The Witcher 3 - The Ultimate Critique

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt released worldwide on May 19th of 2015 to critical acclaim the game was meant to be the end all RPG in a fantasy setting to end all other RPGs and for most players it succeeded the developer CD Projekt RED which is a Polish development company based The Witcher games off of a polish novel series of the same name as a result of this they had a fruitful beginning and starting point to develop this very narrative based RPG now in the current gaming world the term RPG could mean almost anything now it's true that technically speaking it means role-playing game a game in which you play any role that you choose to play however in the modern day games like The Witcher 3 fallout 4 horizon zero dawn in Mass Effect Andromeda are all viewed as equal players in the world of their role-playing elements and that's simply not true and the way that you can tell it's not true is by playing a game such as The Witcher 3 which we'll get into later but this game truly does exemplify what an RPG is supposed to be now that's a very weighty and lofty statement and I do plan to justify it as we go through the video which is why I have included chapter links down in the description so that if you want to watch this video in pieces because it will be very long you can do just that now I also want to clarify why I'm making this video after all The Witcher 3 launched over two years ago why am I still stuck on it well honestly if you've watched my channel then you'll note that The Witcher 3 had a lasting impact on me it has honestly changed the way that I look at every single game in the industry and CD Projekt Reds very positive pro-consumer approach to DLC and two add-ons has set the standard as far as I'm concerned to every developer moving forward and considering that The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games of all time I wanted to make this video sit down and work through the good the bad the ugly and the beautiful to be honest and even-handed across the board because many people complement this game and say that it's the greatest thing ever but unwilling to admit its faults and many people also do the antithesis and claim that it's a terrible waste of time to play you shouldn't bother with it and it's disgusting horrible it's just bad but they don't mention any of the good so this is going to be an attempt to critique and review the game in its entirety the good the bad and the ugly so let's get started now as I previously stated this is going to be very structured video so that if you want to watch it in pieces you can do just that or if you're only interested in a couple items that will be discussing you can jump directly to those and those time stamps will be in the description box below now I also want to clarify that we will not be discussing any of the DLC in this video but rather focusing only on the main game if you would like to see a video on parts of stone and blood and wine the two big expansion packs that were released for the game after its initial release we can do that just leave a like tell me in the comments that you're interested and I can work on those but as of right now this video is just gonna focus on the core game now this video is going to be broken up into four main parts or the sub points within those we're gonna be discussing the narrative both in terms of main quests side quests and environmental storytelling we're gonna look at gameplay with different dialogue choices that have lasting effects combat of course supporting systems such as alchemy and crafting and also exploration and then we're also gonna look at technical aspects of the game such as the graphics sound glitches control of the characters and similar things and lastly we will analyze the lasting impact that this game has had on its fans and the industry as a whole and so with all that said I also want to clarify that I would love to hear your thoughts on this whether it's in the comment section below or on my Twitter page at Luke Stephens TV or on the discord server which we have where you can talk directly to me and many other fans of the channel directly and all of those links will be in the description box below you can share your thoughts as you go through the video I would love to hear them well with all that said let's get started now we're gonna start out this video by going through the narratives specifically the narrative in main quests side quests and the environmental storytelling that the game does all the way throughout now don't worry we're not gonna get into any big spoilers or anything because this game is so good I don't want to spoil it for you at least initially so we might get into some spoiler territory later on but I will warn you when that time comes but at this point we're not gonna get into it now I think it's important to clarify why I'm taking on the narrative first and the reason I'm approaching the narrative at the beginning of this video as opposed to the gameplay for instance is because I honestly believe that the narrative is a single most important factor of this game as a whole there's a reason that I call this game a narrative RPG almost exclusively when people try to compare The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt to say Skyrim they're making a grave mistake because they don't understand the core difference between the two games The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is a narrative RPG because it makes a point of having the narrative take center stage all the way throughout it's true that it does have a basic idea of what the narrative is going to be and how you are going to follow it there are smaller decisions you can make inside and it is true that there are many different endings based on how you play throughout the entirety of the game and I'm sure if there's a which are for your decisions in The Witcher 3 will have a lasting impact on that game just as your decisions in The Witcher 2 can have an impact on The Witcher 3 which we'll get into later Skyrim on the other hand is an open-world sandbox RPG and I differentiate between the two on purpose there is a very differing degree of freedom that's employed by each of these games Skyrim for instance if you want to play as a thief that breaks into every house and steals everybody's everything then you can do that and the worst thing that might happen is you might be attacked by a couple guards you run away and they forget by the next time that you're there however in The Witcher 3 if you try to do that it is a lasting impact and it can ruin future interactions with different characters side quests everything can be botched as the result of one small moral choice now some people love the game for this in me and some people hate the game for this because it in many of these people's words can quote-unquote ruin the fun that they would expect to see in a game like Skyrim now the reason they think that it ruins the fun is because there are lasting consequences for your actions that have a significant impact on the rest of the game even 30 hours after you made that quote-unquote mistake now Skyrim if you were to go to Whiterun and kill a bunch of people then you might be thrown in jail or chased down by the guards and you could escape from jail you run away and it has no real lasting impact other quests will still work with the same faction you don't really have to worry too much about ruining the game based on your decisions however the witcher 3 takes itself much more seriously narrative lee and in terms of gameplay which you could argue is a good thing or a bad thing and it will be dependent on your personal tastes but it's something to be established that this is not an open-world sandbox like skyrim this game takes itself seriously it's trying to tell a story with real characters with real people and as a result you can't horse around and do whatever the hell you want to do point being the witcher 3 takes itself much more seriously than games like Skyrim or fallout 4 and if you try to play it in the same way where you just run around doing whatever you want to do you've got South Park in the background and you aren't really paying attention to the things going on around you you will not have a very good time playing it but if you allow yourself to become immersed and you focus on the game and really try to immerse yourself in the world that CD Projekt RED is crafted you will have a life-changing experience now as I already said I'm not going to get into any spoilers but I do want to go through the opening of the game to establish the tone and general feel of the game if you are sensitive to spoilers in any degree even those which are small and in the first hour and a half of the game then I recommend that you skip forward to another part in the video or click away entirely and so with all that said let's get into it after booting up the game a cutscene plays that explains the backstory to the witcher universe that echoes the style of the videos that you'll see throughout the entire main campaign during load screens now this is something that I initially thought I would become immensely annoyed with every time I the game I would have to sit through one of these long load screens with an annoying video recapping where I was in the main campaign but it actually ended up being incredibly helpful and one of my favorite features and something I would like to see in many many other games especially