Hi - I'm Hamish Black, and welcome to Writing on Games.
It took me over a year, but I finally completed The Witcher 3.
Don't get me wrong, I beat the main story back when it came out, and it won my game
of the year last year, but I wanted to wait on doing a full video regarding this game
until all the DLC had been released.
I think that was a wise choice - not only do the expansions for this game raise the
bar significantly for any companies planning DLC releases for other games, but in almost
every way they take what made the main game so great and expand on that in some pretty
fascinating ways.
The main thing that has remained constant, however, is the way the game manages scale.
It's a game about the little things, as much as (if not more so) it's about the bigger
picture, and this is brought about by writing and characterisation, but also things like
the way the game handles player choice, world design and where Geralt is placed in the world.
This is a game where the decision whether to press ‘1’ to tip a messenger boy for
delivering a letter or ‘2’ to send him home manages to carry more moral weight than
the contract Geralt is in the area for.
The game somehow manages to straddle the line between a massive, rollicking RPG adventure
whilst also remaining one of the most grounded, human stories in the AAA gaming space.
In this episode of Writing on Games, I want to ask why this is, as well as perhaps looking
more generally at what makes this game so special.
Also, just as a heads up, this analysis will feature footage and scenarios from Blood and
Wine (mainly because it’s so fresh on my mind), as well as Hearts of Stone and the
main game, but I’ll try to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum – I know people are
sensitive about that stuff so I just thought I’d mention it.
Now if we’re going to talk about how The Witcher 3 manages its scale, this all begins
with the character of Geralt – put quite simply, he is not like characters in other
RPGs, or other games in general.
For a little background, I feel that one of the biggest problems with RPGs is the way
in which they inevitably elevate the player character to a position of absolute empowerment.
There is often a cataclysmic event threatening the world, and you are the ‘chosen one’
that the ‘prophecy foretold’ would come and do a big sword fight at it in order to
get it behaving properly again.
For examples of this, one need only look to a game like Skyrim – in which the player
takes on the role of the ‘hero known as the Dragonborn, a warrior with the body of
a mortal and soul of a dragon, whose destiny it is to destroy the evil dragon Alduin.’
Note, it’s your ‘destiny’ to fulfil this prophecy, not your ‘choice’ as a
player.
Whilst the Elder Scrolls games do allow you the scope to largely play the game how you
would like (that is to say, you can basically never touch the main quest and still experience
the game), but ultimately this setup exists to point out to the player: ‘body of a mortal
– check!
Soul of a dragon?
Ah, you can just pretend that you’re the hero.’
The motivations for the player character existing in this world fall outwith normal, human understanding
– have you ever faced a dragon?
No?
Well just imagine the urgency with which you might do if you were in that situation.
Compared to the character of Geralt, however, it’s a different story.
Sure, in The Witcher 3 there exist larger conflicts, including that of the Wild Hunt
closing in and the larger Northern Wars – however, in the former’s case there is always a personal
stake for Geralt, and in the latter, they aren’t the focus of proceedings.
In fact, their presence is so rarely felt in the world – if this were a more typical
fantasy RPG, Geralt would be duty-bound to fight and stop the conflict singlehandedly
for no reason than he was the player character and the player character must be at the center
of the action at all times.
However, in The Witcher 3 this isn’t the case, and so the conflict becomes a framing
device more than anything else.
It contextualises the general malaise of the world, hanging over it like a tarpaulin, but
never making its presence felt in any meaningful way.
This brings the focus of the game down to the citizens and how these events are affecting
their lives.
These people aren’t concerned about the outcome of the war – they’re concerned
about poverty, about how their relationships with others are strained, how they can’t
trust those around them anymore.
These are all consequences of war, but somewhat indirect consequences.
The wars are brought down to a personal level, and so the player is more easily invested
in the problems that arise from the conflict.
The beauty of this is that Geralt himself is not written to be above these concerns.
Rarely, if ever, does he feel a compulsion to save the world out of any sense of duty.
In fact, whenever he finds himself in the proximity of the more prominent conflicts
of the world, it is never without a personal stake – he goes to Emperor Emhyr after he
comes across his love Yennefer, only agrees to help find Ciri because of his close personal
ties to her, and only agrees to help the Bloody Baron because of his information on Ciri.
That, and he also has a financial stake in all his quests – he is a witcher after all,
and this is his job.
Far from being heralded as a hero like the player character might be in other games,
it is heavily suggested that witchers are treated with a great deal of trepadation and
skepticism.
Think about it – Geralt is financially benefitting from the numerous hardships and uncertainties
these conflicts bring to the world.
He’s hardly the squeaky-clean ‘chosen one’.
Rather, he’s just a mercenary with the right skills for the job, and a need for money.
Hell, his attitude to the whole thing can be summed up in one curt phrase, used whenever
he’s asked for help – ‘don’t work for free, you know.’
Ultimately, Geralt wants to make sure those around him are OK, and that he gets paid.
