I remember so many failed sequels to great computer games. I remember Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Mass Effect 3.... such failures from the perspective of stories and ambitious projects. So when I started Witcher 3 and realized its ambition, I amost expected the eventual place in the game where things start to fall apart. That never happened. Everything about this game is well beyond any of its peers. The game feels open, yet there is a driving, emotional pull of the storyline. The story is huge. I kept expecting to be at the end, only to be led into the next chapter that was even bigger. The side quests are often big stories themselves, and often have a way of connecting to something else. You could wander the countryside for a week just exploring, too, if that is your thing. I think that after 2 play throughs I haven't seen half of what there is to find. The acting is awesome, and the animations are tremendously good at conveying emotion. Triss and Yen are both a very big deal that is very well done. The only thing that isn't perfect was that so many of the non-important characters share faces, not that it affects the story at all. My first play through was played on an older computer on low graphics and I loved the game. My second was on a new computer with a modern graphics card on ultra settings.... absolutely beautiful, and I loved the game. The second time I experienced many game crashes until I installed an Nvidia driver hot patch for chrome and alt-tab errors and patch 1.07. After that the game never crashed on me. I don't know how any game could follow this one. It is the most impressive and fun RPG that I've ever played.
