Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - The Witcher 3

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

From gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh, we're bringing you even more gaming content each week. Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take

episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode. Shazam! Boom!

Hey, squad mates. This is Paul here with another Quick Take episode for you guys. Now, you might be a little bit curious to see why this quick take is coming from Paul when it's labeled The Witcher 3, because anybody who listens to the podcast knows that The Witcher 3 is Josh's all-time favorite game. I have not been able to get him to shut up about it here over the last few years, and I had dabbled in The Witcher 3 a couple of times, but was never able to really get past the introduction quests and really get sucked in. But I decided to give it another college try and ended up being fully sucked into The Witcher 3. Totally cracked out on it here over the last

couple of weeks. And I don't think Josh has done a Quick Takes on The Witcher 3, but either way, even if this is the second one, that's cool. I just wanted to talk about it a little bit here. I have a feeling that we'll probably talk about it a little bit on a This Week in Gaming episode, but in any case, I did want to spread the word out there that in case you are like me and you just have not played The Witcher 3 yet, it is well worth the time and the money. The game is very cheap nowadays. You don't have to pay like a full $60. I think I bought mine on Steam sale and it was only a few bucks. But The Witcher 3, if you don't know a whole lot about it, I won't go into too many details because I know most of you are at

least somewhat aware. But the closest game analogy I can come up with is Dragon Age. It's definitely very similar. It's an open world RPG. The combat is much more melee focused. You are primarily using swords. Technically you do have a crossbow and some grenades, but those play a minor role with the combat. But what really makes The Witcher shine is the quest lines. And so what I would say is that I think Dragon Age does a better job with overall storytelling, but I think that The Witcher 3 has more memorable individual quests, if that makes sense. It's almost like maybe I would consider Dragon Age to be the better TV show, but The Witcher has just scenes that really stick with you. And maybe some individual scenes are better than anything you would see from Dragon Age, even though maybe I prefer the overall story with Dragon Age. But The Witcher, it's a very,

very dark and depressing world, which is normally not really my jam. I would say this is a very similar world to Game of Thrones. I can't help but think that they drew a lot of inspiration from the Game of Thrones books when The Witcher came out. There are even bald, overweight eunuchs that provide counsel to important people. There are struggles over having kings assassinated, and who's going to ascend to different thrones, and what nations are going to come in and invade. And as you play as Geralt of Rivia, you're basically just a humble witcher. Witchers go around and hunt monsters for coin. And so when the game starts out, I had not played The Witcher 1 or The Witcher 2. I did technically buy The

Witcher 1 and I played for like 40 minutes and had given up on it. And the one regret I have is not going back and watching some recap videos of the first two games. In the third, they do end up referencing a lot of characters and you meet a lot of people that clearly I'm supposed to know. But I didn't have that kind of context. So I would say watch some recap videos, jump on into it. There are crazy moments in this game that will absolutely stick with you. I know that Josh has talked about some quests on the show. He's talked about some memorable monsters like the Botchling. And I think that The Witcher 3 does such a good job with world building and just establishing so much lore. There are monsters that you hunt down and fight in this game that have fully drawn out backstories.

How did this monster come to be? What are they weak to? What's the best time to fight them? What can we expect from this upcoming battle? And they do such a great job with all of that, that it just all seems fully realized. This is a very complete world. It doesn't feel like anything was rushed or anything was left to the side. Maybe it really helps that it does draw from a series of books, but I have not highly recommend checking it out. The only caveat is that it is a very mature game. This game does have basically any kind of content you can think about, whether it be profanity, violence, sexual content, even drug use and things of that nature are in The Witcher. It's a very real world. It's a very dark world. You are kind of trying to find your way through it. There is even a little bit of humor in the game that I didn't really fully expect.

There are characters who have names like Hemmelfart and Doodoo, and they even make jokes about these things inside the game, which is a little bit of a nice reprieve from such a dark game where there are so many people torn apart by war or who have dead loved ones or who are being extorted by others in power. So really fun. You get to make a ton of choices. As soon as I beat The Witcher 3, I had to go straight to YouTube and watch other alternate endings. Very fun game. You can easily get 100 hours out of it, if not more. I did all of the major side quests, but there were several that I did not do.

And I certainly did not do all of the Witcher contracts, simply because I have limited time, because we have to cover other games on the podcast. So I focused mostly on the main storyline, and then I tried to do every side quest related to major characters. So anyway, check out The Witcher 3. It's Josh's all-time favorite. I would probably put it in my top five, but it's probably going to fall outside of my top three, so I'd probably have it somewhere number four or number five. And if you're a fan of The Witcher, come let us know. Are there any favorite characters,

quests, anything like that? We'd love to hear from you guys, whether it be on discord or on social media. All right. Well, that's it. So hope you guys are all having a great week and we'll be back with our next

full episode here pretty soon. We'll see you guys then.