These are incredibly human, incredibly relatable emotions that are rarely afforded to players
in other games, due to said games’ need to place the player in the position of power,
or the only one who can save the world.
As I’ve stated countless times on this channel before, the best art is the art that makes
the person experiencing it feel small – like there is an entire world within it that would
exist whether the person was experiencing it or not.
In games this is slightly easier to quantify, because you are literally dealing with created
worlds.
That said, The Witcher absolutely nails this – there is a constant sense of dread looming
over the world and a feeling that often you are merely passing through each individual’s
existence in that moment of interaction.
Like, they had problems before you arrived and they’ll maybe have one less problem
when you leave.
It also manages to balance this, however, with the fact that the world is just so damn
pretty to look at and explore (even if exploration usually just comes down to following a dotted
line on a map).
Especially in the latest DLC, which often just looks like a collection of amazing watercolour
paintings rather than a game world.
Speaking of the latest DLC, I feel like it highlights a lot of what I’m saying here.
Without spoiling anything, Geralt accepts a contract that takes him to the gorgeous
world of Toussaint.
Here the human motivations of Geralt are given something on the other extreme to really clash
against in a way that is less subtle than it might be in the main quest.
This is a world in which pomp and circumstance seem to trump all and Geralt is merely there
for a job.
This is a world in which, for example, men will agree to cut down vile beasts to win
the hands of fair maidens, even if this means handicapping a blind beast by attaching bells
to its tail to distract it to ensure an easy kill.
Geralt feels particularly (and deliberately) out of place in situations like this, and
the dialogue choices the player has take on a new level of nuance as a result – does
Geralt state his discomfort with this at all?
Does he comment on the cruelty, or on the fact that these supposed soldiers can’t
fight without a severe handicap?
Situations like this consistently appear to Geralt, and highlight to the player the absurdity
of the futility of ceremony in this world, when situations are often more nuanced than
this.
This brings us back to where we started – the choice the DLC presents the player, of whether
to tip the messenger boy or not.
This is a simple yes or no choice, treated with very little significance mechanically
or narratively by the game, but it really stopped me in my tracks.
I realised that I was no longer even thinking in those video game terms – I was thinking
about how I had constructed my own version of Geralt through these small, seemingly meaningless
choices, and how that version of Geralt would react to this situation.
The sociological implications of poverty, the fact that mere minutes before I had been
at a royal party partaking in a dumb game, the fact that this kid probably has to grow
up fairly quickly in a world indirectly ravaged by conflict and inequality, all these things
came into my head as I made this decision.
Ultimately, I concluded that whilst Geralt was distant and emotionally numbed, he wasn’t
cruel.
This kid went to a lot of effort to find me, and I couldn’t send him home penniless.
All this from a seemingly meaningless dialogue choice that had no impact on the story at
large.
This is what I’m talking about when I say that The Witcher 3’s biggest triumph is
its management of scale.
There are larger things to do with Barthesian ideas regarding ‘the death of the author’
and such when talking about the psychological nature of choices like these, but I covered
a lot of that in my video on Firewatch.
Just think about that for a minute though – The Witcher 3, one of the grandest AAA
action RPGs in recent times, handles player choice in the same way that a comparatively
tiny, experimental indie game like Firewatch did.
It trusts the player to embrace the nuances of morality in the same way that the writers
do.
It trusts that the player will have a greater appreciation for the problems of the individual
denizens of the world, because they aren’t that far off from Geralt’s.
It trusts that the player will treat the larger conflicts with the same disregard that Geralt
does, and even when the player is forced to act within these situations, it trusts that
they will focus on his personal and professional stakes more than anything else.
It trusts the player’s intelligence, and this is simply not seen when a game forces
the player into the role of the one person who can save the world from a cataclysmic
conflict, and assumes that they will feel duty-bound to do so.
Try and think about this next time you play an RPG, and see if any action you take in
that world can come close to having the moral weight that The Witcher places on whether
or not to tip a lowly messenger boy.
And that concludes another episode of Writing on Games (the first after the channel’s
one year anniversary – holy moly!)
– I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.
It felt really good to finally talk about The Witcher in more depth, but obviously this
is just scratching the surface of what this incredible game has to offer.
As such this almost certainly won’t be the last video I do on the game, so if you want
to keep notified of that stuff, subscribing to the channel is your best bet.
As always, thank you so so so much to my Patrons who make this show possible.
You guys have all kept me going through some incredibly tough times and that is absolutely
invaluable to me.
If you enjoy the show and you’d like to consider supporting, please check out the
Patreon link probably plastered all over the screen!
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the dumb podcast I’m now doing with my good friend
Nico (once again made possible by my kind Patrons) on iTunes – I’m really glad so
many of you seem to be enjoying it!
Finally, thank you all so much for subscribing, pledging, commenting, spreading the word,
all of that good stuff for the past year.
Here’s to many more.
And with all that said, I’m Hamish Black and this has been Writing on Games.
I’ll see you next time.