Posted August 25, 2015
So, Witcher 3. It's the most conflicting game I have played in a very long time. This is going to me something between review, analysis and my own personal bitching without actually giving away any spoilers (and I would appreciate it if we kept the whole topic spoiler-free) – if you don't like to read walls of text, turn around now, there's not going to be a TLDR. YOU IGNORANT FOOL! Ehm, anyway, let's get on it, shall we?
I loved Witcher 1 and 2, and let me tell you right away that I also love Witcher 3. I started playing Witcher 1 right after finishing the novels, actually it was one of the few games I purchased on release. Then I figured it was a buggy mess, then waited for patches and then finally got to enjoy the damn thing, nonetheless I still consider it one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Then came Witcher 2, a game improving on most aspects from the original (or changing them completely for better or worse), beating Bioware at their own game so to speak. Witcher 2 felt especially incredible to me due to the fact that the story you built was truly yours – CD Project was not afraid of constructing an experience so 'wide' that 99% of players won't even get to see majority of content. To understand where I'm going you have to realize where I'm coming from – and I'm coming from a player who enjoyed Witcher 1 and 2 for what they were, semi-linear story-driven RPGs with massive focus on choice and consequence. Because then, Witcher 3 came and … Did its own thing I guess?
Witcher 3 and its own thing
See, my main gripe is that I feel like CD Project has been working towards this holy grail of RPGs which Bioware never quite reached, and then, after almost reaching it with the release of Witcher 2, they turned their back on what they built and decided to do something else. Now I'm a huge fan of open world games, but let me be clear on one thing – I do not believe Witcher 3 is a good open world game and I firmly believe it would have been better as a story-driven linear one just as previous two games were.
There are many faults with Witcher 3 and its approach to open world. A ton of relatively easy filler content you need to go trough to reach the good equipment, quests which progressively get worse as you distance yourself further from the main storyline, the weird monster scaling CD Project decided to make use of (and lack of monster/quest level scaling to make sure trying to do as much of the game as possible makes it trivially easy), presumably to give player impression of bigger progress than he's actually making, extremely weird encounter design with encounter zones being all over the place… The list just goes on and on. RPG mechanics don't really work that well either, and all of these aspects just seem to bring down otherwise fantastic combat system. The game is filled with mechanics which don't quite work as a one, big system supporting itself, but instead as a bunch of smaller things undercutting each other.
Nonetheless, when this CD Project's monster gets hit by lightening and raises on its own feet, it actually works. It functions as a singular entity, albeit one which occasionally trips over its own inexplicable tail and then crashes to desktop. Kind of like all the other products CD Project has ever attempted, it's broken on fundamental level, but it's so insanely ambitious and made with so much love, care and duck tape that it's quite difficult to not love it. And holy shit, it's the most beautiful game I have ever laid my eyes on. To me, however, it remains a disappointment. It remains one because I wanted to see what will CD Project do with a genre they single-handedly aced – instead, they started off from the beginning with a slightly different genre which they didn't have enough experience to quite pull off. That's not all I was interested in tho – I was also interested in what is CD Project going to do with my story. Yes, the one I have constructed throughout the previous two games and was looking forward to concluding. Surely, a company focusing on choice and consequence won't disappoint me in that area, right? *sigh*
Witcher 3 and its own story
Oh boy. Right, I love storyline of The Witcher games. In spite of being glorified fan fiction and just not being able to match Andrzej Sapkowski in his writing abilities, Witcher game universe works with the source material with respect, love and a lot of care. It's obvious that writers over at CD Project read the books at least a few times and are very careful not to trample all over the franchise. What about the story they have constructed tho? Well, that's where my possibly biggest disappointment comes from – story continuity.
Witcher 3 pretty much tells its own story and just about completely ignores what I did in the previous games. There are few spots in which this matters, but they're few, far between and not particularly important. That's not what I expected of a company which was not afraid of cutting vast majority of players out of vast majority of content of Witcher 2. Hell, even Bioware managed to handle this better in Mass Effect 3 and that's… Well, I'll let you reach your own conclusions on that statement.
Overall tho? Witcher 3 proved that open world storytelling is far from impossible, and that a well constructed story can work very nicely even in such an environment. I would love to rave on about how CD Project handled this particular aspect, again showing us that they are masters of telling a story, but I do believe guys over at Extra Credits said it much better than I'll ever be able to.
Witcher 3 and my conclusion
Witcher 3, why do you torture me so? I kind of wish it was Cyberpunk 2077 which got the open world treatment. I kind of wish this was a spin-off of Witcher series, with much more linear Witcher 3 in the making, reacting to my choices a lot better. I wish CD Project took a bit more clues from Bethesda on open world design and from Gothic games on encounter design. I wish that instead of creating a 200 hours long experience, CD Project would focus on 50 hours of top quality content. I wish for a lot of things, and there are many things due to which Witcher 3 will never become my GOTY, as opposed to Witcher 1 and 2. With the game's increasing ambition, its pitfalls are also a lot more visible.
