Too bad GTA is shit and Witcher 3 is the game of the last decade.
I think I will take my chances with Cyberpunk and trust CDPR to deliver a decent game.
Literally the three amazing things about Witcher 3 are writing, graphics... and world building.
Combat is mediocre, quest design, loot balancing, RPG elements are all pretty shallow.
I love Witcher 3, but a lot of its power rests on its ability to sell the world through production values.
So it's best I watch The Witcher 3 the movie rather than give the game another chance? I agree. Felt like writing was the best thing going for it. Might as well just be a book.
Depends what you look for in a game, i enjoy even just walking around looking at stuff if the world building is well done (like it is in Witcher 3).
Besides, an element being mediocre (like the combat in W3) doesn't mean it's shit, it can still be serviceable and be good enough to sustain the excellent parts.
This is true for any game, since no game is excellent under every aspect.
You literally said combat, quest design, loot balance, and rpg elements are all shallow. Indicating a poor game, but a well written product that might as well be a movie.
I don't think that's how it works.
The Witcher3's narrative is its strongest point, but it's still a
game narrative, meaning you could not just slap it on the screen and get the same result and feedback.
There's this (wrong) belief that narrative and gameplay are two entities separated from each other, that the latter is just something borrowed from cinema or literature, but i disagree.
When i walk from A to B in the forest in an open world game, that is narrative, that is narrative that is unique to a videogame, that is narrative that you can't just slap on a movie.
It's not a narrative structure that is as well understood as cinema's and book's techniques are, but it's there.
That's why you should always look at a game in its entirety, rather than break it down in small pieces (gameplay, story, graphics) pretending that one and the other aren't directly connected.