That's it! I've reached the apex on gaming and there's no climbing higher. The Witcher has me shook and hooked. Good lord, people. I think everyone has an experience where they see or play something after its wave of popularity, and it's an even better moment when that popular thing turns out to be as amazing as everyone said it was. The Witcher is one of the greatest games ever made. It is so thoroughly well-done and impressive. If you watched and liked the Netflix show, play this game. It's better. If you like RPGs, play this game. It's the best.
Geralt of Rivia, a witcher, is something of a superhuman detective, ghostbuster and fighter. He's also charismatic and generally outspoken and errs on the side of wanting to help people. The show is convoluted and involves time-travel and with all the actors getting so much screen time, Henry Cavill's Geralt doesn't really get much time to bloom. Like any open world RPG, you have a main questline that follows events and key characters. The side quests in the Witcher are more developed than any other game I've played. Not only do they flush out other characters and random people in the world, but this game has worldclass writing and voice acting that make the sidequests worth it. I saw that the dev, CD Projekt Red hand-animated the cutscenes and have an impressive arsenal of pre-developed dialogue gestures. Pretty much every other game in this genre, beloved FFVIIR included, suffer from bland, soulless, robotic character behavior in non-key dialogue chat. It's a major turnoff of games in this genre for me, but CDPR put in the work and have made it worth doing extra quests (besides the trophies and stuff). I've said before that cutting corners on animation can work against good voice acting, and this game set a new standard in 2015 that's still hard to meet with all the current deadlines of game creation.
The player gets to make a lot of decisions for Geralt, but there's no morality system. Some of your decisions affect the story, others can lead to manipulating your partner, killing them, or walking away from the whole thing. Other decisions lead to the ol Witcher knockin some sorceress boots! You can make the argument for horndogs getting to gawk at game tiddies, but it really adds texture to the world, along with the other languages, lore, druidic magic, clothing and so on. Also, with America's weird culture of anti/sex and Japan's sexualizing AND infantizing women, it's refreshing that Geralt and the women that he pursues are capable of making adult decisions. People have sex and the game is targeted at adults. In terms of art direction, the women of The Witcher are very attractive. They aren't all perky DD-chested dolls with porcelain-white skin as depicted in anime, nor are they a brown mass of wrinkles like Skyrim. I generally play as the kind-hearted gash-hound, always striking up conversations with ulterior motives *raises eyebrows twice*.
As far as gameplay, the quests are a mixture of detective/witcherwork, killing targets and the occasional fetch quest. The fetch quests usually reward you with a good item and are worth doing as long as you're not over-leveled. Geralt moves very fluidly, but unfortunately clips on things and loses his momentum. This is much worse when riding his horse, but a minor blip in animation that's so great to look at. Another blip is managing inventory, which is broken up into categories, but still a bit frustrating to navigate between shops, ingredients and recipes while crafting. Also is the fact that selling loot wildly varies depending on the vendor, so if you're really in a pinch for money, you have to waste your time consulting different vendors. I have at least 12 browser tabs dedicated to this game.
The art direction is gorgeous. The above character is rendered in realtime and all of the several-dozen main NPCs characters look distinct from one-another. The show's clothing/costume designer gets a lot of credit and so does whoever did so for the game. The Witcher: Wild Hunt put my solid-state-equipped PS4 Pro to the test. Running the game spins the cooling fans to max and the console moves so much hot air you could make a grilled cheese sandwich on it. However, despite the system frankly not being able to handle the demands sometimes and crashing, fast-traveling to the super-complex 100-building city of Novigrad takes 3 measily seconds, and everything pops into existence around you. I have no idea how the game loads all of the assets as quickly as it does, but it shows you that CDPR prioritized something that other studios would have let go.
The music is memorable and makes liberal use of strings, horns and the requisite choir when shit gets real. All of the game design culminates in a main quest called The Battle of Kaer Morhen. It's one of my favorite video game moments to date and very satisfying. I still have to deal with the aftermath of this part and finish the story, but I flipped out and you should too! The Witcher: Wild Hunt is one of those games that's almost always on sale for <$20, and the Complete edition with DLC is all containted on the physical version, which is the right way to do discs.
All in all, I knew Witcher was going to be good. I did not expect it to be one of my favorite games I've ever played, though. What a pleasant surprise, and it really adds to anticipation of Cyberpunk! At the same time, considering the thorough level of quality and design with The Wild Hunt, CDPR can take all the time they need.
Quest Completed: Post about the Witcher! *Celtic fanfare sound*
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