The Right Trigger: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" Review

Geralt of Rivia and I have a somewhat inconsistent history. My first experience in the world of the Witcher was The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, which I would probably have given a 7. While it was, of course, a cinematic marvel, it was just not a particularly good game. Then, a year ago, I got the original Witcher game on steam for $3, and I absolutely loved it. So, as you can probably tell, there isn't much consistency with my views on CD Projekt Red's saga. On one hand, I've always admired the unique interpretations of everything from monsters to races, but on the other hand, there has always been something missing that I can't quite describe. But I'm not writing this to talk about The Witchers I and II. I'm here to talk about the latest entry in the saga: "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt." I was fortunate enough to have saved up enough money for a PS4 recently, so I was able to play it (speaking of which, there will be a large influx of reviews coming in before too long, because I've gone through a few PS4 games). Let me first explain the premise here: It is maybe...a year or so after the events of Assassins of Kings, and the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, is looking for his old lover, Yennefer of Vengeberg (or however you spell it). From there, the plot turns to a quest to find Ciri, the heir to the Nilfgaardian throne, and Geralt and Yennefer's surrogate daughter, a child of the elder blood who is perhaps the most powerful force in the world. There is just one complication: The Wild Hunt, otherworldly wraiths who are after the elder blood, are pursuing Ciri. That is all I'll say of the plot itself. To start off this review, let me say this: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is not without its flaws, but it is without a doubt the best Witcher game and, though it will be up against the likes of Fallout 4 and Batman: Arkham Knight, it is heavily in the running for my Game of the Year for 2015.
--------------------- --------------------

Swimming is...awkward, to say the least.

I'm not entirely sure where to start. I guess, since there are so many positives to this game, I'll go ahead and get the negatives out of the way.
The thing that most took away from Wild Hunt, for me, was swimming (which says something about the quality of the game, given that you are only forced to swim a few times, and that is what I disliked the most). It just feels...off. On the surface, it is just like any other RPG swimming, but once you dive below the surface, it feels like you lose control over Geralt completely. He never quite seems to do what you tell him to do, and I found that half the time I ended up drowning because Geralt wouldn't operate the way he was supposed to. But, like I said, you are only forced to swim for story quests a few times, and most of the treasures you can find are on solid ground anyway.
The other thing that really bugged me is an even smaller issue, but it was infinitely more present than the swimming: the candles. You see, since Geralt has some control over fire because of his "igni" sign, he can light and extinguish candles with magic...the problem being that every person you need to talk to and every thing you need to interact with happens to be standing right by a candle. What this means is that you will need to talk to someone to get a quest or a reward, and you will just end up lighting and extinguishing the nearby candle over and over again. This is a problem in just about every area of the game throughout, and it is infuriating. If you remember playing Fallout 3 and trying to pick up the ammo in the toilet without drinking the water, then the candle thing is a lot like that. I only really have one other large complain, and I will get to that later on.
--------------------- --------------------

Combat is responsive and a joy to take part in.

Now, on to the positives. I suppose the first thing I should talk about is gameplay. I loved the gameplay in the original Witcher and disliked it in Assassins of Kings. What we have with Wild Hunt is not so much a middle ground as it is a greatly improved version of Assassins of Kings' gameplay. Like Assassins of Kings, combat in Wild Hunt is largely action-based with a side of tactical requirement. You have your steel weapon for humanoid enemies and your silver weapon for monsters and your magic signs to give you an extra edge and potions to use. Combat is mainly sword play and dodging, and it has a nice responsiveness to it that Assassins of Kings lacked. Geralt rolls where you need him to roll, and that is a vast improvement. Wild Hunt is not an incredibly hard game, but parrying and riposting is much more reflex based in Wild Hunt. It makes smartly swordplaying more satisfying, in any case. Signs are used for various tactical purposes, as in Assassins of Kings. Unlike in Assassins of Kings, though, you don't have to use potions before going into battle. You can use potions during battle, and I greatly enjoyed that because the way that Assassins of Kings approached tactics was not only unrealistic, but counter-intuitive as well. It makes the tactics feel more tactical and less...trying to look tactical. The side effect of this, of course, is that the game is easier than its predecessors, but just play it on a higher difficulty and you'll be fine.
On the subject of potions, another area in which Wild Hunt excels is in its alchemy system. You can't walk more than two steps without coming across an herb of some kind that can be put to some kind of use, and it makes the world feel much more at your disposal. I would have liked to have seen a little more consistency in the way that herbs look, so that I could tell an herb just by looking at it instead of going up to a bush with white flowers and finding a red flower inside, but that is a minor complaint that never actively impacted my experience. Once you have everything you need to make the kind of potion you want, you take the herbs and alcohols to an herbalist and make the potions and assign them to pockets. If you use all your potions, never fear. If you have strong alcohols in your inventory, then all your potions will be replenished when you meditate.
Picking herbs for potions is not really a chore, given the nature of the map. I, along with many others, I expect, were slightly deceived by CD Projekt Red. I, for one, was expecting a seamless open world. However, what we got was a series of massive open-world hubs. This isn't a negative, and I'm not taking points off for it, but it is not what I was expecting, and I think you should know that going in. That being said, the areas you explore in Wild Hunt are beautiful and expansive and given a jaw dropping, folky soundtrack. There were times when I found myself just riding around on my horse, listening to the operatic female vocalist vocalize with the strings, and those kinds of moments really set this game apart from other open world games (with the exception of Skyrim, of course). There is a degree of cinematic flair added to the very act of exploration that makes it really quite something.
In addition to the sheer size and beauty of the map, it is also filled with stuff to do. There are monster lairs to destroy, treasures to discover, side quests to enjoy, prisoners to free, and many other side activities. By far, my favorite side activities were the Witcher contracts. These are essentially bounties that villagers put up to get rid of monsters. In past games, it has been busy work involving killing "x" amounts of monsters, but in Wild Hunt it is truly intriguing. Most of the time, you don't know what the monster is until you do enough investigating. The villagers in the world of the Witcher are illiterate and uneducated, and thus, they don't know what they are dealing with. As a result, they will just give names to monsters; some fairly standard like "shrieker," and others more folky, like "Jenny-o-the-woods." Every contract involves investigating to find out what the monster is and then making preparations to face it before killing it. That is what being a Witcher is meant to be like, and I greatly enjoyed it. Point being, I spent a great deal of time doing side activities, and I have not, by any stretch of the imagination, done a fraction of what I can do.
Now, there is one thing I do have to admit. There is another aspect to gameplay: crafting, but I didn't ever do it, so I don't really have anything to say about it. I never really felt the need to craft because having different weapons and armor has never been really important to me in Witcher games. I'll upgrade my weaponry when I come across new weapons that are better, and the same goes for armor, but I've never had much of an investment in it. I have, however, heard good things about crafting in Wild Hunt, so I anticipate that you will probably enjoy it.
--------------------- --------------------

