11. The Witcher (2007) – PC
I went through a phase of extreme obsession with The Witcher recently. In a single day, I was playing the excellent RPG computer game, reading The Last Wish (the first of Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series featuring the character to be translated from Polish to English), and watching the admittedly awful Polish television series based on the books, which aired in 2001. Geralt of Rivia is just the coolest character around. He’s a huge badass, but is morally complicated at the same time. He slices up monsters and villains coldly, but has a soft heart for beautiful sorceresses and small children. He lives in a world of gray, where choices force him from comfortable neutrality – the option he consistently preaches – toward a lesser of two evils. It’s a fairy-tale world turned on its head, where the moral of the story is never simple or plain. In the world of The Witcher, if something looks superficially good and innocent, you can be sure that evil is lurking under the skin.
Developers made the courageous decision not to recycle a storyline from the novels, but craft their own plot to exist seamlessly in Sapkowski’s world. It is a great compliment to their creative talent that their story can easily stand against Sapkowski’s own Witcher stories in quality, themes, characters, humor, and moral ambiguity. All the elements of a good Witcher tale are here. The Witcher tells one of the best stories in the history of the videogame medium, and it does so by respecting the source material, while developing its own unique tale in a fully-realized world.
I can’t say enough good things about The Witcher. Its gameplay is fun, the graphics are gorgeous, the landscapes are huge and varied, the game is epically long with many sidequests to keep you busy, and all the voice-acting is superb. Especially if you pick up the Enhanced Edition, which was released a year later and cleaned up many lingering issues like repetitive textures and long loading times: elements that are forgivable considering the obvious ambition behind the project developed by a small Polish company with limited resources over a three year period. It is clear that these folks love their job and are passionate about the material.
The real attraction of the story is having to make very difficult moral decisions. One of the earliest of these involves domestic disturbances in the outskirts of a major metropolitan center. The rural village is home to a witch who, for the right price, will concoct potions or spells for townsfolk who want revenge on a disloyal partner or who want to cause other forms of discrete mischief. As Geralt’s own personal investigations begin to wrap up, it becomes clear that he will be unable to avoid weighing in on the conflict. Upon uncovering the witch’s devious deeds, the townspeople call for nothing less than a burning. The people blindly refuse to acknowledge their own responsibility for the mischief, and want the witch to pay for everybody’s sins. Geralt is faced with a stark dilemma: he can persecute the witch, along with the townsfolk, he can remain neutral, allowing the people to burn the girl alive, or he can intervene and offer the witch protection. The latter, and seemingly less evil choice, angers the townsfolk who amass with pitchforks and torches, refusing to allow Geralt an egress. So, by protecting the young witch, Geralt is placed in a situation where he must defend himself against an entire town, inevitably slaughtering them all before moving on. Well, at least you saved the witch.
After the events in the outskirts, you travel to the main city. Here you become involved in all kinds of political intrigue, social and class conflicts, illegal smuggling, racism, plagues, war, and everything else you can think of. Just when it all begins to be a bit too much, you leave and awake in a small lakeside village called Murky Waters. This is my favorite area of the game. It feels like a typical fairy tale setting, but darkness lurks under the veil of this beautifully quaint village, its golden fields, and sparkling green rivers.
I really love this game and I can’t recommend the experience enough. The Witcher is a masterpiece.
I went through a phase of extreme obsession with The Witcher recently. In a single day, I was playing the excellent RPG computer game, reading The Last Wish (the first of Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series featuring the character to be translated from Polish to English), and watching the admittedly awful Polish television series based on the books, which aired in 2001. Geralt of Rivia is just the coolest character around. He’s a huge badass, but is morally complicated at the same time. He slices up monsters and villains coldly, but has a soft heart for beautiful sorceresses and small children. He lives in a world of gray, where choices force him from comfortable neutrality – the option he consistently preaches – toward a lesser of two evils. It’s a fairy-tale world turned on its head, where the moral of the story is never simple or plain. In the world of The Witcher, if something looks superficially good and innocent, you can be sure that evil is lurking under the skin.
Developers made the courageous decision not to recycle a storyline from the novels, but craft their own plot to exist seamlessly in Sapkowski’s world. It is a great compliment to their creative talent that their story can easily stand against Sapkowski’s own Witcher stories in quality, themes, characters, humor, and moral ambiguity. All the elements of a good Witcher tale are here. The Witcher tells one of the best stories in the history of the videogame medium, and it does so by respecting the source material, while developing its own unique tale in a fully-realized world.
I can’t say enough good things about The Witcher. Its gameplay is fun, the graphics are gorgeous, the landscapes are huge and varied, the game is epically long with many sidequests to keep you busy, and all the voice-acting is superb. Especially if you pick up the Enhanced Edition, which was released a year later and cleaned up many lingering issues like repetitive textures and long loading times: elements that are forgivable considering the obvious ambition behind the project developed by a small Polish company with limited resources over a three year period. It is clear that these folks love their job and are passionate about the material.
The real attraction of the story is having to make very difficult moral decisions. One of the earliest of these involves domestic disturbances in the outskirts of a major metropolitan center. The rural village is home to a witch who, for the right price, will concoct potions or spells for townsfolk who want revenge on a disloyal partner or who want to cause other forms of discrete mischief. As Geralt’s own personal investigations begin to wrap up, it becomes clear that he will be unable to avoid weighing in on the conflict. Upon uncovering the witch’s devious deeds, the townspeople call for nothing less than a burning. The people blindly refuse to acknowledge their own responsibility for the mischief, and want the witch to pay for everybody’s sins. Geralt is faced with a stark dilemma: he can persecute the witch, along with the townsfolk, he can remain neutral, allowing the people to burn the girl alive, or he can intervene and offer the witch protection. The latter, and seemingly less evil choice, angers the townsfolk who amass with pitchforks and torches, refusing to allow Geralt an egress. So, by protecting the young witch, Geralt is placed in a situation where he must defend himself against an entire town, inevitably slaughtering them all before moving on. Well, at least you saved the witch.
After the events in the outskirts, you travel to the main city. Here you become involved in all kinds of political intrigue, social and class conflicts, illegal smuggling, racism, plagues, war, and everything else you can think of. Just when it all begins to be a bit too much, you leave and awake in a small lakeside village called Murky Waters. This is my favorite area of the game. It feels like a typical fairy tale setting, but darkness lurks under the veil of this beautifully quaint village, its golden fields, and sparkling green rivers.
I really love this game and I can’t recommend the experience enough. The Witcher is a masterpiece.
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