Life, The Universe And Gaming: How The Witcher 3 Shatters The Illusion Of Player Choice

Last week I wrote about appreciating the women in the games we play, the ones that are done well anyway. Thanks to the sixty-or-so people who gave that column a read. Elsewhere on the internet, someone is highlighting games that they claim are exploitative and objectifying of women, without any references and despite being easily counter-argued, and getting thousands if not millions of views for it. Call me Sodium Chloride, but if that isn’t a commentary on the state of the human mind, I don’t know what is. Either way, this is why we can’t have nice things.

All the same, I’d like to keep trying to have nice things. So in that respect I would like to humbly continue from my previous column, wherein I promised that we would discuss further the very important characterisation, writing and player choices presented in one The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I do also understand that it’s been many months now and I cannot stop going on about how great The Witcher 3 is. To you I must ask: Would you rather someone who spent that long enjoying something, or someone who went week-in and week-out finding something to pick apart in all your favourite games? I like my method, what about you?

The idea that player choice is an illusion is not something new. In fact, it’s one of the core tenets of game design. You cannot account for an infinite number of outcomes, and in that way gaming has always been limited compared to real life. Ambitious titles such as BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 found this out first-hand, with the end-game-state effectively dumbed down to a count of three, despite hundreds if not thousands of variables in play. Put simply, you could make a thousand choices and because games are designed to be closed systems, you will only ever have a finite number of endings.

But that’s okay, if you understand how to use it to your benefit.

So you get a set opening, and a set conclusion. Perhaps the end-state might vary slightly but ultimately the narrative reaches some overall conclusion. “The good guys won” for example. That’s perfectly fine. The strength then comes not in the choice or worded differently, the cause, because we already know that’s an illusion in a closed system. Instead, the strength comes in the result of the choice; the effect. The repercussions of your actions.

And that, friends, is what The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has nailed down to an absolute tee.

The perfect setup for a sexy sitcom

Repercussions are a powerful thing. In the real world, they’re what ground us, and what guide our decisions. Let’s say you wanted to buy second hand because it’s cheaper than buying brand new. You could take a loan from a bank, but that would incur interest over time and require some form of financial stability as well as a valid credit rating. You could opt to buy from a dealer who offers a better interest rate for the car and does not require a credit rating, but will charge you more than if you bought privately. As a last resort, you could visit a loan shark who will give you the cash immediately but require a hefty return that is payable in the short term. How do you decide? What motivates you? What guides your ultimate decision? The repercussions of your actions are what matter here. In the end you will get the car, but what will it mean to own that car?

This is an example of playing within your boundaries. There is a forgone conclusion (owning a car) but the variables are emphasised, even if they are also limited. The variables, then, become more important.

To use an example more suited to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you’re questing your way through an area when you come across a group of bandits who are sacking a village. The villagers, terrified. Their lifelong possessions, stolen. Their families, beaten. It’s unbearable to you. The bandits tell you to keep moving, but instead you show them the shiny edge of your blade. You clear through them as if navigating a grassy field with a bulldozer. One of their ilk gets away, flees into the nearby forest. The villagers and their belongings are safe. You’re a hero. You think you’ve done well. You continue your questing. Later, a group of bandits approach you and fight you. The one who got away brought his friends, and they want revenge. For good measure, they returned to the village, raped the women, castrated the men, and razed the entire thing to the ground when you were off elsewhere.

Are you really a hero, or did you just condemn a village to its doom?

Repercussions. Cause, effect.

Most other games try very hard to show you that doing the right thing always leads to you being the best possible version of yourself. It’s great for a children’s nursery rhyme. But in reality, it’s a little different.

This is the power of having a forgone conclusion, and spending the core of your effort focussing on what it takes to get to that conclusion.

It is CD Projekt RED doing a simple “point A to point B” journey in the most intricate and elegant way possible.

“Quick, everyone. Look important!”

We can go even further with this, and here’s where it gets potentially spoilerific so I’m going to add a tiny SPOILER WARNING here just in case.

