I knew The Witcher had hit the bigtime when I started getting Netflix Witcher memes from my sister in the family group text. And while I don't expect her to make the leap from fantasy-television-watcher to hardcore PC gamer overnight, some other folks definitely are doing just that. What Witcher game to play first is the big question. It's clear the popularity of The Witcher Netflix show has instilled major interest in the videogames—more people were playing The Witcher 3 on in December than on its launch day, four years ago.

For those whose first introduction to The Witcher is through the Netflix series, getting into the games might be daunting. If you're dying for more Witcher but don't want to commit to reading eight novels, here's how to get into the games, including what to play, what kind of PC you'll need to run them, and how to customize the experience to suit your playstyle.

You can skip The Witcher 1 and 2

The Witcher 1 and 2 aren't necessary in the slightest. This isn't to say they're not good games, but in order to start anew with its own canon separate from the books, CD Projekt Red gave Geralt amnesia at the beginning of the first game. He's made into a blank slate for players unfamiliar with the universe. It's a narrative framework that introduces players to Geralt as he slowly pieces his memory back together while noodling around in the sociopolitical affairs of the land in a series of adventures that echo the themes and events of the books. 

The Witcher 2 is definitely worth visiting after wrapping up everything else (show, books, The Witcher 3) if you're still thirsty for more. The Witcher 1 hasn't aged as well, so I'd skip it entirely. But if you absolutely have to know what happens in those games, I recommend watching IGN's short 5-minute explainer for a quick catch-up. It might save you a couple dozen hours. 

You only really need to play The Witcher 3

The first season of the Netflix series is an excellent primer for hopping in. When the first season ends, you've been introduced to most of the major players in The Witcher 3. When the episode eight credits roll, we know Ciri is a child of the elder blood and has special powers beyond explanation. We know her and Geralt found one another, we know how Yennefer and Geralt met, we get introduced to Triss and Jaskier (Dandelion in the games) and Geralt's monster-hunting profession, we know Niilfgaard is aiming for global domination at any cost, we know the mages circle is web of ego and unchecked authority—all the fundamentals are covered. 

The Witcher 3 largely ignores the events of the first two games anyway. At the start, Geralt's regained his memory completely and Ciri, having skipped out on the first two games, suddenly enters the picture again. The Witcher 3 does a fine job filling in the necessary blanks, introducing characters and summarizing key events that took place between the events of the first season of the show and the start of the game without resorting to dry exposition. Everything you need to know is communicated through clever dialogue sequences, some introductory cutscenes, and a massive codex that explains who's who, as written by Dandelion (Jaskier). 

If you're dead set on skipping the books, you'll have little problem getting up to speed in The Witcher 3. But if you're mildly curious, we have a guide to getting into The Witcher books, too. They're fun reads, but the political drama might be a bit too dry for some, in which case I'd just wait for The Witcher Season 2 for what I'm sure will be a more accessible, thrilling interpretation of events. 

Where to buy The Witcher 3

So you've committed to giving The Witcher 3 a go. Below you'll find a few links showing you where to get it, but first, a few key bits of information. 

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is simply the base game for The Witcher 3. It's all you truly need to get started, an adventure that'll likely take around 100 hours to complete, but I recommend gunning for The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition. It includes the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, both of which are excellent additions to Wild Hunt that add 50-plus hours of new locations, quests, characters, and systems.

GOG: You can get The Witcher 3 from a digital storefront made by the same company that made the game, DRM-free. That means there's no need to install special software to play the game. Just download, install, and play—though GOG Galaxy 2.0 is a nice optional client for managing your digital library. 

Steam: If you want all the fanciest social features and easy library management, Steam is the way to go.

Humble is selling The Witcher 3: Game of the Year Edition for $15 right now. Normally $50 (but frequently on sale), this deal nets you a GOG key for the complete version of one of PC Gamer's favorite games of all time. 

What PC hardware do I need to run The Witcher 3?

There's no shame in playing The Witcher 3 on a console, but we highly recommend playing it on a PC if possible. It's one of the prettiest games ever made and seeing it at its best is definitely worthwhile. But if you're new to PC gaming, knowing what kind of hardware you'll need to get The Witcher 3 looking fine might feel a bit daunting. 

To get started, I recommend checking out our PC building tutorial for the basics, and our recommended PC builds based on how much you're willing to spend. 

• Budget gaming PC build guide 
• Mid-range gaming PC build guide 
• High-end gaming PC build guide 
• Extreme gaming PC build guide

Every PC we've specced out will run The Witcher 3, no problem—the budget build is already more powerful than any console on the market. How well depends on what kind of performance you're looking for. 

The Witcher 3 is five years old now, which is good news when it comes to hardware requirements. If you have a PC that's less than five years old that includes a graphics card, you should be able to play The Witcher 3 on PC. The CPU is also less of a factor than your graphics card.

