It’s a perilous topic for any video game to approach, especially one in which the player has the kind of agency that can be communicated via the dumbing force of a blade. In one convoluted quest midway through the game, which lasts numerous hours, you become involved in the plight of a family that has been brought to ruin by infidelity, domestic abuse and miscarriage. The people you meet and the stories they tell feel authentic and meaningful, in a way that so few video games in this style truly manage. You could choose to take up the plight of a master swordsmith who, after the local gangsters squeezed his trade routes, has been forced to sell dumplings instead. You may be asked to retrieve an elderly lady’s saucepan from the locked house of its borrower. Many of these enticing distractions are advertised on town notice boards. As you tour Temeria (one part Scottish highlands, one part Idaho plains), following your primary quest objectives, you happen upon scores of alluring offshoot stories.
#THE WITCHER 3 WILD HUNT RATING FULL#
The world is full of history, nuance and – glory hallelujah! – plausible writing. Neither do all of the game’s wonderful host of characters (voiced by a notable cast that includes Game of Thrones’ Charles Dance) exist purely for Geralt’s benefit – a design decision that tempers what might otherwise have been a tiresome power fantasy. For once, not every virtual problem must be solved with virtual violence. Indeed, his skills come to define the world in which he operates. Geralt has a Swiss army knife of interactive tools, and his set of abilities offer a uniquely varied and diverse journey. The linear, on-rails approach of the preceding Witcher titles is gone, making way for an open, Grand Theft Auto-style adventure, in which you are permitted, to a certain degree, to pursue goals of your own choosing.
While we have known this much about Geralt for some time, in this, the third game from Polish developer CD Projekt RED, these abilities are given a freer rein than ever before. These considerable attributes combine with his battle-worn good looks to make Geralt something of a triumph with women – although, at his age, he must now also pay the unavoidable taxes on debauchery: loneliness and longing (for much of the game he pursues lost loves both romantic and familial). Naturally, you make firm friends in every village you visit. He is a skilled alchemist who can mix a potion from almost any combination of plants, and his resourcefulness in turning an animal’s carcass into a life-giving morsel is unparalleled (press “Up” to pop a life-giving steak or a rejuvenating beer at any point mid-battle). Outside, he can track the daintiest paw through terrain that would prove unreadable to others. As he prods at the bloodied carpet and the broken mirror, he’ll murmur a recreation of the deadly event like one of the grizzled Baltimore detectives from The Wire. Geralt is able to read a murder scene of which there are a great many even for a medieval-esque fantasy game, intuiting clues where others see none. His talent for detective work would make Sherlock Holmes hot with envy. He is a skilled and charming negotiator, always ready with a witty retort, or a shrewd observation (you pick the response) and, when an interviewee proves contrarily aggressive or guarded, Geralt is able to issue a Jedi-like wave of the hand to calm their blood or loosen their tongue. It’s a necessary skill here in Temeria, which stretches farther than most video game lands, from the fields of Velen, with their stoic windmills and muddles of sunflowers, to the craggy, froth-lapped rocks of the Skellige islands and beyond. He is an accomplished rider, able to drive a stallion through forests and across shallow rivers – even, sometimes, in formal races on the manicured track – at speed. Geralt is a fine swordsman, able to control both crowds of jabbing bandits and the hulking beasts that he pursues across the countryside for rich bounties. But his true home is in video games.Īs a Witcher, he has many talents, which make him the perfect, pliable protagonist. The lead character of The Witcher 3 first appeared in the fantasy novels of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.