Games like The Witcher 3
The three best follow-ups to The Witcher 3 are Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (the quest craft, without magic), Cyberpunk 2077 (the same studio, six years of patches later) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (the world density). The ranking below sorts ten games by which Witcher 3 quality they inherit: the writing, the world, or the wandering.
Eleven years on, The Witcher 3 is still the reference for one specific thing: side quests written like short stories, where a village notice board leads somewhere no other game would take the time to go. Most 'games like The Witcher 3' lists just point at any big open world. This one tells you, per game, which part of Geralt's job each pick actually does.
One entry is a deliberate skip — the game most stores recommend after Witcher 3, and the one most likely to make you quit at hour 15. Everything here sits at 84% positive or better on Steam except where the honest number is part of the story.
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How we picked these
- Side content written with the care other games save for the main quest.
- An open world with texture — settlements, factions and weather, not icon soup.
- Choices where the bad outcome is discovering it ten hours later.
- A protagonist with a voice and a job, not a blank hero.
- Complete editions available — no games mid-way through their DLC cycle.
The list
01 Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
The closest thing to Witcher 3 quest design since Witcher 3 — 94% positive across 193,000 reviews, and the notice-board-to-novella pipeline is fully intact. It swaps monsters for 15th-century Bohemian politics and makes you earn everything: reading, fighting, even saving. The most demanding pick here, and the most rewarding.
02 Cyberpunk 2077
The same studio, and after six years of patches plus the Phantom Liberty expansion it finally is what the 2020 launch promised — Night City is the densest city CD Projekt has built, and the side gigs carry the Witcher DNA of small human stories. It is louder and faster than Witcher 3; the melancholy is still there underneath.
03 Red Dead Redemption 2
Nothing matches its world density — 908,000 reviews at 92% agree the frontier feels more alive than any fantasy map. Quest structure is more scripted than Witcher 3's, so you trade authorship for cinema. Pick it for the wandering and the horse, stay for the best-written gang in games.
04 Ghost of Tsushima
Witcher 3's rhythm — ride, help strangers, follow the wind to a shrine — transplanted to samurai-era Japan and 94% positive on PC. The writing is broader and the choices thinner, but no game on this list is more pleasant to simply exist in.
05 Kingdom Come: Deliverance
The first game is jankier and slower to start than its sequel — and still worth playing first if you have the patience, because Henry's whole arc lands harder in order. If you bounce off the opening hours, skip ahead to the sequel guilt-free.
06 God of War
A tighter, more directed take on the grumpy-professional-with-a-kid formula. The world opens up more than the 2018 marketing suggested, and side content — favours for spirits, Valkyrie hunts — carries real writing. Pick it when you want Witcher quality in a 30-metre corridor instead of a 30-kilometre map.
07 Horizon Zero Dawn
The best open-world mystery on this list — the question of why robot dinosaurs roam a stone-age Earth is answered properly, which almost never happens. Combat against machines beats Witcher 3's swordplay; human quests are a tier below Geralt's.
08 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
The opposite philosophy: where Witcher 3 authors your story, Skyrim hands you a province and shrugs. Still the better game for pure inhabit-a-world freedom, and with mods it becomes whatever you need it to be. The vanilla writing will not survive comparison with anything above it here.
SKIP09 Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Skip if Witcher 3's writing is what you came for — Odyssey has the map and the levels but its quests are errands with dialogue attached, and the XP curve nudges you toward the store. If you want ancient-world wandering, Ghost of Tsushima does the poetry better; if you want choices, Kingdom Come II actually honours them.
10 Elden Ring
Zero quest markers, zero dialogue trees — and yet the same core promise kept: over every hill, something worth finding that someone built by hand. Ranked last only because it demands you meet it on its terms; 1.1 million reviews at 93% say people who do rarely regret it.
Similar but different
Baldur's Gate 3
Trade the open world for a party and dice, keep the 'side quests written like main quests' standard. The only game here whose reactivity exceeds Witcher 3's.
Disco Elysium
One city district instead of a continent, and better prose than anything else in the medium. For when you realise it was never the map you loved — it was the sentences.
Outer Wilds
A tiny solar system that rewards curiosity the way Velen rewards following a stray notice-board rumour. No combat, no levels — just the purest 'what is over there' loop in games.
FAQ
Is Cyberpunk 2077 actually good now?
Yes — 87% positive across 973,000 Steam reviews, recent reviews higher, and that includes the 2020 launch backlash baked in. Buy the Phantom Liberty expansion with the base game; it contains the best quest CD Projekt has written since Blood and Baron.
Should I play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 or go straight to II?
Straight to II is fine — it opens with a recap and stands alone. Play the first only if you know you tolerate jank for the sake of a complete arc.
What has the best side quests after The Witcher 3?
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and it is not close. Several of its side quests would headline other games' expansions.
Is there anything like Witcher 3's monster contracts specifically?
Not done as well anywhere. Horizon Zero Dawn's machine hunts come closest mechanically — study the target, prepare, exploit weak points — but without the investigation storytelling around them.
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