of this type and size essentially their animated shorts that explain what's going on in the main campaign at that current time and I actually really really found these helpful especially if I had to take off a weekend or a week even off of the game just to focus on school for finals or something I could come right back into it and the game would explain where I was what had just happened and I would be right back into it fully immersed now after this cutscene you're brought to the main menu and given the standard difficulty prompts and then you start the game then the game opens up with a very good-looking cinematic and this actually doubled as a cinematic trailer when the game was initially launching and it shows yen running away from soldiers and using her magic to escape in addition to establishing Geralt ability to track something that will be very important as the game goes on now the cinematic ends but it transitions very smoothly into an in-game cutscene showing garel asleep by a tree and then it's transitioned into Geralt actual dream now this dream is actually a mixture of Geralt memory and a reflection of Geralt inner self it's unusual for a game to throw you into a character's consciousness in the first five minutes but as you'll see throughout this video The Witcher 3 is not a normal game the dream opens up with one of the most iconic scenes of the entire game with garel relaxing in a bathtub at Kara morn when yennefer who is scantily clad nearby sends a magical lobster looking monstrosity into his bath to give him a friendly hand so to speak they share some quick witty banter that establishes the concept that they are intimately involved as if you couldn't gather that just from the visuals you grab a key open the door go downstairs and then you find vesemir now the old witcher has fallen asleep while supervising ciri who is a young witcher in training and she's run off and apparently abandoned her assigned readings you go down to syria and the game gives you your first real choice in the game the option to be hard on Siri or more forgiving now at first I thought this was just an empty choice that served only to show that the game had dialogue choices nothing more nothing less but now that I think about it and the more that I think about it the more I realized that this is meant to establish Jarrell as a father figure without ham fisting it it also establishes the idea that you will be able to choose how to approach situations such as these and that they will have a lasting impact as you go through the rest of the game or we could adhere to Occam's razor and perhaps it is simply a dialogue choice to show that you have dialogue choices and nothing more you then chase Siri down to the Courtyard and it is revealed that Syria actually did do her reading and even memorized it to the point where it blows away geralt and vesemir now obviously this serves to show that Siri is not just a physically talented individual as we saw on the pedestals not everybody can do that but also that she is an intellectually talented one as well you're then taken through the game's combat tutorial which is a little thin but serves his purpose and then it ends when Siri hits the helmet off of the dummy that she's forced to train with she runs off seemingly to retrieve the helmet but she doesn't respond when you call after her Geralt then notices that the dummy that she was training with is bleeding and he pulls aside the cloth that's been torn and it's revealed that there's a person inside now it isn't made clear who or if this person is supposed to represent anyone specific but based on the facial structure I can guess that this is a female with blue eyes but that's about it and this was a bit baffling on my first playthrough and even on my second because I thought surely he must be seeing a female character inside that we'll see later in the game but upon further inspection it seems that this is simply a bad omen of some sort jennifer has lilac colored eyes Siri has according to the books emerald green eyes Shawnee has green eyes Keira Metz has yellow eyes and that leaves only Tris as the closest match whose eyes are described in The Witcher books as quote cornflower blue the problem is that they appear green in the to jive with her red hair therefore we can only speculate as to this event significance and based on all of my perusing on reddit threads it doesn't seem that many people know how to put this together if you have a theory or if it's explained in the books somewhere that I did not find please let me know in the comment section below I'd love to hear it my personal theory however is that this is supposed to represent gerelds fear of unintended or perhaps unnecessary consequences to his actions or perhaps it's just a general anxiety / series actions leading to potentially deadly outcomes or maybe it's just a person in a sack getting hit with some metal in a dream who knows now after all of this the wild hunt which is a group of spectres who represent death and misfortune in Polish literature and folklore they show up and they seem to have brought snow and ice with them at which point everyone except Geralt and the hunt are frozen and then an ominous figure who turns out to be the king of the wild hunt orders one of his henchmen to swing it ciri likely killing her all while Geralt is left powerless and then Geralt wakes up needless to say I think this dream is meant to demonstrate Geralt scare for ciri and his fear of being incapable of helping to save her and it also establishes Wright as Geralt begins to explain his dream to Vesna member by the campfire that garel knows that ciri is in danger as he says it none well did it your dream No a Wild Hunt appeared attacked Siri they couldn't move stood there like a stump it was just a dream [Music] that's the problem it was more in the past when seaweed appear in my dreams something was wrong she was in danger we taught her how to defend herself from anything wraiths included [Music] be downing soon time to go garol explains his dream to Vesna mayor by the campfire and they also remind the player that they are looking for yennefer just as we saw in the cinematic cutscene prior to this they mentioned that yennefer is in a nearby town called Willoughby where she said she would meet them and vesemir explains that the trail after that has gone cold and that it will be too hard to follow after reaching the main road but nonetheless they decide to press on anyway you get up to leave and after your first short fight against ghouls in the real world you make your way to the main road on horseback as a means of introducing you to the game's gorgeous environments and I'm not joking just look at this just soak it in I'm gonna let it play like 10 seconds enjoy this no because by eating rotting corpses they prevent epidemics did you enjoy that I sure did but back to business the game wants to introduce you to your first beast you come across a Griffon that is attacked a traveler's horse you cut him up a bit and then he flies away but don't worry we'll come back for him soon enough the traveler then tells you about a tavern nearby that you can go to to ask about yen you go and are introduced to Gwent this games external sort of side activity that recently got its own entire spin-off which could have a video in and of itself but just so you know it is there and then the game demonstrates its nuance dialogue system and then you speak to Gunther Odom who you'll run into in hearts of stone which is the first DLC pack but after speaking with him you find out that your best bet to find yennefer lies with the nilfgaardian camp nearby where a soldier claims that he saw a woman matching yen's description and this is where the game really starts to pick up you are told by the head of the nilfgaardian encampment that before he can give you any significant information about yennefer you will need to go off and kill the Griffon which is causing him much trouble and so we do just that we right off we find the Griffon we kill them when we bring back its head and then were sent on our way to find yennefer now we'll stop with the very detail explanation of the main plot right there will still address some of the plot as we go through this but I don't want to be too specific because this is the point in the game where your narrative can really start to branch out based on who you choose to align yourself with and what you tell one of the Emperor's close confidants if you chose to simulate Witcher 2 saves which how it essentially works is you're being shaved and then the guy is asking you questions to put on the official record and based on your decisions and the witcher 2 if you happen to play the witcher 2 you can explain what choices you made who you left to die if you save this person who died in this fight did anyone die on this fight what did you do at this bridge you can make those decisions and it will have a lasting impact on who you see in the rest of the game and so at this point everything has followed and it will be about the same for everybody but at this point it will start to bridge out and break up into different paths now I also want to say that I have gotten in heat previously for suggesting that there is a quote-unquote right way to play certain games and there are many wrong ways to play certain games for instance blood-borne I felt that the right way to play that game was to play very aggressively and I think that that makes sense with the combat style and