Finished The Witcher 3, mixed feelings
As the title already says I finished the Witcher 3 yesterday and although I think it is a masterpiece in its own right I do think it has some flaws, which in the end made me stop caring about the outcome.
Now as some of you might be avid the witcher fans who read the books and therefore think everything has made sense you might not understand my arguments, but I have only played the games and do not really care for the books and I think that everything should be contained within the medium you present something ( for instance you don't need to have read the books in lord of the rings to follow the movies), especially when it is such an unknown story as the witcher ( I think the game has surpassed the books in that respect I think).
*Nothing I did in any of the previous installments made any difference, the witcher 1 is too long ago for me to remember anything specific, but in the witcher 2 I distinctly choose Iorveths path and fought along the dragon lady, now I understand that things take their course and that a single individual might not affect the world in a big way, but completely ignoring it is also not the way to go and with all the pointless fetch quests they have made, a significant quest addressing what had happened with Iorveth and the dragonlady would have been better.
*The game is never rewarding :
I could make the Harpy sword before I reached level 5 but because of the restrictions with regards to level ( imho very dumb implementation) I could only equip it at the very end of the game.
I have walked around with some dwarven axe for half of the game which I found in some random chest and was way better than anything I could buy or make for a long time, I once fought a seriously overpowered critter guarding a chest and after dying 5-6 time and opening a chest I got some sword which wasn't more powerful than anything I already had or could buy ...hell sometimes when I beat a random bandit they for some reason when I loot them, have a level 42 club/generic sword which is more powerful than any cool named witcher sword.
Another instance is where in a sidequest ( or a mainquest for that matter) you have to take a side between to factions or possibilities and no matter what you pick the endresult is morally grey as in most cases a lot of people still keep on dying, now it doesn't matter if there are a number of quests like this to keep you grounded but I can't remember any remotely good endings , so in the end most of my choices where in general the ones that took me less effort to get through the mission
*Immersion:
Although the world breathes and lives like no other I have seen, a lot of characters are introduced willynilly with an air that I should know them and have to make choices regarding their fate, yes I understand that I could read the character chart but if you have to do that for every character you meet you become detached.
In the Witcher 2 the game had a imited amount of main characters and gave them enough screentime you could actually form an opinion of them whilst playing the game and therefore your choices mattered
In this game I really couldn't care less if Ciri or Yennefer died on the spot, but I still was very annoyed that I had to work with Philipha to find the sunstone ( because of the grievance she gave me in The Witcher 2)and I only picked Cerys in Skellige because I thought that Hjalmar was an idiot but when their father died it didn't really matter to me and even fighting with the king of the wild hunt was just something I had to do, whilest in the witcher 2 I really wanted to rid the world of that Letho dude
But the most glaring problem to me is that I never really cared about Geralt who still after 3 installments is the same bland and dull character he always was, I read in one of the primers that witchers are detached because of their trials, but if that is the case why should he care about Ciri , Yennefer or Triss or anyone else in the game for that matter.
*Gameplay:
-Talking to a merchant has these annoying cutscenes where there is some annoying back and forth banter before entering the inventory which is a bit annoying after a while
- I feel the scaling of the world is to small or Geralts steps to big but as imho the rolling evade action is the only effective means of dodging ( blocking and that stupid pirouette never did anything against (large) groups or powerfull enemies) I keep rolling out of range and with noonwraiths for instance you have to cast Yrden which is a tiny circle and after one attack you are more often than not out of your circle and the noonwraith starts attacking you.. I actually died more often when figthing noonwraiths than giants or archgriffins or fiends as in the case of the latter your area of movement is bigger.
In most games entering buildings or climbing a staircase goes fluently, as there is some margin in the controls making going up and down go smoothly , the witcher 3 is the only game where I have died numerous times on a staircase because Geralt got his head stuck in the ceiling and after wriggling fell down.
I really think that they should have scaled up tiny area's a bit more or reduce the stepping of Geralt
- I have no idea why the gameplay designers found it important but for some reason there is always a candle present in front of a character so instead of talking to someone geralt is turning lights on and off and because of the aforementioned stepping scaling issues aswell for some strange selecting issues where you have to turn the mouse around forever in order to select a character or chest it is sometimes very frustrating especially in bars/pubs
- Witcher sense should be a toggle instead of a press and hold thing
- Skipped almost all of the horse riding as the damned thing always got stuck on a twig in the woods
-Damned unwanted f**king sliding of mountains or hills really made me want to quit the game a couple of times as it made me walk around mountains, which more often than not directed me right of a cliff resulting in death or being stuck between to steep crests.