In terms of current hardware, a GeForce GTX 1050 or Radeon RX 560 can do 1080p and medium settings while maintaining a steady 30 fps (frames per second, or essentially how quickly the image refreshes. The higher, the smoother the game will run). We consider that a bare minimum for enjoying The Witcher's beautiful world. For better graphics and performance, you'll want a faster graphics card. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 / GTX 1660 Super provide a steady 60 fps or more, and so do the AMD RX Vega 56 / RX 5700. Our mid-range PC build guide fits the bill nicely.

How to make The Witcher 3 even better on PC

If you're fairly new to games, particularly PC gaming, then welcome, first of all. Second of all: mods, baby. Mods (short for modifications) are custom additions that allow PC gamers to change how games play and look, from tiny tweaks to sweeping overhauls.

To find out where to download mods and how to install them, check out our list of the best Witcher 3 mods. 

If you're in it for the story 

There's a difficulty mode in The Witcher 3 that trivializes combat so you can work through the story without testing your reflexes and understanding of its RPG systems, which can be daunting to anyone that doesn't play games often. Let's make things a bit easier on you, yeah?

God mode - Become invincible, make your weapons and armor invulnerable, run around with infinite stamina and magic power—become the Geralt Geralt wants to be. 

Fast travel from anywhere - Save time and get to the next story arc quicker with this mod. Normally you need to travel to a signpost to use transport between them, but this mod lets you do it from anywhere. Neato. 

If you truly want to roleplay the life of a witcher

Preparations mod - For those that want to make the process of meditation more meaninful withouth turning The Witcher 3 into a hardcore grim fantasy simulator. With this mod, meditation is the only way to use alchemy, manage skills, and tinker with equipment. 

The Witcher 3: Enhanced Edition overhaul - A complete rework of nearly every system in service of realism. Everything from combat to horse-riding takes on a new form in this fantastic mod. 

If you want it to look as good as possible

Minimal HUD - The default HUD takes up a lot of screen space and might look a bit dated to pickier players. This mod pins everything to the bottom of the screen in a much simpler, transparent design.  

Increased draw distance - If your PC can spare the extra processing power, this mod makes the landscape more detailed over long distances. 

If you want to make the game look more like the TV show

I've already written a complete guide to making Videogame Geralt look like Netflix Geralt. Get the face, the hair, the outfit, the medallion, and more to make your leap from TV to PC as natural as possible. 

Humble's Winter Sale is in season, and along with deals on thousands of games it's a great time to toss a coin at The Witcher series on the Humble Store. From now until January 23, you'll find The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its Game of The Year Edition (which includes its two expansions) for 70 percent off. That makes The Witcher 3 $12 and the GOTY Edition $15, a nice savings, especially if you missed Steam's last sale.

Expansions are on sale as well: you can save 60 percent off The Witcher 3 expansions Blood and Wine ($8) and Hearts of Stone ($4), or get them bundled together for $10. You'll also find The Witcher Enhanced Director's Cut and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition for 85 percent off, which means you can pick them both up for less than $5 combined.

Obviously, it's great time to get into The Witcher games if you never played them, and you'll have plenty of company—thanks to the success of The Witcher series on Netflix, The Witcher 3 recently attracted more concurrent players on Steam than it even had when the game first launched.

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The popularity of The Witcher Netflix series is bringing more people to the games than ever, with The Witcher 3 breaking its record for concurrent players on Steam just last week, nearly five years after release with over 100,000 players. It's safe to say that Henry Cavill's Geralt of Rivia carries the same magnetism as Doug Cockle's, the grumpy charmer we know and love.

But why not make the two things we love into one thing we love? Toss a coin to your witcher and toss aside your aversion to the uncanny: we're making a monster—a monster hunter by plastering Henry Cavill's face and body on The Witcher 3's Geralt. 

And we're going to do it right. 

We've already written about the Henry Cavill face mod for The Witcher 3 before, but there's been a steady stream of 'retextures' in its wake. There's also a couple body mods, a sword mod, an armor mod, and plenty more to consider. Let's sift through them all and find the best Henry trimmings for our baked Geralt.

First things first:

The basics

1. Install The Witcher 3 mod manager. It'll make this all a lot easier. While you're at it, pick up a few of our favorite Witcher 3 mods. 

2. Install the Henry Cavill head and body mesh from Adnan over on Nexus Mods. There's an Anya Chalotra head mesh for Yennefer too, if you're interested. You'll need Hearts of Stone for it to work, but you'll want that excellent expansion anyway. 

The faces

Adnan's default Henry:

Adnan did the difficult work of shaping Henry's face and body, but something's wrong the way the light hits it. The furrowed brow, eyes, and cheekbones make our boy look like a damn wraith rather than a macho monster hunter with poison coursing through his veins. This is a great foundation, geometrically speaking, but the retextures are where the magic happens. 

