The Witcher 3: Wild [-Goose] Hunt Review

The Witcher 3 is an almost infinite series of wild-goose chases. As soon as a wild goose has been caught, another hatches. And if another does not hatch, Geralt (a monster-slaying hexer and tracker) simply uses his keen witcher senses (detective vision) to spot another. This structure makes large portions of the campaign laborious, plodding slogs in which Geralt stumbles from cutscene or conversation to conversation or cutscene, killing a few monsters or people along the way, without reaching a satisfying climax or conclusion. It is also The Witcher 3’s greatest strength.

The Witcher 3’s opening is misleading. The first proper boss is smartly foreshadowed by its trail of destruction, and made out to be an especially imposing foe by Vessimer; a fellow witcher who surely wouldn’t be worried without good reason. A trap must be laid to lure out the monster, the right potions brewed, and the right oils applied to Geralt’s blade to give him an edge in combat. This careful sense of pacing is also used in the battle itself, with the monster having second thoughts as soon as it discovers its prey is not as low on the food chain as it had expected. It is a simple but refreshing approach to RPG combat pacing, taking its cues from action adventure games. Which makes perfect sense, given the action game-lite combat mechanics. But this approach to pacing is rarely applied until the end of the penultimate act; and on a few of the rare occasions when it is applied earlier, it is merely the first proper boss battle repeated verbatim; complete with the predator’s impending regret.

Beyond the tactility of manually casting hexes and attacking using the fast and strong attack buttons, the combat feels very much like an RPG; with enemies going through a very obvious, predictable cool down between attacks—to the point where many enemies can be killed simply by repeatedly attacking, or dodging then immediately attacking, because the timing of their attacks and their inability to adapt in combat means that they never have an opportunity to attack, having repeatedly blocked or been interrupted and/or staggered by your own attacks.

Fortunately not all enemies can so easily be staggered or interrupted, and not all enemies bother to block your attacks (and when some of them do, they stagger you; this simply requires a little more patience, then you just parry their attack once they’ve cooled down and stagger them that way; or use an offensive hex to stagger or to damage them), but for the most part combat becomes a mundane, predictable two-step, requiring little more tactile skill than most RPGs would, without the same degree of strategic thought needed in most good RPGs that makes their combat interesting.

The narrative also suffers from an enticing opening whose quality and complexity is rarely reproduced. The first proper side quest one is likely to encounter ends with a decision one must make, the results of which are not entirely clear when the decision is made. There is enough information given so that one might make a reasonable prediction as to what will happen, but not an exact one—this makes the result of the decision more affecting because it simultaneously allows one relatively informed control over the situation, without providing one with the finer details of what one’s decision will actually mean; thus retaining some degree of unpredictability without in any way compromising player agency. But it’s not long before many side quest decisions become little more complex than to kill or not to kill, that is the [side] question. The main quests retain a greater degree of complexity, but are also polluted by similarly banal decisions—the outcomes of which are often all too obvious.

The plot itself remains intriguing for longer, not because of Geralt’s basic motivation (here’s a wild goose: chase it), but the secondary characters who are effectively the tracks left behind by the wild goose. These wild-goose tracks are first manifested properly in the form of a complex fantasy sink drama, comprised of two seemingly unrelated quests. It’s an effective character study, and successfully portrays reprehensible characters in a complex, sympathetic light; which is no mean feat—especially for a videogame. The decisions that affect the outcome of this fantasy sink drama are a powerful elaboration on what has thus far merely been teased in the side quests—in fact, the decisions one makes actually imbue the outcome with more emotional resonance due to their unpredictability and nuance, rather than dilute it by arbitrarily splitting the narrative. And the fantasy dishes in the fantasy sink are made of a more folkloric porcelain and stainless steel than high-fantasy clay and mithril, which allows for the fantastical creatures to be mythological projections of the tracks’ fears and fantasies, rather than mere epic metaphors—thus humanising the tracks, rather than aggrandising them.

The trouble is that the tracks left by the wild goose soon present Geralt with far more grandiose, and often less interesting, problems to solve; composed almost entirely of clay and mithril. These tracks are less complex—concerned only with the politics of the day, rather than their own affairs, as well as politics. It’s a natural progression as the stakes become higher, but without the firm basis to humanise these tracks, it is a tepid one; until, at least, the consequences of one’s political decisions are revealed in the final act to a sometimes powerful effect.

How, then, can this structure also be The Witcher 3’s greatest strength? It’s not just because of Gwent: the best card game in a videogame since Triple Triad.

The Northern Realms are not merely picturesque. Whilst much of the countryside is indeed a beautiful idyll of grass quivering romantically in the wind (videogame wind patterns have solved the problem of perpetual motion) and rays of sunlight pass majestically between the leaves of the trees, many of the farms have been ransacked; their fields yellowed, decaying carcasses of the refuse of the stolen harvests. The slums of even the richest, largest cities are rundown and dirty; buildings are clumped together, or propped up by precarious ersatz stanchions, and beggars and whores infest the streets. Uninhabited land is often uninhabited for a reason: one monster-infested bog is useful only for the digging of peat, near which stands a tiny village just large enough to facilitate the transportation of said peat on a small scale; but the bog itself is otherwise barren, and therefore almost completely bereft of people. Details such as these make the world of The Witcher 3 tangible—one of the reasons why exploration is so engrossing. Thus one does not simply travel from one opulent attraction to another, but from one place to another.

More importantly still, the excessive and roundabout structure that makes so many quests so laborious, complements perfectly the exploration. The world map is not only marked with towns, cities and states, but also question marks—these question marks denote an undiscovered location: perhaps a camp of bandits, or a pillar of power (the use of which grants the player an ability point and a magical buff), or a smuggler’s cache of treasure; to name but a few. Exploring a world of such rich aesthetic and narrative detail, and then being rewarded for doing so with a focused vignette of combat or detective vision—and/or fiscal reward at the end of the vignette—is a pleasure. In this context, even the combat can become enjoyable—so quickly is it over, with the promise of an immediate reward at the end. The dogs are already salivating. The treasure hunt and witcher contract side quests work for the same reasons: encourage a less focused form of exploration than most main or side quests, but still more focused than wandering around without a purpose; rarely upset the pace with tedious backtracking (except to receive the reward); keep battles short and succinct.

And Geralt is an eminently likeable protagonist: conscientious and pragmatic, and yet sensitive; a combination that prevents one’s own decisions in the narrative from distorting his personality. Even when some of the other characters become concerned only with politics, the often complex nature of his relationship with them makes them at least somewhat interesting. It is a pity, then, that the actual process of interacting with them is often so laborious and banal, especially when the main narrative is so cleverly interwoven with side quests that expand on it, or directly affect it. Plus, Geralt’s conscientiousness and pragmatism also make him the perfect companion with whom to explore such a rich and alive world—preferably on horseback.

Oh, and he grows a decent beard, too…