everything in that game it seems to be screaming for aggression however some people took real offense to that because they felt as though I was trying to force them to play a game in a way that they didn't enjoy or they just wanted to strife around to be defensive and that's fine I don't really care that much but with The Witcher 3 I honestly do believe that this game you have to take your time with it and not force yourself through the main quest now this is what I did on my first time through the game I got the game I downloaded on on Steam and I started playing through it and I just went with the main quests in my head for whatever reason I was thinking that the main quest is what the developers had spent the most time on and therefore I should spend the most time on the main quest as well however this was a grave miscalculation because there is so much in this world in side quests which are in my opinion the best I've ever come across all of the side quests have many different layers of narrative storytelling of a careful exposition of different elements where they explain character purposes and backgrounds even a side quest that you do in the first five hours you can run into the results of that side quest later on which is what we'll talk about in a moment when we address side quest specifically but all of this links together and that's why I really regret skipping over all of these side quests because I ended up shooting myself in the foot because I wasn't able to fully appreciate the political heat that was going on between the hriday nyan army and the nilfgaardian army because I had skip past the side quests where I had to go with to the battlefields and see the devastation or speak to the soldiers who were telling stories about their loved ones who had been killed or running across a young girl who her lover had been killed in the war and just talking with her all of these things you can do if you simply go out in the world to explore and to interact with those around you but if you are just focused on the main quest you might miss a lot of it now thankfully the main quest is very long and has a lot of details so you can get the gist of most of what's going on but if you're going to play this game I highly recommend that you spend a good 1015 hours before delving a whole hog into the main quest spending a good 10 to 15 hours going through the world just turning the HUD down to the most minimalistic size that you can and just exploring and I guarantee you will have a far more immersive experience than I did and so in short the main campaign of The Witcher 3 isn't anything mind-blowing Lee deep or creative it's a typical video game quest where you are seeking somebody out who's on the run or is in trouble and you are trying to save them pretty straightforward pretty easy to follow but the magic of The Witcher 3 is that they don't try to make that the main focus of the entire story in sted they have a story which is that series on the run she has these abilities and then they put you in this world that has a lot of detail built around it and they put the characters in that world and they make them the focus so instead of trying to force this amazingly deep and complicated story on you they instead put you and pair you up with these different characters and let them tell the story and be the memorable part they don't try to throw in big plot twists and turns to throw you off or to make the story memorable but instead let the characters take the reins and just be truthful about what's going on I'm actually a reminded of a talk that I saw Stephen King give on the writing process that he undertook wall trying to write The Shining which is of course the famous horror novel that eventually became a movie that was inspired by his stay in the Stanley Hotel here in Colorado in Estes Park and in this talk he discussed the process of actually coming up with a narrative and how he went about it and the big point that he was trying to communicate to his audience was that when you're writing a story and you want it to be convincing you create characters and then the characters are put in a situation and it plays out he never when writing a book has a beginning a middle and an end in mind instead he has characters in mind and has a setting in mind and he puts the characters in that setting and sees how it plays out now that's the same approach that The Witcher 3 employs of course they have lore that they have to adhere to because the game is based on of course a novel series where the author also employed this tactic but in the smaller interactions they also do that the side quests they don't try to necessarily make them incredible but instead try to let the characters tell the story and take the focus away from just a plot twist that's thrown in there or that's written from the very beginning now I know many of you probably saw this coming but fallout 4 for instance that game is a perfect example of a narrative that was written with the plot twist in mind from the very beginning and then everything was built around that plot twist and if you're sensitive to spoilers for fallout 4 then I warn you now but you're not missing out on anything I guarantee you as you play through the narrative of fallout 4 you are told that you are trying to find your son and this entire time you're running through the wasteland trying to find this little boy that's been kidnapped at one point they tell you that he's probably a little older he might be around 10 which makes sense cuz you were frozen after your son was taken but then you keep going through and all of a sudden you find out in the big plot twist reveal again spoiler warning that your son is actually a sixty something year old man and you were frozen four decades after your son was initially stolen so this old geezer that's been causing you so much trouble turns out to have actually been your son now the problem with this is that the entire narrative is filled with plot holes after this not only do many of the characters earlier in the game reference the old man in flashbacks when they were actually kidnapping the boy so they're referring to multiple old men or perhaps it's just there to be intentionally confusing whatever it is it's never really explained Shawn your son apparently also has all sorts of narrative dissonance going on throughout all of his dialogue sequences where it really doesn't make any sense at all and this is for me the most damning thing I was covering fallout 4 before it came out six months before it was even announced to be in existence and six months before it was announced I actually and you can go back and watch the videos I actually predicted the narrative and the plot twist I said it will deal with synthetic humans I said that you will find your son or you'll have some loved one that's been stolen and it will turn out that they have been frozen and you've been refrozen and they're older than you are and this big plot twist reveal and I predicted it before the game was announced what the big plot twist would be and it's a perfect example of a game that tries to have its narrative take the focus as opposed to the characters because they came up with this big plot twist at the beginning of development and then tried to make the narrative fit around it it's an example of poor writing it's high school writing it's pathetic and I'm gonna stop talking about it but with all that said if I had to summarize The Witcher threes narrative both main quest side quests and even the environmental storytelling I would summarize it in one word that word being honest and the reason I say honest is because the game and the writers of the game don't try too hard they don't try to make the game an incredible narrative experience but rather they give you characters that are sympathetic that have charisma that have wit they put them in a situation they put them in a world and follow them throughout it and it's believable it's honest because they're not trying to force any big plot twists to be memorable or to get reddit thread started but rather just try to be true to what these characters who are people in many cases would be like in real life in the real world what would they do so you never end up saying to yourself well that doesn't seem very reasonable or possible that seems excessive that seems crazy I don't think anybody would do that which I never once encountered in my entire 200 hours with this game thus far I've never encountered any time where I said to myself that doesn't seem possible or realistic and I think that for a game of this scale that's a very hefty feat now many people when you start complimenting CD Projekt Reds ability to write compelling narrative plot lines they will automatically switch and say well yeah they did a good job but the problem is that they didn't really do it they had novels to base it off of an entire novel series that the games are based off of so they didn't really write anything truly heling they just copied it from the original author now there's a couple issues with that excuse which is what it is it's an excuse that a lot of people will use to justify other developers falling so far short now the first issue is that it's automatically admitting fault and admitting that all of these other developers are falling short which is a little sad when you think about it that our expectation is so low that we think that they have to have an entire novel series in order to write compelling narratives but nonetheless