Honestly.. there's a lot I could say about this game as far as harsh criticisms go with regards to the development. Specifically the abysmal decision to put someone who thinks first-person shooters are the end-all, be-all of gaming in charge of a narratively-driven roleplaying games based on a tabletop RPG system that is characterized by character freedom over just about anything else. Or that after marketing the game as a mix of third-person and first-person, and having early development footage in third person, only to try and gaslight people with "it was never going to be third-person" after trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator with the shooter crowd.. ..which honestly is pretty much what ultimately nets this game a low score for me. I would be inclined to rate it an 8.7 out of 10 if it were a third-person game, after they had cleaned up the hot mess that the initial release was. But given it was forced to be a first-person game and literally every argument for "it's immersive" could be countered upon actually playing the game with the realization that first-person did absolutely nothing that made it a necessity.. well, as someone who suffered vicious dryheaving and agonizing headaches suffering through the game, the best I can offer it is a 6.4 out of 10, with me being generous. I played through the game once, and literally never felt the desire to go back and play it again the way I did any of the Witcher games. That's right, I would rather play the very first Witcher game that everyone likes to dunk on over playing this game a second time. That's just how unpleasant the first person made the game for me, and how it made it not worth the suffering of going through it a second time. What's hilarious is that I actually took count of all the polls both on CDPR's own forums as well as other forums: third-person was always voted higher, either as exclusive or mixed, than first-person mode ever was. Which begs the question: just who was this game for?
