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Review: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Review: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

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Although I swore I wouldn’t do it until the price dropped, I still somehow acquired a copy of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for PS4. I have spent the last week filling my free minutes slaying monsters and trying to locate armour that’s functional and doesn’t violate the existence of colours. Finding armour I can live with has been the hardest battle I’ve faced so far.
The long awaited Witcher 3 hit shelves with a force not unlike a meteor. People clambered over each other to get a hold of a copy in store and they foamed at the mouth behind computers as the notice of delays on pre-ordered copies started going out from the usual suspects. the-witcher-3-e3-2I’m not generally one for hyped up games, and often the all-consuming drive behind these sorts of titles turns out to be just that and nothing more, but I had hope. The Witcher is a great series of games and, so far, the promotions indicated that this was going to be a continuing trend.
I can safely say that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt not only lived up to my hopes for a great title but, in a lot of ways, surpassed my expectations. From the first time it powered up in glorious HD I was riveted. There’s an atmosphere in the game of degradation, despair and looming darkness. There’s humour, foul language, characters I loved and characters I’d love to punch in the face. The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt-CrossroadsThe sheer size of the game makes it a behemoth, and although I do know some people suffered bugs with the early releases (Xbox One in particular), I haven’t noticed a single glitch yet.
It’s an utterly fantastic game, one that threatens to consume my life in a way that Skyrim did all those years ago. In the game you play as Geralt, the legendary Witcher, who happens to be chasing down his adoptive daughter, Ciri. She in turn is being stalked by the wraiths of the Wild Hunt and her biological father, the Emperor. On top of everything, this mad chase is taking place during an invasion of the northern Kingdoms, meaning the land itself and its people are in turmoil. Sometimes the character and the wraiths are so close on the same path that it almost feels like they’re chasing Geralt instead of her, but this gives the story a fantastic extra dimension.
Truly, The Witcher 3 is a triumph of a game, one with very few weak points. Although, for me, it has a glaring issue that I just couldn’t ignore while playing.

While playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you would be seriously hard pressed to find a single Human character of colour in it. And for almost no reason I can think of. Despite the women wearing ridiculous heeled boots out in the wild, they’re scarred, outspoken, clever and badass. For all the nit-picking I could do with the female representation, and also the fact that every ten seconds I’m called a ‘whoreson’, it feels like there are some great things there. So why the character wash out?
In terms of gaming I would be very close to saying that this game was one of the greatest I’ve played in the last ten years of my life but for the fact that almost every single character appears to be white. For a game that, unlike the likes of Skyrim, doesn’t give you the option of choosing the character you play, it seems like it might have been the least it could do to make the people a little more varied. After all, it’s a game that endeavours to stand the test of time; it only makes sense to make it as diverse and inclusive as possible.
Despite the very few issues I have with it, it’s a truly spectacular work of art; beautiful to behold and an absolute pleasure to play. For anyone sitting on the fence of getting this game, I would tell you that it’s worth having and you aren’t going to regret it. It’s hundreds of hours of gameplay and, despite the cost, that in itself is value. A word of warning, however; this is a game that falls into the definite category of ‘not suitable for children’.
I have a feeling that I’m going to be playing this game for a very long time to come.

Come join the hunt! 9/10 

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