#the witcher short story “a small sacrifice” also has a good example

[veiledinviolet]

one of my favorite interactions in fiction is one character going to another "let me tell you what your problem is because you're too much of a little bitch to acknowledge your own desires/insecurities/etc."

bonus points if the person doing this is just as bad

[ranger-report]

Review: THE WITCHER (2007)

With the recent popularity of The Witcher across mass media thanks to the Netflix series starring Henry Cavill and his arms, I finally began what I consider an epic quest to play through all three of the Witcher games and their DLC. This is, by no means, a small task, but you know I might as well sacrifice myself in the name of entertainment. So I began to play The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a PC game released in 2007 based on the books of the same name written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Now that I’ve beaten it I have quite a few things to say about it. But, first thing’s first, and that is easily the most obvious aspect of this game:

It has not aged well. Not at all.

To begin with, the graphics of the game are very 2007. A product of seventh generation graphical technology to be sure, it doesn’t help that it’s running on BioWare’s Aurora engine, which was notoriously difficult to use outside BioWare’s own house. There’s all kinds of graphical glitches, people pass through objects, character models and textures are fuzzy and sometimes plasticine, facial animations are sometimes downright frightening. There’s also the fact that the game reuses the same character model for multiple characters, both important and unimportant, leading me to confusion sometimes as I swore I just saw that goddamn priest I just killed wandering around the city. Except now there’s two of him. And all the merchants look the same, too! This being the enhanced edition there’s a number of upgrades and clarity that’s been added in to the experience, but it’s still dated for better or worse. What has aged well is the use of impressionistic paintings for the purpose of certain cutscenes, adding an extra dose of epic quality to some of the goings-ons. This also includes more “intimate endeavors” Geralt can engage in. Long story short, there’s a lot of women in this game who are willing to throw themselves at Geralt, and if you play the cards right you can get down to business pretty quickly. Sometimes too quickly; one time I brought a woman a loaf of bread and she had sex with Geralt. It was confusing and out of left field. But each encounter comes with a brief piece of tasteful nude artwork of the lady in question as blurred models bump and grind in the background. And, to be completely honest, the artwork is really well done. Although it is very jarring to play a game where sex workers are clearly labeled “whores” and “hookers,” most of the women have a good amount of agency in the proceedings, particularly the two primary romance options, Triss and Shani. Geralt can actually romance these two women to the point of committed relationship, which is refreshing to see that sex is not just a reward for “romancing” a character in a game, but something the characters enjoy, while the romance comes from genuinely caring about someone.

Despite the graphical despondency, main characters fare slightly better, as anyone who needs to be easily recognizable is, and are crafted with much more detail and fine tuning than regular NPCs. While this is fine, sometimes finding these characters is a chore and a half. The Witcher has a day/night cycle, and characters follow this, but when my map is telling me I need to be in one place to meet up with someone, I can’t count that they will actually be there depending on the time of day. And I can’t artificially move the time of day forward unless I have a campfire to meditate at. Meditation is an interesting mechanic, btw, as it basically acts as Geralt “sleeping” and also functions as your chance to level up and distribute talents. On paper, I’m okay with that. In reality, campfires and places to sleep are few and far between, unless you’re close to an inn or someone who doesn’t mind you crashing at their place. And oftentimes you’re running back and forth in linear paths across deceptively open areas, back and forth and back and forth in what can only best be described as tedium when you’ll approach the quest marker on your map, only to find no one there, and need to hoof it back to a fireplace to change the time again. This can also lead to extra consternation if the game crashes, which it did a handful of times during my fifty hours of gametime. Save often.

And, finally, there’s the combat. For better or worse, it’s an exercise in clicking on people to attack them, then clicking again at the right time when your icon changes in order to string together combos. That’s fine. Combat is also divided into three styles between two swords: strong, fast, and group style, with steel blade and silver blade. Strong and fast styles speak for themselves; group style is for when you’re surrounded and need to attack everyone around you. Steel blade is for humans, silver blade for monsters. Sounds simple right? It is -- too simple. Clicking on people is as easy as that, with little interaction otherwise. Sure, you have to figure out which style to use on which enemies, and you can couple in Signs (magic spells) to make your life easier, but repeatedly clicking on people to whack away is bland at best, frustrating at worst. Later on when you can level up your sword styles to include more powerful/deadly moves it becomes more challenging, but even then it remains a strange exercise in an odd hybrid of real time/tactical combat.  Finding oneself surrounded can lead to death quickly, so if you’re not paying attention, you can go from overpowered madman to witcher meat in seconds. Literally seconds: enemies I would have no problem with one-on-one, or even two-on-one, suddenly escalate to an unstoppable force the moment that three or more come in for an attack. The game has a way of forcing Geralt into combat situations without warning as well, making it easy to be thoroughly unprepared for a deadly gangbang around a corner and a cutscene. The game also doesn’t have much of an autosave system, meaning that if you haven’t been hitting that quicksave button very often, there’s a deep chance you could get your ass handed to you and reload a ways back from where you were. Easily the biggest frustration for me in terms of playing the game. Enemies will stack status effects to clobber you; Geralt will attack and get hit; sometimes you can stagger enemies and one-hit kill them, but enemies can still attack while Geralt goes through the slow kill animation. I don’t know how many times I cursed the game in anguish as I was forced to reload yet again after a fourth monster swept in out of nowhere, or the one monster I was fighting decided to get in a Stun attack, then proceed to own my ass. Pausing the game at any time using the space bar can help to get bearings, but you can’t execute commands while paused. Saving in combat isn’t allowed either, so if a big fight starts and you realize you haven’t saved in a while, you’re screwed. Couple this frustration with the intensely boring act of clicking on monsters over and over again to fight them, and here we have the biggest weakness of the whole product.

