Abs.
The first thing I see after booting into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is abs. Really really really obvious abs. This glorious washboard belongs to a bathing grey-haired Geralt, who is lazily splashing his foot out of the bottom of the tub. We get a full view of this perfect six-pack as he stands up and slowly walks over to a very naked Yennefer, of whom we get a languid view of her elegant back. They’re saying something to each other but honestly I don’t care. There are so many pretty naked people on the screen I just don’t care what’s going on.
A few hours in and I’m still struck by how pretty everyone is. But also with how dirty and textured they are. And, while what they’re saying still doesn’t make much sense – since I jumped in in medias res – I am absorbed in what’s going on.
I had about three hours with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Xbox One at Bandai Namco’s Sydney offices and, while it may not be perfect (yet – CDPR still has until May), what’s there is a very solid game. So far.
…There’s so much to do
What began in a bath tub evolved into a full-on tutorial session, where Geralt is reminded of the basics of how to interact with the world of The Witcher. Interacting with objects is made simple by utilising Geralt’s Witcher senses, which highlights hidden and interactive objects like keys and doors – and this is the first task we’re saddled with in the Witchers’ stronghold of Kaer Morhen. This quickly turned into a movement tutorial, as Geralt and his trainee Ciri sprint, vault, and jump down to the combat training zone. Here, we learn the basics of using Geralt’s silver and steel swords against a training partner, utilising quick and heavy strikes in combos, as well as how to cast the Witcher’s sigil magic – signs. So far, everything is rather familiar to fans of the second game, except for some of the vaulting which feels more fluid and swift. The core mechanics are, by and large, a refinement of the second game.
Which is great news, because The Witcher 2 is a rather fantastic game with a rock-solid foundation.
But then we get thrown abruptly forward into the real world, the world outside Kaer Morhen’s walls. A world with trees and horses and travelling and people and monsters.
The plains and forests of rural Temeria are vast, verdant, and full to the brim. Each rock, leaf, road, river, town is hand-crafted and placed in the world. It has a personality. So when Geralt reaches his first village and enters the tavern – as suggested by the helpful merchant we conveniently saved earlier – you just know something is going to happen. And that something does.
After some conversation, a game of cards, and a brief fist fight, we’re back on our way – this time to hunt down the vicious griffin harassing the locals. It’s far more than a simple process of “find X, hit X with sword” – this is the world of The Witcher, after all, and monsters are very powerful. Instead, Geralt first must find a contractor, examine the creature’s past kills, and find ingredients to make a lure.
Following the open world’s waypoints is more hands-off than most open world games. Instead of a giant “follow me” arrow, The Witcher 3 makes you use your map and minimap. Waypoints are marked on those maps, and you need to make sure Geralt is travelling the right way. I found managing the active waypoint on the fly a little clunky and unintuitive on a controller, but once I got used to it I liked not having a massive obtrusive yellow triangle – because it’s always a yellow triangle – taking up most of the screen. It added to the scale of the world, made it feel bigger, harsher, less friendly. And that’s what The Witcher is all about – unfriendliness.
After speaking with a Nilfgaardian captain – a member of the occupying army in charge of this area of Temeria – and accepting the contract on the beast, Geralt gets pointed in the direction of a local hunter who discovered the first victims of the griffin’s attacks. Conveniently, the hunter is out, so Geralt must use his Witcher senses to track the hunter through the forest, following the bright red footprints that illuminate when the ability is activated with a push of L2. It’s a skill that I found myself using often to track people and creatures during various side missions and quests, and it worked well to give the impression of Geralt being a seasoned monster tracker.
The hunt is on
The Witcher senses came into play soon after, as Geralt is led to the site of the first attack. Highlighting objects and then examining them gives Geralt a sense of what happened. It felt forensic, similar to Batman’s investigations in the Arkham series, or Ronan in Murdered: Soul Suspect. It’s not particularly complex, but it gave a sense that Geralt was studying the patterns and behaviours of his quarry, and, used in later parts of the game, allowed for more displays of the non-combat abilities that are important to Witcher lore.
After the examinations were complete, and Geralt had persuaded the local herbalist into telling him where to find the rare herbs needed to build the griffin’s lure, he then had to acquire the ingredients – a task which put a new gameplay mechanic into the spotlight: swimming. Geralt can now swim across bodies of water, and dive down below the surface to explore. Swimming is a rather straightforward affair – movement defaults to surface swimming, and you can swim faster by tapping a button. Pressing a different button makes Geralt submerge, where you can swim freely. It’s not a mechanical revolution by any means, but it makes sense in this open world for Geralt to be able to swim and dive and explore further than before.