Face score: 4/Henry

Yian's Henry:

A big no-no for me. Our guy is still looking like a weird stunt double. Yian hasn't done much to Adnan's work, though the big draw for this mod is the Hearts of Stone option. If you want to make sure Geralt's runic face drawing fits on Skele-Cavill in the HoS expansion, this is a decent mod to have around, but it's still a little too damp and—I can't quite articulate what's wrong here—inverted? Like one of those hollow-face optical illusions where a concave mask has the appearance of a convex face that follows you where ever you go. It's creepy is what I'm saying. 

Score: Specialty face-tattoo/Mustache removed with CGI

Shadowphonic's Henry:

Now we're talking. Easily my favorite face for the purposes of The Witcher 3. This face darkens Henry a bit by ironically making him paler, which highlights the stubble and contours of his face for a more natural, witchery look, and adds a Striga scar to fit Henry comfortably into the game's timeline. This is the face texture to use. 

Score: Henry/Doug

Finishing touches

The hair

Geralt's hair is a bit longer in the show than the hair the game starts with, so I recommend going with something long as soon as you find a barber. To really accentuate those locks while keeping our beloved hair physics intact, try out CraniumJ's alternative long hair mod. It's glossier and more responsive to wind.

The sword

It ain't a perfect recreation, but we'll take it for now. Dimkich's steel sword mod aims to recreate one of Geralt's Netflix blades for use in The Witcher 3. It's not the most detailed model, a bit too simple with the color and geometry, but at a glance it looks familiar enough.

The armor

This mod's a must, as long as you're willing to forgo the specialty looks and stats the game's armor provides. ReplicantPolice's Viper Armor nails the look of Netflix Geralt's studded leather getup. 

Or just the amulet

If you'd prefer to keep the lovely in-game armor around and just swap out a sigil, Jatodude1's alternate amulets mod will suffice. It changes Geralt's pointy wolf pendant into the show's flat, circular version, and it's supported a good spread of popular armor sets. Ciri and Yen also get new amulets based on the symbols used in the show. 

The spooky toxic eyes 

While there's no dynamic Cavill face mod that looks applies corpse paint in the lavish layers the show goes for as his toxicity increases, we can at least make his eyes turn black and light veins pop around his eyes.

The beard fix 

Cavill doesn't grow much facial hair in the Netflix show, but throughout a playthrough of The Witcher 3, a beard is an inevitability. Problem is, slapping a new face on vanilla Geralt doesn't automatically change where hair is gonna sprout from. This beard mod from Skaters122 replaces the Mutton Chop facial hair with a beard custom built for Henry's square jaw. 

And there you have it. He doesn't animate as well as vanilla Geralt and Cockle's VO is a bit less strained and deep than Cavill's, but we've successfully melded two worlds into one—a conjunctions of spheres, if you will. We're only a few weeks out from the show's release, too, so expect even more Henry mods to trickle out from now until Netflix stops changing Geralt's outfit. With a second season of The Witcher already confirmed, we'll at least get a few more years of this good stuff.

We reported over the weekend that more people were simultaneously playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt than were playing it when it first released—which, in case you'd forgotten, was all the way back in 2015. And it's not as if it slouched out the door back then, either: According to Steam Charts, its peak concurrent player count in May 2015 was an impressive 92,268.

That number has continued to climb since the weekend, and today the nearly five-year-old game set another new mark, surpassing 100,000 concurrent players for the first time ever. Breaking into the top five games on Steam is probably out of reach (although I wouldn't count anything out at this point) but muscling past Destiny 2 is impressive enough all on its own.

See for yourself:

This sudden resurgence in popularity, as we noted previously, is almost certainly attributable to the success of The Witcher on Netflix, and curiosity about the game has been easy to indulge thanks to ridiculously good sale prices on The Witcher 3 on Steam and GOG, and free time to sink into it over the holidays. (The fact that it's an outstanding RPG is probably a factor too.)

Those numbers will inevitably decline; even if all the newcomers play it from start to finish, an aged singleplayer RPG isn't going to maintain a player base the way a free-to-play game in active development will. But it's a remarkable testament to how far The Witcher has come since we first encountered it as an oddball RPG in 2007—something Lauren dug into recently with a look at how the series' handling of sex and relationships have evolved from the first game to the last. (Trivia bit: The "romance cards" in the initial Witcher release in North America were censored, while those in European nations were not. The release of the Director's Cut edition made the uncensored cards available everywhere.)

The Witcher 3 is back to its usual price on Steam, but on GOG, the Game of the Year edition is still $15.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt presently has more concurrent players on Steam than it had on launch day in 2015, breaking its own record of 92,000 by several thousand players. At the time of this report more than 94,000 people were playing the game according to SteamDB, Steamcharts, and Valve’s own statistics. That puts it ahead of well-established free games like Path of Exile, Warframe, and Team Fortress 2. Further, the two previous games in the series are both in the top 100 games by player count on Steam, with The Witcher: Enhanced Edition at 12,100 and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings at 6,600.

