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asusirwritesalot-blog · 7 years

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First post- Why The Witcher 3 is my favorite game.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE WITCHER 3. IF YOU HAVEN’T YET PLAYED THIS AMAZING GAME, GO PLAY IT! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

As I rode Roach along the scattered path leading into Velen, the string ensemble in the background immediately created an ominous, uneasy feeling. The murky swamps stared at me from the background of the picture, almost like I was watching a film. The camera was placed at the bottom of the hillside, granting me, the player, a view of my character in his new surroundings. The foreground of the picture contained a huge oak tree with sprawling branches, surrounded by tall, untamed grass. The first thing I noticed was the dark group of bodies that hung from the many branches of the tree. I had only been playing for an hour or two, and already I had my own opinion on the poor souls who hung in the swamp, as well as the men who hung them. The Witcher had somehow taught me how to fight, how to interact with the world, how to explore, how my choices affect the game, and who my character was while still feeding me tidbits of a story that gripped my mind like a classic movie or novel.

That’s something I can’t say for a lot of games.

Many of you may be familiar with film critic Roger Ebert. While his scholarly articles on film are unquestionably a great resource, and the man knows what he is talking about, I won’t lie when I say that much of my respect for him was lost when he claimed that ‘Video games can never be art”.

See: http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art

While I could spend all day disputing Mr. Ebert’s arguments, and why I believe that almost everything is a form of art, I think it is clear that, at the very least, SOME video games are artistic in nature, and therefore, are art. While I personally believe that even the crudest, silliest games are art, I will only argue for The Witcher 3 in this particular case.

I have a background in theater- technical, non-musical, and musical. The thing that first drew me to theater was the way that it combined many other forms of art, such as music, dance, visual art, and acting. Now, I don’t know Mr. Roger Ebert personally, but I would have a hard time believing that he would ever argue against the artistic merit of theater. After all, cinema is a byproduct of drama, which has been around much, much longer. Without thespians, cinema wouldn’t exist.

However, given that theater is most certainly artistic in nature, and given the list of other art forms in it incorporates, we can see that ALL of them are present in The Witcher 3. The game contains an amazing soundtrack by Marcin Przybytowicz and Mikolai Stroinski. The choreography that exists in the game’s combat is more impressive than most dance I have seen. The visuals of the game are, of course, astounding, despite not being over the top in terms of color or design. Simply looking at my blog’s header image will show you how visually pleasing this game is. And, of course, the acting, specifically the 300 hours of voice recording, is top notch. These 300 hours of recordings equates to roughly 450,000 words, or about 4 novels. Far longer than almost any movie script. The main character, Geralt, who was voice acted by Doug Cockle, has almost 70,000 lines of dialogue in the game.

Now, I would never argue that quantity = quality in terms of voice acting, but I think anyone who has played the game would concede that the voice acting is top notch. Of course, my above arguments do not even mention the countless other aspects of the game that are artistic, and amazingly done. I particularly enjoy the facial animation in The Witcher 3. There were many instances of it that were truly hilarious or emotionally moving.

That’s enough on the artistic merit of this game. If I haven’t convinced you yet, you probably won’t be convinced. Now I just want to talk about why it is my FAVORITE game.

I’ve been playing games since I was very young. My accreditation for writing about this topic is up to you, so I will leave it here. I have not played the first two Witcher games, but I certainly plan on it. I have extensive playtime in other popular RPG series, such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Pillars of Eternity, and Final Fantasy. I have also played my fair share of action games including many shooters, the Diablo series (which I will most certainly write about in the future), Path of Exile, Overwatch, several MOBA games, and the Batman series by Rocksteady studios. Of course, the games mentioned here are only a snippet of my gaming experience. My current playtime in The Witcher 3 is 287 hours, which included 2 playthroughs of the main story and 1 of each expansion (which are also top notch in nearly every way).

Without further ado, here is why The Witcher 3 is my favorite game: It is one of the only times in my life that I have admitted I was completely wrong. I am a damn stubborn person. My parents got on me a good bit for it growing up. I always had trouble admitting when I was wrong, and I still do sometimes. I had a friend named Sam in high school, who was just another guy in my group of nerdy stoner friends. Personally, I had often found Sam quite annoying (Sorry if you’re reading this, Sam, I still like you). If there was something that Sam liked, I kind of intrinsically wanted to not like it. I remember that I really enjoyed the song “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz when I first heard it. However, I soon learned that it was one of Sam’s favorite songs and promptly stopped listening to it. Was that douchey of me? Probably, but it is what it is.

Naturally, when The Witcher 3 was released and Sam constantly ranted about how good it was, I refused to believe him. “Is it as good as Skyrim”, “I’ve never even heard of it” and “Graphics don’t make a game good” were a few of the arguments I used against him. It wasn’t until the game had been out for 3 years and I hadn’t seen Sam in a good long while, that I finally ended up buying the game on sale.

Good god, I was so, so wrong. I will preach for this game like it’s the bible and I’m a crazy redneck from Alabama who never quite figured out what they wanted to do with their life. Seriously, just listening to the soundtrack sometimes gives me chills. The creators of this game have said that The Witcher 4 is NOT coming. Why? Because, as they say, they currently don’t think it’s possible to make a successful sequel to The Witcher 3. And I agree.

It is possible to find many errors in the game, or little things that could have been done better. But that is true for everything in life. The reason that The Witcher 3 is so damn good is because it does everything, every little thing, extremely well. The story is engaging, as are the characters. The soundtrack fits in perfectly thematically and is not distracting. The visuals are stunning. The UI is clean, simple, and polished. The game has very few bugs. The amount of content is ridiculous. Your choices in the game actually have meaningful results. The game even includes Gwent, which is a minigame that was so good that many players joke that the actual gameplay was the minigame. I could go on for days and days about why The Witcher 3 is so good, and I’m sure I will return to it several times in future posts.

I hope that I am able to convince at least one person to give this game a try with my short little article. I promise you, it is worth every penny.

Please feel free to share, and comment on my writing, whether it be a stylistic choice you liked or disliked, or something I said that you agree or disagree with. I would love to discuss this topic further.

#witcher #pc gaming #pc games #the witcher #my writing

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