that's the excuse that people put forward but they do levy this excuse and when they do they seem to be completely ignoring the fact that many of these other franchises especially open-world RPGs tend to have expansive lower collections if you look at elder scrolls for instance that series has thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of wiki and documentation cataloging every element of that game world now that goes into far more detail than anything that describes The Witcher threes world in those narratives The Witcher 3 yes it's based on a few novels true but skyrim was based off of thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of documents that were compiled over the last four games that came before it describing the world describing the entirety of Skyrim's universe and to ignore that I think is a little disingenuous now with regards to side quests of which there are many in The Witcher 3 I'm going to try and stick to one that I encountered very very early in the game and I'm doing this for a very intentional reason and that is to make sure that if you try this game that nothing is spoiled because so many of these side quests are dependent on you experiencing them for the first time and making your decisions based on initial impressions as a result of this I'm going to simply show you one that you encounter in the first half hour or so in the game and we'll explain it now if you haven't seen my other video in which I went into detail deep detail over side-quests in general and I compared them across different games then you will be familiar with this side quest essentially early on in the game you are hunting down the after mentioned Griffon and one of the ways that you do this is you go to an herbalist shop and you ask for a particular plan that's going to be very aromatic and draw the Gryphon out and when you arrive at the herbalist shop you look over and you see that there is a girl laying on the bed and she's being treated by the herbalist and it turns out that this girl has been attacked by that Griffon and has sustained life-threatening wounds now you can choose to ignore this or you can ask more about it if you are more role-playing and you're just trying to find yennefer and ciri you will likely just steamroll over it and you'll never hear about this again or hear from this herbalist again but if you ask more about it then you find out that this girl went out to the forest to meet her boyfriend who happened to be a soldier that she wasn't allowed to see in public so they snuck out into the woods they were attacked by the Griffon he escaped but she sustained these horrible injuries and is likely to die which is why the herbalist is trying to simply soothe her and give her the equivalent of morphine if you want to think about it like that to try and ease the pain and let her go peacefully now again you're given the second chance to get out and ignore this or you can actually offer to help and the way that you offer to help is to concoct this potion called swallow which allows healing which works on witcher's who have undergone the mutations but on a regular human it can either heal them or can cause horrible pain distortions and can kill you very very quickly and so already you are facing literally a great choice where you are not sure whether or not this will work you could end up saving this girl if you give her some swallow or you could end up causing her to die a horribly painful death and Geralt even says her screams could be heard the next town over as a result of it if it doesn't work now this is a side quest that you come across in the first hour or so of the game and already you're having to make very difficult decisions without much information as to whether or not it will work it's not like you're given an exact statistical likelihood that she will survive or die as a result of your actions you simply have to make the choice and go about your business and the worst thing is is that after you do this if you agree to help you give her the swallow it can take a few days to actually have an impact so you can't just sit there you have to go about your business and you don't even get to see the immediate results of your actions now many people hate this because they want to see the immediate impact of what they do but I actually think it's wonderful and I went about playing in hours and hours and hours later I was running around and I came across this camp I walked in and I encountered this man and I'll let it play out are you cold get out of Rivia correct you will in white orchard recently near vision charming village if you don't mind rotting corpses that have been one more if not for you Lena she survived thanks to your potion nice to see an elf curly and soldiers so concerned about the fate of some simple Nordling surprising that night when the Griffon attacked her she was on her way to meet me in the woods near the garrison [Music] lousy spot for a romantic encounter if the Gryphon hadn't gotten her something else would have I know but I could only ever get away between watches those words they were close listen Lena she has not fully recovered I took her with me when I was transferred thought she might get better [Music] she says nothing recognizes nobody sleeps most of the day I want to Mira which emotions have powerfully usually permanent side effects can't do anything to help now maybe a mage could I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for not letting that die trust me choice I had to make was harder now when I initially encountered this guard I cannot explain to you how blown away I was I actually like set down the controller and just said Wow out loud because I did not expect this I had no expectations of a follow-up to this small quest they took me probably less than 10 minutes in total to complete in my first hour and a half with the game I had completely forgotten about it and when I initially encountered it it just made me sit back and appreciate all of these other things and make me wonder how much else was out there in the world that I hadn't encountered organically that explained more and connected previous things in my previous actions to actual consequences it actually reinvigorated me into the game world and that's what I mean when I say that The Witcher 3 is honest the real world doesn't have little side quest markers leading you to people to find out what impact your actions had but rather if you go through life with your eyes and ears open you will occasionally encounter things that draw connections to previous decisions that you've made and the witcher 3 approaches it the same way there was no way that they knew I was going to encounter this soldier there was no way that they could have forced me to encounter this soldier but rather while I was exploring around the edge of the map I happened to come across a camp I walked in to maybe find somebody to trade with and I got this cutscene and I was truly truly blown away now I know I've been gushing a lot about the narrative so far and don't worry there will be a large section in a little while full of criticisms I do not plan to pull any punches with things that I see wrong in this game but the narrative I truly believed to be one of the best handled in this genre of games to find a narrative to find a story that is communicated on the small scale and the large scale as well as it is handled in The Witcher 3 is so incredibly rare that I simply stopped expecting any of the sort and when I encountered it in The Witcher 3 I was blown away and apparently many others were as well I've gotten hundreds of messages whether it's on Twitter or over the discord or over YouTube itself or in the comment section people telling me that The Witcher 3 has ruined gaming for them because the standard has been set so high the bar is so high in the sky that nobody else seems to be able to meet it and it's one of those games especially in the narrative department that makes you wonder if the other guys are even trying and again I want to clarify that I don't think that the narrative and the story is being told in this game are necessarily mind blowing Lee creative or revolutionary but rather the delivery is what makes them stand out because they focus on the characters they focus on the world and the honesty they're in and that's something that I personally and many others can appreciate next thing I want to address is environmental storytelling though this is something that is often overlooked in critiques and reviews of all sorts of different forms of media whether it's a film or a TV show or if it's music or if it's a video game the environment or the ambiance or the sort of background to the core entertainment I think is just as important if not more so than everything that's going on directly in other words in a song the background chord progression the key that it's in everything has a very intentional choice behind it if it's an a minor it's chosen specifically to be an a minor for a particular reason because it sounds a certain way if you're watching a film and the street lamp is green that is a very particular choice when you're watching The Matrix and there's a color grade over every shot in the matrix that was a specific choice made by the director and the editor it's all intentional just as in The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 Skyrim in GTA 5 everything you see was placed there with intention and so you have to give it its due credence that having been