During the start of my vacation, I got to do something I’ve been meaning to do for weeks – finish up “The Witcher.”1 I won’t go into a lengthy review – as always, there are plenty on the Internet – but the fact that I devoted over 41 hours to finishing the damn thing probably indicates that I enjoyed it on some level. I did learn a few things from it, which are things I do want to share.
A quick note – since this is an RPG, it’s hard to deconstruct some elements without skirting spoiler territory. I’ll try to keep it as vague as possible, but if you really hate spoilers, just bookmark this and come back after you’ve finished the main story.
Meaningful Choices Add To Replay. The Witcher is, in many ways, the best BioWare game that BioWare never made. It uses the Aurora toolkit as a basis, but even more than that, a lot of the tough, complex decision-making that I know from recent BioWare titles is present in this game. There were a number of times where I had to sit and think about what I wanted to do, either because I was engaged in the story or to decide what content I wanted to see. Plus, the advancement system is designed so that you can’t be awesome at everything – you have to make choices about what kind of character you want to be. So, while I don’t see myself investing another 41 hours into the game anytime soon, I currently plan to keep it on my hard drive, and possibly giving it another go at some point in the future because I want to see how the story evolves and how my play of the game changes when I make different choices.
Game Mechanics Can Conflict With The Story. One of the more controversial aspects of “The Witcher” are the so-called sex cards (link NSFW). Essentially, if you sleep with a female character, you get a racy collecting card of your encounter, which you can look at in your journal. At first I wasn’t nearly as offended by this as other people seemed to be. The main character, as presented, was a sterile mutant monster hunter ostracized from society, which meant that he probably doesn’t exactly have normal relationships with people. When I realized that this was essentially a collecting card mini-game, I was actually on board – this character was probably meant to be a James Bond-style womanizer, one who uses women as temporary comfort before going back out to slay monsters before the local townsfolk got wind of his indiscretion. Granted, it didn’t make my sympathetic to the main character I was playing, but the game was firmly steeped in a very muddled morality – every character has good and bad sides – so while I didn’t empathize with it, I understood it.
But then, at a certain point in the story, the plot evolves to where the main character can fall in love with one of the characters. Sure, there are options to toy with her affections (which seems in line with how I understood the character so far), but more and more I realized this wasn’t a throwaway subplot, but a noteworthy part of the main story. I realized that, while the designers gave me some options on how I could develop it, they still expected me to at least address the concern of falling in love with one character. This is completely at odds with the sexual mini-game. I could point back to the idea of “lack of common human understanding” again, but now it feels like justification. The story and the mechanic are at odds, and so the mechanic stopped being a narrative device to become what others are probably seeing it as – a tawdry attempt to inject boobs into the game.
Rich Characters Bring You Back Again and Again. There are a number of complex characters in the game. The story relies on many of these characters over and over again to drive the story forward. This makes sense – there’s only so much a game studio can invest in creating new characters for a game – but in a lot of games I get sick of looking at the same characters over and over again. However, there are a few characters that are engaging and complex enough that I don’t mind talking to them over and over again. Sadly, this is more noticeable because there are even more characters that don’t engage me on any level, and a lot of character textures that get reused so often over and over that sometimes cities get a little too Stepford Wives for my liking.
Small Characters Can Help As Well. On the flip side, I liked walking through towns. The very small characters would toss out a line of dialogue as I walked by, and it made the city feel alive. Unlike many fantasy RPGs, where every townsperson is completely aware of every legend or rumor that has ever been written (and all of which are, of course, true), many times these characters will complain about the weather (accurately), talk about each other, or mutter about how hot their armor is. Also, if I went to a shop in the evening, the shop owner wouldn’t be there – he’ll likely be at home, sleeping.2
Too Much Choice Can Be Paralyzing, But Mastery Is Satisfying. At first, the choice between two different swords and three styles of wielding each one was paralyzing – I’d often find that the reason why I particular fight was difficult was because I was using the wrong combination. For a while, I was irritated by this, but over time I slowly figured out the logic behind it.3 It felt satisfying to see a character approach, switch to the right sword, and drop massive damage before switching to the next one. I’m starting to feel the same way about D&D 4e – it took me a while to figure out which powers worked best for each situation, but over time I felt really empowered.
Overall, I enjoyed the hell out of it. If any of you have played it, let me know what you think as well in the comments.
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I downloaded the big-whatever edition of the Witcher from Steam when it was ridiculously cheap last week, and I’ve played it a little (I have a lot of games right now, so trying to make my way through them when I have time). I’ve only played the first little bit with the assault on the keep, but that kept me riveted. Very engaging, and very entertaining.
The controls of the game get to me though; they are very clunky, but I assume with enough play I will get used to them. I like switching styles, but I can I see how much micromanaging that could become ludicrous.
All in all, I am looking forward to playing the game after I get some time, and reading your review made me feel better about that. Nicely written, Eddy!
Yeah, I switched to the “advanced” mode pretty quickly — moving around with WASD was far easier than the “click to move here” style (although you still have to pause the game to click on the hotbuttons while in WASD mode). After about 10 hours, it was just something I got used to, but it’s not the most elegant control scheme, I admit.