That being said -- is the game worth playing in 2020? Despite being 13 years of age and regarded as the least accessible game in the franchise, what it brings to the table is a surprisingly effective storyline that involves subject matter which is shockingly relevant. Racial tension. Class war. Plague. Quarantine. Riots. Gray morals. Strange creatures. Frustration. Difficulty spikes. Blurred lines between human and monster. If that sounds hauntingly familiar, it’s probably because that sums up the first half of the year 2020. To say that I was expecting a 13-year-old game to reflect the state of current events would be a massive lie; in fact, at the outset of the game, I was struggling to maintain interest at all. However, as time goes, the story and the choices made are what end up being the game’s biggest strength, and ultimately its salvation.

The story opens up simply enough: Geralt of Rivia, our titular witcher, has been found in a near-death state and nursed back to health by his fellow witchers and former lover, the sorceress Triss Merigold. Coming back from the dead has cost him his memories, however, and the amnesiac Geralt is quickly plunged into conflict as a group of mercenaries called Salamandra attack the witchers’s base to steal the secrets of their mutations. Swords clash, magic flies back and forth, and Geralt is tasked with giving chase in order to retrieve the mutagenic formulae so they can’t be used for harm.

A great conceit in this is that Geralt having no memory of his past allows anyone unfamiliar with the world to gently ease in and learn about the world as he does. The game is set after the events of the books, so this gives an added bonus to readers already knowledgable of events. And as the player learns more about Geralt and his world, a variety of choices come into play. Most RPGs have this option to allow player freedom in telling a story, but unforseen consequences follow every decision; whether they come into play immediately or further down the road remains to be seen, but there’s a ripple effect that goes above and beyond the usual Choose Your Own Adventure details which essentially craft your character into a good guy or a bad guy. What’s brilliant about this is that the game never hints at this; it isn’t until the game breaks away into a cutscene with monologue does Geralt realize how his choices crafted this specific moment. For example, in the Salamandra attack, Geralt can choose to fight off a horrific monster or help Triss defend the witcher laboratory. Depending on that choice, some characters may live or die, and the game will let you know that when it wants to....usually to hammer home a point.

What works to this being the strength of the game even further is the deep narrative, which is often times complex to the point of frustration. But the story develops at a natural pace, and never presents any choice as being right or wrong, black or white, good or bad. The main gist is that the human city of Vizima is under quarantine, fighting off a vicious plague, but also defending itself from the rise of nonhuman freedom fighters comprised of elves and dwarves. The city is divided on this, particularly in class division, with any nonhuman residents living in the slum quarter, while the affluent humans live exclusively in the market quarter. There are humans in the slums too, make no mistake, but it’s very apparent who is allowed to live where. However, the game makes no stance on this whatsoever; Geralt is presented with a series of choices based on the information at hand, and as the game goes on, comes closer and closer to choosing a side between the freedom fighters or the humans as tensions comes to a head with violence. Every action has a consequence, positive or negative, but also depending on who the consequences affect. Questions of moral arise; what truly defines a monster? Is it appearance, or is it action? It’s difficult to really spell it out further without diving into spoilers, as the story should be experienced first hand without any warning. That being said, it’s refreshing to play through a game in which the character is clearly defined as being the hero, but then forces the player to ask if their actions are truly heroic or actually damaging in the quest to destroy the greater evil.

In closing, The Witcher is a mixed bag. Narratively, it’s a stellar effort that swings for the fences and sticks the landing. From a gameplay perspective, it’s a dated game that’s sometimes a chore to play through, even to the point of dire frustration. But it’s one that I can cautiously recommend. While it certainly took me six or so hours to finally believe that I had the hang of it -- I didn’t -- struggling through the first quarter of the game can yield beautiful results, especially once it rolls into the final, jaw-dropping conclusion. What I will say is that it really beats you over the head with your choices, even the ones you didn’t know you were making, and holds up a mirror to ask if your decisions were really for the greater good or not. Outstanding work in that regard. I’m looking forward to playing The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings now that I’ve beaten this, and someday I’ll even come back to see the paths I could have taken. Just with tempered expectations this time around.

Final score: 7/10