This ( at least to me) was only a reall issue for me in Skellige which made me skip a lot of the questionmarks and stick to a need to do only sentiment .
- swimming sucks I died a couple of times because geralt kept getting stuck between a rock and a ship
- The crossbow sometimes takes forever in loading up which made me get hit by harpies or drowners
-Inventory sucks as well and I think usables should be separated from potions and bombs as I sometimes had to sift through a number of redwanian lagers and the likes to find the killerwhale potion of swallow, also being able to have more potions or bombs in shortcuts would have my preference
Can't believe I am saying this but I liked the witcher 2's gameplay a lot better, it required more thought and strategy and was more rewarding
*Narrative:
Instead of stuffing the world full of generic content with interchangeable characters of a forgettable nature, I had rather seen more sidesteps to the world of the Wild hunt elves or worlds where the white frost is coming or has past in order to gather more in game knowledge about the subject, also more sidequest regarding any of the main characters would be a lot better.
My main beef with The witcher 3 is essentially more or less the same as it was with The Witcher 2 and that is that the main storyline is strangly developed and not in a good way.
In the witcher 2 my main focus was on helping non humans fight their oppressors and help them have a sanctuary of their own and in the end through some short revelations all of a sudden I have to start caring about Ciri or Yennefer, there were no cameo's of either of them and the regaining of Geralts memory wasn't acted out in the game ( maybe dreamsequences where Geralt slowly sees more of them and you as a player gets invested and actually feel betrayed by Triss in the end) it was just in some cutscene.
The same problem is present in the witcher 3 where in the end Ciri has to jump in some portal to visit a snowworld to do something to a a glowing white sphere ( never explained what she did , but apparently because i played a snowball fight with her everything turned out great) and in my case had a short epiloque where radovid slaughtered a lot of people, that nilfguardian dude which I hated died and Ciri got a sword from me and I was sitting in a bath somewhere with Yennefer.
I had rather had some missions where I found out about the white frost and how to combat it so I could prepare Ciri for what's to come and help her survive or any mission which makes me connect with main characters in teh world, than any of the pointless witcher contracts I had to do..
Now after reading my own post it might seem that I really hate the game, I can honestly say I don't hate it and find it a very great achievement especially keeping in mind that CD projekt red is relatively small, but there is also for me no reason to do a playover whereas with the witcher 2 I really wanted more as it pulled me in.
As the title already says I finished the Witcher 3 yesterday and although I think it is a masterpiece in its own right I do think it has some flaws, which in the end made me stop caring about the outcome.
Now as some of you might be avid the witcher fans who read the books and therefore think everything has made sense you might not understand my arguments, but I have only played the games and do not really care for the books and I think that everything should be contained within the medium you present something ( for instance you don't need to have read the books in lord of the rings to follow the movies), especially when it is such an unknown story as the witcher ( I think the game has surpassed the books in that respect I think).
*Nothing I did in any of the previous installments made any difference, the witcher 1 is too long ago for me to remember anything specific, but in the witcher 2 I distinctly choose Iorveths path and fought along the dragon lady, now I understand that things take their course and that a single individual might not affect the world in a big way, but completely ignoring it is also not the way to go and with all the pointless fetch quests they have made, a significant quest addressing what had happened with Iorveth and the dragonlady would have been better.
*The game is never rewarding :
I could make the Harpy sword before I reached level 5 but because of the restrictions with regards to level ( imho very dumb implementation) I could only equip it at the very end of the game.
I have walked around with some dwarven axe for half of the game which I found in some random chest and was way better than anything I could buy or make for a long time, I once fought a seriously overpowered critter guarding a chest and after dying 5-6 time and opening a chest I got some sword which wasn't more powerful than anything I already had or could buy ...hell sometimes when I beat a random bandit they for some reason when I loot them, have a level 42 club/generic sword which is more powerful than any cool named witcher sword.
Another instance is where in a sidequest ( or a mainquest for that matter) you have to take a side between to factions or possibilities and no matter what you pick the endresult is morally grey as in most cases a lot of people still keep on dying, now it doesn't matter if there are a number of quests like this to keep you grounded but I can't remember any remotely good endings , so in the end most of my choices where in general the ones that took me less effort to get through the mission
*Immersion:
Although the world breathes and lives like no other I have seen, a lot of characters are introduced willynilly with an air that I should know them and have to make choices regarding their fate, yes I understand that I could read the character chart but if you have to do that for every character you meet you become detached.