said when I decided to play through the game again actually twice for this video in particular I chose to really focus on the environment and go through and try alchemy and play those different mechanics that I had ignored in my first run and one of the ways I did that was by turning the HUD down I tried to play with it completely off but a few of the quests simply were too difficult or I didn't have the time to try and complete them without the heads-up display on but it is technically speaking possible to play through the game at least I've been told with the HUD off which I find a neat little detail now right before I went to the aforementioned herbalist shop I was running down a road actually following the marker to the herbalist shop but on the ground I saw a severed arm now the critic in me was immediately thinking is this a glitch or is this intentional did something happen here did an NPC get in a fight with a wolf in some sort of dynamic system and this just happens to be here well no I I doubt it so I decided to actually approach it the way that I would in that world I pulled up my sort of detective vision my Witcher senses and I looked around and I couldn't see anything but I did hear voices or some sort of growling or movement in the distance so I started walking over there because after all it's a severed arm somebody could be hurt or killed I want to find out who's responsible and I came across some wolves I killed them and thought that that was the end of it I said okay well the wolves must have killed that guy and it's a neat detail but whatever and then I head back on my path and all of a sudden I come across a bunch of ghouls and a bunch more dead bodies all over the place and this turns out to be where the arm was severed from and you actually can find a body which is missing its arm and it actually matches the clothes actually match now this is another example of attention to detail turn to the max that severed arm didn't need to be there if I walked 30 feet forward they could had a ghoul jump out at me or they could have just had somebody growl or something but instead they put this severed arm there to rouse your curiosity if you're paying attention and then you investigate it and you get looking over there then you look over here and all of a sudden you're immersed you were headed to some little cabin to talk with an herbalist to get buckthorn which smells horrid but just to draw out a Griffin and all of a sudden you've been pulled into this village which you end up liberating simply because you found a severed arm and once again this could have been a sidequest and perhaps it is and I simply didn't find it but even then I would argue that that proves my point even more so that I was exploring the game and organically curiosity drew this experience out of the ether another example is when I was outside of the camp where you actually run into Lana's boyfriend and right before I went into the camp to meet him I was looking around and I saw all of these bodies that had been hung apparently they were deserters or perhaps they were people that just stood up to the army or they were simply examples to the others not to mess around and there are bodies all over the place but there are families weeping and wailing mourning the death of these individuals it's not super hard to do but it's a nice detail that well perhaps nice is the wrong word but it's a detail nonetheless that helps immerse you in the world another detail that comes later in the game and this is something that I'll try to remain vague about because it could be classified as a spoiler but essentially there is a woman who goes on trial for committing a crime and she is sentenced to execution by being chained up to a giant rock a boulder and dying of starvation and to have her body picked out by the crows etc etc normal dark medieval stuff now when this happened I didn't think too much of it I was like yeah she's a horrible person she totally had it coming and she deserved everything that she got so I went about my business and completely forgot about her as I went through the rest of the story but it wasn't until probably 10 or 15 hours in-game that I went around and I was sailing on a boat and I came across a giant boulder and there was a woman chained to it now this is a detail that they once again didn't technically need to include they could have gotten away with simply saying she was executed and that was all they really need to do but instead they put this here so that if you are exploring the world you can encounter it organically and honestly again you didn't ask to go and be taken to the site of her execution but rather just by exploring it you came across it the developer had faith in you the player that you would encounter it because you were curious enough to seek it out or to just come across it organically another example is when I was playing and just exploring around the world with the Hut off just trying to see what I could find and I came across a bunch of bandits I fought them killed them took their stuff and then looked over and I noticed that they had a painting next to their tent I thought it was kind of odd for bandits in the middle of nowhere to have a bunch of paintings so I looked over by their boat and sure enough there was a large crate there was a well-dressed dead man that seems to have been gone for a while and another crate filled with paintings and this is something that isn't explicitly stated but these are art thief's they robbed an art merchant took his stuff and then came and were probably headed to oxenfurt or somewhere to sell the paintings but instead you caught them killed them and you just encounter this and again this is not something that is explicitly stated but it's something that you can infer based on what the developer put in the world around the characters all of this to say the CD Projekt RED made a real point of paying attention to every little detail instead of just throwing some NPCs these bandits on a hillside so that you would have something to interact with when you reach the island they put a box of paintings and they also throw a dead merchant on the beach side so that you can infer that these guys are art thieves or perhaps they just raided this guy and they're gonna go and sell his paintings off in oxenfurt or somewhere it's something that isn't necessary but that's what makes it so impressive and so great the fact that it wasn't required but they still went the extra mile to deliver it this same attitude is also seen in CD Projekt Reds attitude towards DLC now they didn't need to do this but what they did is they released 16 pieces of free DLC things like extra quests alternate outfits skins all sorts of things like that that normally a developer like Ubisoft or a publisher like EA would typically charge a buck or two for and certainly they could have and I would have been more than happy to pay for it because I am such a fan of the game but instead they release it for free and only charge four hearts of stone and blood and wine hearts of stone which adds 10 hours minimum to the game and blood and wine which also adds 20 hours minimum to the game something that is so significant that they could be classified as their own games in and of themselves much less a DLC expansion needless to say this attitude towards DLC is a breath of fresh air in the modern gaming industry and one of the reasons that The Witcher 3 fan base is so devoted to supporting CD Projekt RED because they are so different in how they respect their customers it's really just abnormal and I have trouble justifying it in my head probably because I'm just a cynic but it really is great all of this to say that The Witcher threes narrative is in my opinion one of the best delivered stories not necessarily the greatest story in gaming but one of the best delivered stories in any open-world RPG that I have ever come across it truly is astounding and in the multiple times that I've played through this game I still find myself baffled and saying to myself how did they possibly do this how is this game even possible but it is and I'm very very impressed now we're gonna move on and discuss the gameplay we're gonna be discussing dialogue choices combat supporting systems such as alchemy crafting and the like and then of course exploration as a whole now as I said at the beginning of the video many games claim to be RPGs nowadays but I tend to have a higher standard for them I require the ability to actually have a moral choice to be made and then to have that choice hold a lasting impact on the world around you I don't think that simply having stat checks or buffs in perk trees I don't think that that actually qualifies you to call yourself a role-playing game I loved horizon zero dawn for instance but I would never claim that that is an RPG sure it has dialogue options sure it has ways to level up your character that can be different from your friends but on the whole your actions don't actually have consequences that have a lasting impact the world doesn't feel alive and lived in but rather it seems that you're playing out a single narrative story that the developer crafted for you that isn't to say that it's a bad game I really really enjoyed it and I've done videos on it in the past but it's simply to say that that is not an RPG fallout 4 is also not an RPG because you don't actually have freedom you have the ability to say yes to any request from an NPC in usually four different ways you can