The Witcher

"People like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. They feel better then. They find it easier to live."

Source // MobyGames

Geralt of Rivia hasn't been around the video game scene for too long, but over the course of just a few games that lean heavily on the more mature side of fantasy monster hunting that the source material provides, he has become one of the all-time greats.

Originally starring in a series of novels and short stories, it'd be a decade before he was picked up by a developer who wasn't really a developer, but a publisher of foreign games in their native Poland, CD Projekt Red. You might know their development history. The Witcher, The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077. And like Valve with Steam, they're the brains behind GOG as well.

They've done well for themselves since their first game, an action-RPG in the world of the supernatural and the fantastical, of monsters both inhumane and mere man and woman. The Witcher is here to collect the bounty and move on, and he's damn good at it.

Fun Times

The Witcher opens with a short story of the type of work Geralt gets up to. The monarchs daughter has been cursed, and Geralt is the kind of guy with the skills and the knowledge to lift that curse, even if it means taking a few hits in the process. Through the use of potions, the strategy of live bait, and multiple methods of attack, from sword and steel to magic, he'll get the job done and be on his way to the next town, and the next monster.

I played this game in 2017, two years after The Witcher 3 had released. By the point in time, the trilogy was hailed as one of the best of all time, each new entry blowing the previous ones away. I was, therefore, hearing an awful lot of talk about The Witcher 3, and, not really knowing much about it or its origins, but knowing that the first game was on this 1001 list, I started from the beginning.

To give you some sense of my accomplishments, let's look at my playtime: The Witcher, just over 6 hours. The Witcher 2, completed the main story after 17 hours. The Witcher 3, did seemingly everything I came across over a 92-hour span. That game was good. Really rather good. The Witcher... Well, it had to start somewhere.

Frustrations

I loaded up my save in the Temple Quarter, one of the first main sort of towns you come across in The Witcher. I'd fought in castles and roamed through swamps and little fishing villages during my first 6 hours, but it was here where the game got a little too overwhelming, I guess - right around the time when the 1001 write up says it actually starts to begin after all the tutorial stuff has been dealt with. Ah.

Loading into town, in the middle of a rainy night, I wondered just what I gave up doing all those years ago before moving into The Witcher 2. If memory serves I was trying to hunt down a load of collectables for some reason or other and had only a couple left to go buy no idea where to find them. I'd rather not restart with a treasure hunt if I can help it, and bringing up the journal allows us to have a look at what else is on our checklist.

Ooh boy. Everything, it seems. Now I remember why I felt overwhelmed. As interfaces go, The Witcher's does indeed display the information, but a snot green and blood red theming doesn't exactly strike you as welcoming and friendly. Still, I was able to fine-tune my quest list into the main storyline and/or chapter-specific quest entries, so I landed on a handful that I might be able to complete, including one that simply tasked me with killing someone.

As luck would have it, I last saved right outside this guys house. The door is locked and flanked by bouncers, and I should probably have put two and two together to come to the conclusion that I must have given up after a failed attempt at this very quest three years ago. Let's see how we get on.

Drawing my sword and clicking on a target starts a fight, that much is obvious, and WASD moves Geralt around the place, but often in ways that leave him horribly exposed. Is there a lock on I'm missing? Camera controls require me to move the mouse to the screen edges to rotate the view... I remember The Witcher being a funny game in the way it does combat, but what's going on here? Where's the attack button?

As thug after thug swarmed into the fight, I was able to learn where the attack button was, and indeed, how the fight system even worked. It's just occurred to me that the combat system in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is similar in its weirdness until it clicks, and there and then, more or less, The Witcher's combat clicked in my head and we were away again.

You have three stances or styles, Strong, Fast, and Group. Sword at the ready, you pick a stance and then click on an enemy to start Geralt swinging, where animations will kick in and numbers will pop up if the random number generator behind the scenes deems you successful. You can't click and click and click, however, because your animation isn't tied to an attack button. Instead, at specific points in your animation, your cursor will be engulfed in flame, and a second click while it is will see Geralt chain together a second attack, and potentially a third if you hit the timing window again, and again, until your opponent falls to the floor.

In the different styles, these windows will differ of course, as will the amount of damage you do, how open you are to be hit, and how many other combatants will be caught at the same time. I don't know how on Earth it works on the defensive side, but I did see 'Parry' pop up a few times. Was that that I successfully parried, or was that my cue to do so?

Thugs dealt with, I nicked their keys and had a look at my inventory to find a healing item. I didn't appear to have anything obvious, so I had to root around the menus to find out just what it was I needed to regain my health quickly.