These figures are for Steam only, and don’t count players from other distribution platforms like Witcher developer CD Projekt’s own GOG. Most highly-anticipated games never again reach their launch day concurrent player counts, especially single-player ones, so this number is particularly impressive for an RPG. This remarkable success follows last week, when The Witcher 3 surpassed Red Dead Redemption 2 in concurrent players.

The burst of interest in The Witcher is likely due to a combination of the new Netflix series, based on the same books, and the current sale discount on the game—the lowest it has ever been at $11.99 for the base game or $14.99 for the game and its expansions. Those two factors, amplified by the holiday break in Europe and the United States, have made for impressive numbers for the nearly five year old game.

Just imagine time traveling back to 2007 and telling someone that the odd Polish game series with the sexy trading cards was going to become the most successful RPG in the world. 

The Witcher TV series is not Game of Thrones. There are too many oversaturated scenes and folk tale monsters. It's not Lord of the Rings. There's too much pointless death with zero lessons learned. It's not quite the books or the games it pulls from, either, but somewhere suspended in between. The first season of The Witcher show is an original interpretation of Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy epic with a massive Netflix-sized budget, and it's not just a great adaptation, it's one of the best shows I've seen this year.

The Witcher is horrifying at times, cute and sweet at others. It's funny often, with restrained comic timing. It's horny, like, a lot. It's framed by a disorienting and complex political conflict swirling around in a massive cauldron of noun soup, but it's all grounded by Geralt's monster hunting day job. Almost an anthology, we follow Geralt between villages and castles as he takes on dirty jobs for dirty people from every class and background. 

The Witcher's world is a cynical one, perched on a history of brutal colonization, endless wars, and magic that doesn't allude to gods and purpose but is literally chaos itself bent into submission. It's where monsters are often more sympathetic than humans, products of abuse and random cosmic misfires rather than inherently evil morality figures. Here, fairytales end with everyone dying before the big lesson hits. 

The show nails it. 

We've only seen the first five episodes so we can't judge the whole eight-episode season, but what I've seen so far proves showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich knows exactly what makes the Witcher universe so compelling. A second season is already promised, but I hope we get many, many more. (Light spoilers for episodes one and two ahead.)

Cavill is Geralt

For anyone familiar with the games, whether or not the show is any good hinges on how good its Geralt is. No worries there. Henry Cavill immediately sheds his handsome Superman persona and melts into the role of a jaded, sardonic, almost imperceptibly sweet bounty hunter.

Cavill as Geralt is as limber and graceful you'd want, whipping those swords around like a seasoned monster hunter. There's no question why he's called the Butcher of Blaviken in the games, made extremely evident during the first episode. He cuts through 10 men in 20 seconds, kicking off the scene with a defeated, slightly mocking "Fuck".

In one continuous shot, Geralt blocks a crossbow bolt, stabs a guy through the mouth and rips up to split his skull in two, guts a few guys, lops an arm off, uses the aard (basically force push) to knock a bundle of them back, then beheads a dude he already stabbed because fuck that guy in particular. Cavill swings that thing around like he's carried it since the crib.

It's not the only time Geralt gets his man-sword out, and he'll often, thank goodness, interrupt or wrap up fights with a potent one-liner, the timing as perfect and delivery as flat and dead as I hoped for. And don't worry about the voice. It's like Doug Cockle climbed into a Henry mech. 

When he's not cutting down fools, Cavill's sniffing the dirt for signs of monsters, begrudgingly helping snide mages, shooing away Jaskier (Dandelion in the games), or cracking wise to his haters in grimy inns. He loves Roach and Roach doesn't really give a shit. Netflix Geralt presents as a nihilist vagabond just trying to get by, a brooding dude soured on the world but who can't help his nature: he cares. He cares about Jaskier, Yennefer, and even complete strangers tangled up in the messy business of politics and monster hunting. I forgot Cavill was there by the end of the first episode. It's our boy. 

The gang's all here

Geralt steals the show, but he isn't the whole show. This is an ensemble story. Yennefer's origin story plays a huge part, and Anya Chalotra depicts her simmering pain and fury perfectly. 

One of the early climaxes in Yennefer's story is also some of the most disturbing TV I've seen this year, braided in with another equally intense scene happening simultaneously. It was one of those slack-jawed Jesus Christ moments that only come around so often, and I already kinda knew it was coming. Adaptation, baby. A new medium and talented creators completely renewing a familiar story. 

Ciri plays a big part too, though her scenes are largely limited to brief interstitials tying the disparate character stories together. In the books, Ciri's story doesn't really take off until after the two collections of short stories. I'm guessing the show might kickstart that arc, but Freya Allan does well with what she's given, even if most of it is confused panic. I'm curious to see how she handles Ciri's more stubborn and bleak characteristics. 

