I Finally know which My Favorite Game is!
By armaan8014 29 Comments
This is a question that's probably been asked a million times before, and a question that hardly ever gets a proper answer : Which is your favorite game?
How can you possibly choose one game over the many hundred games that you've played in your lifetime? Well, I think I have my answer to that question. It is a game that has remained at the top of my list of favorite RPGs since the time I played it and has since refused to move away from the top. And since RPGs are my favorite genre,
it makes sense that my favorite RPG is my favorite game.
Sure, it may not be the best game out there, but it's become the game that I am the most emotionally attached to.
Which game is it you ask? Well, it goes by the name - The Witcher
(note that I'm discussing the Enhanced Edition as that is the one I'd played)
The Witcher is a beautiful game. I cannot think of another game that didn't sacrifice it's story, atmosphere or plot just for the sake of making it more accessible to a wider audience. If games are a form of art, this is mother - effing it.
The story of how I got to play the game in itself is pretty interesting. I got the game after reading a bit about it two years after the release of the original, and just after the released of the EE - in the summer holidays of 2009. I started up the game pretty excited, but was heartbroken when I saw the gameplay.
Hoping to get into some action - heavy sword fighting and magic wielding, I felt cheated when I saw that it was a point and click type RPG. The first thought that came into my mind was - "Why on earth would any IDIOT use this sort of a gameplay?! What sense does it make to click to fight?!"
I soon got over that disappointment and continued over to the second area in the game (The Rural outskirts) Things started getting better, but I felt that the game was too light and happy, and there was not much going on. I eventually got BORED and quit the game. I didn't touch it for about a month.
Luckily, my holidays were still going on, and one fateful day I was just sitting at my PC, staring at the icons of the 3-4 games I had installed at that time. I had no intentions of clicking on The Witcher, but I did.
I thought, "what the hell am I doing? I don't wanna play that game!" But I did, and I was finally hooked. Man! What a day that was. It was raining outside and also inside the game, I was finally getting out of the Outskirts, and I even began enjoying the combat.
The adventures and the ride that I rode after that in the game was something I could never have imagined. The very fact that the game had a slow start, gave it a base that was perfect for a game with this setting.
By the end of the game, the world just turns upside down, and you are left trying to catch your breath. For a week after completing the game, all I could do was try to go over everything that happened in the game
(Might be minor spoilers ahead, but I've avoided writing anything of the sort)
How on earth could all that have happened? The setting and the plot is perfect - It starts out in the outskirts, where all you know is from the rumors that you hear from the locals and a few informed people you come across. You hear about things like the plague, the lockdown of the main city, and you come across very little information of something else - a terrorist type group called the Scoiatel. A large group of Elves and Dwarves united against the humans to fight against the injustices shown to their people.
Who on EARTH has EVER thought of making ELVES and DWARVES in such a MOTHER EFFING new way!? This conflict between the humans and the Scoiatel slowly develops into one of the best and most mind blowing parts of the plot. And sets up the setting for the most difficult decisions that you'll have to make in the game.
Which brings me to my next favorite part of the game: CHOICES. Let me start by saying - This game has the most difficult choices to be made in the HISTORY of games (at least IMO)
Unlike other games, which provide a good, a neutral, and a bad choice, this game provides you three choices which are:
1. Fucked up
2. Fucked up
3. Fucked up
The choice that you are gonna make WILL be morally fucked up in whichever way you look at it, it's just your choice in which way you prefer to screw yourself or others in.
The choices are usually in the form of whether you want to support the humans, Scoiatel, or be neutral as a witcher should be. The best part is that you can support any side till about the end, and then switch over to any other side right in the last level. And my friend, if you're involved heavily in the game, decision making takes TIME.
There was a point in the game in which I had to finally choose between the two females I had been romancing, and give her the orphan child, Alvin, who is an extremely powerful kid.
What to do I think about? What's best for the kid? Who do I love more? Who loves me more? Think about the female who i'll choose? And the one I'd reject? What's best for the rest of the world? And let me tell you, the answers to each of these questions WILL have a BIG impact on the rest of the game. And you know what? It took me THREE HOURS to make that decision. Went over forum topics, researched, and then went with one girl, then finally reloaded, and went with the other one.
And I was satisfied. I had sacrificed my happiness for what was best for the child. Also, she was not that bad, she looked like a shady character, but Geralt and her actually had history together. She did love him, and he loved her back. It wasn't fair to judge her badly just because she had a strong personality.
