The Atmosphere
The World: Cruel and Remarkably Thought-Out
Geralt’s home world is anything but friendly. Wars ravage the land, women are captured and raped on loot expeditions, then burned at the stake, thieves have a hand cut off, and dark rituals require the sacrifice of dead embryos from miscarriages. And those are just the humans. On top of that come the countless monsters that terrorize individual villages or have mingled with the inhabitants to live undetected as vampires or succubi, feeding on their victims.
Background Material
As you loot your way through the houses and ruins of the world, you can find plenty of books, manuscripts, notes, and other documents. Often they contain background information about the world, which detail-oriented fans of the universe will appreciate. Often, however, you’ll also find hints of a hidden treasure or the whereabouts of a specific person in the (quite exciting and interestingly written) texts. If one wants to, one can get lost for several hours in the codex entries, finding out every detail about the monsters and rulers of this world and then plunging back into the main story feeling significantly enlightened. Not all of these texts are completely optional – whoever wants to solve the “riddle of the bloodstained diary” will have to read it attentively.
The Soundtrack: Fantastic, but…
I have already made this statement multiple times, but regarding the soundtrack, Witcher 3 is among the best I have ever heard in an RPG. No matter whether you are just looking for a lady for the night in a Novigrad brothel (take the elf!), exploring a cursed ruin in the swamps of Velen or engaging in an epic battle on the mountain peaks of Kaer Morhen, the music fits. Cheerful tavern music and dark choral songs provide the appropriate musical backdrop to every situation and are one of the pillars of the dense atmosphere. Occasionally, the transitions are somewhat abrupt when you switch from a green meadow to a dark cave, but this quickly creates a sense of real threat.
Details to the Max
I want to specifically mention the details that can be found in the game world. Often these are really just little things that one does not pay much attention to: A corpse hanging from the gallows, a rotting skeleton in the depths of a dungeon or a single red flower standing lonely by the wayside. Almost all objects have a certain significance or a deeper meaning that is often only understood in connection with the books or the dialogues of the villagers. The majority of these connections the average “Joe Gamer” probably won’t notice, and I likely overlooked or simply ignored countless things that will only stand out to me on the second or even third playthrough.
