The second reason is more obvious: the Northern Realms is among the most lifelike, sadly beautiful and strange fantasy worlds ever committed to code, and you’ll want to pick it apart. This is for two reasons: while Geralt is a character that you can’t aesthetically customise to any satisfying degree (you can’t deck him out in mage gowns), you can really make him yours thanks to a nuanced and consequential dialogue system.
Truth of the matter is that the best stories you’ll take away from The Witcher 3 are peripheral to the main narrative. Everything in The Witcher 3 feels big: the dungeons are huge and sprawling, the decisions immeasurably consequential, the moral responsibility through the roof. Certain secondary quests appear to affect the main narrative proper, and CD Projekt RED has done an admirable job blurring the lines between primary and secondary. You’ll usually have a handful of main quests in your log, as well as potentially dozens of secondary ones, as well as Witcher contracts (fully fledged, investigation-led monster-slaying jaunts), and each is complemented with cutscenes. To accommodate new players, dialogue options are sprinkled with opportunities to gain background information on plotlines involving historical events. And while newcomers won’t feel punished for skipping the first two games, they’ll miss the rewarding familiarity of old characters and references. You won’t care so much that the world is at stake unless you’ve made the effort to learn a bit about it via sidequests. It’s a fantasy RPG, after all, and while the ending is typically grandiose and heartstopping, the main thread would feel a bit rote without its minor story arcs. Other power struggles come into play later on, and then some other stuff happens, and then… the whole world is at stake and you’re the one to save it. In true sprawling RPG fashion, that’s not all that The WItcher 3 is about: finding Ciri isn’t the crux of the game’s narrative. The official mission only lends a wider context to a more personal endeavour on Geralt’s part, as this was a woman he’d trained from a young age, and accepted as a daughter.Ĭiri is a central character, and she's even playable in certain linear sequences. Matters are complicated by the fact that said Nilfgaardian leader’s daughter, Ciri, is someone dear to Geralt, and that a dark force–the Wild Hunt–is pursuing her. Nothing is going to be OK, but evidence suggests it was never OK to begin with, Nilfgaardians or not. Poverty is everywhere: alcoholism, boredom, listlessness. There’s the weak and the strong, and no grey area in between. The people in The Northern Realms are miserable. It’s not immediately obvious whether they’re a force for good or bad (especially if you’ve never played a Witcher game before), but one thing is certain: nothing is going well. The Nilfgaardians have taken, by force, most of the regions you’ll visit in The Witcher 3. His wit, his ingrained prejudices and allegiances, are just subtle enough that they don’t impinge on my ultimate control of who he is.īefore I get to the finer details, here are the cliffnotes: Geralt is tasked with finding the daughter of Emhyr var Emreis, Nilfgaard’s emperor. He’s a malleable character, and I feel more connected to him than I do the thoroughly customised RPG characters in Skyrim. Geralt has his complexities, but he inherits them from you.
The truth is, he’s only the video game tough guy cliche you make him. It’s not that this fantasy is thoroughly objectionable to me, but it definitely seemed as if Geralt of Rivia was a boring video game tough guy. I’d see his face on marketing material and smirk: he was just another by-the-numbers video game power fantasy. I didn’t like Geralt before I started playing The Witcher games. He’s recalcitrant in the face of royal authority.
He kills monsters, beasts and bandits along the way. Early on, The Witcher 3 has him exploring the Northern Realms, recently taken over by the warmongering Nilfgaardian Empire, for women he’s either a) in love with or b) eager to protect. He’s a gruff, powerful, chiselled, archetypal male video game protagonist.
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