Player Choice, and How The Witcher 3 Absolutely Nails It

Publishers nowadays are in the habit of rereleasing their major games a year or so after launch, packaging them with all the DLC and add-ons and calling them “Game of the Year” Editions, so it’s no surprise that The Witcher 3 will be getting the same treatment at the end of this month. So what’s different? Nothing, really, except that CD Projekt Red’s 2015 masterpiece is one of those titles that can call their product the “Game of the Year” without anyone raising an eyebrow. It’s an unofficial title to bestow, but The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is a once-in-a-generation sort of game.

The conclusion of the Witcher trilogy does so many things well, and anyone who has yet to play it can fork over fifty dollars rest assured that it’s money well spent. Hell, if anyone is getting ripped off here, it’s the publisher. There’s enough content in this package, between the main story, the sixteen add-ons and two DLC episodes to last for months and the amazing thing is, it manages to stay fresh from start to finish.

So the game excels in many areas and that’s been well documented, but I found that there’s one thing in particular that set it apart from just about any other game I can remember playing. We could spend hours talking up the game’s achievements, but for the sake of posterity and my own attention span, let’s just stick with this one facet.

In a sentence, I’m talking about the choices that players are confronted with throughout the story, and more importantly, how those choices affect the ending. Over the last couple console generations we’ve seen a marked shift from linear, level-to-level, cutscene driven storytelling to a more open-ended approach that relies (supposedly) on player choice. Rather than play through an interactive movie, gamers these days want to be able to find their own path through an adventure by making their own decisions at critical junctures. Ideally, both the personality and skill-set of the main character and the way that the plot unfolds are partially in the hands of the player. It’s becoming less about simply “beating” levels and more about making dialogue choices and choosing where to go and when.

Unfortunately there have been some growing pains in this evolution. There isn’t much satisfaction to be gained from making binary plot choices in which we’re frequently asked to pick from one of two options: the good way and the bad way. Your character is either a hero or a bad guy. An altruistic do-gooder or a selfish asshole. You can be Clark Kent saving Metropolis or Donald Trump at a rally in Bumblefuck, Idaho, but nothing in between.

On top of that, we’ve frequently come to find that no matter which direction we chose at any given crossroads, they all led to a single conclusion once the credits roll. Mass Effect 3 is the famous example, after we spent hours crafting and molding our own version of Commander Shepard only to find that it had no effect on the ultimate outcome of the series.

Sucker Punch’s Infamous is the game that always comes to mind when this topic is raised. If I remember correctly, player choice was a pretty heavily advertised facet of the game leading up to its release, leading us to believe that we were getting a sort of choose-your-own-adventure superhero story.

I don’t mean to shit all over Infamous because it has its merits and I honestly had a good time with it, but there’s no denying that the whole choice-driven adventure thing was purely cosmetic. One of the early levels tasks you with recovering a supply drop from a bunch of thugs, and then choosing whether to share it with the starving citizens of the city or, literally, to shoot them all and take everything for yourself. Real nuanced character development there.

Even fantastic games like Bioshock flailed when it came to letting the player make up his own mind, so as The Witcher 3 drew to a close and it finally became clear how all of the choices I’d made were becoming manifest, the realization blew me away.

The game never makes it clear when exactly you are making a crucial decision, nor are there easy to follow paths to take depending on how you want the characters’ story arcs to turn out. Games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect let you know where you stood on the “good-evil” spectrum at all times, but the Witcher 3 has nothing of the sort. The conclusion of the game mostly hinges on how you treated Ciri, who is something of a daughter figure to Geralt, and what blew me away the most is that there’s real nuance to your decisions. Are you protective of her, or do you let her make her own choices? Do you overrule those choices or do you stand beside her?

There are great arguments for whichever stance you take, and all you can really do is what seems best to you and then live with the consequences. Sweat it out until the final cutscene rolls and see what came of your decisions. I believe there are ultimately three different endings, and thankfully I was more than satisfied with the one I got. I’ll leave the spoilers out of it but the finale I ended up with was touching and even somewhat bittersweet, sort of like what I’d imagine it feels like to send a kid off to college. It’s just what you want after investing your time into a game, a book, a movie or a TV show.

Fans of western RPGs will have noticed that more and more developers are tinkering with romance as well, and they like to advertise that players will be able to choose partners and build relationships. Remember that stupid ass controversy about how players could pursue relationships with aliens in Mass Effect? Then there’s gay relationships and nudity and whatnot- the sort of stuff that Fox News like to report on.

The Witcher 3 is sort of like a Diet Game of Thrones in this regard. You won’t see any swinging dicks or anything, but there’s plenty of boobs and thrusting and all that. The player-choice angle plays into the romance as well, which is something I didn’t realize at the time and thus, my Geralt ended up all alone once the credits rolled. Every time there was an option to pursue sex I pretty much went for it, and apparently in the world of The Witcher, women don’t like that. If you pick one of Triss or Yennefer and stay faithful, Geralt lives happily ever after with whomever you chose. If you decide to go all man-whore and sex them both, it leads to a pretty funny cutscene and ultimately Geralt lives out his days as a bachelor. But at least you all remain friends! So there’s that.

At least I managed to get the happy ending for the main story. Romance and the whole "not dying alone" thing are overrated anyway.