A somewhat different view on Witcher 3 which I think hasn´t been posted yet:
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/01/hands-on-with-the-witcher-3-the-naked-truth.html
Btw I found the article unintentionally funny.
8 paragraphs.
2 of which are about the building and how he found the decorations. What? Why do I care about this? I'm here to read about the game, not a diary. Spare me.
1 paragraph about them talking with Damien and him explaining how the three hours will unfold.
Almost half of it is without actual substance about the game.
Then 1 paragraph about The Witcher's "problematic" history with woman, and the opening scene. Even if I'll "give" for free that TW1 had problematic history, just for the sake of the discussion, you need to be uber sensitive to find something problematic about TW2 in this regard. He's bringing up the sex cards, something that'll be almost a
decade old by the time TW3 comes out. I feel this is is like bashing CoD:AW for the
No Russian mission. Holy moly, give it a break.
Then, finally, he begins to write a bit about gameplay and a quest. But even then it's annoying (to me) because it's riddled with ultra political correct undertone, such as there being no people of color, or writing patronizing things such as,
I simply nodded, but in my mind I was wondering if he realized that maybe people chose the sister because she was a better character? Or because they thought a woman should get some glory in this game for once? I shook the thoughts out of my head as he drifted away.
Come. On. 5$ say that most people didn't think about that, and just preferred the sister because she made a better first impression and seemed much more reasonable. And seriously, the society depicted is inspired by medieval history. It's not meant to be identical, but still similar in tone, so stop viewing it through modern social standards. Even then, TW has its share of very strong female characters with agency. Philippa, Sile, Yennefer, Ciri, Saskia. These are characters who aren't defined by Geralt's every move (it might be the other way around, arguably), and some of them pull the strings themselves. Bringing up TW's history in gender matters is alright (somehow...?) when writing about TW3 for the bad points, but not for the good ones?
And then at the end,
Some argue whether the word “fun” deserves a place in serious game criticism.
Really? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills over here. I don't... I...
What?
I don't mean to be overly hostile about this, and I don't flip out every time someone voices something negative about TW. But this, written like a blog, dedicating half of the article to things that aren't related to the game experience itself and information about it, and the extreme gender-sensitivity grated on my nerves. You need to walk on eggshells around people like this. You can twist anything today to find it offensive. Hell, if you had the "token black\chinese\latin guy", I can find that offensive too.