A world defined by stories
The Witcher 3 is not perfect. The pre-patches game had many technical oddities and difficulties. The combat becomes relatively rote after awhile. Breasts are displayed with reckless abandon, mostly not during sex. Roach can be a finicky horse. Some narrative threads seem to cut off early. The UI was a chore pre-patch and is now a bit better.
And while all of that matters, it's still a deeply engaging and thoughtful game built around contextualized movement through an interesting and detailed world. The main questline follows a theme of family and loyalty through to ends both political and philosophical. The game is always trying to be about something bigger--about prejudice, about responsibility, about power, about love--and it usually deals with heavy issues well. Any written questline has taken considerate thought about WHY characters are acting like they are acting, focusing on the reasoning and the motivations and the emotions over the HOW or WHAT of lore or plot. The lore and plot are good, but the characters of this world define it and make it shine.
In microcosm, what I like most about this game is little moments of breathing room that amply fill around the bombast. Decapitations and disintegrations and explosions abound, but in between there are many moments of peace and reflection that make it all worth it. The writers understand that we need to care about these people in order to shove them through the next story beat, so a friendly horse race or card game or talk about the future or the past all matter just as much as making the sword go through a guy real nice.
The Witcher is also intelligent about its use of choice. Geralt is a defined character. He is not a blank slate that can either save a village or burn it to the ground. Instead, his choices, while sometimes wide sweeping, focus on lesser evils and greater goods. He can, at most, be a dismissive dick. He will not torture or murder (though killing in self-defense is common). Embodying a character like this is joyful because it feels more like filling a role than creating one. The choices have more weight because they feel less arbitrary.
The best parts of the game are the talky bits, I think. These are followed closely by the world exploration. Temeria is gorgeous, whether it's a swamp or a castle built into a rocky mountain. The lighting sparkles on the water and through the waving grain. Open world jank is very rare, with most the time spent in admiration rather than judgment. This is the best world I've ever seen constructed, and it is a joy to explore.
The most lasting feeling for me from this game is admiration at the thoughtfulness of it all. But there are also missteps. They work together to form an awkward whole at times. For instance, minor spoilers, the mini-stories with Ciri, Geralt's pseudo-magic daughter, are sometimes brilliant. Putting the player into Ciri's shoes means creating empathy for the main thrust of the story, making us feel like her choices and beliefs matter instead of leaving her just a macguffin for Geralt to find. And there's a scene in a bathhouse that both does that and feels a bit skeevy. Textually, Ciri is learning about island culture and family and that a young man has a crush on her from a younger and older woman. It's one of the only moments between only women in the game, and their conversation feels different from political upheavals and other such matters while still feeling relevant and important. And at the same time they are nearly naked in a sauna and the player can choose to have Ciri be so as well. It's a hard balance between making a scene about emotional wellness and growth, but having this aspect of titillation and leery camera movement. The elderly woman being included shows an inclusiveness, but the women splayed out in seductive poses in the outer bath feels exploitative. It's complicated.
The whole game is complicated. Describing what it is and what it isn't, what is good or bad, is difficult. Overall, it's an astonishing achievement in character and world building, with choices that matter and characters given room to be interesting rather than merely exciting. There's vampires and werewolves and elven prophesies. And there's beautiful, haunting songs played on lyres, Troll riddles, drinking parties, and deciding between a life of power or a life of wandering. The brooding gravitas and playful musing somehow work together to form a game worthy of what, for me, has been many months of slow and lovely progress. It is constantly willing to tackle social, emotional, and political issues with care, and I hope this instinct, and the fact that there are missteps, will lead to even greater stories and games in the future.
