won’t really care about saving the world unless you have played the first two games, but saving/protecting Ciri will really be your focus here, among other personal elements.
It’s all a lot of fun, but where things really shine is in the plethora of side-mission that you can partake in. CD Projekt Red have done something that you don’t normally see in most modern RPG games, with regards to secondary quests. Yes, you can go about doing just the main quest line, but diving into the secondary stuff is where most of the fun lies. These secondary missions are not only used to just help gain some levels, but offer up real consequences to the main story. Things you do in many side-story missions can have a direct effect on how the main quest plays out. People will remember what you have done, and to who, so you can expect this to bite you in the ass, or play to your advantage later in the game. Make the choice to slay some bandits that are annoying you in a tavern, and you may later find that they were aligned with a main quest character, making any task involving him/them all the more difficult. The developers have done a great job of blending the quests into each other, so even if you are taking care of something minor, you’ll have to think about the choices you make. The Witcher 3 has a solid story, but its magic really lies in all the secondary stuff that is going on in the world.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is pretty fantastic, but it isn’t without some issues. As I sit here writing this, the developers have released another patch to address some annoying game issues. My main issues arose during the in-game cutscenes that precede every single encounter. They looked just fine, but for whatever reason the animations where always slightly behind the audio. The longer a cutscene was, the longer the gap got. Looking into the forums gave me a number of ways to fix the problem, like going into the games files and making changes, but for the average player messing about with files isn’t an option. People have also been knocking the game for performance issues, but everything seemed to run fine outside of some very minor game freezing that seems to only last a few seconds at most prior to the game being patched. The game even ran alright on my home computer that is pretty behind the times. My home desktop has an AMD Phenom 8650 Triple-Core processor, 5 GB of ram, and a Radeon HD 5700 graphics card, and while not quite what I’d recommend for playing The Witcher 3, it was more than enough to have an enjoyable experience when I wasn’t working on the gaming rig.
That being said, The Witcher 3 is a good measuring stick for what is yet to come this generation. It offers up a ton of fun and features a solid story with tons of secondary quests that impact what you see and do. CD Projekt Red really have something special here and those players that are looking for a grand adventure needn’t look elsewhere. One other thing that I have to note is that the game is huge. Not in scope, –although that too– but in content. The Witcher 3 base game has more content than many other AAA titles have including all their DLC combined. Pick this one up, you won’t be disappointed.
J. Luis
@_ShadowGallery