Gwent is Wild Hunt's gambling minigame, and it is quite good.

As you roam the map, you will undoubtedly come across something that has historically been a crippling thorn in The Witcher games' sides: gambling-based minigames. I don't remember if something like that existed in the original, but in Assassins of Kings it was some sort of dice shooting game that was boring and felt shoehorned. This is yet another area in which Wild Hunt shines. In Wild Hunt, the gambling-based minigame is "Gwent," something resembling a trading card game. What sets it apart from other gambling based minigames is this: It is fun and it is customizable. I have never played an in-game gambling minigame that I have liked quite as much as Gwent (save, perhaps, for the memory game in Fable). It brings me back to my days as a Yu-Gi-Oh player, and I believe that even people without that kind of background will find it enjoyable. As you win more and more matches of Gwent, you can come across rare "hero" cards that give you major bonuses. You essentially get to customize and build your own deck of cards, and it becomes a compelling quest to track down rare cards. It is an easy way to make some money, and it is a compelling side activity. Wild Hunt truly sets the bar high with Gwent.
--------------------- --------------------

Wild Hunt's story, though not quite traditional, is fabulous nonetheless.

The Witcher, being based off a series of novels, is mainly about the story, so one typically goes into a Witcher game with high expectations. Before playing, I heard mixed opinions about Wild Hunt's story. Some called it the best in the series, and some called it flat and mainly filler. Having completed the story at this point, I can understand where the latter opinion might come from. Wild Hunt does not have a perfectly linear step-by-step plot. As I mentioned in the introduction, the major premise is that Geralt is looking for Ciri, his surrogate daughter, and that encompasses about 3/4 of the plot. That 3/4 mainly consists of doing missions for people in exchange for information, so on the surface, it is understandable that one might view it as filler. Here's the thing: if it is filler, it is good filler. One thing that Assassins of Kings absolutely did right was its cinematography, and Wild Hunt takes that exceptional aspect and brings it up to a whole other level. In the "filler" portions of the plot, you meet complex characters and come into contact with emotional situations, and they are framed in a way that is completely immersive. I was actually surprised by how often Wild Hunt made me feel its situations.
Part of this effect is due to Wild Hunt's phenomenal voice acting. I don't normally associate good voice acting with Geralt of Rivia, because he is a gravelly voiced mutant who doesn't feel much emotion. However, in Wild Hunt, his voice actor delivers the same gravelly voice in a way that goes above and beyond the Geralt of Rivia that we're used to. Even the smallest of characters is acted professionally, and this makes the world feel much more living than other open world RPGs.
Another reason that this world feels so alive is the way it is presented visually. This is the best looking game I've ever played. Period. The PS4 really struts its stuff in Wild Hunt by way of gorgeous orange sunsets and faces with realistic amounts of wrinkles.
The bottom line about Wild Hunt's presentation is this: It is masterful. There is a point in the story that I won't spoil, but that I have to discuss. The Witcher is an action genre. There is a lot of explosion and swords flinging and magic, and the plot is always equally actiony. However, there is a point in Wild Hunt where CD Projekt Red strands us in total silence, forcing us to sit there and look a major plot development in the eye. It is a moment where we see a side of Geralt of Rivia that we've never seen before, and it is handled flawlessly. With Wild Hunt, CD Projekt Red has shown that they not only know how to tell a compelling story, but how to present it as well.
--------------------- --------------------

The romantic aspect of Wild Hunt is tasteful and varied.

