CD Projekt Red and Warner Bros. Games have finally released the PlayStation 5 upgrade for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition. The promises of upgraded graphics, solid ray tracing, and stability were true for the most part. Well, at least two-thirds of that sentence. While it hasn’t gone all Cyberpunk version 1.0 on us, the always epic Witcher series still has some echoing problems of a too-early-to-release upgrade. The good news is that if you own the game on the PlayStation 4, then the upgrade is free, and you can turn things off with a solid ‘no thanks’. If you’re a newcomer to the series and starting out with what is expected to be a perfect upgrade, well, you might be a little put-off.
On that ominous note, let’s get this going.
Story-driven game
The story driving The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is nothing short of theatrical and epic. You once again take control of Geralt (Witcher) and pair up with ex-lover Yennefer (and other ex-lovers, future lovers, etc.) in search of Yennefer’s adopted daughter Ciri. Ciri has grown up after being born a Source (powerful magic type) and trained as a Witcher. She is being hunted by a group called the Wild Hunt who want to capture her and use obtain her abilities for their own needs. Of course, there is far more to the story, but that is the gist of it.
The beauty of this game comes in several layers. First, the story is well-written and well-acted. I think the latter of the two was the first thing I noticed when I started to really dig into the meat and potatoes. Everyone was even in their delivery and everyone bought into their character. It probably was a combination of great writing, fantastic direction, and great actors that wanted to make more than a game. Lots of thoughts and feelings were delivered and sold in the story and the actors’ performances.
The second layer of this story is the branching narrative. The structure for the branching narrative is nearly at the same level as Knights of the Old Republic. I don’t say that lightly. If you are unfamiliar with the term branching narrative, it means that your in-game dialogue choices dictate how the story is progressed and how it ultimately ends. In my opinion, KOTOR’s structure, effort, and thought set a nearly unmatchable standard in how a branching narrative shifts and changes with player choice. That story flowchart for KOTOR must have been incredibly complicated. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition is close to that standard, where making specific choices shifts story outcomes that can ripple throughout the game. I love games like this, but I especially adore games that put care and effort into making a true branching narrative that motivates you to replay the game to view the story’s various outcomes. And, spoiler alert, there are multiple endings in this one and the branching is solid.
Lastly, the game takes great care in deepening its creative cultures, providing very real and personified problems in a big world, and making the stakes high. This reminded me of Dragon Age where races were oppressed, and a looming darkness was slowly engulfing the world. There are very few games over the course of the video game industry’s timeline that can achieve such depth and greatness. The Witcher series manages to make this world of 1272 as engaging to the player as possible through its superb storytelling and gripping in its cultures and character development. Most Hollywood movies can’t achieve this level of complexity.
Overall, what you get from the story and how engaged you become with the fantastic world-building that happens in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition makes this a special game to play.
Beautiful Backend Mayhem and gameplay design
This action-adventure game is everything you thought it would be with its action and adventure. The main crux of gameplay when you’re around enemies, and not choosing dialogue, is slicing and dicing. You choose the weapon, you activate a sign (magical protection or additional offense), and you decide how to approach the situation. The game does the usual in the action arena with the main gameplay mechanics being parry, dodge, attack, and runaway (it doesn’t do this well, but you should fight, coward). Sometimes the sword-swinging or crossbow-ing can be a bit janky in its execution, maybe that’s the gamer, but for the most part, it’s exciting and involved. You want it to be both of those things. Of course, underneath it all, there is far more to the process than that quick paragraph of explanation.
What helps to complicate and drive the story, as well as the action, in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is how the gameplay design, especially the precise and pristine backend, fits neatly with everything. In a standard RPG, you typically find a skills tree, maybe some crafting, and certainly leveling as you push forward. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt pushes that concept a bit further, even more so than KOTOR. If slicing and dicing enemies weren’t enough to suit your fancy, the developers wanted to make sure you had some mathematical and structured logic to sift through when making decisions about upgrading and adjusting your character.
The weapons and armor system in this game is a combination of old familiar with new hotness. You can quickly acquire weapons and armor as you sift through the land taking out enemies and exploring for treasure. The game is like Skyrim in that respect, where you can pretty much happen upon powerful equipment that will make your adventuring a helluva lot easier. The exploration part of this is a huge reason why The Witcher, especially the third one, is a big deal. Finding good items means that you explore more open land, and there is so much openness to this land. You will be silently encouraged to go seek new items to use.
