aired in the Wild Hunt the white frost serie and L and Shay time travel ultimate worlds elder blood and so on for book readers the series already had a satisfying ending which has been written over and that's fine but this is an event that's been built up over the course of three games now and for all this buildup the payoff is pretty disappointing and as for the faith of Surrey the decisions that lead to it aren't terrible but they're not exactly good either there's four or five small choices depending on whether you go see Amir and the only one that feels like it should truly affect series fates is the final one whether you let her go to scars grave or not the others are far too minor letting ciri travel axe hideouts doesn't seem like something that should be linked with saving her life also over timers during these choices immediately seem out of place and let the player know something's up with them which makes the timer's seem unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive if they wanted Ceres fates to be based off minor things they should have ditched the timer's and included a few more choices so the outcome feels a bit fairer and less random but for all of those complaints I still love this game story the main storyline isn't grades and the ending has several big problems but you know what this game fails of some things but it succeeds that the most important thing of all making you care you care about these characters after so many hours and maybe so many books and other games you really do feel like you know them like they matter and as a result you're emotionally invested in the story all free epilogues are great because you do care what happens to ciri the bad ending feels depressing and Geralt chasing after series medallion makes for a fitting ending the Empress of nilfgaard ending is very bittersweet it's also arguably the best ending for the world as nilfgaard ruled by ciri might be more likely to lead to peace and tolerance than the alternatives finally the witch attending does a great job of building suspense riding through white orchard one last time is strangely nostalgic and making the player wait to find out what happened to ciri makes the happy ending even happier this was the ending I got when I first completed the game at the time I didn't know whether I had the good or bad ending or what the fate of ciri was seeing the scene with Amir I thought she was dead then upon getting the swords a small spark of hope kindled inside me and finally seeing her at the end felt really great I felt genuine happiness and relief and it's because I didn't care about Sara and Gerald and the world the world that has been brought to life for his great characters creating a story that is flawed but also felt meaningful and emotional strong characters have always been the main strength of the series even when they look like this and by strong characters I don't mean characters that are actually strong or that are likable or even have a lot of depth instead I think it's best to find those characters who feel like they actually exist and aren't just there for the sake of the story or for the protagonist to interact with characters that are believable and whose believability makes them interesting and that's the case with the characters in this game from the main characters down to the minor ones the characterization is consist we really well-done and adds so much to the experience and just behind the great characters is the great world building the world of The Witcher is interesting and now it's been brought to life with such detail and on such an impressive scale it's a world full of stories to tell and they are stories worth discovering in many ways the gameplay doesn't do them justice the gameplay sections of quests are straightforward combat gets repetitive and the open world is structured in an uninteresting way that makes exploration leave a rewarding nor engaging but despite that the stories this game tells still feel like they're worth hearing and the world feels like it's worth seeing the gameplay may not be anything special but there are many other things that are from the sheer quantity of quality content to its writing to the small details for its ability to surprise you or any one of the great quests or its fantastic characters or maybe something else there's so much to appreciate how much the game's flaws the track from the experience would depend on the player but we also shouldn't forget the part of the reason this game is so flawed is because this game was so ambitious for the entire Witcher series setup react didn't just tried to make incremental improvements and improve on the formula established by each previous game each new game feels completely different with each installment they tried to make something new and make something that was great they aimed big and maybe some of the game's flaws are part of the results but would you honestly have it any other way would you rather they played it safe stuck to what they knew but you rather have something that was more polished and less ambitious I know I wouldn't there have been a lot of great games over the last 10 years a lot of games that have won awards or have high Metacritic scores and so on but of all of them The Witcher 3 feels like the most special to me not because it's objectively the best but because it made me care about this world and its characters they gave me hours of content to just get lost in and I loved every set where were the which every is a masterpiece or not I don't know but I guarantee this game will continue to be talked about and enjoyed for years and years to come and there may not be any greater achievements for now fogs thickest curdled milk never took you for a poet oh but I am one wanna hear a limerick sure Lambert Lambert what a prick not bad

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 313,194

Keywords: The Witcher 3, witcher 3, the witcher 3, the witcher 3 review, the witcher 3 critique, the witcher 3 analysis, the witcher 3 retrospective, critique, retrospective, witcher game review, witcher 3 game review, the witcher 3 why, overrated, neverknowsbest, best rpg, greatest rpg, witcher 3 sucks, witcher critique, witcher 3 critique, witcher 3 analysis, witcher 3 review, the witcher 3 gameplay, witcher 3 masterpiece

Id: bG-oMTxPCUA

Length: 101min 41sec (6101 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/never_knows_best_]

Worked really, really hard on this. Hope some people here might enjoy it and find it interesting.

[u/discojoe3]

Watching it now.

[u/Vumli]

Great review as always :)

[u/ObsceneTurnip]

I love the Witcher and related media, but haven't completed Blood and Wine yet. Does this contain spoilers for that part, or can I watch it without issue?

[u/They_havekilledFritz]

This is a fantastic critique and video in general. You described problems the game has that I knew were there but could not articulate properly. After watching I felt as though I knew the world a little better even though I have played through it 3 times. I love this game warts and all. (also I did not plan on sitting through the whole thing but you succeeded in capturing my interest and before I knew it I had watched the whole thing in one sitting)