I have yet to finish it... in Novigrad, but wow this is taking a silver sword to DA: Inquisition (I was surprised, even though I really liked the game, to look and see how many goty awards that won, haven't been paying much attention the last couple years to all that stuff) and all of its side quests. This is how you do side quests in an open-world (mostly) game. I've played open-world games with meaningful and interesting side quests (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3), and I've played open(ish)-world games with good overall story-lines (RDR, GTA IV and 5, mostly, DA:I even), but I have not played any that do both well (am taking recommendations, and while Rockstar's side missions are quirky, they are almost never satisfying. I appreciate them and the commentary and jokes they make, but don't enjoy playing them), and certainly not arguably doing both as well as any games do in either category. I have no idea what to expect with these side quests, and I love that. Seemingly simple contract quests sometimes bring about chance encounters with really cool characters, past and present, and normally the monsters one fights are just plain fun to see and fight. Well done CD Projekt! At least so far.

We'll see how it finishes up but I've already had some tear-jerking moments. Not to mention Gwent, which is up there with Liar's Dice as one of my favorite in-game minigames (is this a list yet?!), probably better (within the game, I love Liar's Dice far too much in real life) in that there's even story-line interaction with it and you play with real characters also. It's hard to believe what they started with in the first Witcher and what they've built the series into without ever making it feel like too much. I'm also continually amazed at the vast difference between even side quest endings and later dialogue options based on one's choices the couple times I reloaded to see, and at the difficulty of some of those choices. I'm writing this because I can't play it for the next week and I feel like I have to say something.