Once a weapon/armor is acquired, you gradually wear it down over time. While it is not quite the irritating level of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you will from time to time have to repair both categories in order to survive. The game gladly gives you a percentage of durability as you fight baddies, and you can take your items to a blacksmith for repair. Honestly, this portion of the game doesn’t nearly get in the way as much as I thought it might. By the time you must worry about repair, you have probably found something to replace a weapon or armor. That added complication to the gameplay helps to keep you on your toes and choosy when it comes to killing baddies.
You’re probably like, “Seriously? Is that all the complication?” and the answer back would be hell no.
The crafting part of the game will make you activate your inner Elder Scrolls OCD. As I have stated in the past, I’m not a huge fan of crafting, as it always seems like more effort than the payoff, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition has done gameplay elements properly and in ways that set new standards. You can collect plants, and items from buildings, steal loot from houses and find items that you may not even have a use for in the game. These items serve a couple of purposes. You can sell them and start collecting money for all the loot you acquire or you can dismantle the loot and use their elements to create weapons, armor, potions, or other useful household items. There is a huge backend list of elements that when combined with other elements create actual useful items (swords, armor, etc.). The mere idea that you can use elements to create other elements that can combine into something useful will motivate the gamer to keep collecting, crafting, and exploring. As a developer, you want this much time spent with your game that will guarantee the experience lasts beyond the campaign. The game is deep in its crafting and it’s quite impressive with how far the developers take it.
On the skills tree side of the tracks, you acquire points as you level up and as you defeat huge enemies. These points can translate to upgraded traits that help to complement Geralt on his journey. Those traits could be a bigger attack percentage, a brief upgrade in vitality, or other buffs along those lines. You have multiple categories to choose from (signs, offensive, etc.) and all of them serve a different, useful purpose when trying to decide what is the best way to build out Geralt. The skills tree is useful and there are limited slots for these traits to be added, so you truly have to logically figure out what goes where and why. Don’t worry, you can adjust those slots at any time during the game. The big plus with this part of the gameplay is that it works in tandem with crafting, weapons, armor, and action. It’s a wonderful dance between all of these categories.
All the above make for a complicated and fun gameplay design when you get rolling in the story. You have a lot of backend juggling but it’s worth learning it all and digging deep into decision-making.
Gorgeous, glitchy, and don’t click on that mode
The upgrade for the PlayStation 5 is broken into two play styles – Performance and Ray Tracing. The performance mode gives you a high frame rate, environment details, outrageously gorgeous lighting, and pretty-okay cutscenes that don’t quite match the rest of the performance but are better than the original release. This mode makes the game look better than the original console version, by leaps and bounds. The performance mode is much better than expected for a console release, even as something as powerful as the PS5. The performance mode makes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition one of the better releases for the PlayStation 5.
And now onto the other story – the Ray Tracing mode.
The Ray Tracing mode should never be turned on. When this mode is turned on, the frame rate drops below 30 frames per second, and the mode can create actual artifacts surrounding Geralt’s character model during scenes with intense graphical demands (such as a rainstorm at night with the wind blowing the grass, abundant enemies in sight, and a large draw distance). If Geralt goes too fast in this moment, then you’re going to see black fuzz appear around him. Honestly speaking, the dropped frame rate makes this mode completely unplayable. Believe me, I tried. I’m not even a 30-frame rate hater. Anyway, this mode was disappointing. This should have been delayed so this mode could be fixed. While this won’t screw over the folks who own the game in their library from the PS4 because the upgrade is free, the expectations of a true and complete next-generation experience for newcomers will not be met because this mode does a poor job of handling itself on the PS5.
As for other glitches, the game does have its hiccups. There was a moment on a quest with dumplings in its name where my save point kept repeating an endless stuck loop during loading. The loading was activated by a branching dialogue session, where I pay 200 coins to get into a warehouse or I come back with the money after finding it. If I leave the conversation to go find the money, the game will forever load until I restart it. I had to actually go back and find 200 coins during a previous save to avoid this. There are some similar moments like this in other parts of the game. There are actual glitches as well, lots of graphical break-ups here and there, but nothing that can’t be overcome. Do save and save often just in case the game does decide to stop working.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Judging The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition on its entertainment value is easy – it’s perfect. It has an unbelievable story, compelling characters, solid gameplay, and a properly thought-through backend that shows the developers are all-in on delivering an unforgettable experience. On the next-generation upgrade side of this release, it’s just not complete. While the performance mode takes the experience up a notch with visuals and frame rate, the Ray Tracing mode is unplayable and incomplete. It hurts the experience more than it helps it.