I’m glad you enjoyed the review. When you finish and write your own review, either backlink it to me or swing by here and drop a link in the comments — I’m curious to see what other people think.
You got it. I think I’ll use it as the meat in a Mass Effect sandwich. I don’t know that I can take 30 hours of Shepherd in one go.
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Regarding your opinion of the sex cards and the womanizing vs. forming a relationship … I think it’s pretty clear from the books that the Witcher is mean to be capable of doing both – he likes casual sex and he falls in love. It’s not like these women he sleeps with are being tricked into anything here, they obviously want a tumble in the hay with him too. It’s also clear from the book and the game that your character has ongoing close personal feelings for at least two women. I don’t see any contradiction between a mechanic you can avoid – the card collecting – intended to make your character closer to the character from the book, and a more detailed plot mechanic based on the closer character relations also seen in the book.
The alternative is a virgin-whore dichotomy in which a man cannot have casual sex with women he likes, and love women he loves. Seems that this view is more old-fashioned than the ideals put forward in the game…
First off, I’ve never read the books — I was only going by my play experience.
Secondly, how willing the women are to sleep with him is secondary. The card collecting mechanic implies a “gotta get them all” mentality, which is at odds with a “you’re the only one for me” mentality. Of course you can ignore one in favor of the other, and even do both (which I did, actually — I got about 2/3rds of the cards and fell in love with Triss), but the idea of collecting cards sends a mixed message — the very mini-game” nature of the mechanic tells a certain story that parts of the actual story is at odds with. If that mixed message is ingrained in the source material, then I’m willing to shift my perspective from “bad mix of mechanics and story” to “a closer look at the mechanics are need to more accurately reflect desired gameplay.”
Again, I really liked the game. This one aspect just struck a very off note for me.
Given my particular kinks, I enjoyed The Witcher most as a sword and sorcery story that leveraged high fantasy material. In a lot of ways, it’s what I aspire to when playing classic D&D.
@Eddy
“Meaningful Choices Add To Replay. The Witcher is, in many ways, the best BioWare game that BioWare never made. It uses the Aurora toolkit as a basis, but even more than that, a lot of the tough, complex decision-making that I know from recent BioWare titles is present in this game.”
Yeah. One of the things I like about The Witcher is that a lot of your decisions have consequences that aren’t entirely predictable, but still make sense when you run into them. For example, there’s nothing that tells you that arming the elven guerillas will get a character you want to talk to shot four hours later, but it feels both surprising and logical.
A lot of choices in computer games are immediate branches, rather than changing content down the line. I much prefer a mix.
Also, very few of the choices in The Witcher are obvious light side/dark side choices. I’m not against moral clarity in games, but I’ve found that the really obvious Bioware choices lead me to think more in terms of my character’s “moral build” than the situation at hand. I prefer the latter.
“But then, at a certain point in the story, the plot evolves to where the main character can fall in love with one of the characters. Sure, there are options to toy with her affections (which seems in line with how I understood the character so far), but more and more I realized this wasn’t a throwaway subplot, but a noteworthy part of the main story.”
This is an argument against mini-games that reinforce elements of the character. At some point, Geralt stops being the alienated, callous guy that he starts the game as. But he still plays that way.
“There are a number of complex characters in the game. The story relies on many of these characters over and over again to drive the story forward.”
The characters who stand out really stand out, yeah. But then the game will put the face of a guy you hated the shit out of and stabbed to death on a random pedestrian. I’m not against reusing assets, but chapter-level villains should probably get unique faces or outfit colors.
(Even Serpent Isle, a game in 20MB, only reused each major NPC sprite once.)
“On the flip side, I liked walking through towns. The very small characters would toss out a line of dialogue as I walked by, and it made the city feel alive.”
My favorite part of The Witcher was the Temple District.
On a mechanical level, I’ll add that I absolutely adored the advancement system. It’s everything I liked about D&D 3/NWN without the fiddly and dubiously relevant bits. Unlike an actual Bioware game, I felt no need for an auto-level option to keep me from crippling myself.
@faustusnotes
“Regarding your opinion of the sex cards and the womanizing vs. forming a relationship … I think it’s pretty clear from the books that the Witcher is mean to be capable of doing both – he likes casual sex and he falls in love.”
As faithful as the game is in many ways, Geralt is a somewhat different character. Game Geralt is substantially more alienated, kinda like the newer James Bond. In the books, I got the impression that Geralt was someone who enthusiastically pursued women for sex and romance. In the game, well, what’s the Meatloaf line?
“She used her body just like a bandage, she used my body just like a wound.”
Yeah. That.
As such, the fact that he gradually redevelops the ability to care is really important. His relationships later in the game are reasonably compelling… and then a trading card pops up. Especially in the scene with Shani after truth or dare, this seemed disruptive and arbitrary.
On the other hand, when Geralt slept with the jerk-witch because he had a few minutes to kill before kicking the mob’s ass? That felt appropriate.
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