The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Void It Left Behind

I didn't want to play this game.

I had it sitting in my library since June 2024. Untouched. I installed it at the end of that year, forced myself through the opening, swung a sword a few times, and thought "this combat feels like shit." Closed it. Moved on.

My only exposure to the Witcher universe was season one of the Netflix show, which I watched back in college. That was it. No books, no previous games, no real attachment to anything involving Geralt of Rivia.

Then mid 2025, I started watching Zanny. If you don't know him, he's this YouTuber who plays through games with the kind of energy that makes you want to pick up a controller. His Witcher playlist did something to me. Watching him stumble through the Continent, making dumb decisions, losing his mind over Gwent. It made me want to try again. So I did. September 2025. I went in armed with Witcher lore I'd gathered from various YouTube deep dives, and this time, I didn't put it down.

White Orchard Almost Killed It

I need to talk about the opening because it almost cost this game a player.

White Orchard is the tutorial area. It teaches you the basics. You swing your sword, you use your Witcher senses, you fight a Griffin, and you move on. On paper, that sounds fine. In practice, it feels like nothing. The combat is clunky, the world feels small, and there's no real hook pulling you forward. My 2024 self finished the Griffin hunt and thought "that's it?" and quit.

Here's what I didn't realize until my second attempt. White Orchard isn't about hooking you. It's planting a tone. The post-war villages, the burned fields, the refugees. All of that pays off later when you hit Velen and realize the entire Continent looks like this. You're seeing what the world has become before anyone asks you to care about saving it.

I still think it's a weak opening for a game this massive. But looking back, it earned its place. It makes you feel small before the world opens up. I just wish I'd known that in 2024 before I quit.

The Slow Burn That Became My Game

Let me be honest. The start of this game is slow. Not just White Orchard. Even the first few hours in Velen feel like the game is taking its time, introducing characters, setting up political tensions, building a world that doesn't care if you're ready for it or not. It respects its own pace more than it respects your impatience.

But once it clicks? Once the world opens up and the story starts pulling you in different directions?

This became my game.

I don't have a real complaint about the story. Maybe that sounds like blind praise, but I genuinely mean it. As someone who skipped Witcher 1 and 2 and jumped straight into 3, there were moments where I didn't fully understand certain references or character histories. YouTube filled those gaps for me. Not ideal, but it worked.

The moment it clicked for me was the Bloody Baron. I'll talk about him more in the characters section because he deserves it. But this was the questline that took everything I thought I knew about "good" and "bad" choices in games and threw it out. It gutted me. That was the moment I stopped playing a game and started living in one.

What got me was the choices. I've finished this game four times now. Four full playthroughs. And every single time, the choices hit different. Not "oh you picked option A instead of B" different. I mean genuinely different narrative outcomes that I didn't see coming. Positive choices that led to dark places. Decisions I thought were throwaway lines that came back to haunt me hours later. CD Projekt Red thought about every single path a player could take, and they made sure each one mattered.

Why the fuck does every choice carry the same level of responsibility? That was my thought during my first playthrough. Not a complaint. More like disbelief. The game treats you like an adult who should live with what they pick. And it doesn't tell you which option is "right." Because there isn't one.

The game has roughly three main endings, but that's misleading. Within each ending there are sub-endings shaped by smaller decisions you made along the way. Who you romanced, who you helped, who you ignored. My first playthrough was the safe one. Everyone alive, romanced Yen, classic happy ending. My second run, I made different calls and the game punished me for it in ways I didn't think were possible. By my fourth playthrough I was still finding new outcomes. Still getting surprised. You need to complete this game at least three times to fully see what CD Projekt Red built here. You won't get it on your first run.

Most open world games give you the illusion of choice. This one gives you the weight of it.

The World Between Wars

Something I didn't expect from this game was how much it cares about politics.

The Continent is caught between Nilfgaard's invasion from the south and the Northern Realms tearing themselves apart. Radovid is burning mages. Novigrad's streets are filled with propaganda. Refugees crowd every crossroads in Velen because there's nowhere left to go. The war is the air you breathe.

