It’s no mystery why Geralt of Rivia is such a popular character. He’s smart, cunning, lethal, shows little emotion, and constantly surrounds himself with some of the hottest, most dangerous women in all of gaming. Maybe it’s his monotone voice. Maybe it’s the white hair, or the scars that attract them. Chicks dig scars, right? Whatever it is, he gets them all wrapped around his finger. With so many distractions, it’s a wonder he ever gets anything done.
110 hours. That’s how long it took me to beat The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its first expansion, Hearts of Stone. Even though it pales in comparison to the hundreds of hours in Elder Scrolls Online and other MMO’s, for a single player action-adventure game, Wild Hunt is a mammoth undertaking. When you’re trying to play as many different games as possible in order to keep a website updated with content, 110 hours is an eternity. I haven’t even touched Blood and Wine yet. I just can’t. I need a break.
I’ve been chipping away at this game little by little for a few months now. Recently, I had decided that it was time to bite the bullet and yank off the bandage. What I anticipated to be a few days worth of diligently cranking away at it turned into almost a month. Geralt of Rivia is not lacking for things to do.
This is nothing new to anyone that has played even a little bit of The Witcher 3, and to be honest I don’t even know what to talk about. Even though the game is regarded as one of the best of all time, it never really ceased to amaze me how CDPR managed to keep Geralt’s story interesting. Even though he had his fair share of shit work, and some of the quests seemed a tad like filler, the variety of quests and situations never failed to intrigue. It’s an amazingly deep game, but that’s not to say it’s without its flaws. To say that Gwent almost inspired a Rant-astic or two would be an understatement. Seriously, fuck that card game.
Also, there was a point in the game where I was stuck at level 19 for about a week, which is kinda shitty when you have a silver witcher’s sword only a level or two away. The reason for this was that I was succumbing to my gaming OCD, and was trying to do every side quest I could find. The developers made an odd choice to include a fairly large number of level 12-14 sidequests. Which is fine, but by that point in the game, I was well beyond level 14. The diminishing returns the developers attached to the questing mechanic meant that quests that were a certain number of levels below your current character level gave practically no experience points. Many times I would complete a quest, only to be rewarded with 1 XP. At this point, I was doing the quests merely for story and completion purposes, as the rewards were negligible. The problem is, this stretched on for way too long. Too many times I would collect Witcher contracts or gain a new sidequest, only to see it was still only a level 14 quest. So as I said, due to the questing and Witcher contracts well below Geralt’s level, I did this for at least a week before finally feeling comfortable enough to move on in the story and thus actually start leveling up again.
It’s obvious the developers designed the game in a way that gamers who only played through the story leveled up easily enough that no grinding was necessary. Encouraged, but not necessary. In fact, some time down the road I plan on utilizing the New Game + feature and playing only through the story, making different decisions than I did the first time.
For example, I chose Yennefer as Geralt’s love interest. Even though I like Triss (despite her Raggedy Anne hair) she’s been in the picture since the first Witcher. So I thought I would give Yen a little screen time. In addition to that, I royally screwed the pooch in the Bloody Baron storyline, ending with the Baron hanging himself, his daughter not forgiving him, and the Crones transforming Gran into the beast. I would really like to see the opposite outcome of that story, as well as a few others I was given a choice on.
If there is one thing I recommend, it would be to stay at least four or five levels ahead of your current quests. As long as you’re not bee-lining it from one story quest to another, it’s not hard to get ahead of the curve. This makes the game less difficult, and in my personal opinion, more fun. Geralt’s a badass, it shouldn’t take him five minutes to chisel away at the health bar of a no-name soldier out in the middle of nowhere.
I also played through the Hearts of Stone expansion, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. The “wedding” quest was a fun way to have Geralt cut loose while staying true to the character, and the “rose” quest was a great way to tell a story through flashbacks (I’m being vague on purpose as describing these quests would ruin it a little). Not everything was great. I thought the “heist” quest was a bit of a chore, and the final conclusion to the story was a bit on the anti-climactic side, but I thought the character of Olgierd von Everec was a nice surprise. Everything about him told me I was going to hate this guy from the start, but he turned out to be a deeper and more troubled character than I expected, and in the end I was actually wishing he could have been playable.
In fact, as cool of a cat that Geralt is, I found my brief stints as Ciri pretty refreshing. I wish CDPR would have found some way to make more of the characters playable. There are so many unique and interesting characters in the Witcher universe, it’s a shame some of them have so little screen time. And with CDPR all but done with The Witcher franchise and now working on Cyber-Punk 2077, the chances of us getting anything else there is slim. If Cyber-Punk is a hit, and I’m confident it will be, it’ll all but seal The Witcher’s status as a trilogy.
But, perhaps that’s CDPR’s greatest accomplishment after all; knowing when to wrap it up and move on. It would be all too easy for them to cash in on another Witcher title. Especially since it could easily fit into a Souls-type formula, or even just a hack ‘n slash action game like Ninja Gaiden. It could work, trading the large open world for a tight, linear narrative. The imagination dances around the possibilities.
But alas, the developers know when to put it down, and finally, I think I can too. I will return and play through Blood and Wine someday, but for now, I think both Geralt and I deserve a little rest.
