The Witcher 3 is one of the most celebrated games of the modern era. It iterates on the gameplay style of the Witcher 2 by adjusting the combat system and shifting to a massive open world peppered with an exceptional amount of uniquely crafted content, much of it with full voice acting.
CD Projekt Red clearly wanted to finally get its video game version of Geralt more aligned with the literary version, so the story in its early phases sees Geralt summoned to an audience with the emperor of Nilfgaard, the Germanic empire that invaded the northlands at the end of the previous game. Geralt is soon reunited with Yennefer of Vengerberg, his canonical love interest, who's been serving the emperor as an advisor, and the emperor tasks Geralt with tracking down Ciri, Geralt and Yennefer's adopted daughter because the emperor is her biological father and wants her with him. Ciri, as the long-lost daughter of the queen of Cintra and the descendant of a crossbred elf-human line with incredible powers (sort of the Witcher universe's version of Dune's Kwisatz Haderach), is an important person, both politically and genetically, so she spends a lot of time evading people who want to take advantage of her, and in this game she's on the run from the Wild Hunt, a group of extremely ill-tempered elves from another dimension who like to snatch people and press them into serving their ghostly hunting party. Geralt is revealed to have been in their clutches before he was freed and rendered an amnesiac, explaining how he got into the state he was in as the original game began.
So off Geralt goes to track down leads on Ciri, reuniting with old friends and enemies, and generally having a variety of new adventures. Occasionally, when Geralt finds where Ciri has been, the game will switch to a flashback in which the player gets to control Ciri and enjoy her ability to teleport around the playfield, zipping behind enemies and backstabbing them.
As with many open world games, the overarching story isn't very compelling, little more than a thread to keep players moving into fresh, unexplored areas. What's more notable is what goes on as the player wanders around that world, running into monsters or bandits that need killing, visiting towns and picking up contracts for witcher's work, or just stumbling across strange happenings that need sorting out. When the game is at its best, there is no game that better conveys the sense of being a wandering swordsman simply getting into adventures. The life of a sword-and-sorcery protagonist who's more interested in making some money or satiating some curiosity about strange local rumors instead of saving the whole world. The major subquests, such as the one about the Bloody Baron, often feel like they could pass as well-drawn short stories or novellas in an extra volume of Geralt's adventures. Even the main storyline, to its credit, is really just about Geralt trying to reconnect with his daughter; Ciri might be of world-shaking importance but Geralt is "but a witcher."
The game is a triumph of presentation. The graphics are beautiful, with various environments convincingly rendered with crisp art direction. The music brings a classically Slavic flavor that has never really been popularized outside Eastern Europe. Most notably, the game has a very large amount of unique writing that makes even the most disposable content feel special. Wiping out a generic group of highwaymen will usually yield at least a letter or journal that explains who they were and why they were there, completely unlike any other generic bandit group who have their own brief stories. And the game handles a variety of tones. Much of it is grim and horror-tinged, but there are times it goes for humor or well-earned sentimentality. It brings back the Grimm fairy tale and Arthurian influences that Sapowski worked into his original stories.
Where the game is less triumphant is in most other aspects; i.e., the gameplay. Although it improves on the combat system in The Witcher 2, adding a nice side-hopping move to the full dodge-roll from the previous game, the combat is still rather unsatisfying in many ways. Geralt has a maddening tendency to auto-target the wrong enemies and in more hectic fights the player could end up fighting the controls as much as the characters in the game. Geralt's context-sensitive moves can be hard to predict - sometimes he'll perform a simple quick stab, but many times he winds up with a slow-developing pirouette. And the combat is often formulaic. Many situations come down to dodging or parrying a strike, hitting exactly two counterattacks before the enemy gets its guard up, and then repeating until the fight ends.
The controls for horseback-riding and swimming under water are also frustrating. The player has to keep Geralt facing forward at all times for them to work correctly, lest they start reversing over and over until the player resets the camera behind Geralt and gives the game a moment to settle down. With Geralt's limited air supply, you can literally drown while trying to get the swimming sorted out.
As an RPG, the game feels like it has an identity crisis, similar to its predecessor. Most of the game's design is in line with standard action games and the inclusion of classic RPG mechanics like gathering experience and leveling up feels at odds. Why is Geralt, such an experienced witcher, clowning around much of the game at a low level? Even late in the game, it's possible to encounter random bandits who can slaughter you in a single blow because they're 10 levels ahead of you, so powerful that it's possible you won't even be capable of hurting them no matter how well you've mastered the controls. And the game doesn't even gate off areas with monsters at significantly higher levels. The whole world is open to you right away and it's possible to run afoul of such monsters at any time, leading to pathetic scenes of Geralt fleeing like a wimp from routine drowners or ghouls.
As a major AAA release, The Witcher 3 is also predictably conservative in how it handles exploration and quest design. It insists on holding the player's hand at all times. Although it's possible to switch off HUD elements like the minimap, you'll still need to refer to the map to get anywhere because the game never bothers to use detailed directions when describing objectives. A character might tell you to visit someone in a particular city but they won't give you an address or note landmarks - you have to use your GPS/quest markers to find out where they live. Contrast with a game like Morrowind, where an early quest involves locating Caius Cosades and the player has to work out on their own where he lives based on information provided. Interesting locations in the game world are marked with question marks until the player gets near them, taking some of the fun out of simply wandering the world, wondering what's beyond the next hill or in those ruins off in the distance. Now you just check to see where the markers are and head over, never needing to bother with empty, unmarked spaces.
As a very large game, some pacing issues do occur at times. The game's second major phase, where Geralt visits the island country of Skellige (a nation of pseudo-Celts who follow Norse religion), often demands that Geralt circulate high mountains or sail from island to island. Although it's quite visually stimulating, the relative slowness of the travel can become wearisome and unlocking fast travel options becomes a priority.
Ultimately, the game and the series as a whole exemplify games that succeed based on their storytelling and general ambiance over their actual game design. They resonate with fans who enjoy the characters and the situations they get in, and with those who appreciate games that prioritize choices and consequences, less so with players who would rather just have a nuanced and exciting combat system.
The game does offer a tremendous value for money. In addition to already being a big game, CDPR created two substantial expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. Hearts of Stone provides a major new subplot in which Geralt has to literally beat the devil, taking part in other activities such as organizing a bank heist along the way. It also brings back Shani as a supporting character, giving fans of the first game who missed her some closure.
Blood and Wine is even bigger, so much so that it's almost a full-fledged sequel in its own right (Witcher 3 and 3/4?). Geralt travels to the French high medieval-flavored duchy of Toussaint to hunt a vampire, and it also serves as a homage to the early short story "The Lesser Evil" in how it involves a princess born under a bad sign. Blood and Wine serves as a sort of victory lap for the character and the series. After trudging through so much blood and mud in the northlands, the sunny, colorful climate of Toussaint can be a relief. Sapowski's stories portrayed Toussaint with a bit of a satirical attitude, falling maybe a bit closer to Don Quixote than The Amadis of Gaul, but in the context of the game it's refreshing to explore a place where the beautiful, well-dressed people seem to actually take chivalric virtues seriously (too seriously at times) instead of simply all being bitter-minded cynics and hypocrites. When the expansion closes with Geralt chilling out at the vineyard he's inherited, there's a feeling he's earned his rest and arrived at a better end than what Sapowski chose for him.
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