say it either yes firmly you can say yes sarcastically yes in sort of an a-hole ish way or you can say maybe but that also ends up meaning yes now I don't want to pretend like The Witcher 3 is a perfect game in this sense no there are many discussions you'll be having when you are finessed into saying yes even if you're trying to weasel out and say no you can try to say oh well no I don't think that's a good idea for instance this discussion right here this is when you are hanging out with Siri and you're on the run but you are hanging out with basically a circus they need horses and they tell you that they want to steal some of those horses because they won't sell to them now Geralt has the option to say sure let's steal some horses or he can be like no we're not stealing blah blah blah now in this case you're going to need to end up stealing the horses it's basically required because if you say no no we're not gonna steal horses it's wrong they say well it's just two horses they won't notice the difference and they've been mean to us so we can be mean to them not a great excuse but nonetheless you can press on Geralt can even offer to pay for the horses himself but the same dude says no that's not possible because it's not the money that's the issue it's us that's the issue they won't sell to us because we are scum now when I first played through this I was thinking that well why doesn't Geralt just go in alone offer him money for the horses even a premium price for the horses he sells him to Geralt and then he just gives them over to these people but I guess you could say perhaps the guy that is selling the horses is aware of Geralt presence at this camp so maybe he would notice and not sell it to them either way but still it seems like it should have been worth a shot before we just break in and steal all of his stuff it's a little bit of a plot hole a little weird but it's something that I can overlook one of the inherent difficulties of having dialogue choices especially in a game that has a voice protagonist is that you'll have a dialogue option on screen you click on it or hit the corresponding button and then the character ends up delivering a line that doesn't at all match what you thought he was going to actually say because it was worded on-screen in just such a way that it was vague and you couldn't tell if it was sarcastic or who it was referring to if you were the filthy scum or if the other person was filthy scum or if the third party was the filthy scum you can't tell because the question or statement was worded poorly now I do not envy the person who has to go through all of these cutscenes and make sure that the dialogue is written in just such a way that you won't misunderstand it so that you understand who the subject is who the object is who the indirect object is that way you don't end up having a decision made that is game altering but it simply was because you didn't understand what the game was actually asking of you I do not envy that person at all and it's very impressive that for probably 98% of the discussions in this game it's perfectly accurate now of course that is completely subjective I am simply stating from my experience that for me based on how I was reading the dialogue options it corresponded accurately to what the characters ended up saying now that is completely subjective because depending on where you're from depending on the translation if you're playing the game in another language all of these can play a role in how you interpret the dialogue options so take this with a grain of salt but for me at the very least I didn't have any issues with this but there's not much else to say about these dialogue options other than they are meaningful and they do have an impact something as simple as whether or not you chase after Siri or say Ceres stop can change the ending that you have so you have to constantly be weighing the consequences of your actions but other than that all I can say is that I think they serve their purpose and they're executed well now moving on to combat I'm sure many of you have been waiting for this section I know I sure have combat is probably the weakest part of The Witcher 3 honestly I have had trouble pinning down what exactly it is that bugs me about The Witcher threes combat system but in general I think it starts from a problem I have in general with the controls which is that Geralt seems to have no weight whatsoever he floats through the game world almost as if he's a balloon blowing in the wind and having weight to a character is something that is very hard to pull off especially in the animation Department I do not envy those who have to do that and whose job it is to animate a heavy figure through the game world but it is something that is significant because you're playing through a dense combat sequence and your character seems to have no weight whatsoever you end up with something that feels like Batman Arkham City or Assassin's Creed unity where you're just floating around and it also can pull you out of your immersion because it doesn't feel like you're controlling an actual being it feels like you're playing a video game in addition to the poor controls during combat difficulty is also something that I've consistently criticized The Witcher 3 over the game is completely dependent upon a difficulty slider with four different settings you can either choose to play just the story or blood and bones or you can go to higher difficulties which as you can imagine simply bulk up the HP of your enemies increase their damage output and make your health pool smaller now I'm somebody who enjoys difficult games I'm a huge fan of Dark Souls and blood-borne as I'm sure many of you guys know I livestream them all the time but the problem is that the Witcher threes difficulty is predicated on gear it's predicated on you having the right swords on having the right oils on having the right armor in order to actually put up a fight so if you are even one of the greatest players you can dodge everything can roll against everything you know the perfect timings of all of these enemies and you hit them if you don't have the right gear the durability will run out and all of a sudden you will be left stranded with no way of actually competing with this behemoth now CD Projekt RED seems to have been aware of this challenge with such a gear heavy system and so they added a difficulty slider that way if you ever get caught somewhere in the game incapable of moving forward you can just move the difficulty slider down lower their health pool increase your damage output and take them down now this is something that I have always viewed as lazy if you are a game developer and you add a difficulty slider I simply view it as lazy scaling in the world now I fully recognize the difficulty of developing a combat system for an open-world RPG like The Witcher 3 you don't know when a player is going to go to a certain area and as a result you tend to have to leave it fairly open at least so that they can get out of this situation if they get themselves into it and in that case I can understand and sympathize with the decision to have a difficulty scaler it's sort of a get-out-of-jail-free card if you happen to start a quest that's way above your level and you can't get past one of the bosses but you don't want to have to load back to a previous save in order to get out of it my argument however in that particular instance is that you're stupid because you got into that fight when you shouldn't have and as a result you should also suffer the consequences and have to reload that previous save but there are organic solutions for this look at blood-borne for instance it has a linear difficulty curve simply because certain areas of the map open up as you go through you can technically run through a lot of those areas sequentially but they only open up once you defeat a boss leading into that next area so you always can assume that the players have completed certain bosses before they reach another one and in the witcher 3 it's no different when you go to Skellig ax you have already completed a certain number of quests and you have accumulated enough gold so that you can pay somebody to sail you there so the developer already knows that you're at a certain level and that you will have a certain skillset and inventory going on to the island which is why they can have more difficult enemies there now I only had to use the difficulty scaler twice in my first run-through it was first when I was about halfway through the game it had become too easy and I was outputting such high damage that I wanted to move it to the next tier so I moved it from the third most difficult to the second-most difficult and I felt that that was a good balance of difficulty and ease throughout the rest of the game the second time I had to use it was when I started the DLC and I got to to song in blood and wine although I was leveled correctly and I was actually above the minimum level requirement I found that the enemy damage output was so much higher than what I was used to dealing with that I wasn't scaled appropriately and didn't have the right gear to deal with it so I lowered it back down to how I initially started the game on the third hardest difficulty setting now I fully recognize that this is completely subjective and some people will never have to mess around with a difficulty slider others will do it almost every 10 minutes but in general this is just a personal preference I