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| The Witcher 3 Review |
All
the same, you’re probably expecting more from a review than just breathless
hyperbole. Well, imagine a game that takes everything you love from The Witcher
2: Assassin of Kings, Skyrim, The Legend of Zelda from Ocarina of Time to
Twilight Princess and Red Dead Redemption. That pretty much has Wild Hunt
covered. With the third Witcher, CD Projekt Red is playing in the very biggest
leagues.
The Red Dead comparison might seem strange, but there’s
something about Wild Hunt’s free-roaming gameplay that keeps bringing
Rockstar’s western masterpiece to mind. It’s not just that Geralt spends a
large proportion of the game on horseback – his faithful steed, Roach, rarely
further than a whistle away – but that the focus on exploring the wilderness,
discovering characters and missions gives it a similar kind of feel. Both games
share a dark, cynical tone leavened by sardonic humour and a dash of hope. Both
are tales of killers who, in some sense, yearn to be something more.
Wild Hunt has almost endless possibilities, but it’s smart
enough not to swamp you with them all at once. The initial section of the game
threatens to hit you with the same mild disappointment you felt when you
discovered that Dragon
Age: Inquisition wasn’t doing one seamless
world, but a series of linked, large-scale landscapes. Even Wild Hunt’s starter
area is packed with story missions, beasts to slay and side quests, on a map we
would have called huge ten years ago, but it feels a little constrained. Is
this what an open world Witcher really means?
Yet CD Projekt Red is just getting you used to the systems;
to finding noticeboards and taking on pest-control contracts, to getting from A
to B on horseback and discovering what perils and hidden treasures lie
en-route. You’re being eased into the game’s combat – fast, smart and tactical
– and into its research and crafting: two things that other games make a chore,
but Wild Hunt makes an integral part of the fun.
There’s been a lot of talk recently amongst the gaming
literati about whether systems engage players more than storyline, but Wild
Hunt binds the two together in ways that make the question seem nonsensical.
Geralt has evolved from a surly young blade to a would-be father figure, on the
trail of the woman he once loved and the closest thing they have to offspring.
To find them, he’ll have to battle men, beasts, spirits and otherworldly
forces, while getting involved in intrigues that affect the fate of nations,
yet it’s always clear what you’re doing and how it contributes to your aims
overall. And if that means collecting herbs to brew potions to give you a
fighting chance of taking on a murderous griffin, then that’s something you’re
willing to do.
Even
levelled up, Geralt is a professional rather than a superhero. While you can
win some battles just by wading in, hacking away and dodging quickly, you’re
more likely to succeed if you go in prepared, stocked with potions and with
your target’s weaknesses in mind. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Wild
Hunt is how it makes light work of its most mundane elements.
It
still has the classic hook of every RPG – fighting monsters to gain experience
and loot to level up and upgrade to make you even better at fighting monsters –
but it has other pleasures too, with incredible scope for exploration and
quests that are well-scripted, varied and full of personality. Your faithful
steed works brilliantly both as a transport and as a means of charging headlong
into combat, and even here the game shows intelligence, both by limiting its
effectiveness in battle through a fear gauge, and in having what’s effectively
a cruise mode for gently cantering along the paths.
Yet
it’s just when you think you’re getting the measure of it that Wild Hunt pulls
the veil away, then tells you that you ain’t seen nothing yet. This still isn’t
quite one single open world, but the largest areas are so huge that it
effectively doesn’t matter, and each one comes crammed with so many story
quests, side quests and incidents that you’ll spend half your time trying to
prioritise what to tackle next. And while you’ll be happy to spend hours
trotting through the scenery on horseback, the fast travel options that seemed
unnecessary in the prologue section now seem vital. Ditto for boats – an
essential for getting from the main landmass to explore far-off islands. Words
like sprawling and massive don’t do The Witcher 3 justice.
There’s
a real balance here, too, between the narrative-led gameplay and the more
explorative, emergent stuff. The story missions don’t simply take you from one
point on the map to the next, but give you threads to tease out and follow, so
that you’re always in touch with the central storyline no matter where you are.
The only limitation comes down to your current level – each quest and
side-quest has a recommended level, and we’ve found that you ignore these at
your peril. Yet when Wild Hunt does put you on a story mission, it feels as
detailed and cinematic as any linear action game. Dialogue scenes, set-piece
action sequences and boss battles all seem to flow naturally into the gameplay,
with a potency we haven’t always seen in previous Witcher games.
Throughout,
it’s held together by great music, strong voicework and an impressive
consistency of tone. Fantasy doesn’t get much darker than it does in Wild Hunt,
where the ongoing war between empires is constantly in the background, where
the ordinary folk are clearly suffering, injustice runs rampant, and even a hero
must sometimes turn a blind eye. That doesn’t mean you can’t make a difference.
There’s a real feeling that what you say and what you do is changing things for
worse or better, even if it’s simply clearing a farmstead or a small port of
monsters and letting the locals get back to their grubby, impoverished lives.
The
visuals, meanwhile, are just astonishing. The game’s landscapes are epic,
atmospheric and believable, making superb use of vegetation, light, fog, cloud
and colour. It’s the kind of game where you want to explore for the scenery
alone. Yet the up-close detail is equally impressive, with textures and
surfaces you can almost feel and facial animation that leaves Dragon Age:
Inquisition’s in the dust. Wild Hunt delivers a world of magic that you can
believe in and characters you can believe in too. And if the series’
predeliction for dubious sexy stuff hasn’t gone away entirely, at least the
needless cleavage and soft-porn groping doesn’t look so ridiculous or
Thunderbirds-like this time around.
Causes
for complaint are spectacularly few and far between. CD Projekt has done a
fabulous job of all the basics, from inventory and quest management to
crafting, that the interface barely bogs you down, but two steps to get to the
map screen seems one step too far. Loading times are a little on the long side,
though only a problem when you die or use fast-travel, and the frame rate
falters occasionally on the PS4 version tested, particularly when
you’re wandering around the world’s big cities.
Speaking
personally, I’m also not a huge fan of having to repair weapons regularly, and
having to travel back to the nearest blacksmith to get my gear fixed up is one
chore I could do without. Still, repair kits are easily available, and some
people like that sort of authenticity. In fact, Wild Hunt makes it palatable by
placing accessible limited-time weapon and armour buffs for you to use while
you’re there. In short, I’m only sweating about the smallest small stuff.
And
that’s just silly. The big stuff here is absolutely brilliant – and brilliant
in a way that leaves you wishing that more games could be both this ambitious
and this well executed without failing one way or the other. Sure, The Witcher
2 isn’t something you can pick up casually, requiring time, commitment and –
well, a lot more time – but it’s hard to imagine anyone without a hatred of
RPGs and fantasy regretting the countless hours they’ll put in.
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