I've always loved the idea of a witcher. A lone wanderer drifting from place to place, getting into adventures, slaying monsters, and briefly finding themselves tangled up in other people's problems—for a price, of course. These rootless mercenaries shun a comfortable life to walk The Path, and there's something incredibly compelling about that. Whether it's roaming rōnin Yojimbo, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, or, more recently, The Mandalorian's Din Djarin, I've always been a fan of this character archetype.
It's also my favourite way to play The Witcher 3. Yeah, the story is great, but I'm never happier in the Northern Kingdoms than when I'm just riding around on Roach doing nothing in particular. When I replay CDPR's masterpiece, I always select the option to immediately start the Blood and Wine expansion. This starts you out with a levelled up Geralt, somewhere in Velen, with all the story quests completed. But, and here's the best bit, every side quest is left untouched. Now it's the wandering samurai game I always wished existed.
A big part of what makes The Witcher 3 such an exceptional game is the quality of its side quests. In a lot of open world RPGs—even really good ones—the side content is cheap filler designed to artificially extend the game's lifespan. But in this game, every single one of them is meaningful in some way. Each quest, no matter how small, says something interesting about the world and the people who live in it. They're also wonderfully surprising and unpredictable, with seemingly simple tasks mutating into multi-hour epics.
That's why The Witcher 4, or whatever it ends up being called, should be all side quests. While the grander narrative in Wild Hunt is full of memorable moments, captivating character drama, and has colossal stakes, I don't find myself reminiscing about it that often. It's the short, self-contained stories that really stick in my mind—whether it's Geralt hunting a serial killer in Carnal Sins, battling a djinn with Yennefer in The Last Wish, or escaping a trap-filled maze conjured up by a cheese wizard in Of Dairy and Darkness.
I want a Witcher game that is just a world filled with stories. A game that encourages you to wander off the beaten path and look for adventure, rather than being led down a critical path and having it handed to you. In The Witcher 3, Geralt always has a larger goal in mind. But imagine a game where you create your own witcher, a blank slate, and forge your own path through Andrzej Sapkowski's dark fantasy world. Create your own goals, pursue your own destiny, be your own person. A true witcher simulator.
An RPG without a story might be a hard sell. I can't think of a single one, in fact, that isn't underpinned by some kind of overarching narrative. But I think people are ready for it. Look at the popularity of Elden Ring, where players are content to head out into the unknown and discover stories for themselves. However, even that game has a main quest of sorts. It would be immensely brave of an RPG developer to do away with this tradition entirely and hand the reins entirely to us. Here's a world; now decide who you want to be in it.
This is what makes games like Elite Dangerous so spellbinding. When you start Frontier's space sim, you're a nameless pilot with no past, a basic ship, and 1000 credits in your bank account. What you do from here, in this vast simulated galaxy, is up to you. The freedom is exhilarating, and if a Witcher game adopted a similar approach it would be something very special indeed. We've had our fun with dear old Geralt, and he got a perfect ending in Blood and Wine. Now it's time to spend time in the world of The Witcher as ourselves.
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