I started playing The Witcher 3 a couple months ago, on and off, got about 10 or so hours in. I had played it back in the day when it originally came out, but also just for maybe 5 hours or so. It\u2019s a really solid, incredibly well made videogame that I absolutely do not give a shit about, at all.<\/p>\n My experience of the game is that it\u2019s largely a bunch of gruff, manly white men grunting at each other talking about \u201ceverything got worse when the Black ones came\u201d (yeah there\u2019s some enemy army \u2013 who aren\u2019t Black, there\u2019s almost no PoC in this game, it\u2019s Fantasy, you see!<\/em> \u2013 that has a NICKNAME \u201cthe black ones\u201d, but still). The first big quest line is one wherein the game goes to like extreme lengths to humanize and give extra chances to a rich, drunken domestic abuser Lord guy. Why? Of all the stories to tell, you want to try to make me \u201csee both sides\u201d with this wealthy authoritarian a-hole who beats his wife? I feel like when you choose to work hard and humanize that guy, instead of\u2026 almost anyone else in the universe, that says something about your values as a storyteller. The most important choice storytellers make is choosing which story to tell<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The game is really good, as I mentioned, and by good I mean, extremely polished and smooth. It is an incredible videogame product<\/em>. You can kind of just turn your brain off and go follow the arrow, click on things and pick things up, and it\u2019s very chill and relaxed and I mean this all in a positive way. I actually like the general experience of playing the game *other than* when there\u2019s dialogue or when there\u2019s combat.<\/p>\n The world is extremely fleshed out and rather detailed, which is cool \u2013 partially this is because it\u2019s just a well made game, and partially this is because it\u2019s the 3rd game in a series, which is itself based on a series of books. There\u2019s a ton of little details in there. I have the most fun when I\u2019m just moving around and looking at things in the world and not interacting or reading dialogue. The thing is, I don\u2019t like this world. It\u2019s depressing and it doesn\u2019t ring true to me as a world, it just looks like some teenager\u2019s Hobbesian fantasy of a wild west that you can become the KING of!!!<\/p>\n Still, moving around in the world and just seeing stuff is fun. But a huge problem is, it always comes down to combat, and I don\u2019t find this combat system to be satisfying or engaging at all. It\u2019s kind of just annoying. It\u2019s not like Elden Ring \u201cchallenging\u201d, but it\u2019s also not like Breath of the Wild \u201csatisfying\u201d either. It\u2019s not even as fun to fight in this as it is in Diablo, where at least you get new moves sometimes and monsters drop random fun loot sometimes. It just feels laborious<\/em> to fight in this, and fighting is the central focus of the game (as is the case in almost all RPGs).<\/p>\n There\u2019s also just a lot of things which are really just\u2026 distasteful, in a way that only a company that has too many men in charge would ever do. Like in the card game Gwent \u2013 which I like, as a game. Sidebar real quick, but I LOVE IT when there is a card game in an RPG. And Gwent is a really good minigame, one of the best I\u2019ve seen! Anyway, there\u2019s a card in Gwent that has flavor text which tells you that this character on this card is a rapist<\/a>. What was the intended experience of seeing this flavor text? Because I can promise you<\/em>, a lot of boys and men saw that card and laughed in a creepy way. It\u2019s fuckin\u2019 gross, man, and yeah \u2013 that\u2019s just a tiny flavor text on a tiny card. But nobody seemed to question it. And there\u2019s little \u201cChoices\u201d like that one, all over the place. Most videogames don\u2019t seem to have a problem not-suggesting that the units you\u2019re deploying are rapists. But this is the kind of game where that\u2019s the kind of thing you gotta be on the lookout for.<\/p>\n Part of why I played it is that I heard that Witcher 4 would feature Ciri as the main character, and I will say that she was way more likeable than most of the characters in this game. So I will definitely keep an eye out for Witcher 4 and might play it when it comes out. Maybe.<\/p>\n EDIT: My friend Mikhail from the discord said:<\/p>\n What Witcher 3 excels at is creating an engine for adventures. Just look at the world! Look at all the adventures you could have there!!<\/p>\n Too bad they decided to populate the game would with assholes I don\u2019t care about and bad videogame<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Anyway, overall, I personally think it\u2019s a solid videogame and an EXCEPTIONAL videogame product<\/em>, but also pretty uninteresting and just kind of\u2026 blech.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/keithburgun.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/proxy-image.jpg\")
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Rating<\/h2>\n
4\/5 Stars \u2013 Never Playing This<\/h2>\n
Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n