Once again, emerging forth from my Hobbit-hole of inactivity, I feel compelled to talk about what experiences in video games have sparked my dormant soul to life recently. Well, this year, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt turns 10 years old and seeing as CD Projekt's other open world action RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, managed to grab me so firmly by the balls last year, it felt like an appropriate time for me to go back and play it.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
I should state, I had played The Witcher 3 before. I made it as far as the Skellige Isles before deciding to take a break and never coming back. My head-canon for that original Geralt is that he just never survived the shipwreck that landed him on Skellige and all hope for the future of the Northern Realms was just dumped on a beach with some driftwood.
However, my infidelity with my digital hobbies wasn't what I came to talk about. Rather, I wanted to talk about the way that The Witcher 3 handles money and how, almost uniquely, it manages to create some fascinating meta-narrative story moments.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
Picture this, you're in the opening hours of a new RPG and you open your quest log. You see that the main quest is automatically tagged for you. However, you also see a list of alternatives quests, treasure hunts and people in need that would reward you with extra money and XP. What do you do?
Well, if you're anything like me, your immediate instinct, so long as you feel comfortable leaving the main story on hold where it is, would be to knock off a few side quests in the hopes of getting additional money, experience and gear so that you feel more prepared for the main story. After all, side-questing is a fairly significant part of most RPGs and, while we can't all be completionistic lunatics, it's only natural to get stuck into a decent number over the course of your playtime.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
Now, humour me by imagining the same scenario again but, this time, towards the end of the main story. Things are heating up, you're well accustomed to the game's various systems and, perhaps more importantly, the enemies that you are fighting now drop higher level gear that can be sold for a far greater sum, making it fairly easy to stay on top of your fantasy expenditure. Do you still go side-questing?
To me, this is a much harder decision to make. As I've already said, I'm not much of a completionist but I do like to feel prepared for the main story when I tackle it. Then again, by the time I reach a later stage in the game and I have a dragons-horde of wealth to my name, be it figurative or literal, I very rarely feel as compelled to complete side-content because I struggle to see how it might tangibly benefit me. I already own a majority stake in the entire continent, what could this random unwashed surf possibly offer me?
The Witcher 3, as you might have guessed from this highly-telegraphed setup, is an exception to this rule, although I would also say that Cyberpunk achieves a similar effect if I think back to my time with that game as well. More precisely, I feel like The Witcher 3 does two important things that help solve this problem and that kept me side-questing all the way through into the late and post-game. Namely, they are the way it handles its writing and, perhaps more importantly, the way it handles money.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
It is not particularly difficult to get rich in The Witcher 3. The main quests offer plenty of monster and human enemies for you to cut a swathe through and whose gear you can sell to the various towns' merchants for a tidy profit. On the surface, it's a fairly standard RPG affair. However, the game tweaks one important detail that means you don't end up buried under a mountain of gold like in most RPGs, and it's that stuff is expensive as HELL.
(It's at this point that I wanted to include some kind of joke about inflation and Trump's tariffs but I can see the markets collapsing in real time on the corner of my taskbar as I write this, so it felt like poor taste.)
Weapons, armour, consumables, raw materials, you name it, all of it can set you back a handily-sized bag of gold if you try to purchase them directly from vendors. Interestingly though, even crafting is an expensive process. Geralt clearly didn't put enough skill points into repair in his early life and now he's dependent upon blacksmiths to craft the gear for him, all for a fee of course.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
The result is that, if you want to stay up-to-date with your latest gear and upgrades, you'll need plenty of coin. Selling enemy gear does help with that, but by the time you get into the late-game and DLCs, some of the more exotic upgrades get pricey quickly.
However, this is when The Witcher 3 gets interesting because it's when that stellar writing becomes relevant. Geralt is often depicted as something of a tired old misanthrope who will take on pretty much any investigative or monster-slaying job that will pay him, almost like the fantasy equivalent of an exhausted New York City rat-catcher. Much to his chagrin though, these jobs often involve some kind of a twist that invariably makes Geralt's life more difficult, something that he is never exactly delighted about.
 |
| (Image property of CD Projekt) |
Now, what works so well in The Witcher 3's design is that it marries this characterisation of Geralt with the attitudes of the player through its in-game economy. By making the player feel poor and in need of some coin to scrounge up, the game places them in the same position as Geralt. Both are in need of money and will take on whatever simple job will offer it before inevitably getting annoyed at how they spiral off into various political intrigues and moral quandaries.
Through the scrappy, expensive nature of its in-game economy, the player is forced into the same mindset as the protagonist, creating this sort of meta-narrative symbiosis that immerses you in the world alongside the protagonist.
For me, this is one of the most important reasons why The Witcher 3 is such a compelling and enduring experience. While it has its moments of high melodrama and bombastic action, it's the relatability and immersion that comes with playing as its main character that really drives the experience. It doesn't matter how trivial your current task is, the player always feels connected to the main character in a way that makes them feel immersed and compelled by the moments that they are playing through.
It's a fantastic example of how, in interactive storytelling, even the most trivial aspects of the world like in-game economics can be used to tell the story and compel the player to emotionally engage with the story's events.
But, what do you think? Do you still feel like The Witcher 3 holds up 10 years later? What was your favourite part of the experience? Leave me a comment or let me know via Bluesky. Have a nice day!
All images and property names belong to their respective rights holders and are utilised here for the purpose of criticism and review.