Witcher 3 wild at heart terrible8/19/2023 ![]() The entire first act of the game is one giant, interwoven fable. This folkloric element is seeded through The Witcher 3 at almost every level, resulting in a fundamentally different-feeling experience from any other fantasy game. While there are shades of epic fantasy in The Witcher 3, seen in its wars between its Kingdoms and Empires and the broader story of the Wild Hunt, ultimately, the basis of The Witcher is in the old stories told to stop itinerant children from wandering alone into the woods. ![]() Where the majority of Western fantasy games take their inspiration from Tolkien onward, The Witcher 3 is primarily inspired by fairytale and Slavic folklore. No, what makes The Witcher 3 special, what ties everything together and makes the game unique, is that The Witcher 3 understands the root of fantasy as morality tale. Geralt is already a master Witcher at the game’s outset, and so it struggles to expand his abilities in any meaningful fashion. The Witcher 3 isn’t a particularly great character-building RPG either, certainly not compared to games like Disco Elysium or Divinity: Original Sin 2. Yet getting ganked by some random bandit doesn’t feel particularly Witcher-y, so neither feels like the “right” way to play the game. The combat, while spectacular and entertaining, only has any meaningful depth on harder difficulties. Although the world is visually stunning, it’s also very static, an extremely detailed theme park that occasionally lets you alter the conditions of an area depending on the choices you make. Beyond the narrative and dialogue, The Witcher 3’s mechanics are relatively lightweight and arguably where most of the game’s flaws lie. Yet while having a single, pre-defined main character helps The Witcher 3, I don’t think Geralt is the key to the game’s greatness (he was in two other games, after all). The Witcher 3 admittedly lends him greater depth than previous games, shifting his character from neutral nihilist to lovably grouchy murder-dad. Geralt is a stock Ronin character, the wandering outcast, the mercenary with a heart of gold (or silver, in Geralt’s case). It isn’t Geralt either, much as I love him as a protagonist. Fantasy role-playing games are almost exactly the same age as video games, while dark fantasy RPGs can be found everywhere from Dragon Age to Dark Souls. What makes The Witcher 3 better than those games? Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has phenomenal world design. But there are plenty of other games that do these things brilliantly too. There are some common generalisations like “the writing” or “the world design”. Pinning down exactly why The Witcher 3 is so fantastic, well, that’s a little trickier. 'Whoa, this ice-cream stuff is pretty awesome, huh?' 'Yes, Rick, now take it out of your ear.' It’s a fact so universally acknowledged that saying it just makes you sound stupid. Simply writing about how The Witcher 3 is great is like writing about how ice cream is great. ![]() 'What is it that makes The Witcher 3 great?' That’s the question I wanted to answer in my first revisit to the game since reviewing it back in 2015.
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