The New Witcher Game Should Be All Side Quests

thegamer.com:

I've always loved the idea of a witcher. A lone wanderer drifting from place to place, getting into adventures, slaying monsters, and briefly finding themselves tangled up in other people's problems—for a price, of course. These rootless mercenaries shun a comfortable life to walk The Path, and there's something incredibly compelling about that. Whether it's roaming rōnin Yojimbo, Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, or, more recently, The Mandalorian's Din Djarin, I've always been a fan of this character archetype.

It's also my favourite way to play The Witcher 3. Yeah, the story is great, but I'm never happier in the Northern Kingdoms than when I'm just riding around on Roach doing nothing in particular. When I replay CDPR's masterpiece, I always select the option to immediately start the Blood and Wine expansion. This starts you out with a levelled up Geralt, somewhere in Velen, with all the story quests completed. But, and here's the best bit, every side quest is left untouched. Now it's the wandering samurai game I always wished existed.

Related: Why Are We All Still Playing Skyrim Ten Years Later?

A big part of what makes The Witcher 3 such an exceptional game is the quality of its side quests. In a lot of open world RPGs—even really good ones—the side content is cheap filler designed to artificially extend the game's lifespan. But in this game, every single one of them is meaningful in some way. Each quest, no matter how small, says something interesting about the world and the people who live in it. They're also wonderfully surprising and unpredictable, with seemingly simple tasks mutating into multi-hour epics.

That's why The Witcher 4, or whatever it ends up being called, should be all side quests. While the