It’s not perfect. The combat system is next to broken. The character development feels weird. There are way too much word-reading in the game. And the navigation and mini map are confusing. There are also inevitable bugs appear from time to time.
So, is the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a good game? Of course, no doubt about it. In fact, it’s a fabulously created game with gorgeous landscapes and scenery, amazing soundtracks and visual effects, lots of ingeniously sculpted characters and conversation lines. And perhaps one of the most impressive storytelling I’ve experienced, not only in the main story, but also in those side quests. I can go on for another page, however, the main reason which propels me, a person who usually choose to keep the comments and opinions to himself, to actually open the store page and type down these words is the immersive sense of reality it provides. Yeah, I know, the word “reality” doesn’t usually go with the impression of this game, which depicts a world full of magic, monsters, myths and legends. But this is intrinsically the very reason why I deem it’s so great. Especially for this type of game, role-playing adventure game.
One can learn the from Russian actor and director Stanislavski in his work “Работа актера над собой” which can roughly be translated and concluded into the following sentence:” A good actor should reason, pursue and act in accordance with the role he plays, and thus the audience can begin to appreciate the catharsis of emotion , the development of the plot, as well as those fates and destinies the roles bare or defy.
And so is true in games, a good game should have some kind of self-consistency, if it were to make the players emotionally devoted to both the role they play as well as the stories it tries to develop. And luckily the Witcher 3 to me is such a game. The elements feel real, the drizzle and storm, the breeze and gale, the scorching heat and biting cold. The characters feel real, they have their own lives, and they actually live in the world. To them you are only a foreign land stranger pass by, and their lives go on with or without you. They feast and fight, laugh and cry, live and die,. The stories feel real, there are betrayals and vengeance, sacrifices and redemptions, bravery and cowardice. The choices you have make have unpredictable outcomes. The moral guidelines which help you tell good from evil is constantly being challenged. Even the monsters feel real. They have their habits and habitats, predators and preys, escape routes and hunting trails. Almost everything feels like it behaves the way like it should.
In most of the time, you are not a hero in shiny armor with sharp blades riding around the world on a mighty steed for the salvation of mankind.
Instead you spend most of the time as a hired hand stumbling in waist deep mires in company with corpses and mucous looking for traces of monsters in the contacts you took earlier at the notice board right outside the village bar. You have to observe and deduce, find the opponents’ weakness, and learn how to fight the monsters like a professional Witcher using potions, signs and oils. And you have to learn how to haggle for your work which may cost you your life and take prejudice and insults as daily greetings in exchange for peace. Which is pretty much like the real life apart from that in real life you can’t use “Axii” as often lol. In fact, perhaps the only situation in which common people treat you equally is when you play Gwent with them except for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ elf in Novigrad who really gets me in the guts.
There are games using real-world settings which feel real. And there are games like the Witcher 3 which uses fantasy world settings with dragons and sorceries as the world settings and can still give you a sense of reality. And this along with many other virtues make it one of the games which can hold a candle to other great titles such as Dark Souls and Elder Scroll.
All in all, it’s a great game, which actually has its own soul given by a group of developers who know and care what players love and need and truly love their work.
When you play it, you’ll know.