Transcript
Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of The Witcher. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.
My time with The Witcher was plagued by technical difficulties. I have heard it said that The Witcher is a game barely held together, and I agree. It strains its engine so that even 10 years later, I can’t get it to run well on my modern system. And talk about glitches and crashes. The game crashed so much that I was almost ready to give it up at the end of chapter 3. I didn’t though. I looked up ways to mitigate the crashes. I overlooked the glitches. I grew to love everything the game was trying to do even when it was bursting at the seams. The question then, is “what kept me playing”? This video is going to explain that. How it ended up being a wonderful game, that I can easily see myself returning to in the future.
Let’s start off with Geralt. When I first tried playing The Witcher years ago, I played it in English, and I think Geralt’s gruff Christian Bale voice might have been one aspect that stopped me playing. This time around I played the game in Polish with English subtitles. This greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the voice acting. Part of that may be that when you don’t know another language, you don’t know if it’s a bad line delivery, but it helped immerse me in the fantasy world of The Witcher. It definitely made listening to Geralt more tolerable.
So what is a Witcher? A Witcher is a relic of the past. A group of specially trained mutants who are paid to slay monsters. Geralt is an infamous Witcher due to past exploits that he doesn’t remember, as he starts the game suffering from amnesia. I don’t know if I’d say that Geralt’s philosophising of a Witcher’s role in modern society is due to this amnesia or if it is part of his character. His friends like Zoltan Chivey certainly aren’t surprised when you engage them in meaningful dialogue of this nature, but it was one facet of Geralt’s character that endeared me to him.Regardless of the choices the player can make, you can see Geralt wrestling with what he is, what is the right thing to do, and if he has a place in what’s going on.
His friendships and the relationships you strengthen throughout your adventure are another highlight. Because of the amnesia, long time friends are still new to Geralt. The trust might not be there with some of them (Triss for example, due to her motivations as a member of the sorceresses), but I always loved spending time with Zoltan, Shani, and Dandelion, especially that one section of the game where you have a party with them, and just drink and reminisce. The Witcher is famous for its moral choices, but I’d say out of all the decisions in the game, the one that gave me the most pause was whether to hand Alvin over to Shani or Triss in chapter 3.
I spent the game making such decisions on the spur of the moment. Story decisions are made through the dialogue choices, so I’d always ask myself which reply made the most sense to me when it happened. This choice in particular was interesting because I made the decision to give Alvin to Shani before Salamandra got involved. After rescuing the boy, I needed to keep him safe, thinking that Triss would be able to protect him more than Shani. I loved how the game threw a curveball in there as if to say, “Yeah, this decision was tough, but was it really?”. I think it’s because it’s the most personal choice in the game. Siding with the Scoia'tael or the Order of the Flaming Rose is important plot wise, but Alvin, Triss, and Shani all have relationships with Geralt, and this choice can drastically affect those relationships.
Now let’s discuss the world of The Witcher. If you’ve played a fantasy RPG before, or read a fantasy novel, or watched a fantasy movie, you might know where I’m coming from when I say The Witcher is full of classic fantasy tropes, but things are just different enough to make it unique. It’s the enemies that are the best examples of this.Yes there are ghouls, spirits, rabid dogs and wyverns, classic fare, but there are also drowners, kikimores, giant centipedes, and the Vodyanoi. There’s the wild hunt too, the leader of which haunts Geralt for much of the game and ended up being the final boss in my playthrough.
This idea of “same but a little different” applies to a lot of the systems as well. You level up as you gain experience, but your upgrade menu is tiered and uses medallions, of which you only get a set amount. Alchemy may seem tedious for its collection aspect early on, but once you get a taste of the power of Witcher potions and oils, you’ll never want to enter an encounter without at least a Swallow on hand. There’s also the possibility for experimentation, and coming up with concoctions that you may not have found the recipe for yet.
Then there’s the combat. It’s like the world’s simplest rhythm game. Click when the icon changes and you’ll enter into the next stage of the combo. You might find yourself swapping stances, and throwing a few spells into the mix, but overall the repetitive nature can be tedious. What interested me is the difference between playing the game in isometric mode versus playing it over the shoulder. I played the entire game over the shoulder, but during my last attempt I played with the isometric view. Isometric gives you a more strategic overview of the battle. You’re able to position Geralt a lot better but you become more removed from the action. Over the shoulder puts you in the action, increasing use of the dodge to make sure enemies are in front of you. It’s more one at a time, changing to group style if there are others around.
Lastly it’s each individual chapter’s story that kept me going. Yes, walking around the outskirts or through Vizima for the upteenth time can be a chore, and yes, I did get distracted by much of the side content, but each chapter’s main story is highly engaging. Chapter 1 is a morality tale, about why the villagers are being haunted by a malevolent spirit and who is to blame. Chapter 2 is a whodunit that can end in different ways with different characters as allies, enemies or corpses depending on how closely you were paying attention. Chapter 3 is political intrigue with the tough Alvin decision I talked about earlier, plus payoff from earlier in the story. Chapter 4 is similar, dealing with a wedding gone wrong and the influence of an elder God and its worshippers. You also finally run into another Witcher. Then you have the finale.
Princess Adda has the Striga curse again, and the battle between the Scoia'tael and the Order of the Flaming Rose reaches its climax. You confront the one pulling Salamandra’s strings with the game suggesting that when Alvin disappeared at the end of chapter 4, he went back in time and grew up to be the man you just defeated: Jacques de Aldersberg. This places your interactions with Alvin in a new light, and colours not only the actions of Salamandra and the Order of the Flaming Rose, but Geralt as a father figure for the boy. Yet another instance of Geralt choosing actions that have unintended reverberations not only in the future, but in the past as well. You wonder if Geralt caused the events that took place, or if he was simply never able to prevent it no matter what choice the player makes.
And then the final cutscene plays starting another chapter of The Witcher. Yes it seems that it is linked to what Geralt and the player has just gone through, but it’s an inciting incident of its own story. Hopefully sometime soon I’ll get around to playing The Witcher 2. I have heard a lot of criticism towards that game, but then again I put up with consistent crashing, glitches, and a lot of tedium to play through The Witcher, and I don’t regret my time spent with it, faults and all. I’m looking forward to The Witcher 2 having similar qualities.
Thanks for watching.