view difficulty sliders as lazy I think that if you're going to develop a game you should put in the time and effort to make sure that the enemies are scaled consistently and if that means that certain islands are impenetrable until you reach a certain level so be it I have no issue with that and if that means that going to Tucson when you're underleveled or under geared is going to be a blood fest then so be it I have no problem with that RPGs especially should be willing to let you suffer as a result of your stupid decisions on the whole the combat isn't terrible it serves its purpose but it certainly is not great and doesn't live up to the same standards set by the rest of the game it's clear that this was not the focus in development but rather the narrative and the ambience was the focus now some people have come on my channel and expressed disdain for the game as a whole as a result of the combat system they said that it's not worth playing simply because the combat isn't good and if that's how you feel then certainly this game is not for you this is not meant to be a medieval combat simulator whatsoever but rather a game which is a narrative RPG that also has combat now the other thing I have to mention are the signs and specifically Kuenn now Kuenn is the shield sign which initially just puts a protective shield over you and if you take a hit then it protects you against that initial strike but as you level it up it can eventually be used to hold up a shield and actually take health back on based on the damage inflicted on it and then it can also be used as a shield and that explodes basic when it's struck now if any of the gameplay mechanics in this game this one is the most prone to breaking all combat it really can mess things up if you start spamming it and that's why I chose as I went through in my later playthroughs to simply ignore it I was allowing myself to use igni I was allowing myself to use your didn't but I would not let myself touch Quinn because it was just too Opie as for the healing system which I would argue is one of the most important mechanical elements of any combat system on the whole The Witcher 3 approaches this fairly normally essentially you can quick slot food or potions or drinks or various items and use those even as you're fighting because they are quick slotted and they over the course of time will help you regenerate a certain amount of health depending on the item but you also have to be careful because the potions and things that you consume have a toxicity to them and if you overdo it then you're toxic meter will rise too far and it can actually do reverse damage to you the other straightforward way of healing besides really complicated character builds is to use Quinn hold it down after you've upgraded it past a certain point and it will actually help you regain damage that is inflicted on the sign itself there are technically speaking a couple more ways to regain health whether it's certain enhancements that you have on your swords or your clothing or certain level ups that you've done based on your character build but because those are pretty miniscule I'm not going to mention them specifically in this combat section I think that they're more for just general gameplay to make it easier to explore and not specifically for help during battle there are also things like oils that you can apply to your swords to help you with certain types of enemies like undead or vampires but I actually was able to go through my entire first playthrough without using them at all so it's important to know that they aren't strictly necessary but if you do plan on going through the game on a higher difficulty or going through the DLC very quickly without leveling your character these are going to be incredibly important on the whole I think the combat serves its purpose but it's very clear that this was not the focal point of development the combat is fast paced and it's fun enough but it can get a little tedious at times and frustrating in my opinion in order for combat in a game to be fun every time you take damage or die it must be because you did something wrong specifically a mechanical failure perhaps you dodged at the wrong time or you struck a character you shouldn't have struck something like that it's your fault the problem with The Witcher threes combat in particular is that it's so gear dependent and leveling dependent now that isn't normally an issue with these types of games but it can be really immersion breaking when I go to an area running there or riding on my horse there's no clear difference in the areas except for perhaps the foliage and then I see an NPC over there or perhaps a barbarian or Raider and they're just messing around but they look no different they have no different gear apparently then the people I saw back where I was previously where I took care of them no problem but when I go over to mess with them they can one-shot me and I can't deal enough damage on them with my regular sword to actually have an impact it can be very very immersion braking because it is so leveling heavy and that's something I wish weren't so obvious and as I previously said I think that there are many solutions to this but the most obvious one would be to have it so that combat is much more dependent on the skill of the player and the movesets of the enemy characters above and beyond the gear that they happen to be holding at that given moment if I'm running around the map and I just happen to encounter a couple Raiders and then I pull out my sword to take care of them I am Geralt The Witcher of Rivia I am a badass and the fact that they could one-shot me just because they happen to have better gear than I do is a little immersion braking because I can dodge every move that a given enemy gives out but if I mess up too slightly and they hit me I it's ruined the game is over because they just so happened to be a higher level and I know some of you will air your grievances at this point of view but it's something that's always bugged me in these types of games that are so leveling and gear dependent it pulls me right out of the moment it may just be me but hopefully there are some other people watching this that can sympathize now I would like to discuss exploration in the world of The Witcher 3 now I've already touched on this a little bit especially in the section on environmental storytelling but I would like to address it more specifically here because there's one thing that I think really hinders exploration in The Witcher 3 and it's something that is very easily fixed but I think it's an issue that not many people will realize exists probably until it's pointed out to them which is hopefully what I will do in this section now I am of course talking about the heads-up display now I in general tend to have a problem with a lot of HUD's in games horizon zero dawn had a horrible default heads-up display Zelda breath of the wild has an incredibly cluttered one but there's no easy way to customize the heads-up display in breath of the wild you basically have two options you can go with the standard one which is incredibly cluttered or you can go with the quote-unquote pro heads-up display which is very very spare so it's a little tough to strike that balance but luckily CD Projekt RED did include all of the switches and options to allow you to customize it to your tastes the problem is that I don't think many players will realize until it's too late that all they're doing is following their mini-map around and looking at their inventory slots while they're playing through the game as I said earlier the environmental storytelling in this game is really really good and that's why I actually try to play as much of the game with the HUD turned off as possible I'll go through whole sections of the game just exploring around the map with my HUD turned off completely because it helps me get him Kirstin it helps me focus on the world around me rather than how many vials I have left of this or that or how many potions I have how much bread do I have left can I make it there what's my health like right here what am i doing it's something that really helps with immersion and focusing on not focusing on something I know the idea of focusing on not focusing he's a little little contradictory but I'm gonna go with it but going off of the idea of HUD's being so cluttered nowadays it really makes me think and realize how many games today have incredibly cluttered screens and viewpoints I think that it's really unnecessary and there are options to turn it off but most people will assume especially if you're playing on console and aren't a menu digger like many PC players are you're gonna assume that the default settings are the ones that developer intended and I think that that's a safe assumption to make the problem is in the witcher 3 for instance or horizon zero dawn the HUD can actually clutter the view and actually detract from the exploration because you're more focused on following quest pointers or looking at your mini-map as opposed to looking at the world that the developers carefully crafted that's sitting right in front of you and incredibly detailed HUDs are not necessary in order to create a very vast open-world game with a lot of different quests and locations my prime example for this is Skyrim that HUD is incredibly small is incredibly minimalistic and I think it works just right it gets the job done and it helps you avoid the common pitfall of focusing on the