And the game doesn't pick a side for you. Nilfgaard is an empire. They conquer, they impose order, and they don't care what it costs. But they also bring stability to places that haven't had any in years. The Northern Realms are "free," but that freedom includes witch hunts, corrupt kings, and people starving in fields while their leaders play politics. Both sides are fucked. You just get to decide which flavor of fucked you prefer.

Geralt is supposed to be neutral. Witchers don't get involved in politics. That's the code. But the game keeps putting you in situations where neutrality isn't an option. A village needs help and the only way to get it is to pick a side. A mage is being hunted and you can look away or you can act. The game never forces your hand, but it makes doing nothing feel like a choice too.

I ended up caring about the state of the world more than I expected. Not just "will Ciri be okay" but "what happens to the people in Velen after the war ends?" The game has answers. Different ones, depending on what you did. I've rarely seen a game put that much thought into its politics.

Janky Combat, Beautiful Depth

The combat is janky. The sword fighting feels stiff, the movement is floaty, and the whole thing gave me a bad first impression back in 2024.

But here's what I didn't understand back then. The jankiness pushes you somewhere else. Into building. Mixing signs, potions, oils, armor sets, decoctions. I ended up creating around eight different builds across my playthroughs, each one tailored to specific enemies or story sections.

Alchemy was completely new to me, and once I started experimenting with it, the game opened up in ways I wasn't expecting. Choosing which oils to apply, which potions to brew before a fight, what armor synergizes with my sign build. That loop pulled me deeper into the world than the combat ever could on its own. Walking up to a contract monster with the right oil, the right potion, the right sign ready? That's when you stop feeling like a guy playing a game and start feeling like an actual Witcher.

Quen became my best friend early on. That shield sign carried me through fights I had no business surviving. But as I learned the system, I started branching out. Igni for groups, Aard for crowd control, Yrden for wraiths. Each sign has its place, and figuring out when to use which one is part of what makes the combat click over time.

The Witcher gear sets are where the build system really shines. There are four schools: Cat, Bear, Griffin, Wolf. Each one pushes you toward a different playstyle. Cat is fast attacks and critical hits. Bear is pure tank. Griffin is sign intensity. Wolf is the balanced all-rounder.

Griffin became my go-to for monster contracts. The sign intensity bonuses made Igni and Yrden devastating against creatures that would otherwise eat me alive. There's something deeply satisfying about walking into a contract with full Griffin gear and watching your signs do the heavy lifting while your sword cleans up the rest. For general exploration and story quests, Wolf just felt right. It's the School of the Wolf. Geralt's school. The armor looks like it belongs on him, and the balanced stats let you handle whatever the game throws at you. It fits the fantasy of being this Witcher, not a specialized build but a professional who's ready for anything.

I started on normal difficulty. By my third playthrough I forced myself onto Death March to chase the achievement. Turns out the game gets even better when everything can kill you in two hits. It forces you to actually use your builds, your potions, your oils. Normal lets you button-mash through most encounters. Death March doesn't. You prepare or you die. And that preparation loop, reading the bestiary, crafting the right gear, meditating before a fight, is where the combat system finally makes complete sense.

Contracts, Being a Witcher

This deserves its own section because it's the core fantasy of the game.

Witcher contracts are bounties posted by villagers who need a monster dealt with. You pick one up, you investigate. You use your Witcher senses to track the creature, you read up on it in the bestiary, you prepare the right oils and potions, and then you hunt. It's a loop that never got old across four playthroughs.

The investigation is the best part. You don't just get a quest marker that says "go here, kill thing." You examine claw marks, follow blood trails, interview witnesses. Some of them lead you somewhere you didn't expect. A monster terrorizing a village might turn out to be something completely different. The game keeps you guessing.

Some contracts are just good fights. Big monster, tough battle, satisfying reward. But others tell stories. A contract that starts as "kill the monster in the forest" might end with you uncovering a tragedy. You kill the thing and walk away feeling conflicted. That grey area is the whole Witcher fantasy.

