There’s some cracking design choices in the Witcher. The casting of the player as a professional monster-hunter-for-hire makes all the usual quest tropes seem so much less contrived – plus the ability to haggle over the price of a job š
In addition, it limits the player’s character development choices to a very specific set of skills – still plenty of options, but this is fundamentally and unashamedly a game about melee combat. The freedom of Skyrim allows the player to play how they want, but often that creates a very unbalanced experience (I played Skyrim as a full-on Mage, spells only, no armour. It involved a lot of running backwards shooting fireballs). The Witcher gives the player plenty of choices within a very specific field instead.
Finally, the depth of story in every side quest is brilliant – for example the haunted well in White Orchard, which sounds like a simple “go here, kill monster” but unfurls into an elaborate backstory that links with several NPC backgrounds and other side quests. That sense of consistency and rich detail makes for powerful worldbuilding.
The menu text is far too damn small on a console though š
Winterblood 