The Witcher 3's, and almost any AAA game's, worst weakness is that they completely spoil themselves by always pointing the player directly to the objective. Back in the day, you could look up a walkthrough of a game if you were stuck; today, such a walkthrough comes built into almost every game, and it can't be turned off. If it can be turned off and you do so, then the game becomes unplayable because the HUD provides all the information necessary to finish the quest, not the game world.
The game never leaves anything for the player to figure out or discover in regard to quests. It's always a matter of religiously following the quest marker and step-by-step list of objectives. Paying attention to the 3D world—or knowing what you're even doing, where you're going, and what the quest is about—is optional, the HUD and minimap being the main components that call for the player's attention. You can be completely clueless as to what you're doing in any quest in the game and finish it.
Fortunately, PoE and Divinity: Original Sin aren't poisoned by this design.
Having to know what you're doing in a game instead of blindly following a dotted line nowadays is considered "archaic" design by many. This, among many other reasons, is why I think it's silly to even compare IE-style games and something like The Witcher 3. They have next to nothing in common from a design standpoint.
Divinity games did those weird no clue quests and it was awful. I played DOS2 and Divinity, both suffers the problem that at one point walkthrough is all you going to get or starve yourself on limited exp, it encourages you to game the bloody system and spend hours on walkthroughs instead of immerse yourself in the game.
Deadfire quest descriptions are nice enough, but still lacking like Aloth's quest, expecting you to literally look for the entire map, DOS2 system is even worse, helpful quest guidelines such as "I found this gem stone, wow." "I discovered a ghost, wow" "I found an abandoned ruin, wow" literally zero directions in most of the quest, it does not test player intelligence, it test player's patience to dig the entire map (not to mention it'd be empty most of the time since you cleared the non-respawn mob), it is frustrating rather than "intelligent". I expected my protag to be smarter than find a stone and not questioning where could it be related, and that is what we are lacking in quest log currently.
Witcher 3 might suffer from quest markers, but game is still doable with exploration aspect since the game is filled with helpful witcher sense clues that let you dig further without trying to find a needle in a haysack.