The preparation sells it. Opening the bestiary, reading about weaknesses, applying the correct sword oil, brewing the right potion. Then walking into the fight knowing you did your homework. You came ready, and most games skip that feeling entirely.

If I'm being honest though, the base game holds back on the monster encounters. The contracts are good and the fights are satisfying, but the truly insane monster designs? The ones that make you pause and reconsider your entire build before stepping in? Those come in the DLCs. If you think the base game monsters are something, wait until I tell you about the Toad Prince in the Oxenfurt sewers. That thing lives rent-free in my head. But that's for the DLC review.

A World That Pays Attention

Every small thing I found in the world felt like it had purpose. Nothing wasted. Random items, hidden locations, overheard conversations. Things I picked up in Velen came back to matter in Novigrad. And Novigrad itself is a different beast entirely. Velen is war-torn emptiness. Swamps, abandoned villages, drowners in every pond. You're constantly on edge. Then you walk into Novigrad and it's crowded streets, marketplaces, political intrigue. The detective-style quests in Novigrad feel completely different from the rural survival of Velen. It's like the game shifts genres depending on where you are.

Skellige changes things again. The islands are cold, Norse-inspired, and proud. The people, the culture, even the monsters are different. Sailing between islands and stumbling onto hidden caves and forgotten shrines felt like a genuine expedition every time. The only thing that drags it down is the amount of time you spend in a boat. There are dozens of question marks scattered across the ocean, and reaching each one is just... sailing. For a long time. That's my one real complaint about Skellige.

Side quests in this game made me create entirely new save files just to see what would happen if I picked the other option. That's how much weight they carry. The branching is insane. Two that stuck with me: "A Towerful of Mice" is one of the most tragic stories I've experienced in a side quest. Genuinely heartbreaking. A ghost story that turns into something much darker than you expect, and no matter what you do, someone suffers. And then there's "A Frying Pan, Spick and Span." It's a simple fucking fetch quest about a frying pan. An old woman wants her pan back. That's it. And somehow it's one of the funniest things in the game. That range is what makes this game special. It can break your heart and make you laugh within the same hour.

And then there's Gwent.

I don't know how to explain Gwent to someone who hasn't played it. It's a card game inside the game. You collect cards from merchants, innkeepers, random people across the Continent. And at some point, it stops being a side activity. I spent entire gaming sessions just playing Gwent. Traveling to new regions not for the story, not for the loot, but to find someone new to challenge. There's a tournament questline that's one of the best side quests in the game, and it's literally just playing cards. It's a problem. A beautiful problem.

The one thing I'll complain about? Roach. That horse is an idiot. The AI decides to spawn in the worst locations, gets stuck on fences, refuses to jump over small rocks. It's genuinely frustrating. Boats are better, but Skellige is almost entirely boat-dependent exploration, and that gets old. Skellige is actually my only real annoyance with the entire game. Just the traversal. Everything else about those islands is gorgeous.

A World Worth Screenshotting

300+ screenshots. That should tell you enough.

White Orchard carries this heavy post-war atmosphere that sets the tone immediately. Velen is a wasteland, a no man's land that makes you feel the weight of conflict everywhere you go. Skellige's islands have this rugged, cold beauty that's completely different from the mainland. And Kaer Morhen. Walking into Kaer Morhen for the first time felt like coming home to a place I'd never been.

My actual favorite region? Toussaint. But that's for the DLC review.

This game came out over a decade ago. Let that sink in. With the Next-Gen update and RTX enabled, it's still one of the best-looking games I've played. The lighting alone transforms scenes. Sunlight cutting through Velen's fog, candlelight flickering in Novigrad's taverns, the way water reflects in Skellige's harbors. A game from 2015 has no business looking this good in 2025, but here we are. CD Projekt Red brought the visuals into a new generation, and the result stands shoulder to shoulder with titles released this year.