In the Witcher 2 the game had a imited amount of main characters and gave them enough screentime you could actually form an opinion of them whilst playing the game and therefore your choices mattered
In this game I really couldn't care less if Ciri or Yennefer died on the spot, but I still was very annoyed that I had to work with Philipha to find the sunstone ( because of the grievance she gave me in The Witcher 2)and I only picked Cerys in Skellige because I thought that Hjalmar was an idiot but when their father died it didn't really matter to me and even fighting with the king of the wild hunt was just something I had to do, whilest in the witcher 2 I really wanted to rid the world of that Letho dude
But the most glaring problem to me is that I never really cared about Geralt who still after 3 installments is the same bland and dull character he always was, I read in one of the primers that witchers are detached because of their trials, but if that is the case why should he care about Ciri , Yennefer or Triss or anyone else in the game for that matter.
*Gameplay:
-Talking to a merchant has these annoying cutscenes where there is some annoying back and forth banter before entering the inventory which is a bit annoying after a while
- I feel the scaling of the world is to small or Geralts steps to big but as imho the rolling evade action is the only effective means of dodging ( blocking and that stupid pirouette never did anything against (large) groups or powerfull enemies) I keep rolling out of range and with noonwraiths for instance you have to cast Yrden which is a tiny circle and after one attack you are more often than not out of your circle and the noonwraith starts attacking you.. I actually died more often when figthing noonwraiths than giants or archgriffins or fiends as in the case of the latter your area of movement is bigger.
In most games entering buildings or climbing a staircase goes fluently, as there is some margin in the controls making going up and down go smoothly , the witcher 3 is the only game where I have died numerous times on a staircase because Geralt got his head stuck in the ceiling and after wriggling fell down.
I really think that they should have scaled up tiny area's a bit more or reduce the stepping of Geralt
- I have no idea why the gameplay designers found it important but for some reason there is always a candle present in front of a character so instead of talking to someone geralt is turning lights on and off and because of the aforementioned stepping scaling issues aswell for some strange selecting issues where you have to turn the mouse around forever in order to select a character or chest it is sometimes very frustrating especially in bars/pubs
- Witcher sense should be a toggle instead of a press and hold thing
- Skipped almost all of the horse riding as the damned thing always got stuck on a twig in the woods
-Damned unwanted f**king sliding of mountains or hills really made me want to quit the game a couple of times as it made me walk around mountains, which more often than not directed me right of a cliff resulting in death or being stuck between to steep crests.
This ( at least to me) was only a reall issue for me in Skellige which made me skip a lot of the questionmarks and stick to a need to do only sentiment .
- swimming sucks I died a couple of times because geralt kept getting stuck between a rock and a ship
- The crossbow sometimes takes forever in loading up which made me get hit by harpies or drowners
-Inventory sucks as well and I think usables should be separated from potions and bombs as I sometimes had to sift through a number of redwanian lagers and the likes to find the killerwhale potion of swallow, also being able to have more potions or bombs in shortcuts would have my preference
Can't believe I am saying this but I liked the witcher 2's gameplay a lot better, it required more thought and strategy and was more rewarding
*Narrative:
Instead of stuffing the world full of generic content with interchangeable characters of a forgettable nature, I had rather seen more sidesteps to the world of the Wild hunt elves or worlds where the white frost is coming or has past in order to gather more in game knowledge about the subject, also more sidequest regarding any of the main characters would be a lot better.
My main beef with The witcher 3 is essentially more or less the same as it was with The Witcher 2 and that is that the main storyline is strangly developed and not in a good way.
In the witcher 2 my main focus was on helping non humans fight their oppressors and help them have a sanctuary of their own and in the end through some short revelations all of a sudden I have to start caring about Ciri or Yennefer, there were no cameo's of either of them and the regaining of Geralts memory wasn't acted out in the game ( maybe dreamsequences where Geralt slowly sees more of them and you as a player gets invested and actually feel betrayed by Triss in the end) it was just in some cutscene.
The same problem is present in the witcher 3 where in the end Ciri has to jump in some portal to visit a snowworld to do something to a a glowing white sphere ( never explained what she did , but apparently because i played a snowball fight with her everything turned out great) and in my case had a short epiloque where radovid slaughtered a lot of people, that nilfguardian dude which I hated died and Ciri got a sword from me and I was sitting in a bath somewhere with Yennefer.
I had rather had some missions where I found out about the white frost and how to combat it so I could prepare Ciri for what's to come and help her survive or any mission which makes me connect with main characters in teh world, than any of the pointless witcher contracts I had to do..
Now after reading my own post it might seem that I really hate the game, I can honestly say I don't hate it and find it a very great achievement especially keeping in mind that CD projekt red is relatively small, but there is also for me no reason to do a playover whereas with the witcher 2 I really wanted more as it pulled me in.