Jaskier, played by Joey Batey, is a goofy, conceited idiot who plays well off of Geralt's stone cold demeanor like I'd hoped. The show's take on his bard tunes don't always feel appropriate for the setting, a bit too modern for my taste, but I'm still humming his Witcher ditty days later. Anna Shaffer's take on Triss is the most disappointing, but she hasn't had much time in the spotlight. As King Foltest's mage, she's little more than a go-between for Geralt and him, so her performance is as muted as her role so far. 

Overall, the casting, costuming, lavish set design, and mostly great performances imbue the setting with a sense of history and realism, where monsters and magic exist but are treated with fear or dismissed outright rather than looked upon with wonder and awe. Men are at constant war on a continent they colonized through outright slaughter of the native people. Scenes are drained of color or artificially bursting with them, a world out of balance and ready to sigh and deflate from pure exhaustion at any minute. I hate that it's so relatable, more apt than any themes or politics Game of Thrones vaguely waved at. 

Wish granted

The first season largely adapts stories from Sapkowski's collection of short stories, The Last Wish, which serves as an introduction to the universe of The Witcher and its big players.

The effect of adapting short stories that serve an overarching world narrative reminds me of the The X-Files, strangely enough. We get Geralt's monster of the week nearly every episode, see new places in the world, and meet a few new characters. Regular check-ins with Ciri, Cintra, the mages, and Nilfgaard serve as the connective tissue between plotlines that allude to continent-rending wars and cosmic destinies that will eventually bring everything together, but this is a story primarily told while Geralt's on the daily grind. 

I enjoyed the quest-level look at Cavill's Geralt piecing together crime scenes and hunting down the monsters behind them, all of which are genuinely unnerving. The folky horror is alive and well here. The Striga is a highlight of the series so far, a nasty beast with a truly awful origin. Cry-worthy stuff, a twist you'd expect from a good sidequest in The Witcher 3.

All the beasties and spectres are a tasteful mix of CG and practical effects that fit into the postmodern fairytale world naturally.The monster fights are particularly rad—the deft combo of liquid choreography, invisible editing, special effects, and Cavill's performance make for some fun, tense bouts. 

In what might be a necessary side effect of adapting the short stories into a more cohesive whole, the show constantly bounces between a bunch of different perspectives and often between time periods. It's my biggest gripe. The framework can be a touch disorienting—there's no warning when the show jumps between time periods and it leaps around liberally at times, but there's a satisfaction in paying close attention and piecing things together as you go. But hey, giving the viewer a little date on-screen here and there wouldn't have ruined anything. 

The Witcher also spits out new nouns every other minute. Historical figures, old wars, distant kings and countries, political orders, magics, prophecies, and more are referenced in passing and things barely slow down to explain. There's still plenty of exposition, which Jaskier even acknowledges as necessary while doing his thing as the designated fourth-wall-buster, but paying close attention or doing a little wiki homework is almost required. 

But I dig it. Nothing's been terribly simplified to fit the format. This world is as deep and wide as in the books and games, and while the show definitely uses the dramatic and cinematic language of a lot of modern television, it doesn't feel like a focus group got between Hissrich and her team's vision. 

This is an unrelenting fantasy-ass fantasy story, nothing of major import buffed down to make it more palatable to a wider audience. Yes, that's that a hedgehog-man hybrid. And yeah, he's he gonna kiss the princess. Don't worry about it, he's uh, it's a curse or whatever. They're explaining The Law of Surprise now, be quiet. Cast all doubt aside. Netflix's The Witcher is an excellent adaptation and some of the most exuberant fantasy TV out there.

The joy of The Witcher 3 isn't just in its winding story and sweeping landscapes—it's also in the little details, some so small that you might not even notice them on your first playthrough. Considering the size of the open world, you almost certainly will miss most of them. The Continent is full of incidental animations and unexpected interactions, of NPCs behaviour that makes the world feel alive, and subtle in-jokes that will only make sense to seasoned monster hunters. 

We couldn't collect all of them in one space, but here are 30 of our favourites. Go looking for them, the next time you mount up Roach and take Geralt out for a quest. And who knows? Maybe some will even show up in the Witcher Netflix series. And if you're looking for an absurdly detailed list of secrets in The Witcher 3, check out Andreas Schmiedhofer's mammoth guide to hidden quests and locations. 

1. You can stumble on the grave of Leo, a relatively minor character from The Witcher 1 

"A senseless death, could've been avoided."

2. The drunk barber in Novigrad will sometimes give you the wrong haircut

You can protest, but you won't get your money back. 

3. The raindrops on your Quen shield 

Who needs an umbrella? 