menus as opposed to the game itself now this criticism may just be me reaching for straws because I'm trying to find things to criticize about The Witcher 3 but I honestly do find it very frustrating that the HUD is so cluttered by default and as I said it is something that can be turned off and on on all versions of the game whether you're playing on ps4 Xbox one or PC you can alter it to make it more minimalistic or turn it off completely but many people aren't going to do that they're gonna play through the game the way it is by default and I think that that is a real shame as for other elements of exploration I think in general the witcher 3 does it really well it gives you the tools needed to explore no doubt but I wish that there are more reasons given to you or quests that asked you to go out in the world and required exploration more quests that ask you to go and find a statue in the middle of the woods or ask you to go and climb the highest mountain or to go and do something like this and that and that just anything to get you out of the cities and exploring because the world is so incredibly detailed that it breaks my heart that not many people are going to get to see it because they will constantly be telling themselves I can't get distracted I have to focus on the main quest because I'm role-playing and ciri is in danger Geralt wouldn't spend all his time wandering in the woods he would be going from quest to quests following clue to clue to try and save ciri and I think that that's a reasonable thing to do maybe you want to play through the main quest and then after you've completed that then go exploring and I think that that's fine as well just as long as you try it out turn your HUD down to the bare bones they as far down as you can get it basically and then just go out and wander around you will be astonished as for the supporting systems in this game such as alchemy and some of the crafting systems I think they work just fine but I was able to get through multiple playthroughs at least the majority of them without even touching the crafting system beyond the initial tutorial missions and quests that required you to craft a couple items so it's really not necessary and you can get through most of the game without it but if you were to focus on it I can only imagine that it would make the combat even easier and perhaps allow you to play up by three or four levels at a time but in full disclosure I am no expert on these systems because they don't really match my play style and so I never really gave them their due attention but if you are interested in them they are there now I'll be completely honest I'm not really sure how to approach this part of the video because after all the witcher 3 launched in 2015 to discuss the graphic seems kind of cruel because it is an older game but even if we were to discuss the graphics i think it goes without saying that the witcher 3 is still an incredibly beautiful game i've played through the game in its entirety on PC and on ps4 and on both console and on PC the game is jaw-dropping and in terms of performance I can get solidly a hundred and forty two hundred and fifty FPS on maximized settings on my current rig if you put a gun to my head and asked me if there was one thing I could add to the game in terms of graphical prowess what would it be I would say that better lip-syncing would be much appreciated it's very rare that I get caught off-guard by something like this it was very common in Mass Effect Andromeda for instance but in The Witcher 3 you usually don't notice it but there are moments when the lip-syncing is very very noticeable another issue which seems to be a holdover issue from the initial launch of the game is the sound that comes when you strike an enemy with your sword this occasionally won't play and so you'll take a swing your enemy will take damage and get staggered but you won't hear anything and it's really distracting and noticeable when Geralt is in the middle of a big combo and every spin is associated with a clash or a clang and then all of sudden hellooo - and there's just no sound that plays I'm not sure why this happens but I noticed it on PC and on ps4 even still as for anything approaching a gamebreaking glitch I personally have never encountered one I know people have occasionally reported that they had some horrible glitch that destroyed save files I have never encountered it those seem so incredibly rare that they aren't even repeatable and so technically speaking they are statistically irrelevant and so it probably goes without saying but the game runs wonderfully on 2017 Hardware whether on PC or on a console and there's just not much to say about it it's had two years of very consistent and steady patches and at least I can say thank you to CD Projekt RED for providing those with regards to the soundtrack I don't think I have to say much you've been listening to it throughout this entire video in the background so you probably already have an opinion of it whether you consciously register that or not but what I can say is that I love this soundtrack it is so vast and has such a varied number of songs that I I just can't gush about it enough it is very common in an open-world game like this that you will be spending a lot of time running around the same areas of the world and the soundtrack is very important because it helps to keep those moments fresh and light and at least somewhat interesting now in certain games the way that they approach this such as in Fallout games is that they give you a radio and allow you to listen to a bunch of songs that are on basically a giant playlist and I think that that works really well and soundtracks in general work the same way you have a bunch of songs that are set up for certain contextual situations and so in those terms The Witcher 3 doesn't do anything abnormal or anything revolutionary it gets the job done and the music is interesting enough that I think it serves its purpose and it can often complement the emotions going on in a particular cutscene in the interest of full disclosure however I do want to say that a few of these tracks will become very very familiar to you but they don't get annoying like that song that's stuck in your head for days on end but they will be familiar to the point where you might even be humming them along as you're slashing ghouls apart The Witcher 3 is without a doubt the most impactful game that I have ever played it is shaped the way that I view gaming as a whole and in many ways set the standard for most games at least for me moving forward if you followed the channel for any period of time at all then I'm sure you're aware that I constantly bring up the Witcher 3 and reference it in all reviews and critiques that I do and I do that on purpose because I honestly view this game as the new standard bearer for quality and excellence in this industry in a world of Ubisoft's and EAS it's very easy to become discouraged at the lack of polish and care that goes into so many of these products a franchise can have a fanbase in the millions millions of people who have had life-changing experiences as a result of playing these games but that doesn't matter at all if the franchise or intellectual property is owned by a publisher that is focused solely on quick profits they will pump out horse armor DLC and new skins and require you to purchase expansions to get the full number of quests in the game and they'll take the consumer for a ride simply because they know that they have a product that has emotionally impacted their audience it's for this reason that a company like CD Projekt RED is viewed so differently they're seen as the oasis in the desert the one speck of hope in a corrupted landscape of game developers and that may sound overly colloquial and I apologize for that but simply the point is that what CD Projekt RED has done with The Witcher 3 the 16 piece is a free DLC that came out after and the massive expansion packs for low prices it's all bucking the trend and it shows that they view their customers as more than just little piles of cash to be harvested The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt really is something special and if you have not had the honor and pleasure of playing it I cannot recommend it to you enough but that's all for this video hopefully you liked it and if you did please hit that like button and consider subscribing and if you want to help support the channel monetarily then you can also check out my patreon in the description box below I am after all a broke college student and I need some way of justifying the time commitment to make these videos to myself so if you do support me on patreon I will be eternally grateful but with all that said thank you all for watching so much and I'll see you in the next video peace out [Music] you

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 2,094,119

Keywords: luke stephens

Id: -aMggRlvttg

Length: 80min 30sec (4830 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/RogueKnight777]

Here is a great critique of The Witcher 3 by LukiePoo that I thought I'd share because he doesn't get nearly enough attention, IMO. He brings up some very interesting topics in regards to the game, and I think he does an excellent job showing why the game is so great. I initally subscribed to him because of his review of the game that I stumbled upon about 6 months ago, and I am glad to see TW3 is still on his mind even two years after the game's release.