There are also other opinions from respected writers, for instance Eric Kain from Forbes wrote a something I can 100% agree with:
[...], but chief among them is how disappointing The Witcher 3 was compared to its predecessor, Assassins of Kings. Not that it’s a worse game, overall, but because CDPR succumbed to ambition before getting the basics right.
The second Witcher game was a powerful story of betrayal and intrigue that mixed just the right amount of exploration and open-ended quests with its somewhat more straightforward (but branching) story. I was gripped from beginning to end, and had to go back and play the alternate story branch after I’d completed the first http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...-year-as-dragon-age-inquisition/#9cff64c17814
The New York Times wrote a great review about Witcher 2, in which they described what made the game so special:
Innovative, unflinchingly mature and richly imagined, it is driven by fascinating, finely nuanced characters navigating a fantasy world of dark political intrigue and ambiguous morals.The world of The Witcher is gothic, soulful and intelligent, yet mercilessly brutal. Innocent people die, and still almost all the characters consider themselves perfectly justified in their actions. After all, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, and which you consider noble depends on your personal circumstances. As the Witcher, an independent, mystical warrior set amid warring medieval kingdoms, you will have to decide what justice means to you.
And that is because The Witcher 2 fully realizes the power of the concept of choice. It is a tenet of role-playing games that players must feel as if they were having an effect on the game world, and The Witcher 2 provides that feeling both more vividly and subtly than any other game. It immediately throws you into a story in which your decisions have far-reaching implications that are usually not obvious when you make them. Those results may be unintentionally catastrophic, but they never feel arbitrary. They make sense within the logic of the game world, and you may kick yourself for not foreseeing them. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/a...-projekt-red-in-poland-video-game-review.html
I love the Witcher 3. It's my 2nd or 3rd all time favourite game, but I'm deeply disappointed by the main story of the game.
If you look at other placed on the internet speaking about Witcher 3 , you will usually read about the combat being the biggest complaint.It's never the story which is usually described as good or even great. For me this shows the low expectations people have in video game narratives. This forum on the other hand mostly complaints about the story and characters. It's logical because most of the people on this forum have played the previous games and many have read the books, so they expected more than an above-average video games story. And I'm sorry to say it, but I don't even believe that the story is above-average. The game has some excellent stories within the mainstory like the Bloody Baron or Ladies of the Wood but the main story itself (the search for Ciri and the fight against the Hunt) couldn't be much more simplified. Any interesting topic regarding the Wild Hunt (enslaving of humans, their relation to the Aen Seidhe elves,the whole Aen Elle-Aen Seidhe- humans dynamics, Geralt's time as a Rider of the Hunt) were barely or not touched at all during the game. They even turned the game into a cliche "chosen hero saves the world(s) from the big bad evil" power fantasy story in the last 15 minutes. That was particulary disappointing considering the big strenght of the witcher franchise was always to not be this kind of story. To make matters worse, they even changed the lore to do this (White Frost changed from a nature catastrophe to a villain, who has to be stopped)
Additionaly the politics were simplified to a point in which the user Knight of Phoenix, who wrote this excellnt analysis of the Witcher 2 politics (
http://knightofphoenix.tumblr.com/) said that he won't do the same for Witcher 3 because the politics are so simple and dumb that it's just not worth it.
I believe all narrative problems with the game come from the fact that they wanted to reach the mainstream. Something that they never managed with Witcher 2. Did it work? The sales and goty awards say yes.
Was it necessary to dumb down the game? I believe no. I think the console release and open world (though it should have been smaller) would have been enough to reach the mainstream. There was no need to simplify the story,make it less mature,"open" for newcomers and as standalone as possible.(+ other "mainstreamifications"like the ridiculous simple riddles) In opposite to some people I also don't believe the open world itself was responsible for the flaws.People mostly complain about the 3rd act, which is the most linear part of the game, while the main story in Velen is praised, which is the most open part. It was rather a problem of CDP using too many ressources on their open world. But tbh I'm not surprised thinking about the pre- Witcher 3 advertising and how many times times they mentioned how big the game world is.