I stumbled on the original Witcher for PC when it was discounted and I’d run out of other RPGs to play. I was the only person I knew who was playing it. Within an hour I was stunned by an approach to RPGs that has now been copied (most notably and effectively in Mass Effect) but neither matched nor surpassed. I was also knocked down by just how buggy the game was. CD Projekt Red were hugely responsive to their players and before I left the first settlement in the first act I was out there pressurizing all my friends to play the game. I think I might have used the words “Best. RPG. ever.” It delivered truly meaningful consequences. It didn’t hold your hand. It didn’t allow you to try all the options and it certainly didn’t forgive people who wanted to play douches. The combat was HARD. Hard, hard, hard. Not in the sense of Demon Souls where you are expected to die in order to progress but in the sense that, like in real fights, it’s mistakes as much as skill that gets you killed. In Geralt of Rivia’s experience, getting surrounded by children is still getting surrounded and liable to lead to some serious pain. Once the technical issues were sorted it grew into the most mature, gritty, meaningful story I’d played in a long time and it took delight in spitting on common RPG conventions. You played Geralt of Revia who cannot be changed to look like you. He is a Witcher – there are no other classes. He’s NEVER going to be head of the mage’s guild, the fighter’s guild or the thieve’s guild. For a start, such painfully boring ciphers for player preferences don’t exist. The world is high fantasy but it’s built on real people who need to get food on their tables and goods to market. They’re uneducated, brutish and pretty much normal, whether they’re dwarves, scoia’tael or human. Geralt is not the centre of the universe. Indeed, Geralt is an outsider who’s, by turns, despised, distrusted and needed.
The world is based upon a series of stories by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and good David Gemmell type affairs they are too. The world is dense, complex and interesting enough although sometimes a little too obvious in its attempts to be grey.
So at last we come to the sequel; Assassins of Kings. Again, all that was good about the first game is still there. However, it’s streamlined. Combat is still a rhythmic tactical affair where it’s very easy to die until you take time to actually understand how to fight as a medieval swordsman rather than just hacking away but the hugely interesting complex forms from the first game are gone. It’s both better and worse at the same time. One of the joys in the first was stringing together a series of authentic sword moves – that’s somewhat gone now in favour of an easier combat system – but it’s still unforgiving, make no mistake about that. Trying repeatedly without learning is going to see you dead (and I died a lot in the early part of the game) again and again.
The story continues from the first, as do the adult situations both political and personal. Blackmail, compromise, cynicism and the art of the possible surround Geralt’s adventures amongst kings and sorcerers. Yet, in some sense it feels slightly as if the sense of consequence has been watered down – but this is in a context where it is still far more dangerous to make choices in the Witcher 2 than in any other game on the market. It doesn’t wait for you to ponder and it doesn’t offer you second chances. Offend people and you won’t ever get them to talk to you again. Choose to help others and still more will hate you for it. Nothing is simple, nothing is straight forward and everything is rewarding because of it.
Look, there’s a lot to say about the Witcher but this is what’s important; Sapkowski has created a world so rich in detail that every aspect of the game is resplendent with layers of culture and meaning. The game is constructed as an exercise in asking you to be a moral creature in a complex, subtle and sophisticated setting. It is never a case of saving the cheerleader and saving the world. The story is personal but the world you explore doesn’t care about your character at all. You are playing a definite story even though the world itself is wide open for exploration. That it looks gorgeous helps, so does the excellent technical sense of being a game that works, but in the end The Witcher 2 works because you care about the world, you care about choices that can leave you physically uncomfortable and you care about what happens in the end. I can’t give it higher praise than that.
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