Even when that means not letting you win every time. Save for its fleeting moments of juvenile approaches to sexuality, this is a role-playing game that treats the player as an adult. Because in the middle of the bloodied bluster and sweeping score are moments of parental abandonment, domestic abuse, and strained friendships, all written with the patience to show full emotional arcs and (frequently) not allow a purely good or purely evil method of conflict resolution. We see the class struggles and horrors of war that dot many a Mature-rated game, but here things actually feel mature.
These micro-narratives are where the Witcher series has been at its best, never more so than in the Wild Hunt. Not only does this make the flow of the grand machinations of macro-narrative more tolerable, it lets the more compact, mission-based stories better intermingle against the larger world.
The story of the Wild Hunt works best as an unraveling experience, played over weeks or months with plenty of air left between main campaign missions. But while aggressively dense in its worst moments, the emotional and moral complexity that has come to define the Witcher series is at its most gleaming, polished best in The Wild Hunt.ĭon’t expect Witcher 3 speed-runs. It heaps reams of lore on the player at every major turn, which leaves newcomers to the franchise likely to drown in exposition until they dive into the in-game codex or play through the previous games. Geralt’s quest for Ciri (whom the player occasionally plays as for brief spurts) takes him across immense stretches of a continent in the war-ravaged Northern Kingdoms, diseased fiefdoms and lavish upper-class estates embroiled alike in a seismic political shift. Witcher 3 hinges its tale on the search for the monster-slaying Geralt of Rivia’s adoptive daughter Ciri, a gifted young woman fighting off the pursuit of the ethereal - and titular – Wild Hunt. Not only is the Witcher 3 genuine in its broaching of dark subject matter, it’s largely unrivaled in its depth of approach to wavering morality and unforeseen consequence. A first-person shooter or RPG will drop one of the “g” words to hype up their intensity, with the final release only hinting at adult topics for no other reason but the headlines and controversy. Grime and grit have become code for immaturity in these past few years, especially in video games.
0 kommentar(er)