4. Your horse, Roach, will seek food and water

If you dismount your faithful companion to visit an inn, or chat to townsfolk, Roach will ensure he's sufficiently fed and watered by seeking out food troughs. If you're lucky, you might see the town drunk join him. 

5. Geralt uses different finger movements for his various magic signs

You'll need to be a contortionist to copy him. 

6. NPCs will cough, sneeze and hiccup

Better out than in... 

7. The Seven Cats Inn has exactly seven cats

And you can use your Axii sign to calm cats and make them follow you.  

8. NPCs seek shelter from the rain

When it starts spitting, some NPCs will run for cover. You'll also see children playing in puddles. 

9. You can find Yen's crystal skull at the start of the game

It's the one from the opening cutscene—find it and give it to her for some unique dialogue. One to remember at the start of your next playthrough. 

10. "One fucking hundred"

Hey, you said count, and they counted.

11. Geralt lifts his scabbard when sheathing his sword

There are tons of incidental animations during combat, too: Watch out for Geralt twirling his sword in his hand between strikes. 

12. The Witcher 3's birds actually behave like birds…

...most of the time. Rather than just fly in a given direction, flocks of birds will swoop and flow realistically. It's wonderful to watch. 

13. The Aard sign can deflect arrows

It's not just for opening doors. 

14. Geralt's Blue Stripes tattoo will carry over from The Witcher 2

In The Witcher 2's Hung Over quest you can wake up, naked and dazed after a heavy drinking session, with a tattoo on your neck. If you keep it, and import your save for The Witcher 3, the tattoo will remain—a constant reminder of a wild night. 

15. The sun rises earlier the further north you go 

And it's beautiful wherever you are. 

16. Geralt's face gets veinier the more potions he drinks

Potions are toxic, and the more you drink, the more purple Geralt's face becomes. If you don't like the effect, here's a mod for you. 

17. The elusive White Whale

Poor Eyvind has been waiting his whole life for a glimpse of a legendary White Whale. Shame you had to show up… 

18. Watch the world go by

In The Witcher 3, windows are actually windows: you can look through them to see what's going on outside. It's a small detail, but it makes the world feel more coherent. 

19. You can actually control the weather

A few shrines hidden across the world let you change the weather with a prayer. The Hemdall shrines can make it storm, snow, or clear up in an instant.

20. A dwarf crime boss sits on pillows to make himself taller 

Cleaver, a fearsome gang leader, can't quite see over the table without them. 

21. You can spot figures in the hills of the Skellige archipelago

Presumably inspired by English hill figures. Keep an eye out for them.

22. Geralt's staring contest with a cat

Meet Nibbles. 

23. This bench, where couples go for romantic dates

Looking over Crane Cape, this spot is one of the most romantic in Novigrad—as the changing musical score will indicate. Each time you return, you can expect to see a different couple canoodling. 

24. The scholar who teaches you Gwent will indeed be killed for his boots

Aldert Geert, in the White Orchard inn, basically acts as your tutorial for Gwent. But he's an ambitious scholar in his own right, and tells Geralt how he wants to document war from the front lines. Geralt warns Aldert that he'll be killed for his boots—and sure enough, later on you find Aldert strung up from a tree, feet bare, a journal beneath him. 

25. Geralt makes horse noises to comfort Roach

The secret best relationship in the Witcher series.

26. The way Aard effects water

Just look at those ripples. 

27. Geralt really hates portals

28. The Witcher 3's ecosystem reacts to your actions

It's fairly minimal, but it's there. If you kill wolves, deer will flourish—if you murder deer, the wolves won't have anything to eat, so they’ll leave the area. Monsters and NPCs will interact with each other from time-to-time, too.

29. Keeping your sword sheathed can stop bloodshed 

For some fights, such as battling the students in the Defender of the Faith quest, if you keep your sword in its scabbard then your enemies will do the same. You'll still punch each other's lights out—but at least nobody's losing a limb.  

30. The body of Birna Bran 

During the King's Gambit quest, former queen of Skellige Birna Bran can be (depending on your choices) sentenced to death, "chained to a rock to perish of hunger and thirst, and seafowl will peck apart your remains." In most RPGs, that'd be that—but if you go hunting, you can actually find Birna's Body, chained to a rock as prescribed. 

Henry Cavill isn't putting on an American accent in Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher, but his videogame counterpart, Doug Cockle, still provided the actor with inspiration, he recently told IGN.

Initially, Cavill went with something that sounded like his natural accent after listening to the audiobooks narrated by voice actor Peter Kenny. It fit with the books, particularly the first one, where Geralt is pretty chatty and the language is a bit flowery. In the show, however, the first two books are being condensed into eight episodes, so Cavill had to find a way to express who Geralt was without a stream of dialogue. 

"When I heard Doug Cockle’s incredible performance in Witcher 3—which I’ve heard time after time because I’ve played the games a lot—I realised that I could utilise something like that, and create [Geralt's] stony exterior," Cavill said. 