The character models hold up too. Every conversation, every cutscene, the expressions and movements feel deliberate. And since we're here, let me just say it. Triss. Red Head TEAM. I won't elaborate further.

Mods, Because the Game Wasn't Enough

On my current playthrough I went modded. Not because the game needed fixing, but because I wanted to see everything CD Projekt Red left on the cutting room floor.

Brothers In Arms, Ultimate Edition is the big one. It restores deleted and removed content that didn't make it into the final game. Cut dialogue, removed quests, content that was planned but scrapped before release. Playing through restored content in a game you've already finished four times feels like finding a secret room in a house you've lived in for years. Some of the cut content makes you wonder why it was removed in the first place. Other parts, you can see why they made the call. But having the option to experience it? That's what mods are for.

And then there's Real Cheating Yen and Triss. The base game only lets you commit to one romance. Pick Yen or pick Triss. No in-between. This mod lets you experience both romance paths in a single playthrough while still keeping the one that matters in the end. After four runs of carefully picking one or the other, I just wanted to see both sides without having to replay the entire game again. Sometimes you want the full picture without the commitment of another 50-hour playthrough.

Music That Feels Like Home

The soundtrack is glorious. I don't use that word lightly. This is on the same level as Bear McCreary's work in God of War. Different in flavor, equal in impact.

Every region has its own musical identity and you feel it. Velen's tracks carry that post-war melancholy. Novigrad sounds alive with commerce and chatter. Skellige hits you with this island folk music that's unmistakably rooted in Slavic tradition. The Slavic influence across the entire soundtrack is what gives it soul. It sounds like a place with real history, not generic fantasy.

The Fields of Ard Skellig. Kaer Morhen's theme. These two tracks specifically. I can't explain how a piece of music can make a fictional place feel like somewhere you grew up. But they do. The Fields of Ard Skellig plays and suddenly I'm not sitting at my desk anymore. I'm there. Kaer Morhen's theme hits and it feels like home. Music shouldn't be able to do that for a place that doesn't exist. But here we are.

Combat music is fine. Honestly, I'm too busy dodging and managing my builds to pay attention to what's playing during fights.

The voice acting though? Magnificent. This is a massive part of why The Witcher 3 is my favorite game right now, sitting right behind God of War. The performances carry every scene. Geralt's dry delivery, the emotional range of the supporting cast. It all lands.

The People Who Made It Matter

I'm not going to say much about specific plot points because there's too much to spoil. But the characters? I can talk about the characters.

Vesemir

Vesemir is the oldest living Witcher. He trained Geralt. He trained all of them. Kaer Morhen is his home. The walls are crumbling, the world has moved on from Witchers, but Vesemir is still there. Still holding on.

He's old. He's seen everything. Lost friends, students, an entire way of life. But he doesn't carry it with bitterness. More like quiet stubbornness. Like he refuses to let the last fortress of the Witchers fade without someone standing in it. The scenes between him and Geralt at Kaer Morhen are some of the most human moments in the game. Two men who've lived too long, sitting in a crumbling keep, drinking and talking about the old days. It's warm in a game that rarely lets you feel warm.

The Battle of Kaer Morhen is where Vesemir's role in this story reaches its peak. I won't say what happens. But I will say that every ally you recruited throughout the game shows up to fight alongside you. On my first playthrough, I'd done the work. I'd helped everyone I could, convinced everyone I could. And seeing them all gathered at Kaer Morhen, this place that felt like home the moment I first walked in, ready to fight together? It felt like a real battle, one that I earned by spending dozens of hours building those relationships. And Vesemir is at the center of it. Because it's his home. It's always been his home.

Ciri

The entire main story is about finding her. And the way the game builds that is through the people who talk about her. Not cutscenes. Not exposition dumps. Everyone you meet has a piece of her story. A memory, a warning, a debt. By the time you actually reach her, you've already built this picture of who she is through other people's eyes. And when you finally see her, when the search is over, it hits different because you earned that moment. You went through the whole Continent for it.