When I say I was overwhelmed way back when, it wasn't just the quests and the combat system, but these menus that did it as well. I couldn't tell you what is going on here at all. Character progression of some sort, but what I was putting points into and where those points had come from is anyone's guess. I remember not using signs very much in my 5 hours of play previously, mostly because it was a struggle to understand what was going on with them on top of the struggle to get the combat system down.

Signs are magic, essentially. A burst of flame, a gust of wind, useful abilities to use in combat to not be on the back foot. Understanding them makes your life easier, but here I was, learning that to increase my vitality, I'd have to meditate.

Ah, yes, that's right. To do anything in The Witcher, especially concocting potions, if memory serves, you've got to meditate, sleeping your troubles away, advancing time until the point where your potion brews or your health is topped up or whatever else goes on during this idle time.

It was yet another convoluted system that I wanted none of, I do remember that. I generally hate crafting in games, especially if it's potions with obscure names, whose ingredients are plants and powders and bits of defeated enemies. I understand it adds some sense of realism to the game, some idea of preparation being key to good fortune, but I really don't want menus getting in the way of what is already an immersive RPG.

I just want a health potion, but I don't have one. Let's home this Rat fellow or whatever his name was is a pushover.

He's asleep inside this overly large interior, so we wake him up and have a chat. The Witcher as a series is known for its writing and storytelling, with so much going on during conversation that you could spend tens of hours just chatting to people. In some instances, you can use your charms, natural or not, to convince people to take one course of action over another.

Sadly, I've absolutely no idea what's going on, who these people are, what their relation to each other is, and I don't have the opportunity to peacefully kill this guy through a dialogue option.

I do manage to make some progress with various quests, however, including actually completing one, but I'm in another fight with an awful lot of thugs again, and let me tell you this: It was far too late before I realized how useful the Group stance was in situations like this.

You and me both, P2. How does she do it? She was in the other room.

Source // MobyGames

Final Word

A lot of this post has been under the frustrations heading, not because The Witcher is a bad game, but because it's not the kind of game you're expecting, and is more of a faff than it has to be because of it. It's not an easy game to get into, especially if you're used to simpler action-RPG mechanics or console gaming, where it requires some effort to really dive into what it is offering to get the most out of it.

When you do, though... Wow, is The Witcher unlike a great many of its fantasy RPG competitors. Dungeons & Dragons, as a system, allows you to fight anything and everything, with storytelling taking so many different forms that every campaign you play through can stand alone and be something amazing. But they all seem like an episode of Scooby-Doo when compared to The Witcher.

I've no idea who or what the big bad villain of The Witcher is. It might be a silly monster more befitting of a Saturday morning cartoon, but it's probably something far more mundane and down to earth. It may even be a bloke who sincerely thought he was doing the right thing or someone with a backstory just as horrible as the one they're dishing out to the locals.

At the same time, these very human stories are mixed with supernatural elements from Eastern European folklore that many players simply won't recognize, and will lead to all kinds of twists and takes on monsters that might otherwise be familiar. The Witcher, perhaps because of its Polish origins, tells a very different tale despite using all the tropes you expect from a fantasy action-RPG.

It's a little difficult to actually assess how well The Witcher plays when you've only played 6 hours of it, and your views are swayed by the incredible 90-hour journey The Witcher 3 took you on, but I know that even through the quibbles and the quirks, there was something here that demanded a bit of attention. The first game from CD Projekt Red, as ambitious as this? As different as this? As compelling as this?

The Witcher has its faults that not even the Enhanced Edition I was playing addressed, but I must admit to many of those faults probably being more prevalent because of the game being so alien to me. If I could get a handle on the controls, I'd love to dive into another huge story spanning multiple hours, full of weird monster-hunting shenanigans, but I don't know if I've got what it takes.

I think The Witcher might be one for die-hard fans more than anyone else. The Witcher 2 might be the better starting point for those of us looking for more a more modern way of controlling a hero, but even that had to stand on the shoulders of this. Definitely one to check out in some form.

Fun Facts

The writer of the novel series, Andrzej Sapkowski, was offered either royalties or an upfront payment of just under $10k for the rights for a video game adaptation. He took the money there and then. The Witcher 3 would rake in profits of $63m in the first half of 2015 alone. Can't win 'em all.

The Witcher, developed by CD Projekt Red, first released in 2007.

Version played: The Witcher Enhanced Edition, PC, 2008.