Early Impressions of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
If you listened to this week’s podcast (and you should), then you’re aware that I’m not a veteran player of the Witcher games. I had heard of them, certainly, but I had never found the time to fit another long RPG series into my gaming diet. But with all the hype for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I figured it was worth checking out. My initial plan was to focus on the main quest line, power through it, then write a review. After a dozen hours of side questing I’ve realized that I’m in this for the long haul.
My entire experience with the Witcher series prior to booting up Wild Hunt was playing through roughly two to three hours of the original. I thought I should get acquainted with the games before playing the third installment and I’d already bought them for $5 on a Steam sale. So why sit down and only play for a few hours? Because the original Witcher had the absolute worst combat control scheme that I’ve ever had the displeasure of encountering. I’m sure the story and moral choices were great, but it felt like the combat was designed with the specific intent of ruining all fun forever and causing aneurysms. Keyboard and mouse were tossed aside and then immediately picked back up so I could go read the plot on Wikipedia.
Witcher 3, by contrast, opened up with a terrifyingly ball-clenching scene of Geralt in a relaxing bath as a small abomination climbed in and went for his junk. Then the tutorial starts. I was pretty sure that opening was going to be a metaphor for the game I was about to jump into. Thankfully, I was able to unclench and learn that the control setup had greatly improved. On keyboard and mouse, I was able lop off heads with the best of them and did so right up through killing one pissed off griffon. Then I switched up to an Xbox 360 controller which also works splendidly for slashing drowners, wargs, and noonwraiths alike. Thank fuck because I would not have continued playing otherwise.
So I’m not entirely sure where the story is going since I’ve barely scratched the surface of the main quest line. However, I’m more than thrilled with the open world feel of Witcher 3 and the point of interest discovery that goes along with it. It’s not quite the same as Skyrim, but sometimes having a somewhat defined goal is preferable to wandering aimlessly. The only real down side is that I see each big “?” on my map as a challenge that must be handled before I can move on. As I’m only level 4, the level 10 drowners swimming around a cache of treasure are still giving me a bit of trouble.
The crafting system is quite nice. I enjoy having Geralt capable of doing his own alchemy while needing to rely on smiths to handle the armor and weapon crafting to be done. Of course, my freaking need to complete everything can get in the way while out in the field when I start obsessively picking every plant that pops on my radar. It is at once fun and maddening. We’ll have to see which wins out after 100 hours of playing.
From my less than favorable impression of The Witcher, I almost didn’t take the review copy of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I’m certainly glad that I took the chance on believing the pre-release hype. The game has so far been enjoyable and I’m looking forward to delving in and getting more involved in the search for Yennefer and the conflict with the dark ones. Hopefully, I can get past my completionist OCD and get on with the story before I’m driven crazy by every little node on my mini map. Thoughts about the story are sure to follow in the next couple weeks.