It wouldn't be a Witcher game if I didn't talk about romance. I'm happy to say that it is handled much more maturely in Wild Hunt than in Assassins of Kings. In Assassins of Kings, there were brothels in every. single. town. Nudity and sex were thrown in every chance possible. Women were giggly and couldn't keep a shirt on for the life of them and it really made the game seem more like a teenage boy's idea of what the medieval ages were like. In Wild Hunt, however, Geralt is older and no longer has to find comfort in the arms of cheap women. Instead, he is more than fine with the number of romance options presented to him, not the least of which are 1) Yennefer, his lover from the novels, who feels slighted by his relationship with 2) Triss Merigold, the love interest from Assassins of Kings. Regardless of which love interest you choose, the...um...scenes...are handled tastefully. It still isn't the kind of thing that I would want anyone to walk in on, but if you, like me, live with a family, then you can rest assured in the knowledge that the chances of young eyes walking in and seeing something they shouldn't are much smaller. Every romance option is different and has different resolutions. I chose to remain loyal to Triss Merigold in Wild Hunt, and from what I've heard, her romantic subplot is quite different from others.
--------------------- --------------------

Ciri is a strong character both in a character development sense and just in a plain old strength sense.

While we're on the subject of women, I think I ought to mention Ciri a little bit more. As Geralt uncovers information about Ciri's whereabouts, you switch perspectives and play as Ciri in flashbacks. As a child of the elder blood, Ciri is a powerful being, and these sections allow you to experience the power of the elder blood for yourself. Normally, and especially in Witcher games, playing as someone other than the protagonist is a chore. Playing as Ciri, on the other hand, is an entirely different experience that feels powerful and grants you the opportunity to form a connection to Ciri. This makes it so that, if you haven't read the novels, you get some sense of why this woman is so important.
--------------------- --------------------

The only truly negative aspect of Wild Hunt's story is its ending.

As I mentioned, 3/4 of the plot is Geralt looking for Ciri, and I can't explain the rest of the plot in good conscience, but let me say this: It builds and builds and builds...and then sputters. This sputtering happens in the last 5 or so minutes of the game. Five minutes before the end of the game, we are presented with about 5 different new plot points that have not once been mentioned over the course of the saga. They were evidently mentioned in the novels, but I have not read the novels, so I wouldn't know. That is one point that I do have to mention: if you haven't read the novels, you will be a little bit lost. I didn't read, though, and my constant state of not quite knowing everything being talked about never detracted from my experience (which is saying something, I must say). Point being, the ending relies heavily on the player's knowledge of the lore, and if you don't know it, you will be very confused and disappointed. Even if you do know it, however, I expect that you will still be disappointed, as these new plot points appear in seconds and are resolved just as quickly. You know what is strange about that, though? It didn't stick with me. I wasn't angry about the lackluster ending. This is probably because the entire journey was good enough to cancel it out. My biggest qualm with Wild Hunt was its ending, but the 3/4 of the plot where Geralt is locating Ciri as well as most of the remain 1/4 are good enough to sweep the ending under the rug.
--------------------- --------------------

This is the collector's edition, but the regular edition still has a lot of this stuff.

There is one final area where Wild Hunt shines, and that is in what it stands for. I don't mean the plot, I mean the game itself as a thing. CD Projekt Red has taken steps that no game developer has taken in a long time: really giving us our money's worth. The physical copy of the game, the REGULAR edition, comes with: the game, a full map of the game world, stickers, the game manual (when was the last time you saw a game manual?) and the soundtrack. In addition, everyone who owns the game gets a number of DLCs absolutely for free whenever they happen to come out. In a world where Peter Molyneux tries to charge you to get black hair dye in-game and where EA constantly sells you DLC ripped from the game for $15, this is a welcome and progressive change that hopefully sets an example for game developers in the future. With Wild Hunt, CD Projekt Red has put their money where their mouth is in terms of saying that their priority is the gamer. They truly went above and beyond the call of duty with all of the content they include with Wild Hunt.
--------------------- --------------------

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a privilege to play.

So, as I've mentioned, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is not without its flaws. Few games exist without flaws, and thus it is up to the game developers to craft something so memorable, so fulfilling, that it makes the gamer completely disregard its shortcomings. Wild Hunt was an experience that I would legitimately call a privilege. Few games I've seen come with such consistently strong character development, cinematography, gameplay, storytelling, and rewards for exploration. Not only that, but this is a game that makes an important stand for giving us our money's worth. Not only do we get the massive game that is Wild Hunt, but we also get a massive amount of other physical things as well as additional content to this already massive game once said content comes out. For as long as I've been reviewing, I've been pretty liberal with my masterpiece seal. That is something I'm going to be working on in the near future, but I hardly need to change my standards for Wild Hunt. Wild Hunt is a game made up entirely from ambition and passion, both of which consistently pay off. The game is already fantastic, but this ambition and passion are visible throughout the entirety of it, and that makes it something truly special. Wild Hunt goes above and beyond in just about every way, and it is truly a once in a lifetime experience.
10/10