I know the points I'm about to make have already been covered in some of the previous posts, but I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring for team Witcher.

Skyrim was a great game. It had a huge open and varied world that was especially impressive back in 2010. But for me, Witcher 3 is a vast improvement for several reasons.

First and foremost, I play RPGs for the roleplay aspect, and Witcher 3 does a far better job of this than Skyrim. Geralt, along with most of the major NPCs, are well written and fleshed out characters with their own personalities and motivations. By comparison, most of the characters in Skyrim are pretty shallow. The quests in Witcher 3 are also more fleshed out. I had a real sense of purpose on the main and side quests with the Witcher 3, and felt motivated to complete them, whether it was find a missing friend, lift a curse, reunite lost loved ones, or remove a lingering threat from a village. Some of Skyrim's quests were excellent, but many of them were simply fetch quests that lacked much in the way of story driven motivation.

Combat in Witcher 3 may not be as precise as, say, Dark Souls, or as fluid as the Batman games, but it is a huge improvement over Skyrim's extremely simplistic system. Fights can be approached in multiple ways, and on higher difficulties careful preparation and even research is needed to take down bigger threats. Fights against legendary mythical creatures feel momentous - you really get the impression that only a Witcher, with his sword, alchemy, research and sign skills, is capable of taking down the contract monsters. Compare this to the dragons in Skyrim, which while initially impressive quickly become repetitive with little to differentiate them from one another.

As others have already pointed out, one big flaw of Skyrim (and many other rpgs) is that the enemies scale with you, which detracts from the sense of progression, and arguably punishes you from investing in non-combat centric builds. The Witcher 3 has one of the best solutions to level scaling I've ever seen in the game. Enemies don't scale with you, but the tougher enemies and quests are clearly labeled as such, preventing you from accidently stumbling into scenarios that you are not yet equipped to deal with. You are, however, free to take on challenges way above your level if you so desire, which I think is great and adds to the sense of freedom.

The overall main plot in the Witcher is SO much better than Skyrim's, in terms of length, depth, and detail. To me that point is not even subjective. Skyrim's main plot was fine, but was overall too short and not especially memorable.

The Witcher 3 also captures meaningful player choice much more effectively than Skyrim (and most other RPGs). As others have said, many quest lines have multiple outcomes, some of which are outright 'quest failed'. Choices made early in the game can have unexpected impacts later in a story, and even skipping a side quest entirely can have important ramifications. Skyrim has almost no examples of this.

Is the Witcher 3 'bigger' than Skyrim? I think it is hard to tell, but I'df argue that the map has much more content and variety built into it. As I travelled around the world, I was constantly running into small events, some of which would lead to side quests. After a while Skyrim's open world felt relatively empty by comparison.

The Witcher 3 is not without it's flaws of course. Crafting is overly cumbersome (as it is in most games). The font is unnecessarily small. Too many female NPCs are dressed like male fantasies, flashing too much cleavage even when it is completely out of character. But overall I think it is an incredibly well polished title that does a fantastic job of balancing open exploration, a detailed and lengthy story, meaningful side quests, monster hunting, and a reasonably interesting combat system. I had a lot of fun with DA:I last year, but for my money Witcher 3 is the best RPG of this gen s far, and is shaping up to be one of the best games of all time.