Yup. Also MGSV and David Hayter to Kiefer Sutherland.
There was but the new guy ended up being pretty good imo.
edit: I think they also recast Gareth (?) in Thief reboot.
This made me most sad. Ironside has such a distinct voice, him being gone turned me off from wanting to even play the game.
Yeah. All three lead stealth game protagonists were recast. So the thought they wanted to get rid of Bateson as 47 too…
gah.
Don’t remind me :(
Such a stupid decision.
I finally finished Blood & wine.
Witcher 3 as a whole is easily one of my top five favorite games of all time and it is the RPG future RPGs will be measured against for a long time. It is like the developers asked someone whether they wanted an open world rpg or a story based rpg and the person answered “Yes.”
You have the large world of an open world game but the writing and story detail of a hand crafted adventure. Both aspects at the highest quality. I don’t know how they did it, but they did.
The DLC in witcher 3 is truly the embodiment of what DLC should be. In fact, the DLC in witcher 3 are more expansions than the typical DLC you see these days. Each DLC was at least as great as the original game (which was also great), if not better. Blood & wine being my favorite.
Finishing witcher 3 truly is like a painter making the greatest work of their life and then thinking that everything after that moment in their life will be downhill from there. I for one think i need to play some non rpgs for a while or I won’t be able to give them a fair chance.
If you don’t have a medical condition which makes you die when you play an rpg, you owe it to yourself to play this game and complete it. Even if you do, it might be worth it.
This is so good. All of them
Such a good game. One of the best ever. But… why?
In my opinion there has been little talk of why, exactly, is such a good game. You can argue is self-explanatory but that’s lazy. Most people point to “very good writing”, “great side quests” (apart from “Gwent!” and “that soundtrack!”) but there hasn’t been a very deep analysis, it’s always very general appreciation.
Which also I’m not going to do, I don’t have time for that, but at least I wanted to point out three unique aspects where I feel make the game special, and I haven’t seen any other people commenting them:
The Witcher 3 is long, epic game and gives you tons of variety
It should be obvious, but I don’t think people give it enough credit to this. Not only The Witcher 3 is a long, epic game which gives to the players more than 100 hours of fun, so hey lots of bang for your buck, but additionally the developers wisely know how to exploit that length. Smaller games are usually more focused in one style, one tone, as they don’t have time for more, but within The Witcher 3 you can find stories and scenes that go from drama and tragedy to romance and sex, to silly, amusing moments full of wit, to political and cloak & dagger intrigue, to good ol’ epic fantasy, to hilarious scenes. From serious and morally ambiguous to the whimsical, from politically complex to the deeply personal drama.
All in the same game, and almost all with great quality. As good as the Bloody Baron or A Towerful of Mice quests were and everybody agrees on that, I also remember how well they nailed moments like when Yennefer teleports Geralt to a lake in the middle of a heated discussion, or when Geralt covers his face before entering a magical portal, or the lovely charm of Keira or Shani.
Geralt works as a believable as character
He is the typical silent, scruffy mercenary. Man of few words and of plain, dry personality. But it works, you can feel him as a real person. And the key imo isn’t in his inner personality, but in the exterior. He has a place in the world. He has relationships. He knows people, and people know him, this makes him so much grounded.
In the game he meets and interact with a broad range of people who he already knows:
-Friends
-Co-workers
-Mentors
-Family
-Lovers
-Ex-lovers
-Enemies and opponents
-Enemies turned allies
-Old clients
-Acquaintances
-Admirers
When you are walking in the world and meet an old friend or someone who you fought previously, it makes the world feels much more real and tangible.
Thanks to embracing the past two games and the books the games are based on (despite trying on theory attracting new players on consoles), there are tons of characters like Dijkistra, Philippa, Keira, Roche, Radovid, Letho, Lambert, Crach, Cerys, Thaler, Dudu and others (I was mentioning only secondary characters!) that have links with Geralt.
This is very much unlike tons of other RPGs, where the protagonist is an amnesiac (funny how in the first game started with the same trope), or they come from another land or he is just a blank slate of a character and no explanation is given.
You do cool things. There is life out there, outside of action in a RPG
Yes, usually a good story have interesting things happen. Shocking I know. But somehow lots of RPG miss that bit.
And when I say ‘interesting things’ I mean really interesting, hitting bandit #243 or monster #331 with a pointy metal stick doesn’t count. A good story, also one in a video game needs more than thrilling action scenes. Think how even in adventure movies there are more than cool action scenes, in fact action is usually a % of the total.
The Witcher 3 has a fair share of combat, as gameplay wise is pretty much an Action-Adventure RPG. As expected. But it knows it has to do more than that to be truly great.
So many other RPGs seems trapped by combat, because it’s the main (or only) gameplay mechanic, all quests and stories are focused on combat, or are just pretty window-dressing for what in the end it’s another combat scene. Some designers seems to not care, others seem to try but finally fall again in the familiarity of the old formulas.
