Even over six years later, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains one of the best RPGs ever made. One of the game's many strengths is in its rich, dense storytelling, elaborate lore, and intricate worldbuilding, all of which create a video game that has spawned a hit Netflix TV series and numerous print adaptations.
It also has a strong cast of characters, with Geralt of Rivia being a compelling protagonist in which to experience the game's many mainline and side quests. Being set in a dark fantasy universe, The Witcher 3 handles several heavy themes and premises. As a result, several of the best quests in the game tackle grim stories that involve heavy themes of regret, envy, and death.
Ladies Of The Wood
Velen is notoriously known as one of the darkest points in the game. But things start to get particularly grim during "Ladies of the Wood," which is also one of The Witcher 3's best quests. After reaching a standstill in finding the Baron's wife, this quest tasks Geralt to venture into Crookback Bog to follow a possible lead to Ciri.
Geralt seeks them out based on a legend involving three witches that, in exchange for taking in children, hear the pleas of the townspeople. Upon talking to them through a painting depicting three beautiful women, three giant cannibalistic Crones appear, wearing the limbs of children as ornaments. They're among the most terrifying creatures in The Witcher 3, and the townspeople had been unknowingly sending their children straight to their deaths.
Family Matters
"Family Matters" is a mainline quest that becomes eerily grounded in its dark subject matter. The indifferent leader of this war-ravaged land contracts Geralt to help find his missing wife and daughter. But after some supernatural detective work, the Witcher discovers that the Baron had been beating his wife, prompting her and his daughter to flee.
And it was the Baron's abuse that caused his wife to miscarry. The lost baby was cursed into a Botchling, with the quest later revolving around either agreeing the help save the baby by turning it into a Lubberkin or killing the dangerous creature it became. The Witcher 3 has some heartbreaking personal quests, but "Family Matters" takes things to grimmer personal lows and different shades of morality.
For The Advancement Of Learning
A side quest involving Keira Metz allows the player to choose the outcome. It's a difficult choice that also involves testing Geralt's moral code, but certain criteria need to be met for each decision. Geralt thinks he's having a peaceful reunion with a friend, but it's later revealed Keira used him to find information about a mage's laboratory.
Alexander was a mage specializing in epidemiology that had no moral center, which let him conduct atrocious, deadly experiments on people. Keira wanted to retrieve his notes and give them to Radovid for a pardon. Often players were resorted to fighting and killing her to prevent this horrid knowledge from falling into Radovid's cruel hands.
A Towerful Of Mice
"A Towerful of Mice" brings Geralt to Fyke Isle before Keira to discover what happened to this cursed and plagued island. It's revealed that the Lord that ruled over the island let his population rot, including the amoral and sadistic Alexander. As a result, Fyke Isle was punished with a curse that sent countless plague-ridden rats to devour everything, including the people.
In the tower, Geralt finds a disease-spreading wraith -- one of The Witcher 3's most terrifying creatures -- that was once a woman who paralyzed herself accidentally, thinking the potion would kill her before the rats arrived. The wraith ends up killing her mourning lover, Graham, with a kiss that sends her into slumber at the cost of spreading the plague to him.
Nameless
This main quest has one of the most notoriously dark backstories and fates of an innocent bystander. On the Northern Kingdom of Skellige, Geralt and Yennefer of Vengerberg follow Ciri's trail and find out that she had been in a nearby town before the Wild Hunt arrived and ran rampant. She escaped with a man named Craven, who'd fallen in love with her.
Geralt and Yennefer decide to find Craven, eventually discovering his corpse in Freya's Garden where the residing werewolf mortally wounded him. And while Yennefer had good intentions of finding her adoptive daughter, she crossed a line by forcibly torturing Craven's reanimated corpse and spirit to pry the information out of him.
The Battle Of Kaer Morhen
When the main story begins to climax, "The Battle of Kaer Morhen" can be a crushing narrative quest for at least one instance. With Ciri finally reunited with Geralt, Yennefer, and the rest of the Witchers at Kear Morhen, the group goes to gather manpower and resources to fight the inevitable Wild Hunt.
The battle is tense as expected, but regardless of the optional events that can happen, Vesemir will meet his end there. He was Geralt's mentor and one of the greatest Witchers to ever live, but the father-son bond makes this loss hit the hardest. Depending on other conditions, Lambert the Witcher can also die in the battle.
Something Ends, Something Begins
The final main story quest of the game, "Something Ends, Something Begins" can be the most uplifting in The Witcher 3 or the most nihilistic. Like several other main and side quests, the outcome depends on specific dialogue choices the player made. The "Tragic Ending" lives up to its name as it results in Ciri's sacrifice to prevent the apocalypse.
This leaves Geralt on a path of vengeance, returning to Crookback Bog to hunt down the last Crone. Once the Witcher kills the last Crone, he takes the wolf medallion Ciri got from Vesemir. It's a brutal, yet cinematic finale as the scene pans out from Geralt mourning in the Crone's hut to the exterior, where countless monsters swarm.
In Wolf's Clothing
In Freya's Garden on Skellige, players can take a side quest before finding Craven's remains. The beast that killed Craven there was Morkvarg, a once-feared Skelligan pirate who pillaged everything he could. Morkvarg invoked the wrath of a rival, resulting in him being afflicted with lycanthropy and an excruciatingly painful -- and perpetual -- hunger.
Geralt can go about this quest in several ways. Should he kill Morkvarg, it can be done by using an improvised curse-lifting method feeding Morkvarg his own flesh. Likewise, Geralt can retrieve an item to cure it and immediately kill him upon purification. Given the crimes against humanity Morkvarg committed, there will be no pity for this character, but it's nonetheless a gruesome story.
Get Junior
In one of the biggest, most dense hub cities in The Witcher 3, Novigrad, Geralt discovers that Ciri passed through and had contacted the crime lord Whoreson Junior. Similar to Morkvarg, Junior is a vile human being with no redeeming qualities, except what's shown to players in "Get Junior" is worse than what players experience with the werewolf in Freya's Garden.
Junior is known to hire sex workers, but upon investigating his estate, players see nothing short of a horror show. He had violently murdered the women he hired, and while this game typically handles dark themes maturely, this quest admittedly gets gratuitously self-indulgent by showing the aftermath of such hyperviolence.
Where The Cat And Wolf Play...
In the southernmost part of Velen, Geralt can stumble upon the village of Honorton where there's almost nothing but mangled corpses. This begins the "Where the Cat and Wolf Play..." side quest. There's a sole survivor named Mellie; a little girl who becomes terrified upon seeing Geralt's Witcher eyes. As it turns out, the massacre of Honorton was done by a Witcher from the Cat School.
Gaetan led a slaughter on the town after his contractor refused to pay what was agreed, then nearly killed him. Geralt and Gaetan can fight should the player choose, which brings in the former's conflict with the Witcher code. Though grim, the silver lining of this quest is that Geralt can go back and safely bring Mellie to live with her aunt.