Game Review - The Witcher: Wild Hunt - Part 2: Missions and Levelling

Missions

The Witcher: Wild Hunt is the most varied and engaging open-world game I have played. It is also the most expansive and open story-based game I have played. Skyrim and The Witcher 2 were release in the same year, offering vastly differing but incredible experiences. The Witcher: Wild Hunt is the perfect combination of both games, spiced with unrivaled detail, scope and ingenuity. The games breaks from the all too familiar mission trope of quest-giver -> fetch or kill -> gold. While there are still elements of that, missions are separated under three subheadings.

Main Quests

The most obvious and self-explanatory, these directly progress Geralt’s pursuit of Ciri and the Wild Hunt. Most of the major characters and places are introduced through these core missions.

Secondary Quests

This type of quest can be separated into two types - main side-quests and miscellaneous quests. The main side-quests are an ingenious way of allowing the player to get as much as they want from the experience. The characters you encounter upon your path do not simply exist to help Geralt complete his mission – each has their own journey or task. After many main missions, these characters will open up side-missions that sometimes can span hours and have major ramifications throuhgout the in-game world. These really allowed me to experience depth in the world, characters and story, without feeling that I was being sent on endless irrelevant quests to clog up the main thrust.

The Miscellaneous quests mostly began from random encounters upon the road. While the developers had obviously placed these missions for you to stumble upon, it really felt like things were happening in the world, rather than waiting patiently for you to find them.  Quite often these missions were little more than a cut scene or a battle with very little outcome, but they served to breathe life into the world.

Witcher Contracts

This was a feature sorely missing from the first two installments of the series and scratched the monster-slaying itch in all of us. As a Witcher, Geralt’s job is riding from town to town and slaying monsters for coin. These not only allowed you a quick injection of cash and experience, but also allowed you to test your skills against the nastiest beasts the game could throw at you. This was the part of the game where Geralt was in his element – haggling for ten extra gold pieces because 290 wasn’t quite enough, examining corpses and tracks with his mutated senses, then stalking and finally slaying the beast before taking its head as a trophy. These missions were not only incredibly fun, but actually allowed you to feel like a badass beast slayer.

Before I finish talking about game-modes and mission types, it would impossible to avoid at least a passing mention of Gwent. Replacing the boring and frustrating dice poker from previous installments, Gwent is a collectable card game with depth and detail befitting that of the rest of the game. A simple idea, where two players each have only ten cards and must win two out of three rounds, Gwent is made worthwhile by several factors. Firstly it is relevant in the game. Although some merchants sell cards, most must be won by beating the merchants, innkeepers, blacksmiths and characters who all have a deck. The rarest and strongest cards are won by beating the best players. In game, tactics and deck-strength in equal measure gain victory. Beyond that, there are four different factions, each with its own set of unique cards, and distinct strengths and weaknesses. You soon learn to pack an extra Frost card to deal with the hordes of close combat monster cards, or use decoy cards to waste opponent’s cards in a round you plan to lose. It is almost impossible to win without giving up a round, and doing so well can assure victory. Not since Blitzball in Final Fantasy X have I put so much time into a minigame.

Levelling Elements

The word ‘balance’ is the best way to describe the leveling in The Witcher: Wild Hunt. 

The skill tree interface may be confusing at first, but once the nuances are understood it becomes an invaluable tool for taking down the tough enemies.

There are many skills available to you, but only twelve slots in which to apply them, and these slots only open up as you reach certain levels. The skills are separated into combat, alchemy and signs (magic), and the stronger skills may only be unlocked if enough of the others in that tree have been learned. What gives this system its depth is the addition of mutagens. Mutagens have been present in all of the Witcher games to date, but were often underused. These upgrading elements are looted from the corpses of the most powerful monsters and come in three different colours; red, green and blue. These colours relate to the skill trees of combat, alchemy and signs and when applied correctly work to boost your attack power, sign power and vitality (HP). It is a slightly convoluted system where three skill slots are grouped with one mutagen spot, so you find yourself with clusters of combat skills with a red mutagen, and clusters of sign skills with blue. It encouraged me to learn a few alchemy skills despite not using it much, simply so I could add a few extra valuable points of vitality. In the end I found the system unintuitive but rewarding.

One of my bugbears in games is that as once I have reached a certain level and found incredibly powerful weapons, suddenly powerful monsters spawn to match me. This is the case in games such as Elder Scrolls. The Witcher: Wild Hunt takes a different tact – making missions leveled. They also leveled the sections of world you encounter, White Orchard being filled with low level creatures all the way to Skellige teeming with high level villains. This meant in the early hours that every battle was a challenge, and some were simply to be avoided. I remember being consistently destroyed by hordes of level four Drowners, and to my pleasure – at level thrity-five – I could go around slaughtering them with ease. As you become more powerful, the game rewards you with more gratuitous disemboweling and decapitation, while leveled missions offset Geralt’s growing strength. You will come across missions early in the game that require you to be at a level significantly above what you are. The story mission have set levels too, and this means that there will always be something to challenge you, while you are still rewarded for being really powerful as you travel around.

The final piece that I found created a great sense of balance in the game was the way experience points were distributed. Experience was not awarded for landing attacks, and barely for slaying enemies or discovering locations. Instead, the bulk of experience gained is through completing missions. The main story missions were the most generous, followed by a healthy reward for Witcher contracts, while some side-missions only gave you negligible rewards. This meant that you leveled with the story, and there was never a sense that grinding was the only path to becoming strong enough to continue. There was no need for, or sense of grinding at all, in fact. Similarly, you never become so overpowered that the story becomes a breeze. Sure, after I had gone around completing everything I could, I was a little overpowered by the end, but some of those final battles were still tough.

I also have a hunch that while the enemies had set levels, loot leveled with you. A frustration I have with many Fantasy RPGs is that too often you find an incredible magical weapon, but it is level three and weaker than your level thirteen steel long sword. Or you do a mission, where someone promises to craft you an amazing set of armour, but it’s nowhere near what you have. While I have no proof, I got the sense that the game would consistently reward you for finding new pieces of loot (particularly off larger enemies) by giving them stats slightly above the one you already owned. Whether it was scripted, part of the leveled mission structure or simply a result of chance, I was consistently improving my gear and equipping new and exciting pieces to my armoury. The depth of sword option and design in particular is breathtaking.

The structural elements of The Witcher: Wild Hunt were detailed without being too complex, and clever development choices created a balanced and streamline experience that allowed you to simply enjoy the story.

Read part 1 of the review, or continue to part 3 on gameplay…