On the other hand, this game will be remembered as the shining example of how you do open world storytelling. It will be remembered as a shining example of how you do twitch combat in a story driven RPG. It will, without a doubt, become a classic. Perhaps not my classic, but that doesn't make the achievement of CD Project Red any less significant. Nor does it reduce its significance of the highest quality disappointment I've ever experienced in my life.
I loved Witcher 1 and 2, and let me tell you right away that I also love Witcher 3. I started playing Witcher 1 right after finishing the novels, actually it was one of the few games I purchased on release. Then I figured it was a buggy mess, then waited for patches and then finally got to enjoy the damn thing, nonetheless I still consider it one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Then came Witcher 2, a game improving on most aspects from the original (or changing them completely for better or worse), beating Bioware at their own game so to speak. Witcher 2 felt especially incredible to me due to the fact that the story you built was truly yours – CD Project was not afraid of constructing an experience so 'wide' that 99% of players won't even get to see majority of content. To understand where I'm going you have to realize where I'm coming from – and I'm coming from a player who enjoyed Witcher 1 and 2 for what they were, semi-linear story-driven RPGs with massive focus on choice and consequence. Because then, Witcher 3 came and … Did its own thing I guess?
Witcher 3 and its own thing
See, my main gripe is that I feel like CD Project has been working towards this holy grail of RPGs which Bioware never quite reached, and then, after almost reaching it with the release of Witcher 2, they turned their back on what they built and decided to do something else. Now I'm a huge fan of open world games, but let me be clear on one thing – I do not believe Witcher 3 is a good open world game and I firmly believe it would have been better as a story-driven linear one just as previous two games were.
There are many faults with Witcher 3 and its approach to open world. A ton of relatively easy filler content you need to go trough to reach the good equipment, quests which progressively get worse as you distance yourself further from the main storyline, the weird monster scaling CD Project decided to make use of (and lack of monster/quest level scaling to make sure trying to do as much of the game as possible makes it trivially easy), presumably to give player impression of bigger progress than he's actually making, extremely weird encounter design with encounter zones being all over the place… The list just goes on and on. RPG mechanics don't really work that well either, and all of these aspects just seem to bring down otherwise fantastic combat system. The game is filled with mechanics which don't quite work as a one, big system supporting itself, but instead as a bunch of smaller things undercutting each other.
Nonetheless, when this CD Project's monster gets hit by lightening and raises on its own feet, it actually works. It functions as a singular entity, albeit one which occasionally trips over its own inexplicable tail and then crashes to desktop. Kind of like all the other products CD Project has ever attempted, it's broken on fundamental level, but it's so insanely ambitious and made with so much love, care and duck tape that it's quite difficult to not love it. And holy shit, it's the most beautiful game I have ever laid my eyes on. To me, however, it remains a disappointment. It remains one because I wanted to see what will CD Project do with a genre they single-handedly aced – instead, they started off from the beginning with a slightly different genre which they didn't have enough experience to quite pull off. That's not all I was interested in tho – I was also interested in what is CD Project going to do with my story. Yes, the one I have constructed throughout the previous two games and was looking forward to concluding. Surely, a company focusing on choice and consequence won't disappoint me in that area, right? *sigh*
Witcher 3 and its own story
Oh boy. Right, I love storyline of The Witcher games. In spite of being glorified fan fiction and just not being able to match Andrzej Sapkowski in his writing abilities, Witcher game universe works with the source material with respect, love and a lot of care. It's obvious that writers over at CD Project read the books at least a few times and are very careful not to trample all over the franchise. What about the story they have constructed tho? Well, that's where my possibly biggest disappointment comes from – story continuity.
Witcher 3 pretty much tells its own story and just about completely ignores what I did in the previous games. There are few spots in which this matters, but they're few, far between and not particularly important. That's not what I expected of a company which was not afraid of cutting vast majority of players out of vast majority of content of Witcher 2. Hell, even Bioware managed to handle this better in Mass Effect 3 and that's… Well, I'll let you reach your own conclusions on that statement.
Overall tho? Witcher 3 proved that open world storytelling is far from impossible, and that a well constructed story can work very nicely even in such an environment. I would love to rave on about how CD Project handled this particular aspect, again showing us that they are masters of telling a story, but I do believe guys over at Extra Credits said it much better than I'll ever be able to.
Witcher 3 and my conclusion
Witcher 3, why do you torture me so? I kind of wish it was Cyberpunk 2077 which got the open world treatment. I kind of wish this was a spin-off of Witcher series, with much more linear Witcher 3 in the making, reacting to my choices a lot better. I wish CD Project took a bit more clues from Bethesda on open world design and from Gothic games on encounter design. I wish that instead of creating a 200 hours long experience, CD Project would focus on 50 hours of top quality content. I wish for a lot of things, and there are many things due to which Witcher 3 will never become my GOTY, as opposed to Witcher 1 and 2. With the game's increasing ambition, its pitfalls are also a lot more visible.
On the other hand, this game will be remembered as the shining example of how you do open world storytelling. It will be remembered as a shining example of how you do twitch combat in a story driven RPG. It will, without a doubt, become a classic. Perhaps not my classic, but that doesn't make the achievement of CD Project Red any less significant. Nor does it reduce its significance of the highest quality disappointment I've ever experienced in my life.
Post edited August 25, 2015 by Fenixp
