It's just so much fun to follow Geralt's journey, and that goes all the more if you have played the other games as extensively as I have. This is a story where you want to keep fighting your way through just to find out what's next, what's around that following corner, who are you going to meet down the road, what's Triss up to, where's Yennefer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am still working my way through Velen, dealing with the Bloody Baron, finding the witch, visiting Oxenfurt, and to be honest it's just as engaging as ever. The mainline quest itself is still incredibly impressive. It hasn't really been done since, except for perhaps by Rockstar with Red Dead Redemption 2, and it's equally as impressive now as it was when the game launched back in 2015. It amazing what CD Projekt Red managed to pull off with this game, honestly. Each character has a story, each plant has a purpose, each Gwent card is useful in some way or another. It honestly feels like everything you can do in this grand open world has been hand-crafted to create an incredible sense of immersion and presence. That White Orchard is just the game's starting area is unbelievable, to be honest, and some of those early-game side-quests really do stand out as a representation of what makes this game so darn good. With each passing hour that you play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, though, the true scale of this game become increasingly apparent. This will, perhaps, bolden my evaluation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt because, well, the game can really do no wrong in my mind. Whilst that bad-boy had graphics and gameplay that was absolutely god-awful, it brought some incredibly interesting ideas to the table and told one of the best stories in any video game that would be considered its contemporary. I still think that The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings is an under-rated classic that desperately deserves a new-gen remake, and am a staunch defender of the first Witcher game. Now, look, I do have to let you know a little something: I am a bit of a Witcher mega-fan, having read all of the books, watched the TV show (both seasons), movies, and played all of the games. The graphics are just as gorgeous as they were back in the day (though, of course, The Witcher 3 has been surpassed by many modern open-world games at this point), with a consistent frame rate, great performance across the board, and an aesthetic that has stood the test of time. Pleasantly, though, the game's polish shows almost immediately after the game has loaded. I originally played the game on PC, pumping out Ultra Graphics and establishing pretty darn good load-times, but on console? Nah, on console this game takes a very long time to dive into, I'm talking minutes. The first thing that I noticed booting up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on my PS4 Pro was that the loading times are just as ridiculous with the most recent updates as they were back in the day. Thus, I set the task upon myself to replay it and see for myself whether this game is still as much of a classic as it was more than half a decade ago. It seems absurd that The Witcher 3 came out all the way back in 2015, the same year as long-forgotten titles like Assassin's Creed: Syndicate and that amazing open world Mad Max game (seriously, how was that game so good, and where's the forking sequel?). After all, it has been seven years since CD Projekt Red's magnum opus first graced us with its presence, building upon what The Witcher and The Witcher 2 achieved with one of the most incredible open worlds of its time. With the recent announcement that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's next-gen remaster will be out late this year, I found myself asking whether or not the game still holds up to today's standards. Is it still good, though? Does it hold up? Yeah, yeah it is. Replaying The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2022… you can't help but notice its age.
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