To my ears, an American accent usually sounds too modern, for some reason, to fit in a medieval fantasy setting, but I now can't think of Geralt without also hearing Doug Cockle. Cavill has tried to keep his natural accent, but he's picked up Cockle's gravelly tone, though it's deeper, apparently, where Cockle's was more of a whisper. He reckons it shows the "boiled-down essence of who Geralt was".

I'm looking forward to the show, but it's still going to have a hard time convincing me that CDPR and Cockle's version of Geralt isn't the best, though I can't deny Cavill looks pretty good in a tub. 

The Witcher airs on Netflix on December 20. 

How many The Witcher 3 endings are there? In a world as massive as The Witcher 3's, it’s no surprise that there are many different ways in which your story can wrap up. As Geralt travels across The Continent, he’s forced to make choices that will change the fate of those around him. But with so many decisions to make, and consequences that might only take affect a long way down the line, how do you pick the right Witcher 3 ending for you?

How many The Witcher 3 endings are there?

Between the power struggles, love triangles, and wandering non-humans that fill The Continent, The Witcher 3 features a whopping 36 possible endings. The most important factor—the fate of Geralt’s companion, Ciri—affects only three of the game’s major conclusions, however. To determine what happens to her, you’ll have a number of key decisions to make throughout the game’s second and third acts. But be warned, from here there are major story spoilers for The Witcher 3 throughout.

All The Witcher 3 endings

Ciri Dies

In what’s widely considered the game’s worst ending, Ciri dies during her climactic battle with the all-consuming White Frost. For this to happen you need to trigger at least three of the following five ‘negative’ choices that undermine Ciri as she prepares to face her destiny:

• Immediately after the Battle of Kaer Morhen, telling Ciri that “you don’t have to be good at everything” invites her into the castle for a drink, but fails to improve her mood.
• When Ciri informs you of Imlerith’s whereabouts, if you encourage her to visit her father, Emperor Emhyr, and then accept his reward for finding her, she will be visibly upset.
• When Ciri goes to visit The Lodge of Sorceresses, accompanying her to the meeting with Phillippa Eilhart knocks her confidence.
• In the scene in Avallac’h’s lab, telling Ciri to “calm down” frustrates her.
• When Ciri asks Geralt to visit Skjall’s grave with her, telling her that there’s “no time” causes her to storm off.

Making three or more of these choices reduces Ciri's faith in herself as she prepares to face the White Frost. She never returns to The Continent, and the credits roll as Geralt mourns over Ciri’s Witcher medallion in Velen.

Ciri Lives

To trigger the ‘best’ ending, Geralt has to help Ciri prepare for her battle. To do that, he needs to trigger three ‘positive’ choices:

• After the Battle of Kaer Morhen, telling Ciri that you “know what might lift your spirits,” will trigger a snowball fight, cheering her up after her disagreement with Avallac’h.
• When Ciri wakes Geralt up to hunt for Imlerith, taking her straight to Velen skips the scene with Emhyr, and counts as a positive choice.
• In the meeting with Phillippa, sending her alone encourages the Lodge to take Ciri seriously.
• Letting Ciri trash Avallac’h’s lab offers her a way to channel her pent-up aggression.
• Visiting Skjall’s grave with Ciri boosts her confidence in the confrontation with the villagers.

Picking at least three of these choices sees Ciri return to The Continent after defeating the White Frost. At the end of the game, Geralt meets her in a tavern and presents her with a specially-crafted sword. The two then spend some time journeying together on the Path as witchers.

Empress Cirilla

If Ciri survives her battle after visiting Emhyr—and you helped Nilfgaard win the war—her father convinces her that in order to truly be a force for good in the world, she must return home to rule. In a bittersweet ending, Ciri is escorted back to the Emperor. You’ll still need to have chosen at least three positive outcomes to unlock this ending, but bringing Ciri to Emhyr is the only choice that differentiates this from the 'best' ending.

The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine endings

Of course, if you own the second expansion, the events above are not where Geralt’s story ends. Blood and Wine also features three main endings which concern the fate of its central characters: Duchess Anna Henrietta, her estranged sister Syanna, and vampire Detlaff.

Blood(bath) and Wine

In Blood and Wine’s 'worst' ending everybody dies. During the Night of the Long Fangs quest, if you choose to seek the unseen vampire, you’ll be forced to kill Detlaff. Later on, when Syanna and Anna Henrietta meet in the palace grounds, you’ll have no way of stopping her from stabbing her sister, after which she is shot by Damien, the captain of the guard. 

