168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is seven years old today. If you don’t mind, I’ll be out in the garden digging my grave because I’ve come to the realisation that I’m fucking ancient. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:CD Projekt Red’s masterpiece first launched when I was living in universit𒅌y halls, m𒀰eaning I spent hours playing it when I should have been doing work and attending cool parties.
Instead I was too busy being a gamer, which we all know is cooler anyway. While the studio has tanked its reputation somewhat with the busted release and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:failed next-gen comeback of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher and the legacy it has cemented in the medium remains untouched. While the first two games are fine - purists please don’t send me death threats - it wasn’t until the third and final entry in the trilogy that Geralt of 🦋Rivia hit the mainstream.
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Wild Hunt released at the right place at the right time, offering a vast open world and nuanced RPG experience that felt ahead of the curb in 2014. CDPR had taken the formula pioneered by the likes of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age and Baldur’s Gate, turning it into something far more involved. Gone were the black and white moral quandaries and relatively generic fantasy storytelling, replaced with a dark, honest, and engrossing tale that was unlike anything we’d seen before. At the time, its creꦛators felt untouchable.
The franchise will continue with the release of The Witcher 4 in the coming years, although what story this new entry intends to tell and whether it will be attached to characters we already know and love remains to be seen. If it does, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:they should kill off Geralt, or at l൲east seek to leave the original trilogy behind in fear of retracing its steps and stifling its own creativity. Wild Hunt was so brilliant and so groundbreaking for so many people that I imagine we are hoping for more of the same, or a return to form after the underwhelming reception to Cyberpunk 2077. It’s hard to describe how much of an impact this game had.
It’s safe to assume that Wild Hunt was the majority of player’s first game in the series. You didn’t need to possess a huge amount of prior knowledge to fall in love with its characters, with the narrative of Geralt seeking to reunite with Ciri being a cause that basically anyone could empathise with. CDPR did a great job of filling in the gaps too, aware that with such an ambitious open world adventure backed by the combined marketing mach♊ines of Sony and Microsoft that it would soon be breaching the mainstream in a way the series could have never dreamed of before. It went on to sell tens of millions of copies, with a next-gen upgrade on the horizon that will undoubtedly see that number grow even higher.
In the past I loved to dunk on The Witcher 3 for being a lukewarm jaunt because of its so-so combat and rubbish movement controls, but it still remains one of the most immersive RPGs I’ve ever played, and one that ever since hasn’t been beaten. We’ve seen the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, Greedfall, Elden Ring and even Breath of the 🐻Wild build upon the new ideas it brought to the table, with its influence being clear to see from every direction.
On the flipside, Wild Hunt felt like the culmination of an entire generation’s approach to the genre, taking the achievements of BioWare and Obsidian and proudly pushing their respective formulas forward. Quest lines were deep and uncompromising, providing myriad ways to approach each situation alongside morally grey dialogue and character arcs that always left us feeling conflicted. Stories are often best when they’re deliberately messy, with players reachin🌜g their own conclusions once all cards are on the table.
The🌞 Witcher 3 also felt like the first of its kind in an age of single player games being continually updated and supported outside traditional expansions. Its launch was buggy, with all platforms ripe with performance issues and glitches that would be ironed out over the coming months. It was no Cyberpunk, but the game was in a much better state once CDPR was able to put a further six months of work into patching things up. Bigger updates involved overhauling the entire user interface, updating movement controls, and making the act of combat punchier and more responsive. Combine this with oodles of free downloadable content, and it’s easy to see why the studio built up such a wholesome reputation.
There’s a reason why The Witcher 3 stans feel similar to those who adore Mass Effect or Dragon Age, often replaying the games over and over again with new characters and relationships to pursue, or a newfound fascination for certain storylines that befor🔴e were simply passed over in pursuit of something else. Except Geralt of Rivia’s swansong was more focused, more willing to stick by its guns and provide a definitive narrative for its protagonist that we could certainly influence, but never mould to fit our own preferences.
Seven years later and few games have come close to everything it managed to achieve, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still holding it to the same sta𓆉ndard once another seven years have passed. The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece, and I can’𒁃t believe it came out so long ago.
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