10. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
I did it. It's done. DONE. And I got the good ending! Or the one I wanted, at any rate. So... yeah I'm sorry for the upcoming long, long novel-length essay:
The DLC are saved for another time. I'd say I did... a large amount of the side-quests but if I had forced myself to complete them all I would have grown to hate the game - because there was a point around week three where it did feel like I had been playing the game for five hundred years - so I think it was good to stop them once I realised towards the end I was getting close to being burnt out. All in all it took me just under a month, which is quite long for me as I tend to prefer more linear, shorter games (with my precious RDR2 being the exception).
I have mixed feelings but on the whole I enjoyed it and while I could never bring myself to love it, I do like it... and admire it? I like the scope and ambition. I like the sheer density of it and the amount of things to do. Not every mission or side quest was a winner, but the huge amount of variety in the writing and lore around these missions really highlighted how flat and samey a lot of large open world quests can be. And I liked learning about the folklore in the bestiary and things like that (I preferred that to stuff like gwent, which I pretty much ignored).
The story and characterisation was a mixed bag for me. By the end I was ride or die Team Yennefer and Ciri (but I'll tolerate some Lambert and Geralt), while disliking most everyone else... because I'm judgey and grumpy, generally. I thought the way the love triangle was handled was awful and I pretty much hated it (I've subjected this forum to an apoplectic rant about this before so I will... refrain, go into the west, and remain Miririn). But there were some lovely things in the story, like the parental relationship between Geralt and Siri.
Mainly, I loved how even seemingly minor decisions in optional quests could really impact the main story. I spent the entire game looking forward to killing
- Spoiler: show
- Radovid
but at the end of the main story he was alive and wreaking carnage, so clearly I must have missed something or picked wrong dialogue at some stage. I did like how the game didn't always beat you about the head with what consequences your choices would wreak - sometimes games seem so anxious the player is going to be unhappy with the consequences of their choices that the choices are too blatantly signposted ("Will you kick the orphaned one-legged puppy who was a gift from your long lost dead fiancee, or will you tell the puppy it's a good good dog and give it a biscuit?"). In this game I genuinely wasn't sure a lot of the time what the consequences of what I was doing would be. And I ended up always stopping and thinking at the big decision moments, which is great because that's what you want from a branching narrative like this.
Combat was just serviceable. It was fun enough, and responsive enough, and I love playing as magical people so I bloody loved using the Witcher signs. But the game was so dense already and I was in it more for the story and world, so I cranked down combat to easy so I wouldn't have to deal with it being too tricky. One issue that became apparent during the late game and particularly the final battles, is that I realised I much preferred combat as Ciri, zipping around, to combat as Geralt, who felt more clunky.
They did a good job at giving the main and a lot of side characters interesting, distinctive looks and facial expressions, although at some point someone needs to teach the women of this world how to do up buttons before they catch a cold. The character movement was sometimes a bit jerky or clumsy, and I always laughed when EPIC DANGEROUS WORLD CHANGING MISSIONS OF HELL were happening and then Geralt/Yen/Ciri would shuffle-run along like little waddling hens. But generally, considering how massive the game was, I was impressed with the consistently high visual quality (and I was playing on a Switch!) and the character models and environments. Some of the monster designs were to die for, too. Especially the Leshen and the Crones. Really excellent stuff.
It was a good experience and I'm glad I finally completed it because this was the fourth try after three previous failed tries and it was starting to feel like my video game Everest, sitting there on my homescreen, judging me. I feel a bit sad that I didn't have the "love at first button click" reaction so many others seemed to have, but I did enjoy myself with it.