The relationship between Geralt and Ciri is the heart of this game. Geralt raised her, trained her, and now she's out in the world making her own choices. Some of the most important decisions in the game aren't about combat or politics. They're about how you treat Ciri. Do you let her make her own mistakes? Do you protect her? Do you trust her? The ending you get depends on these moments, and they're the quietest choices in the game. No dramatic music, no obvious "this is a big decision" flag. Just a father figure and his daughter, talking.

My first playthrough, the thing that genuinely scared me wasn't a monster. It was the thought that Ciri might die. The game builds this tension slowly. Every lead you follow, every dead end, every person who tells you "she was here but she's gone." You start feeling like you're always one step behind, and the stakes keep climbing. By the time the story reaches its final act, I was making choices not based on what seemed "right" but based on what I thought would keep her alive. I got lucky on my first run. Made the right calls. But knowing now that different choices lead to different outcomes for her? That's terrifying in a way no horror game has ever managed.

Yennefer

Yennefer of Vengerberg. She doesn't bend for anyone. Not even Geralt. They've got a magical bond, a shared history through the books, and a stubbornness that keeps pulling them together even when they're terrible for each other.

My first playthrough I went with Yen. Safe choice. She's his canonical love, his heart, his destiny. And I get why people love her. She's powerful, protective, and when she cares about someone she'll burn the world down for them. But the way I see Yen, she's not always the right choice for Geralt in every scenario. She's intense, she's stubborn, and sometimes that dynamic doesn't feel like it's making either of them better. Some of their conversations feel less like a couple and more like two people who can't stop hurting each other because they're too proud to be vulnerable. The game shows that honestly. Flaws and all. Whether that's the love story you want is up to you.

Triss

Triss in Witcher 3 feels like she's grown. I know she's manipulative in the first two games. I know the history. But in this game, something shifted. There's a moment in Novigrad where you see who she's become, what she's willing to risk, and it's not the same person from before. She's putting herself in danger for people who can't protect themselves. Not for power. Not for Geralt. That meant something to me.

And honestly, why can't Geralt choose something different? Why can't he change for the better? Destiny tied him to Yen. But destiny in this game is something you can challenge. The whole point of the story is that choices matter more than fate. So why should his love life be the one thing that's set in stone?

I'll admit this is mostly me defending myself because I like red-haired women. But I stand by it.

The Bloody Baron

I already talked about the Baron in the story section, but he deserves his own space here because he's the character that changed how I see video game writing.

The Baron is a drunk. An abuser. A man who destroyed his own family. The game tells you this upfront. Doesn't hide it. And then it sits you down across from him and makes you listen. You're not there to forgive him or judge him. You're just there. And by the end of that conversation, you understand him. Understanding isn't forgiving, and the game knows that.

Any other game would make the Baron a boss fight or a rescue mission. The Witcher 3 just makes him a person. Broken, aware he's broken, and too lost to fix it. The choices during his questline don't have clean outcomes. Every path leaves damage.

He's the reason I fell in love with this game. CD Projekt Red put their best writing in the first major region. Right at the front door. Everything after the Baron is the game proving that wasn't a fluke.

The Wild Hunt

Look, they serve their purpose. The world treats them like the end of days. Every NPC flinches at the mention. But when you actually face them, they're not what sticks with you. They're the reason Geralt keeps moving, but the real story was never about them. It's about the people you meet along the way and the choices you make for them.

The characters come from the books. I haven't read them fully, but CD Projekt Red didn't just adapt the source material. They extended it in a way that feels true to what came before.

Four Playthroughs, Four Different Games

I mentioned finishing this game four times. I want to talk about what that actually means.

My first playthrough was the careful one. I played it safe. Romanced Yen because she felt like the "right" choice. Made decisions that seemed morally correct. Got the good ending. Walked away thinking I'd seen the whole game. I was wrong.

