Witcher 3 is a beloved game, widely considered a masterpiece. But players who love it should be the first to point out its glaring issues. Some of these issues hold the game back from being a clean and complete Witcher experience. As a sequel Witcher 4 has the resounding potential to address Witcher 3’s old flaws to be the best Witcher fantasy it can be. Listed here are changes I hope to see, such as more gameplay depth, that will quickly improve the old formula.
1: Witcher 4 Roach
To start with the obvious, Roach is a nuisance of Witcher 3 that even the developers have made fun of in their other games. For those unaware, Roach is the name of Geralt’s horse, the summonable mount in Witcher 3 who was essential for travel. The mount leaves a lot to be desired. It constantly spawns in awkward places, veers towards awkward paths, and glitches out on slopes. Its handling is so stiff that maneuvering around any obstacle is haphazard and tedious.
Roach works, and she isn’t slow, but her handling and behavior can be unsatisfying and grating. Unnecessary delays and jank can feel insulting to players who otherwise love to explore the open world. It’s a problem the developers acknowledge and shouldn’t be hard to resolve. Witcher 4 is sure to include another horse mount, so let’s hope for smoother handling and polished horse behavior. The sequel’s entire quality of life will improve as a result.
2: Greater Monster Variety
Witcher 3’s enemy variety is not bad. There are different classifications of monsters, and different threats require different combat strategies. But Witcher 3’s monster variety is also shallow. One monster species will be essentially a reskin of another. Rotfiends and Drowners, Water Hags and Grave Hags, Ekimmaras and Katakans, Wyverns and Forktails, each of these pairs are the same to fight except for one or two minor differences. This reskinning stops new monsters from being intimidating or refreshing to fight, once you’ve faced all the archetypes.
This issue severely limits Witcher 3’s bosses. Few of the game’s bosses are entirely unique to fight. The most obvious example is Hubert Rejk, who should have a unique form as a ‘Higher Vampire’ but just turns into a Katakan. Except for sentient monsters, monsters you are contracted to kill always come from a typical species with negligible upgrades to beef them up. Witcher 3 instead relies on its storytelling to craft memorable encounters.
This isn’t a massive problem. There’s enough variety to keep you thinking, the reskins all look great, and there are some bespoke bosses, especially in the DLC. But there’s so much potential for fantastic encounters and enemy design here that Witcher 4 can build on. This is a setting containing dragons, demons, and any kind of cursed creature you can imagine. There are even many monsters mentioned by name that didn’t make the cut. Hopefully, Witcher 4 will expand the bestiary, redesign generic monsters, and introduce more legendary ones. If the monster from the trailer is any indication, there will be more scope for peculiar, creepy, and one-of-a-kind bosses.
3: New Environments
Just like monsters, there are many lands and kingdoms of the Witcher saga that aren’t central to the story. Rich Kovir, exotic Ofir, and the deserts of Zerrikania are all mentioned in Witcher 3 but are never seen. Such lands are described in lore as political and interesting in their own right. The diverse world of Witcher is so big that it provides plenty of future material for new locations and cultures to enjoy. It’s free material that Witcher 3 should seek to build on.
Discovering the unique and problematic cultures of Velen, Novigrad and Skellige are a massive part of Witcher 3’s charm, beauty and storytelling success. For Witcher 4 to achieve the same charm and further the setting, it should take the player out of the Northern Realms to lands unseen. Perhaps there can be a juxtaposition between Northern Realms countryside and foreign capitals. The old reveal image suggests the game will have wintery locations and a new Witcher fortress, which is exciting. New locations are also an excuse for new monsters.
4: Witcher 4 Gwent
This addition has been essentially confirmed by the devs already. Witcher 3’s famous card minigame Gwent turned out to be one of the most compelling parts of the game. It’s simple enough for every player to enjoy, but complex enough that it serves as a good pastime for your entire playthrough. You can win cards in games with friendly NPCs and almost any merchant, so Gwent incentivizes more NPC interaction wherever you go. The game rewards patience and resource management, as you get 10 cards to use across 2 or 3 rounds. It’s possible players see it as compensation for the janky combat, which explains why Gwent is their favorite activity in the game.
Ultimately, Gwent works because it’s cozy. It’s a side attraction that relieves tension in a grim world and gives you more to do within settlements. That’s why it’s important Witcher 4 continues the Gwent minigame as an outlet for obsessed fans. It doesn’t need fixing, just continuation. Improvements to balance, card variety and how the game is presented would be grand. The game could be played in real-time in some hut or tavern corner. The developers are aware of how much demand there is for more Gwent, but hopefully, they won’t change it too much.
5: Witcher 4 Polish
I would expect a Polish game studio to polish their games more. All jokes aside, Witcher 3 can be a buggy mess at times. Even the next-gen version crashes and freezes for me frequently on the PS5, same as Cyberpunk 2077. Besides that players are likely to encounter audio glitches, NPCs and enemies stuck in the ground or walls, and loot that’s impossible to collect, among other things. Before the next-gen update certain skills remained completely broken for years, and glitches remain still.
