The Negative Moments
Now let’s talk about the aspects of the game that bothered me. None of the following points truly warrant calling Witcher 3 “bad”; still, I want to shed light on what I noticed negatively and what truly bothered me.
Poorly Written Passages
Even though a large part of the dialogues and storylines completely thrilled me, there are a few exceptions that completely fall out of line in terms of quality. The most notable example is a quest line from the large city of Novigrad. A ritual killer kills a citizen of the city every night, and after a brief investigation, Geralt discovers that a paper with the name of the next victim is hidden on every corpse. Of course, it doesn’t take long until we catch and confront the killer. However, the fact that the killer is genuinely surprised that we successfully followed the not-so-subtle trail he laid is quite puzzling.
Realism Counteracts Fun
The game seeks to create a high level of realism in most things: cities and villages have a quite considerable scale, the graphics contribute to this, and everything feels incredibly alive and coherent. It simply doesn’t fit into the game world when you only need to brew every Witcher potion once. Once you meditate, all potions that you have previously crafted are automatically refilled (and consume one unit of alcohol). Of course, this is nice for players, as they only have to brew everything once, but it feels unnatural and strange, especially not very realistic.
“Skellige” a bit Monotonous
I was a bit disappointed with Skellige, the largest map. Unlike Velen, Skellige is not mainland but a large group of islands that we can explore quite freely as usual by boat or on foot. Especially in direct comparison, the island group looks remarkably old. The high density of things to discover is missing here. While there are some surprises on the islands, around half of all marked “?” points on the map are smuggler goods floating in the water. Collecting them was exceedingly tedious and mainly boring; for the first time, I had the urge to turn off the game for a while. The smuggled goods are not only numerous in the water, but they often contain nothing of particular value. On the contrary, you often find absolute junk in them. I pulled one or more saddles from almost every stash, which are among the heaviest items in the game. This also meant that you had to return every few minutes to empty your full inventory.
What’s Not Bolted Down…I’ll Take
… I’ll take. The citizens of the cities don’t care if you loot their homes. You can empty the cabinets they are currently rummaging through, borrow their books indefinitely, and enjoy themselves in the armory. All of this doesn’t bother the inhabitants; it simply doesn’t happen for them. Town guards immediately turn hostile as soon as I look at even a single crate within their line of sight and beat Geralt to death faster than I can click “Load Last Save”. Why is it okay for the inhabitants when I enter their homes and clean them out, but not for the guards? This mechanic feels half-baked, poorly thought out, and takes away a lot of conflict potential from the world.
Bugs – Dialogue Loops, Half Rivers, and Flying Heads
Additionally, there are several bugs in the game that were still present at the time of writing (version 1.04). For instance, some textures are missing in certain places, such as in the starting area, where a river is abruptly cut off in the middle. Especially at the edges of the game world, the minimap does not always correspond to reality. If you should technically be standing on a green meadow, but fish are swimming by you across the screen, then something doesn’t seem right. The worst, however, are the very rare bugs that cause the game to freeze completely. I got stuck in an endless dialogue loop twice and once fell through the world when leaving a boat. Spread over 100 hours, such errors are not terrible, but they are clear evidence that even Witcher 3 is not a “perfect” game.