When Dragon Age II first came out, I sang its praises quite a bit. I valued the way it handled player choice and ultimately tried to craft a story that was bigger than the contained parts of the narrative. In other words, the way it used a single character’s story to set up something much larger. Then The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings came out, and blew Dragon Age II clean out of the water. I had no excuse, I had no further argument, The Witcher 2 simply did everything better. This is very much the case once again, where Dragon Age: Inquisition, our game of the year last year, was lauded for its many victories in story-telling, characterisation, and sheer audacity at times. And yet with The Witcher 3 it once again is made to look a little childish by comparison.

Many folks have discussed the topic of sex in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It does happen, it can be gratuitous at times, and it’s not very difficult to find. I spent the first ten or so hours of the game not seeing a thing, but the sex did happen and once it started, I found I was able to get lucky multiple times as Geralt. But here’s the thing, each time I did have sex as Geralt, it was consenting sex with someone who either wanted a casual romp, or someone whom Geralt loved dearly. Either way, no character was exploited, and the sex was just one part of a relationship, entirely natural to all parties involved (disclaimer: I never tried sex with a prostitute, because while that’s not despicable to me, it’s not how Geralt rolls). It was neither glorified, nor celebrated. It just was.

By contrast, BioWare’s Dragon Age (and Mass Effect) series have had sexual encounters with other characters form part of relationships the player character might undertake. For the most part sex with other characters is monogamous and happens as an end-result of a sub-quest involving romancing a particular character. The underlying issue here, is that sex is used as a reward. The ongoing pursuit of an interesting character that culminates in the bumping of uglies, and an unlocked achievement for your troubles. To its credit, Dragon Age: Inquisition did attempt, at the least, to continue the relationship further by allowing the player more scenes with their partner. But once the deal was sealed, there was little else to it. You could perhaps break off the relationship but what’s done was done.

But that’s not real life, is it? A real relationship is not just about the sex. In reality, you could very well get sex from a bunch of different (consenting) people — just ask anyone with an Ashley Madison account. In real life, it’s not the sex that matters but being with your partner. After sex, there is still a relationship there. The relationship remains intact even if you are off having sex with others, but what’s important is that if your partner did not know and they then found out, there would be… yup, you guessed it. Repercussions to your actions.

I played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as I imagined Geralt would. He was okay with casual sex because sex, to him, is not love. And yet, he was unattached. Not strictly speaking in a relationship. Yet he loved two women, Triss and Yennefer. When Geralt encountered Triss, and the opportunity arose, they had sex in a lighthouse and it was beautiful and natural, and nothing seemed wrong with that picture. Later when Yennefer wanted sex, Geralt could only oblige her. He is a man after all, and he loved her dearly. Ultimately, Geralt put himself in a position where he was sexually involved with two women, loved both of them, but could not choose.

And I kept expecting the ‘BioWare way of doing things’ where a dialogue option would pop up where I’d explicitly make a choice.

But the dialogue option never came.

In the end, Triss and Yennefer found out what Geralt had been doing, and they enacted their own plans for revenge. In the end, Geralt was left all alone. Loving two women, attempting to romance both women, ending up losing both women. Why? That’s right. Because of the repercussions of his actions. If he had only told Triss he loved another. If he had only spoken to Yennefer of his feelings for Triss. If he had only chosen for himself instead of trying to have the choice made for him, how differently would things have ended.

Once again, this is where The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt ascends to an altogether different level of maturity. And that’s why taking issue with the sex in the game, in many ways, is as immature and nitpick-y as the games of old that thought of sex as an ultimate reward. For once, the sex wasn’t the point. Much like real life, or at least real life away from what pop culture tells us. The point was that people with feelings were involved, and that meant having to handle those feelings and be a human being about them. Actions. Consequences. Repercussions.

Choice.

Ooh look, a strong female character! Time to pick her apart to promote representation!

And that brings me to the final talking point of today’s column, and that’s Ciri. Geralt’s adopted daughter in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is absolutely the star of the show, in much the same way that Jean Grey and her Phoenix Force was the star of the X-Men 3 movie, if the X-Men 3 movie was actually any good.

