Fragrant flourishes and quick tongues, followed by ghostly morals and dodgy paths. The Witcher is a series of questionable events, a world in reverse where the character is made into the tabula rasa while retaining character, semi-transparently shaped by your actions. Being a swarthy individual, setting out to achieve what are virtually selfish goals for curiosity’s reason, the player sits awash in a background discussed all around him, slowly reconstituting occurrences. What is problematic perhaps is the player’s role in this, relating to how the player has a semblance of control, yet such controls are awkward.
Geralt, or the character you play as is clunky at best. Whether this is a discussion about his age or experience is unknown, but his character is clearly stilted. He’s forthright, while others maintain vagaries, he’s aggressive, while others do their dirty work in the background, and he’s clearly a bit off, even in what are seemingly innocuous interactions. Perhaps that’s what is so intriguing, he is a character who stands out like a sore thumb, and Geralt is clearly aware of it–he seems to own this fact and take advantage of his position.
But that’s also what makes negotiating with him as a character uncomfortable. The character has such a will that there is almost something compelling about who he is, and the player may find themselves questioning their actions not because of what they want to see or do, but because of what they think the virtual character Geralt might do. Effectively, there is something disarming about his being forthright without too much presumption of consequence, and the carried consequences are often brandished unexpectedly, forcing a certain submission to the game system.
The character doesn’t come across as snarky and dry as the hero in Gothic 4, but he is clearly motivated and aware of the overused world-in-peril situation. Geralt, as so many other heroes in the third person action-RPG genre, casually accept the fetch quest as some sort of progress unit that builds up a certain undefined something somewhere. Rather than simply providing a satisfying experience such as Demon’s Souls, where the interaction is a meaty fright-fest, the quest, rather than the unique interaction, retains control over progression. Granted, even though there are quests in Demon’s Souls, the major one never clashes with the minor ones, and the minor ones are not overt. A quest feels best as a discovery, rather than a chore.
A need for smooth transitions between narrative elements aside, perhaps games are better at telling stories when stories are made by the player as they interact, rather than the more movie-like quest, which forces designers to develop narrative paths. Thus, a great game may have no large arc, being defined instead by the small stories found in the world. I certainly remember the minutiae in action-RPGs in greater detail than the larger narratives which, while you are a part of them, the designer will not let you touch, for fear of straying from the intended narrative.
Recommended: No