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It's always been about how well The Witcher 3 occupies an open world that really mattered. That's the big differentiator, where the game will achieve greatness or become, simply, nice. We know from The Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt Red can serve up delicious chunks of game across several acts. But when the walls come down and everything, whoosh, spreads out - what happens then?In some games like Skyrim the open-world is entirely the point and the game wouldn't work without it, whereas other games feel enlarged for the sake of it, and bloated because of it. Sometimes an open world justifies the game, sometimes the game tries to justify an open world.
In The Witcher 3, the open-world makes sense. I play for four-and-a-half hours and I travel around a world that feels real to me. A village sprawls loosely down a river bank how I expect it might, were it real, with soldiers who've made camp around a ruined tower along the coast. There aren't endless buildings and quests but a careful selection, and all of this allows what's in front of you to breathe. Because I don't have to do so many things, I pay more attention to the things I do, and to the world around me. I look up from my journal, if you like.
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