After locating everything needed, Geralt begins his preparations by finding the opportune spot for a griffin fight and downing a potion or two. The Witcher’s potions return, being treated as short-term buffs to give you a fighting chance in combat. Their potency is counterbalanced by their toxicity, meaning you can only have a few in play at any given time. And you’ll need all the help you can get – The Witcher’s enemies are tough. Each battle is a fine balance between potion resource management, health, which sword to use, bombs and traps, stamina usage through sign casting, and dodging. Blocking and counterattacking is an important strategy, as is evasion when an enemy is too overwhelming. Geralt has a new toy to help him out – the crossbow. With a tap of the left bumper, you can slow time and bring up a quick use menu that contains your signs and several items you can hot swap. Aside from the signs and bombs you can equip, Geralt now has a crossbow inflict long range attrition damage. It is a useful addition, enabling long range engagement in a wide open world.
Cyberpunk 2077 funding
The griffin fight is tough, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t quite kill it. The fight involved several stages, beginning with the griffin flying around and swooping Geralt for a not insignificant amount of damage. Once on the ground, Geralt’s silver sword came into play. After taking enough damage, the griffin flew off, with Geralt forced to either chase on horseback or track using his Witcher senses. Once found, the griffin can finally be killed – as I witnessed on my neighbour’s screen.
It was around this time that one of the developers kindly warped us all to around the midpoint of the game. Gone was the vast wilderness, replaced by the rocky, harsh, salty island of Skellige. A Norse-influenced location full of vikings, Skalds, and berserkers, Skellige demonstrated quite a different visual and thematic scene. Contrary to the straightforward attitudes of the people, Skellige showed off some of the political intrigue that The Witcher 3 contains. Geralt is placed between siblings, and must investigate the political machinations of the conflicting tribes of the Skellige isles. Investigation uses Geralt’s Witcher senses again, as well as conversation trees and the occasional judicious use of a blade. I won’t spoil the mysteries of Skellige, but they were deep and complex enough to intrigue me and make me want to uncover all the story elements that lead up to what exactly happened.
Part of the narrative’s strength comes from having a defined protagonist in Geralt. His gruff, coarse, no nonsense approach hides his canny intelligence, and it really comes across in his interactions. The rest of its strength comes from its impeccable world building. Its backstory and fiction is rooted in every part of the game, but its new elements weave in perfectly. As Geralt explores the world he uncovers mysteries and problems that benefit from a Witcher’s singular abilities. Quests are far from the standard repetitive “kill X of Y” – each sidequest is uniquely crafted. Hunting, tracking, investigating, solving crimes – Geralt tries his hand at many tasks. It’s engaging and deep, and will provide a whole lot of entertainment for completionists and the curious.
No Roach, they aren’t for you
Another new element is the much vaunted horse. Geralt’s horse Roach is a welcome addition to this wide wide world. Enabling rapid transport, thrilling chases, extra item storage, and horseback combat, Roach is invaluable. You can summon your mount at any time with the press of a stick, giving you speedy transportation. Roach is not impervious, however – spending time near monsters will build a fear gauge, meaning you might sometimes be able to ride through a den of foes, but you can’t stick around and chip away their health unharmed.
Roach isn’t the only travel convenience – fast travel helps you get from point to point. It’s only enabled at certain places, though – you have to find a signpost in the world to initiate it. It’s less convenient than Skyrim’s system, and I think it would be a better choice to emulate that method, but waypoints are common enough for fast travel to be useful without being overpowered.
There are of course RPG standards like item and ingredient collecting and levelling systems. Flowers, mushrooms, herbs, plants, animal parts, monster bits – the usual – are all available for plucking and use in weapon upgrading and potion making. Running around picking everything is delightfully time consuming and always scratches that collector’s itch. Killing monsters and completing quests nets you experience points, which you can use to buy up skills in your skill web. It’s pretty standard stuff, but I didn’t explore it in depth – considering I never actually gained a level during the demo.
Skellige is a tad less inviting
While the UI has been improved since The Witcher 2, it’s still far from perfect. It’s messy, ugly, and difficult to navigate. On the plus side, item grids are back, giving you an instant visual estimate of how much free storage you have. But brewing potions and crafting items was a trick that I just couldn’t get the hang of. The menus were too confusing, and I hope the developers use the next few months to polish them into something less frustrating.
Performance also needs some polish, with sometimes choppy framerates, texture pop, and screen tearing on the Xbox One. The game looks beautiful, with its rich colours and detailed models, but it’s lacking that final coat of polish that smooths everything out. Talking to one of the developers though, I was assured that while all the game’s content was already in place in the build I played, these last few months are solely reserved for bug squashing and polish, so I’m willing to reserve my judgement on any performance issues.
Despite its slightly raw surface state, and the months left until release, The Witcher 3 feels very much like a complete game. I was happy to just explore the wilds on my horse, stopping to pick flowers and kill Drowners for their brains. Each sidequest felt unique and placed perfectly into the world. In fact, the overall sense of craftsmanship that I felt from The Witcher 3 is outstanding. I would be perfectly satisfied with the game if it was released today, and I can only hope that the last few months will bring it up to an even higher level.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt releases on Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC on May 19th.
