The Witcher 3 Conundrum

Lucas Versantvoort / 15 Oct 2015

Having played The Witcher 3 for dozens of hours, I find myself at a loss at what to think about it. On the one hand, it's an epic game that's jam-packed with content, quests, voice acting and so on. Even if you dislike the game, you can't deny that a lot of effort went into it. On the other hand, the game exhibits the same flaws as many big RPG's. The game's size helps mask this however.

After playing and greatly enjoying The Witcher 2, I quietly joined the ranks of those anxiously awaiting its sequel. Slowly but surely, information started surfacing, some of which revealed the game would feature a huge open world. I salivated at the thought: it'll be everything The Witcher 2 was, only bigger. Yet, bigger (as many a James Cameron film has pointed out) is not always better. I'd seen this take place before: games trying to balance story and open world game design and failing miserably. 

Dragon Age: Inquisition attempted the same thing. After the Dragon Age 2 debacle, BioWare announced the third entry would be massive and feature an open world. Again, I relished the thought, because at least it meant the game would be several times the size of the tiny Dragon Age 2. At least they were putting in the effort. The end result, however, alternated between inspired and boring/aimless precisely due to BioWare's aim of combining their knack for storytelling with their newfound fondness for open worlds. What we ended up with was a game that had to grind its storytelling to a halt purely because of its open world game design. This resulted in hours and hours of searching for ingredients and doing other meaningless busywork that didn't have any real impact. Sure, you were rewarded with war funds or you got some message that your forces were bolstered, but it didn't feel real. On the one hand you had the main story missions and on the other all the side quests that BioWare desperately tried to link back to the main storyline by giving you some wordy explanation that your gathering of some plants helped bolster your forces...somehow. But that's all words. It all felt detached from the main storyline and the feeling of building a sizeable army.

What's worse is that all these side quests and exploration actively detracted from the key BioWare elements: story and characters. I remember completing side quests in one large environment for several hours and afterwards I realized that my companions, who could sometimes be chatty, had been utterly silent the whole time. Not only was I wasting time with meaningless side quests bereft of any story, my followers didn't have anything to say. They were speechless, and so was I.

Also, the open game design didn't work in terms of tension, story-wise. The story revolves around a race against time to stop a mad demon, but the amount of player freedom detracts from the tension this is supposed to generate. Sure, the game tells you time is of the essence, but deep in your heart, you know that you could spend the next dozen hours collecting herbs and nothing would be different. This is the key problem when combining story with open game design: the freedom of open world game design contradicts the forward momentum of a narrative.

Now, after that short detour, let's get back to The Witcher 3. Several years in development, it was released to great acclaim by pretty much every gaming website and understandably so. It's a game that can easily suck you in. GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd was right when he emphasized the fact that many side quests had meaningful content. They weren't merely boring fetch quests, but possibly contained some intriguing stories. Here, CD Projekt Red definitely went the extra mile. By populating their world with actual stories worth discovering, they prevented their game from becoming a large empty sandbox. 

However, the game suffers from the same problem Inquisition did: the main storyline doesn't mesh well with the open world. The main storyline revolves around Geralt going on a cross-country trek to find his lost lover, Yennefer, and their surrogate daughter, Ciri, whom the strange beings known as the Wild Hunt have taken a great interest in. The story is structured as a chase, a race against time (like Inquisition): find Ciri before the Wild Hunt does. This takes up the lion's share of the story and, unsurprisingly, it structurally conflicts with the open world design: I know I should find Ciri asap, but let me just quickly solve this murder mystery. Even if such a side quest turned out to be the most involving murder mystery you've ever experienced, it still wouldn't make sense in the bigger scheme of things. 

This issue doesn't just plague The Witcher 3, but many if not all RPG's. In between story missions, you're always left to your own devices, free to explore the world around you, while the storyline and all its characters quietly wait for you to continue the story. It doesn't make sense, but you learn to live with it. The Witcher 3 is the latest enormous RPG that doesn't

As for a solution, that's a tough one, because it would seem to imply that the only way to make a story fit in an open world...is to do away with the open world. A dramatic storyline will always carry some forward momentum that would require the next mission to quickly follow up on the previous one. Say a GTA mission ends with you being called up and told to get your ass to location Y pronto, story-wise it wouldn't make sense to wait. Your character would immediately go to location Y, not do some side missions and when asked what took him so long, say 'I got bored and wanted do some side quests.' (GTA is not strictly speaking an RPG, but you get the idea.) Yet, many games allow you to go on your merry way in between missions even if those missions suggest they should be finished asap, because someone's life depends on it or something. 

The only solution I can think of is to diminish the opportunities for exploration. Analyze your story and only allow the player to explore when it makes sense story-wise. This definitely isn't a catch-all solution as it depends on the story you're trying to tell. It would be impossible to apply to The Witcher 3 as your main objective is pretty much always to chase after Ciri. Story-wise, that means there's little to no wiggle room to insert some exploration time. As I said, it depends on the story.