From the Kotaku article:
The game is great at making you feel like a Witcher. Taking jobs, following footprints, studying monsters for weaknesses, brewing just the right potion to exploit those weaknesses, being called a "freak" by children on decrepit dirt roads—it all builds to create this image of a fantastical beast detective/slayer, a misunderstood profession that everybody hates until the second they need your help. That, in turn, helps elevate quests beyond typical garden variety collect/kill fare, even if that is ultimately what you end up doing a lot of the time. The Witcher 3 knows how to dress up its quests, and sometimes that makes all the difference.
THAT'S what I want to hear. Sounds like out typical Witcher quests !!
Hunting makes me feel good. And also like Batman. I spent most of my post-tutorial Witcher time going on hunts for troublesome monsters, and that easily made for the game's best questing. The most basic (yet well crafted) example involved a haunted well, which I discovered was actually occupied by something called a noonwraith. After a bit of research, I discovered that the wailing, wedding-dress-clad spirit was a deceased bride who was bound there by some relic. I then had to hunt around in houses and, eventually, at the bottom of the well to find a bracelet and the noonwraith's old bones, which she was no longer using. One ceremonial cremation later, I had a fight on my hands. More research had revealed that this kind of spirit was vulnerable to Geralt's spell-esque Yrden sign, which normally immobilized enemies. In this case, however, it brought the noonwraith into the physical realm, allowing me to damage it. Shame I forgot to brew any potions. Despite all my other preparation, the noonwraith nearly ground my bones to make her bread—or whatever it is ghosts do with bones.
It's still damn hard. If you were worried CD Projekt might dull The Witcher's difficulty for console crowds, you can stop now. The first time I died, it was against a random pack of wolves who convened their meetings of the jerk wolf society in a swamp where everything was poison. I also never managed to successfully bring down the first big baddie of the main quest, a griffin that was terrorizing a cluster of nearby towns. After investigating everything from what pissed the griffin off to how old it was, I managed to draw it out with a plant that apparently smelled an awwwwful lot like rotting flesh. I dodged its swooping strikes easily enough, but on the ground its rush attack—which best resembled a tank trying to run someone over—reduced Geralt to an ugly smear one-part viscera, one-part beard, and one-part feathers. After a couple tries I nearly beat him, but then I ran out of time in my demo session. Oh well
Amazing. Two things which are absolutely necessary.
1. Creative mission design
2. HARD AS F****.
That's the way a Witcher game is supposed to be.
[QUOTE
]Choices aren't "moral." Geralt isn't really good or evil, and that comes out in the choices The Witcher 3 offers you. Sometimes it's about role-playing Geralt as either a stoic malcontent or someone who's a bit more open with strangers, a bit more willing to turn down payment if he sees that people are on a shoestring budget (and dietary plan; I'm saying they eat shoes) anyway. In one bit, a guy I was questioning about Yennefer's whereabouts asked if I loved her. I didn't have to say anything, but I felt like—after all his journeys and the self-discovery that came along with it—Geralt might be ever-so-slightly more open about his feelings. "[Long sigh] Of course it's about love," I had Geralt reply, annoyed but relieved to get that off his chest. In that same area, I was also offered the option to question people the normal way or start busting out Witcher signs to hypnotize them into telling me what I needed to know. My traveling partner, Geralt's old master, wanted me to keep things quiet, but a couple of staunchly anti-Witcher jerks refused to cooperate, so I STOLE THEIR MINDS. This all culminated in brutal fisticuffs outside a tavern, but nobody harassed me for doing things my way or anything like that. I made a series of choices, and the game reacted. Simple as that.[/QUOTE]
One of the most important components. REAL choices and consequences.
All quests have story. Or at least, all the ones I played did. This isn't like Skyrim, with its auto-generating grocery list of "go here, do this" kill/collect tedium. Most of them had me talk at length with at least one character or had multiple objectives that turned typical fantasy RPG quest-givers into people I actually cared about. Even the noonwraith quest, which I obtained from a board in a town square, caused character-driven ripples in my personal story a little bit later. I actually encountered my favorite character in my (admittedly brief) time with the game this way. Her name was Tomira, and she was an herbalist I barged in on to ask about a plant that would lure the griffin out. However, she and Geralt quickly bonded over general world weariness, and both observed that neither of them were all that they seemed. They saw through each other's masks. They were mirrors of one another from very different walks of life. Despite Tomira's cynicism, I ran out and made a Witcher potion to (hopefully) help her dying patient. While neither Geralt nor Tomira was certain the potion—Witcher tested, definitely not mother-approved—wouldn't just kill her patient, she was grateful nonetheless. In the end she gave me a nice reward added, "Thanks. For giving a damn."
Also a great point and something I was worried about, but I am relieved it seems to have been unjustified.
This articles negative points are actually mostly about glitches, robotic animations, the "heaviness" of the jumping an climbing (supposed to be that way if you ask me) and that is confronts newcomers with a lot of lore, which can hopefully be solved with some story recap videos a la "What is a Witcher" "Politics in The Witcher" "What happened in TW1 and TW2" and "The World of the Witcher".