I’ve read a few articles online that talked about the sexualisation of Ciri and how her bra-showing low-cut tops made her look sexualised despite her being a daughter figure to Geralt. Sometimes I wonder if the people writing these articles look at their own daughters and get awkward boners…

All the same, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is in many ways, the story of a girl’s growth into a woman. And despite only being playable in shorter segments, Ciri with her elder blood ends up being the person who most effectively epitomises the idea of player choice in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Once again, let’s first talk about real life here. Not all of us are parents, but we all had some element of parenthood growing up. Consider what choices our parents made actually stayed with us. The way we interact with people. How we view those we deem to be less fortunate than ourselves. What we think of people who disagree with us. We typically form our own goals and dreams based on our experiences, but a big part of who we are was moulded long ago by our parents. In my case, my parents taught me that no matter what element of authority stands before you, if you feel they are wrong and you can prove it, you prove it to them. But you do it with respect. And that is a lesson that stuck with me all my life. But more than that, the way I interact with others, the way I treat those who are less fortunate, all of this comes from watching my parents as I grew up.

When you play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Ciri is the one who makes the decisions. As Geralt, you have various interactions with her, and the things you say have great impact. Only, the things you say hardly ever seem to matter in the context of the game’s narrative. In other words, nothing you say seems to have of any real importance to anything in the story. You could tell Ciri it’s okay to get angry, or you could have a snowball fight with her, and that has grave consequences later but in the moment it seems like nothing at all.

The point here is: It’s the little things that matter more than the big things.

Big things are easy. You want to save the world. You want to destroy the Wild Hunt. You want to restore Kaer Morhen. You want to help Ciri become a strong woman. But how? How do you do any of that? What is the vital context that is missing? Sure, you have a bunch of side-quests that are a means to the end, but just like in the sex example up above, what’s more important than the end-goal? That’s right, your choices. And your choices, no matter how small, are what ultimately influence Ciri’s growth as a person. Do you want to protect her, or empower her? Do you want to give her her freedom even if it puts her in the way of danger, or do you want to shield her from danger by limiting her agency? Do you want to advise her or let her make her own decisions? Do you want to calm her down or leave her to be angry? Ultimately you, as her adopted father, have a direct influence on Ciri based on how you treat her, both as your daughter and as a woman.

I played through the game expecting Ciri to empower herself. I picked a bunch of options that told her I supported her decisions but was still her father, and therefore wanted some aspect of input. I did not let her have all the freedom she wanted, opting to be firm but fair. I thought that was the best way to be a father. Imagine my devastation to discover what had become of Ciri in the end. She was not as empowered as I thought she would be, because I limited her too much. I placed too much emphasis on the big decisions because I thought only those mattered, but I paid little attention to the minutia, the nuance, the smaller more personal details of our interactions. I should have allowed her all the freedom she wanted, and trusted that she knew what she was doing. I should have taken the time to understand her, rather than preach to her about my methods. And I should have just been a companion to her, rather than a parent.

And once again we come to the simple conclusion that my choices as the player had real, and heartbreaking repercussions.

Not just consequence, but unintended consequence. Just like real life.

Girls just wanna have fun

For all these reasons and more, I can only stand up and applaud CD Projekt RED for creating such a magical and at the same time crushingly honest game. More importantly, for showing us something that hopefully sticks with us and forms the filter for which we view other games from here on out (in the same way I can’t watch a movie in the same way after Mad Max: Fury Road). To perpetuate an often-used quote: It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.

This is me standing up and applauding CD Projekt RED for creating a game that defiantly holds up a sign saying: Your choices matter. Good luck.

And that’s all I have to say about player choice in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. If you got this far, thank you for reading. If you didn’t, hey, your choice. Oh, and definitely check out Paul’s related piece which eloquently details Geralt’s relationships within the game. Let us know what you think in the comments okay? Awesome. Thanks. See you in two weeks.

The post Life, The Universe And Gaming: How The Witcher 3 Shatters The Illusion Of Player Choice appeared first on #egmr.