Now tell me, which game has made you think in this way and in such detail? This is the first one for me, especially because the choices you make DO com back to you.
And in the most spectacular and memorable ways. Which is my next favorite part of the game - consequences. And how they hit you after you've played a good many hours of the game and have completely forgotten about it. And then suddenly a cutscene pops up, Geralt narrates his feelings about the decision, and how it has come back to affect his present, and you're left staring at the screen, with you mouth slightly open, and all you can say is - fuuuuck..!
Like in ACT IV, something you did in ACT I comes back and hits you, and it's obviously too late to change anything at this point. Luckily, I was happy with my decision, and was one of the best things that i'd ever seen :
or video: (For some reason I cant embed them. Please follow the link)
Saw the vid? Hoo boy, that's what I' talking about!!
Here's another one about the girl that I chose. Not sure if this is what had come for me, but I think it is the same one
Also, this game obviously loves sex. It loves sex so bad that it almost distracted me from the fun of the game itself. It almost felt like a mission to go and do every woman in the land whenever I got the time. And the sex cards aren't anything to laugh at:
[ MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. ONLY FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE COMPLETED THE GAME]
Now the ending. WOW. What an end!
You come back from that isolated island, to which you were hurriedly sent to avoid the political tensions that were about to break. That too at a point when you are so close to the end. Anyways, you're sent to that island, dealing with very different, and in comparison, much smaller problems. Suddenly, you are forced to come back to Vizima, and the sight you are met with blows you away.
All that you had worked for, all the people you had tried to protect, laid to waste. And you realize [SPOILER!!] that the Order of the Flaming Rose (humans) are not just fanatics, but are using means of terror as well. Until that point, I had stuck with the humans all thanks to Seigfreid (Whose a GREATLY made character btw) but when my dwarf friend (Zoltan) told me something like " When the order started killing innocent women and children" I was like WHHHAAT!??
vid: (skip to 6:20 )
And I knew what I had to do.
I reloaded a ten minute earlier game. Chose the path of NEUTRALITY, and even though they said that I wouldn't be able to remain neutral forever, I did. And was rewarded with another MIND BLOWING cutscene later on.
Running through burning Vizima, being attacked by BOTH sides, was.. crazy.
But wait! There's MORE! (I'll keep it really short now)
In the end, you go to Vizima in the FUTURE!! It's buried under snow and is a dead place, and you come to know - The grandmaster of the Order of the Flaming Rose, (who you realized is the leader of Salamandra)
Basically, from a wiki site:
From this point, no matter which path Geralt has chosen, he goes on alone. When Geralt finds the Grand Master, it is revealed that everything he has done was to save humanity from the inevitable "Great White Frost", Ithlinne's Prophecy. All his life, he was plagued by visions of what the future of humanity would look like if nothing was done. His solution was simple, he would become their saviour.
To achieve this, he created mutants: Greater Brothers, who had all the strength and skill of a witcher, but without the sentimentality. These mutants would shepherd Believers on an exodus to the south, thereby saving them from the dire predictions. Geralt quite rightly remarks at that point that every megalomaniac speaks of a "higher purpose". And with the help of the friends he has made during the course of the story, Geralt makes it through the Grand Master's vision and ends his plans.
Gerail's final choice involves a demand from the King of the Wild Hunt for the Grand Master's soul.
Choice 1: Deny the King of the Wild Hunt's demand, thus freeing himself from his destiny of leaving only destruction behind him. or
Choice 2: Allow the King of the Wild Hunt's demand, thus avoiding the fight and learning that the Grand Master was known to him by another name.
PLOT TWISTS give me orgasms. This one gave me a big one.
Ok this blog has gone MUCH longer than I'd planned, but what can I do? I'm pouring all my love and passion for my favorite game into a single page!
My head is currently spinning from all the writing, and I spent a lot of time writing all this, so PLEASE try to read as much of the above as possible :)
Random related terms of things I love about the game that I couldn't fit inside the blog:
Taverns, politics, fist fighting, atmosphere, story, the detective part, music, bribery, dark theme, your mother sucks dwarf cock,sex cards etc etc
OH GOD THAT WAS THE LONGEST BLOG I'VE EVER WRITTEN!!
Please make it worth it by trying to read through it, especially if you've completed and loved the game :)
Thank you, have fun, and play some mother - effing Witcher! (EE)