Then there’s jank which is baked into the game. I’ve already discussed Roach’s awkward movement, but the player’s ‘parkour’ can be tedious and slippery as well. I’ve found cutscenes can switch frantically from one music track to another when the camera moves. Many quest logs don’t match up with the choices you make, merchant icons fail to appear on the map from afar, and the Enemy Upscaling setting of the game has (or had) massive issues. With or without glitches, Witcher 3 plays like a game that could have used more time in the oven to iron out basic flaws.
At the moment Witcher 3 is actually more janky than Cyberpunk 2077 (on console), because of all the post-release effort to fix Cyberpunk. Neither game is that broken, but both crash frequently. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for Witcher 4 to release in a better state, with fewer inconveniences across the board.
6: Reworked Combat
People say combat is Witcher 3’s main weakness, and they are partially right. It has praiseworthy, satisfying mechanics such as dismemberment, 2 types of dodges and Witcher signs. Potions, Adrenaline and flashy swordplay all contribute to the monster-slaying power fantasy that snowballs at the end of the game.
However, the core of the combat is basic enough that fighting can be unengaging, even if it carries a sense of power. It is often a cycle of mashing the enemy, then dodging their forced counterattack. The biggest issue is that enemies often block and attack spontaneously without telegraphing their movements. Some attacks have unclear hitboxes that are almost impossible to avoid. This drives players to spam their dodge and quen signs. Many monsters are designed to draw out fights, regularly teleporting or burrowing away from you. The slog these monsters create is grating when you face them over and over.
Extra gear like the crossbow and bombs fail to make an impact. Potions and oils are very useful, but except for a few potions, don’t influence the way you play.
I like Witcher 3’s combat for what it is. It’s fast, visceral, and can be tactical, depending on your playstyle. But it is also restrictive, unpolished, and unoriginal. Improvements such as better enemy telegraphing, more impactful gizmos, and better balance across the board would dramatically improve the combat cycle.
7: Reworked Builds/Abilities
Witcher 3’s builds are too imbalanced. Playstyles that invest fully into one overpowered mechanic excel above the rest. There are 3 skill trees to invest in that develop your swordplay, spell casting, and potion/bomb utility, respectively, and one general tree. Many abilities have been written off by the community as basically useless despite requiring vast investment, while other invaluable abilities can be acquired right away. The general tree sucks except for a few standouts.
2 builds that fully invest in either Sign Intensity or Adrenaline/Whirl tower above the rest, due to busted bonuses that were added in the DLC. There aren’t enough useful abilities besides the notorious few.
It is doubly unfortunate that these meta builds also trivialize the game, although the game difficulty is a wider problem. Some Potions, Signs, and attacks are simply too powerful after an early point in the game, even on the highest difficulty. Witcher 4’s build progression should be less imbalanced and polarising, incentivizing players to develop a wider variety of playstyles throughout their journey. And greater combat difficulty across the board would make monster encounters more intense and memorable.
8: More Voice Actors
Witcher 3 suffers from a classic RPG issue, using several voice actors to voice a massive roster of characters. These voice actors have the range to voice multiple characters with different accents and attitudes, but they’re not quite enough. It’s noticeable when the same person voices grand side characters and nameless street-dwellers.
Witcher 3 contains hundreds upon hundreds of conversations with unremarkable NPCs. They’re great fun, but repetitive voice acting can make them seem repetitive. Witcher 4 should have the resources to introduce many new voice actors, giving random and scripted dialogue a fresh coat of paint.
9: Better Economy
Witcher 3’s economy makes no sense. Witchers work for coin, and Geralt faces mortal danger for 150-400 crowns a piece. With this in mind, many of the game’s transactions are ridiculous, especially in the DLC. In one case, I was forced to give an annoying kid 500 crowns in bribe money for some basic information. You need to cough up 30,000 crowns total for the Runewright’s services. The sums you haggle for, risking life and limb in monster contracts, are put to shame.
The problem is not that the player lacks money. The problem is how you get it, by selling copious amounts of random loot. Stacks of gear and junk found in bandit camps and caves sells for so much money, they are your main source of income. It is too easy to forget that witchers shouldn’t be rich, and should earn by doing their job—killing monsters. Contract pay falls flat compared to all the pearls, swords, and villagers’ belongings Geralt seizes from glowing barrels.
The cycle of mindlessly looting and selling every sort of curio you come across is a necessary and boring part of Witcher 3. Witcher 4 should endeavor to make quest rewards more useful and prices more reasonable. This would make the game’s world more believable and fair to the player.
10: Witcher 4 Item Bonuses
Finally, one addition that would introduce so many more gameplay options is more armor/weapon effects. Witcher 3 has a select number of grandmaster witcher sets added in Blood & Wine with bonus effects that spruce up combat. They give the player an edge in power and modify how they play in a fun way.
In Witcher 3 these bonus effects are a scarce aspect of the game that come in at the very end. Similar to Cyberpunk 2077, there’s every reason Witcher 4 should include many unique items that elevate the way you play from the beginning.