Hi everyone! I am so excited to be back writing about games! I’ve still been playing them non-stop still but its always nice to put into actual words how I feel about certain games. For this article (as you can most likely tell from the title) I decided to write about one of my favorite games of all times: The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. I know I’m not the first nor will I be the last person to every say it's their favorite, but it is tops in my book.

I have been playing games for a long time, like since NES days, and this game just did everything I wanted. Great story? Check. Amazing World? Check. Characters with depth and meaning? Check and Check. Well over a hundred hours of my life sunk into an amazing RPG experience??? Hell yeah Check. This game did everything a RPG gamer could want, except design your own character. In this world you can choose between Geralt or Rivia. By no means is it perfect. Heck, at launch it had it's fair share of bugs and glitches. For example even now and then, you’re horse will gets stuck on fences or on top of a nearby roof. All that being said, none of it ever ruined my experience.

So in case you have never played the game, I will give a quick overview. Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is obviously the third game in the Witcher series following the story of Geralt, a genetically enhanced professional monster hunter. Geralt is no divinely endowed hero either, the process involved in becoming a witcher is painful and most of the time leads to death due to the poisonous nature of the potions. He fights a multitude of evil beings, some of them actual creatures that go bump in the night. Some of them are just people, who by all accounts are worse than the monsters. The game picks up with Geralt tracking down Yennifer, his lost love (at least according to the story. I always preferred Triss). She has made contact with him and it sounded pretty important. At the same time, Geralt has been having dreams about Yennifer and his surrogate daughter Ciri who has also been missing for a long time. The dreams involve the Wild Hunt, a group of True Elves who are hunting Ciri for her powers to use them for most evil deeds. That’s just a quick overview of the main storyline of the game. I don’t want to ruin too much cause the experience is definitely worth going through.

The main juice of the game tho is how huge everything in it ends up being. First, the world map is massive with loads of side quests to do. As a witcher, you get access to contracts from the population throughout the game. Hunting monsters, looking for family members or just being asked to participate in rituals are some of the quests. The amount of quests are so numerous and interesting that the main story gets lost in it all. On top of the main quest line and contracts, the side stories are just as interesting. In fact, every decision you make can have repercussions that can actually come into play hours later.

Now, a game with this much to offer is only as good as the characters in it. Thankfully, CD Project Red took the time and cares to really show the love involved here. Geralt as the lead, despite saying his mutations from the witcher transformation has stripped him of emotions, has quite a large degree to say and act on. You are Geralt by all means in this world, it is his story but you shape it to how you want him played. Want him to be a heartless man who only cares for gold? Go for it, but alternatively he can be played with more heart showing that he is more than just a monster killer. The supporting cast was just as amazing with plenty to say whether they are main characters such as Ciri, Yennifer and Triss down to the random NPC who wants you to rescue his goat. It all draws you into the experience.

I also wanted to touch on the DLC content that came out for the game. This took me back to when DLC was truly an expansion on the game. First, before the 2 big content drops, CD Project released around 16 free DLC’s from cosmetic changes to some characters to free missions, which goes to show how much they loved this game. Then the two content packs: Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine were phenomenal. The Heart of Stone story added new characters (and one old one), a bunch of new missions and side quests to undertake as well. The story had an interesting take on the idea of " be careful what you wish for." The second content was Blood and Wine and holy crap... was this content amazing. It easily was its own game, sporting over 60 more hours of gameplay on the already impressive play time the original had. A whole new map became available as well. The team added even more side quests and contracts as well, they even gave Geralt a retirement home where he can settle down at the end, truly showing they are wrapping up Geralt’s story here. The last thing I wanted to mention was that developers of the game were not afraid to make fun of themselves; there is a quest in Blood and Wine where Geralt takes a potion to find this invisible foe. The quest itself is not the interesting part but a side effect of the potion was that you get the ability to talk to your horse and even ask her questions as to why she can teleport miles on end to get to you but gets stuck on tiny debris or a fence. It was that kind of attention to detail that really drove it home for me that they loved this game.

There you have it: a quick look into the Witcher 3 and why it’s one of my favorite games ever. It’s a beautiful and well written tale that I have enjoyed more than once and if you are a gaming fan, I would highly recommend checking out the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt.

Video Games

All-Time Faves: The Witcher 3