My second playthrough I went in wanting to see what happens when you pick the other options. The ones that feel wrong, the ones that make you uncomfortable. And the game showed me. Characters I saved the first time died. Storylines I thought were fixed went in completely different directions. An entire region's fate changed because of one conversation I handled differently. I sat there staring at my screen thinking "they actually built all of this."

Third playthrough was Death March with a full combat build. Less focus on story choices, more on mastering the systems. This is where I discovered how deep the alchemy and build systems actually go. Fights that were trivial on normal became puzzles on Death March. I started reading every bestiary entry, preparing for every encounter like my life depended on it. Because on Death March, it did.

Fourth time through I tried to see everything I'd missed. Quests I'd skipped, dialogue options I'd never picked, corners of the map I'd never visited. And I was still finding new things. New interactions, new outcomes, new lines of dialogue that only trigger under specific conditions. Four playthroughs in and this game was still showing me things I hadn't seen.

That's not normal for a game. Most open world RPGs show you everything by the second run. This one kept going.

I won't spoil the endings, but I want to talk about how they felt. The first one I got was warm. Hopeful. It felt earned after everything I'd been through. I walked away from the game satisfied, thinking "that's how it should end." The second ending I got was devastating. Same game, different choices, completely different emotional weight. It felt like the game was punishing me, but not unfairly. Everything that led to that ending was a consequence of decisions I made. I couldn't blame the game. I could only blame myself. The third ending was somewhere in between. Bittersweet. The kind of ending where you sit in silence for a while after the credits roll because you're not sure how to feel.

Three endings. Three completely different emotional experiences. And none of them felt wrong. They felt like mine. No "bad ending" screen. No feeling of "I got the wrong one." Every ending is your ending. You earned it, for better or worse.

What This Game Taught Me About Games

I need to be honest about something. The Witcher 3 ruined other open world games for me.

I've tried going back to games I used to enjoy. Open world RPGs with quest markers and fetch quests and dialogue that doesn't matter. And they feel empty now. They just don't hold up after you've played something where every quest feels like it was written by someone who cared. Where side content has the same quality as main story content. Where a random conversation with an innkeeper can lead to a questline that changes your entire perspective on a character.

I used to think open world fatigue was inevitable. Every open world game eventually turns into busywork. Clear the map, collect the things, move on. The Witcher 3 proved me wrong. Most open world games fill the world with things to do. The Witcher 3 fills it with things to care about. Stories. Small ones, big ones, tragic ones, funny ones. That's the difference.

God of War is still one of the greatest games I've ever played. Tighter combat, more focused story, emotional beats that hit like a truck. But you walk the path the game sets for you. Beautiful path. Just not yours. The Witcher 3 gives you a continent and says "figure it out." And somehow, the story you end up with feels just as personal.

An open world doesn't have to be a checklist. It can be a place you actually want to exist in. The Witcher 3 taught me that.

I Can't Write a Proper Conclusion

And I mean that. I genuinely can't wrap this up neatly because the main game isn't where my experience ended. The DLCs extended everything. Expanded it. Broke me further.

But for the main game alone, here's what I've got.

Would I recommend it? To everyone. Play this game. Push through the slow start. Push through the janky combat. Push through White Orchard. Give it time. It will reward you in ways you're not ready for.

Does it deserve the "best RPG ever" reputation? Why wouldn't it. Finishing this game left a void that nothing else has filled. It surpasses God of War Ragnarok for me, and that's saying something because Ragnarok was my benchmark. God of War tells a tighter, more focused story but doesn't give you the freedom to shape it. The Witcher 3 hands you an entire world and says "your call." That open world choice, that weight behind every decision, is something God of War never had to offer. And that's what pushed Witcher 3 past it for me.

200+ hours. Maybe more. I've lost count. And I'm still playing it.

The Witcher 3 will always stick with me. The only choice you make in this game is yours. And that's exactly what makes it unforgettable.

DLC review is coming next. Because the story doesn't end here, and honestly, neither do my feelings about it.

References

• Zanny's YouTube , the reason I picked this game back up
• Zanny's Witcher Playlist