Almost a decade after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released, I’m venturing through the fields and bogs of Velen for the first time. The biggest benefit of being so late to a game that it’s borderline irrelevant to discuss is that almost all of the technical bugs are squashed and the quality of life updates well-worn into the game.
So why did it take me almost a decade to take a swing at one of the previous generation’s greatest hits? Well, it’s a bit of a story, but it’s one I think everyone can learn from.
I was given a free copy of The Witcher 3 when I upgraded my video card (I was upgrading to a GTX 970, I believe) back when the game first came out. The downside to that deal was that my friends and I were wrapping up college, so the bits of free time we had were spent playing games together. Smite, Battlefield 3 and Borderlands 2 were the games of choice back then. There simply wasn’t room in my evenings for a single-player game on the scale that I knew The Witcher 3 was.
I dabbled in the game, out of curiosity, but I never made it very far. The furthest I ever reached, until very recently, was the first confrontation at the inn, in White Orchard. That’s about ten minutes outside of the game’s tutorial.
Now, nine years later and a full three seasons of easy-to-digest Witcher content pumped out by Netflix, I found the time to set aside for Geralt’s third video game outing. I’m happy to say that the grim world of The Witcher 3 has become part of my weekend routine, and I’m all in this time around.
Saturday mornings I’ll wake up, get a pot of coffee going and travel around villages slaying monsters and pretending to be not as invested into the local politics as I actually am. You’ve heard of the “weekend warrior” stereotype, well I’m a weekend Witcher. And I look forward to it all week.
After a chaotic week of meetings, work-tasks, errands and chores, it’s nice to lock in an hour or two with Geralt.
Old games are great for this. The (almost always) overblown hype surrounding new games has long evaporated for The Witcher 3, and with that hype went all the negativity that often swirls around the hype in the form of outrage, whether warranted or not.
No drama, no overblown costs (the version I’m playing I picked up The Witcher 3 on PS5 for less than $10), no urgency to finish the game to join in on the discussions or the anxiety of avoiding spoilers. It’s just me, some coffee and more potion ingredients than I know what to do with.
Seriously, what am I supposed to do with all these ingredients.
