The Witcher

The Witcher is a game that I wish I had played from the outset. I remember listening to the single greatest podcast ever, CGW/GFW Radio, and Jeff Green talked a bit about playing the game, and his impressions instantly made my gamer antennae start to go spastic. A PC RPG that treated the gamer like an...gasp...adult? NO WAY!

Want to know why I shied away from the the Witcher for so long? It's the dumbest fucking reason. It's the same reason that I have such a hard time playing Neverwinter Nights.

You play as a single character. That's it. That's the secret reason I wouldn't play it. I tend to have a MUCH harder time getting into RPGs that feature only a main character. Matter of fact, one of the reasons I'm still a little put off by Jade Empire is that you can only have two characters in the party at a time. For some reason, I gotta have at least three.

Until now. The Witcher has changed much of my perception of what an RPG needs to be. Not only is it a one-character RPG, it's fucking brilliant. It took quite a bit of tweaking to get the control to something manageable, plus I ended up setting it to its native Polish language w/ English subtitles after a while (most of the performances NOW are pretty good, but some of the minor NPCs are terrible in their English-language performance.)

Anyway, it's a fairly different beast from both Bioware RPGs and JRPGs. There is much more choice in the dialogue than in JRPGs, but not nearly as extreme an amount as a standard Bioware RPG. Also, the actual live inputs during combat are sort of like Fable II, but the strategy is much more like Dragon Age (pause, think, tweak, play), and the different stances and weapons and such are more like...hmm...ya know, I'm not sure. This is a really unique experience.

The decision-making in the game is much, much more subtle than in anything else I've played. The decision-making is more akin to real life, in that much of it is reliant on 'going here or going there,' or a simple 'yes or no' in conversation. There are situations where I've accidentally insulted the hell out of characters and they have literally told me to 'fuck off.' The paths you choose in the game seem quite a bit more organic, if fewer, than in other branching RPGs.

Also, this game's main character is pretty well-defined, and a lot of the time you are more steering him than totally controlling him. He'll say shit without any input from you that might surprise you, which can be off-putting, if you are only able to play western RPGs. If you are not a worthless, close-minded fanboy jackass, then you'll come to really enjoy this, as I have. I found it refreshing to have an RPG in which I am tweaking the story, rather than dominating every part of it. I forgot how much I like variety in my RPGs.

This wouldn't be possible if the story weren't really, really interesting, and the world deep as hell. The characters are very fleshed out, with their own personalities and agendas, and act like it, even the main character.

The main dude, Geralt, is very cool. While his story and personality are pretty much set, who he is as a playable character is deeply customizable. How he develops when he levels is entirely up to you. You can allocate XP to different types of combat proficiency, different aspects of combat, magic, alchemy, etc. My dude is very much a fighting alchemist, which is pretty rad. I've made decisions in his leveling that have drastically altered the way that my Geralt interacts with the world around him. If you are smart enough to play this, you'll see.

Interestingly, I keep wanting to refer to Geralt as 'Kaim.' I couldn't figure out why that was, but today, it dawned on me that the two are very, very similar characters. If your taste is not absurdly bad, and you've at least played and loved Lost Odyssey, you'll see what I'm saying when you play the Witcher.

So, why am I going on and on like this?

Well, I've only recently discovered the Witcher, thanks to Tony, and our 'best of' list for the decade is going to be inaccurate because this isn't going to be on it, since neither of us have played through it. I've only played a few hours, but this game, because of its distinct nature, and super-compelling nature, should be on that list.

Granted, there's a lot of shit that should be on that list that's not going to be, like Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright, Indigo Prophecy, Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and many others, but we can only have 10 games, and while Tony's taste in games is mostly correct, he is misguided in several beliefs.

Thank you for your attention. Now please respond with something intelligent. You have until this weekend, when we decide, live on the podcast, what the best games of the decade for all of (American) humanity, to either correct us, or continue your silent torment, playing the wrong damn games.

Word.

-Blaine