If you choose to find Syanna (with the help of either Damien or Orianna), you’ll have the option to enter a magical Fairy Tale world, the Land of a Thousand Fables. There a pigtailed girl offers you multiple ways to acquire a ribbon. Take it to protect Syanna from Detlaff during the Tesham Mutna quest, which also forces you to kill the vampire with Regis’ help. If you don't investigate Syanna further, you won’t have the forewarning that helps you dissuade Syanna from killing Anna Henrietta. If you investigate but fail to convince Syanna of her sister’s innocence, she stabs Anna Henrietta anyway.

A Fine Vintage

There’s no way to keep everyone alive in Blood and Wine, but if you want the expansion’s ‘best’ ending you must kill Detlaff and save the sisters. To achieve this, seek out Syanna during the Night of the Long Fangs, enter the Fairy Tale world, take the ribbon, and defeat Detlaff. You’ll need to have done all of the following in order to convince Syanna to spare Anna Henrietta:

• Before entering the Fairy Tale world, read all the governess’ five journal entries in the palace nursery.
• In the Fairy Tale world, tell Syanna you’ve come to free her and listen to all of her subsequent optional dialogue choices. Acquire the ribbon from the pigtailed girl, and allow Syanna to tell you why she was cast out from the Duchy.
• After leaving the Fairy Tale world, continue to investigate Syanna by returning to the bootblack. He’ll point you in the direction of the beggars paid to inform Detlaff of the names of his victims, from whom you should confiscate the letter.
• After learning that Anna Henrietta was to be Syanna’s last victim, confront her in the palace and tell her that you understand that her sister “turned her back on you.” Then, ask if she’d “ever thought to forgive her,” and tell her the wrongs Anna Henrietta did her took place when “she was a child.”

If you do this in the correct order, the Duchess forgives her sister at her trial, the pair embrace, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Being Non-human

The third Witcher 3 Blood and Wine ending is the clumsiest, as it involves Syanna dying before she makes it to trial. If you seek her during the Night of the Long Fangs, but choose not to take the ribbon in the Fairy Tale world, Detlaff kills her at Tesham Mutna. Then you can choose to kill Detlaff or let him escape, but the Duchess won’t be too impressed either way. Geralt is thrown in jail for letting Syanna die, relying on Dandelion to free him.

Whatever happens, Blood and Wine concludes with Geralt retiring to his vineyard. As he arrives, he’s informed of the arrival of a mysterious visitor. Their identity is based upon your choices in the main game; if you chose the correct romance option, Triss joins you, while if you’re wrong, it’ll be Yennefer [you're on thin ice, Jones — Ed]. If you chose neither, Ciri arrives in either her guise as a witcher or heir to Nilfgaard. But if your Ciri ending was that she lost her battle against the White Frost, Dandelion visits in her place.

The final state of The Continent rests on many more choices made throughout the The Witcher 3. Geralt holds sway over the result of the war with Nilfgaard (and the fate of its emperor), the Skelligan succession, and the destinies of multiple minor characters (and often their family and friends). But despite all those intertwining narratives, it’s Ciri’s importance to Geralt and the wider world of The Witcher that shapes each major ending. Pay attention to her and everything else falls into place.

CD Projekt recently took a look back at the first half of 2019, and it saw some interesting things. Cyberpunk 2077 preorders have been going well, particularly on GOG: One-third of all digital PC preorders have been on CD Projekt's own platform. But the primary driver behind the company's financial performance is actually The Witcher 3, despite the fact that it was released more than four years ago.

"Our financial result for the first half of the year was again mainly affected by sales of The Witcher 3, which remain strong. This further confirms our belief that investing in top-quality games pays off, and that such games may continue to sell well for many years," CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said. "In the first half of 2019 gamers actually purchased more copies of The Witcher 3 than during the first half of the previous year!"

CD Projekt has also continued to grow over the first half of the year, according to a management board report: There were 953 employees at the company as of June 30, 2019, up from 887 at the end of 2018. CD Projekt Red accounts for 777 (up from 698), while GOG is down slightly, from 189 at the end of 2018 to 176 on June 30 of this year. CD Projekt said the increase "is mostly due to the upscaling of business and development activities."

But what might be most interesting is the suggestion that more Gwent-style spinoff projects are in the works—and that we haven't seen the end of The Witcher, either.

"Managing two separate major franchises (The Witcher and Cyberpunk), along with several independent development teams, enables the Company to conduct parallel work on several projects and smoothens its long-term release schedule," it states. "This migration towards a dual-franchise model supported by several independent product lines also permits optimization of manufacturing and financial activities, mitigates important risk factors and makes it easier for Company employees to seek professional fulfillment."

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming to the Nintendo Switch in October, but given that the original was released in May 2015, that on its own hardly seems enough to maintain CD Projekt's status as a "dual franchise" company. For now, though, CD Projekt is fully focused on Cyberpunk 2077: A livestream featuring 15 minutes of gameplay from a demo shown at Gamescom will begin at 11 am Pacific/2 pm Eastern on August 30—that's tomorrow.

Thanks, @DomsPlaying.