The Witcher 3: Wild HuntandThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Two RPG giants that are, arguably, the best of their respective generations and two of the greatest RPGs ever made. I wouldn’t really know how to choose between them if I had to. On the one hand, The Witcher 3 marked such a jump up in storytelling and characterisation that it almost makes the basic-ass potato-people of Skyrim and their troubles look laughable by comparison, but there’s also something beautiful in the anonymity of wandering around the harsh northern realm and carving out a character of your exact choosing. I love both games, even though I think Bethesda could learn more from CDPR at this point than the other way round.
But there’s a good reason why right at this moment, 13 years on from when Skyrim came out and eight years on from The Witcher 3, Skyrim-related search queries dwarf The Witcher 3’s by a ratio of about 16:1 (as perGoogle Trends). Now that’s not a reflection of the games’ respective sales, which are quite close at over 50m units for The Witcher 3 and over 60m units for Skyrim. And you’re able to bet it’s not people digging into the lore and things like that.
The Witcher 3: 10 Hardest Bosses, Ranked
The Witcher 3 is host to countless incredible boss fights. This list delves into the very best bosses present in the game.
Pseudo-Maths, Anyone?
I posit that the gigantic evergreen interest in Skyrim is probably the fact that it has the biggest mod community for any gameever.When you look at the numbers on Nexus Mods, Skyrim has 10 times more mods available than The Witcher 3, and 26 times more mod downloads. And,oh my God,what’s halfway between 10 and 26? 18, which is… almost 16?
Ok, ok. Getting a bit carried away with the number-wankery there, but point is that mods are a great way to keep a game alive, and in 2024 The Witcher 3 is going to become more moddable than ever before thanks to a mysterious new ‘Quest Editor’ tool that,according to CDPR:
“… will allow you to create your own experiences in the game by making something completely new or editing existing quests and content.”
I reached out to CDPR hoping they’d go into a little more detail, but they politely said they’d be keeping further info under wraps for now. Still, it does make the mind wander and wonder and ask whether this tool could be The Witcher 3’s ‘Skyrim’ moment, with the new freedoms and accessibility it offers inspiring the community to rise up and get creating on a scale never before seen in a CDPR game.
Not that the current Witcher 3 community certainly has been slacking. The Witcher 3 is still the 9th most popular game on Nexus Mods, and that’s despite it being notoriously fiddly for both creating and installing mods. The general consensus seems to be that it’s fairly easy to implement gameplay mods, while textures and environments are tougher, while on the installation side you need to jump through a few more hoops than you would with super-convenient Bethesda games.
Mod-Ernisation Process
Considering how a mod community has grown around the game despite the friction in its modding process, a toolset that will allow players to more easily create their own content for it should mark something of a golden age for Witcher 3 modding. The big question mark is around the scope of the tools. Will the tools allow modders to create not only their own quests, but new characters, stories, regions or even total overhauls (like, say Fallout: London for Fallout 4)? It’s an extremely tantalising thought, though perhaps it’s best not to raise our expectationstoohigh on that front for now. In addition, one would hope that this tool could eventually roll over intoCyberpunk 2077as well—a game that’s probably crying out for proper mod support even more than The Witcher 3.
In a year that’s almost certainly going to bea bit quieter than 2023 for big releases(though withplenty of expansions to make up for it), diving back into The Witcher 3 in super-expanded, mega-modded form could be the only big new RPG experience I need in 2024.
The Witcher 3: 10 Best Quests, Ranked
The Witcher 3 has a plethora of quests to complete, but which ones are the best?
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
WHERE TO PLAY
