The variable nature of Witcher combat is also represented when a fight begins. On harder difficulties, you need to prepare for fights accordingly, to learn the weaknesses of the monsters you face, and ensure you have a good stock of bombs and potions available at all times. But that's the point of easy mode - to let players enjoy a game without requiring enormous skill or knowledge to do so. It's true that on easier difficulties you can bypass a lot of this, and casually hack your way through the combat. A large part of the Witcher combat style is adjusting to whatever opponent you're facing, exploiting vulnerabilities through combinations of oils, potions and bombs. But importantly, all of these have varying effects on different enemy types.

Geralt also uses signs, bombs, potions, blade oils, and secondary weapons like the crossbow to gain an advantage over his adversaries. As already mentioned, reducing the nuances of swordplay to a sequence of button presses is tough, and The Witcher 3's combat isn't just about swords. Equally important is how engaging it is from the player's perspective. That said, there's more to virtual sword-fighting that how the art is represented by the developers. Sword-fighting is all about skill, not strength, and Geralt epitomises this notion when he fights. It's more like an extension of his arm, easy to hold, to adjust, and to strike with. It isn't like a big club he uses to bludgeon opponents with, as you might see in Skyrim or a lot of JRPGs.

Not simply in its grislier moments, but in how Geralt moves lightly on his feet and wields his blade with such ease. The Witcher 3 is one of the only games to successfully communicate this lightness, this efficiency. Consider how easy it is to slice carrots with a sharp kitchen knife, and then add a three-foot pivot to the handle. A good longsword weighs around three to four pounds, and the length of the blade generates an incredible amount of leverage when swung.

One of the weirdest accusations I've heard directed towards Wild Hunt's combat was that it is lightweight. Most of all, what I like about the Witcher 3's representation of swords is it recognises that they are sharp. They've consulted with experts who have studied Western martial arts extensively in order to better grasp how swords and sword-fighting work, and rebuilt the combat each time in a continuing process to figure out the best way to portray swordplay in-game. Over the course of the series, CD Projekt have experimented with different systems, and gradually built toward an engaging and authentically based fighting style. Consequently, any attempt to represent sword-fighting in games is immediately intriguing, and the Witcher is a particularly interesting case because of how the combat has evolved since the first game. I don't want to go into too much detail about this here, but the short version is that the two are not at all compatible. Gaming, on the other hand, is a digital form where specific button presses demand exact responses. It's is an inherently chaotic, analogue action, where every strike, every clash of blades, can happen at a different speed or a different angle. From a developer perspective, sword-fighting is one of the hardest things to represent virtually. Before we go into the Witcher 3 specifically, it's worth briefly going over the difficulties that melee combat poses when recreated in a game.

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