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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the game that Poland's iconoclastic CD Projekt Red has been threatening to make for a while now, ever since it debuted this dark fantasy series, based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, in 2007. Made by a rogue operator with independent funding (the studio's parent company owns the distribution platform GOG.com), it pays little heed to the franchise-building fads of Hollywood or the focus-tested game design methodologies of Montreal, instead drinking deep draughts from Central European folklore and the narrative traditions of Western role-playing. It exists because a group of people in Warsaw knew exactly the kind of game they wanted to play, and made it themselves because no-one else would. It is that rare thing in contemporary video games: an epic with a soul.As in the previous games, you play Geralt of Rivia, a witcher: a freelance monster hunter with mutant blood who uses swordsmanship, alchemy, a little light magic and some finely-honed tracking skills to get his prey. He's also something of a sleuth, and a mercenary, and a drifter, and a ladies' man. He wanders into town on horseback with his own agenda and gets reluctantly sucked into local affairs, thwarting evil for a sack of gold, picking at society's scabs and then moving on, leaving a trail of swooning wenches in his wake. He has scars and white hair and speaks in a monotonous macho rasp. He's a little bit Philip Marlowe, a little bit Conan the Barbarian, a little bit Solid Snake, a little bit Clint Eastwood's nameless cowboy. In short, he's the archetypal pulp hero - no more than a gruff cartoon, but a pretty appealing one.
The prospect of filling this vengeful outcast's kinky boots is so alluring that it doesn't matter too much if you're not up to speed with the Witcher series. Wild Hunt doesn't waste time explaining its busy cast list or elaborate ongoing plotline, in which the political and military machinations of kings and sorcerers inevitably get mixed up with Geralt's complicated love life. There are many cameos and narrative threads that will please fans as much as they confuse newcomers, but the big picture is always clear and easy to follow. Geralt is searching for his ward and (sort of) fellow Witcher, a whip of a young swordswoman called Ciri, who is also being pursued by a chilling band of spectral knights called the Wild Hunt. He spends much of the game trading his services for information pertaining to her whereabouts.
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