![]() The fleshy sphere flies through the tavern, spinning wildly, spurting red in every direction as the rest of his convulsing body is dragged down by gravity. ![]() The sword leaves the leather holder and with a quick upward swing, one of the fools has quite literally lost his head. When the blood spills, it's a quick affair. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but most of the time it's three idiots, usually in a tavern, usually right after I've won a card off someone. There are often three bandits that try to pick a fight with a Witcher. The Witcher 3 is such a game, with violence that confesses to its own brutality, often putting the onus on you for engaging without being obnoxious about it. It's uncommon for games to strike a balance between these extremes, acknowledging the darker side of finding joy in violence alongside not taking you to task in an ultimately toothless way. In recent years, games like Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 3 have been a little bit smarter about this whole grisly structure, often criticizing you with a lot of handwringing about what a bad person you are while encouraging you to still go on killing sprees and offering you no other path to progress outside of wantonly murdering anyone who gets in your way. Sometimes you're killing invaders or destroying armies for the objective good of the universe, but in the end, most of the time in games violence passes as the absolute, correct course of action. Rarely do games ever escape this cycle – the mechanical and polished presentation of violence in which you perform an action and are rewarded for it with a spectacle that's justified by the plot. A rumble shakes through your controller. The head goes boom and splashes the area in gore as the body falls funny toward the Earth. You put your crosshairs on a bad guy's head. Most violence in video games feels the same, often constructed to be a disturbingly satisfying loop of grotesque entertainment with pleasurable feedback. But there's always, always someone who wants to ruin the fun by drunkenly pushing the Witcher or trying to take coins from him.Īnd that's when the sword comes out the sheath with a hiss. The vast majority of my playthrough has been dedicated to battling lodgekeepers, merchants, and random civilians to steal their precious cards from them. That's right, kids, Geralt's got designs on being the best darn Gwent player that ever was. While yes, our white-haired dad should be looking for Ciri and trying to cure the land's ills, most of the time when I'm playing The Witcher, Geralt's just doing odd jobs or collecting cards. Given the racism-charged landscape of Nilfgaard and Redania, our hero, a human who's been mutated into a sword-swinging Terminex employee by his hard upbringing and constant potion consumption, often finds himself in the position of being a would-be plaything for these frustrated buffoons. Bona fide, dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers morons looking to take out their rage on whatever emotional conductor is nearby. By the specter of a missing (adopted) daughter.īut mostly, he runs into idiots. Everywhere Geralt of Rivia goes, he's beset on all sides. By monsters.
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