The Witcher 3 feels more than that, and it’s one of the main reasons it’s one of my favorite games. Just from memory, without looking at wikis, in the game you:
-Investigate a big hit done to a major criminal family in the underworld
-Plan a heist yourself
-Participate in a luxury card tournament
-Help opening up a reformed brothel
-Catch a serial killer
-Go to a nobility ball
-Participate in a play as an actor
-Have a chat with royalty and vampires
-Help your bro with chicks (cough Crimson Avenger)
-Teach fencing lessons to nobility
-Prove yourself in a viking hazing ritual
-Explore a dungeon inhabited by cheese-obsessed mage
-Be possessed by a ghost and go to a wedding party
-Help family issues and discover their sordid past
-Go to an auction, and participate yourself
-Participate in the assassination of a king
-Go to prison
-Visit alien worlds
-Take some magical mushrooms and explore a dream cave
-Suffer the worst evil of the world: slow bureaucracy
-Recover the penis of a statue
-Get drunk with your friends before a big fight
-Go see horse racing
-Steal cards for a friends
-Prepare for a date
Notice I’m skipping all the ‘free the curse of X’ or ‘investigate this murder’ or ‘stop monster Y’, or ‘recover magical mcguffin in dungeon for the main quest’, that’s the typical Witchery stuff you do, which is also done with high quality, but my point is more about ‘original’ things you do, usually more about human interaction.
Which is maybe the secret, human interaction, that’s what drives most novels and films and tv series, but somehow videogames fear to go there, and limit the interaction in the known value: combat.
Maybe it’s the type of player I am, basically when I found I could go to the Auction House in Hearts of Stone or the night party in Blood & Wine I was like 'fuck yeah!“, more than when I’m going to fight a boss, meanwhile when Bioware is all like 'stop the ancient evil awakening again! Recruit all factions and defeat the Demons/Reapers!” I have to roll my eyes and think if there wasn’t anything more interesting to do.
And in fact it could be, I remember some really interesting descriptions of the exotic society of origin of some of my companions in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I remember thinking: Wait, why can’t the game be about exploring that society, instead of being thing bland-ass hero saving the world against the generic bad guy? That would be much more interesting!
Nice writeup. You should post it on neogaf and r/games as a new thread :)
God damn good points. It is precisely due to variety and unexpected stuff that happens in Witcher games why I love them so much. I remember even the party at Shani’s house in the first game - this was something that very very few games do and it was so memorable. And Witcher 3 is full of this awesome stuff.
edit - I see you posted it there,lol
The Witcher 3 is “Best RPG of the Past 5 Years” according to RPG Codex (members).
Yes, the winner is The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - and by a large margin: almost 60% of everyone who played rated it 5/5.
I hear they’re a tough crowd to please.
2016 was a good year for PC RPGs I guess. Compare to 2005 which had 17 PC RPGs released in total.
I don’t think it is controversial to say that witcher 3 is one of the best, if not the best, rpg released in the past 5 years.
One would assume a site called rpg codex would always nominate an rpg as their favorite game. So yeah.
I would have to look through the games released in that period to be sure, but it is highly likely that i would agree that witcher 3 was the best game of the past 5 years as well.
I meant “Best RPG” sorry.
Is there a difference between best rpg and best game? :)
Witcher 3 is the best CRPG of all time and it is not close.
Haha with RPG Codex, this is actually quite unexpected. Lot of people there have hate on for it and for pretty much anything that isn’t turnbased/isometric. In the forum under the article there are people demanding a recount without poles’s votes. And someone did it…and Witcher 3 still won. Go figure :)
I liked W1 and W2 (though am not a big fan of the Geralt character). Am waiting for the price to drop on W3. That won’t happen for a decade going by the prices of popular games like GTAV right now. :(
I just finished this today. Incredible game. It could be the best I’ve played. The amount of love and passion that went into Geralt’s adventure is beyond anything else I’ve ever experienced. I’m really going to miss the cast, which is something that I haven’t felt about a game since I was a little kid saying goodbye to Manny Calavera and his friends on the train platform in Grim Fandango. What an adventure. Plus, the ending was so badass! I wish I had the time to play the DLC now. :(
I think we’re so lucky that in games there’s a chance to experience different sensibilities in the mainstream space. In movies, blockbusters from other countries barely exist, and those that do don’t cross over, so we’re stuck with middle films that gross tens of millions and are watched by relatively small audiences.
This doesn’t feel like other Western RPGs. I love that we have games from places like Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic that hold widespread appeal without sacrificing their unique identities.
That said, I can’t see another developer topping what CD Projekt Red’s accomplished with the Witcher 3 anytime soon. I know I won’t hold off playing Cyberpunk for nearly two years when it releases. I WANT IT NOW!
Well, its 17€ now on Gameplanet which is decent saving, at least more than I’ve seen GTA 5 get. Thats only the price of 3 starbucks coffees… just go for it!
Its the bestest game after all! Hugely good!
On Black Friday, they had it on all platforms for $25 for the base game + both expansions. The complete game for just the price of the expansions. I thought that was a really good price drop.
You haven’t played the two DLCs? Then you haven’t finished the game. ;) Seriously, the ending of Blood and Wine felt like a true ending, at least the one I had. With reminiscing, nostalgia, love, all bundled up in the last scene.
If you’ve just played the main game, it’s as if you’ve just finished the first book in the Hobbit trilogy. ;)