“A true witcher should never abandon poultry in distress.”

July 13, 2023 5:45 AM

The Witcher 3 hits even harder in a post-Cyberpunk 2077 world [Polygon] “Oddly enough, the prevailing thought that dogged me as I played The Witcher 3 again was actually about another game. I was thinking about Cyberpunk 2077, which I played earlier this year, and how little it played off the successes of The Witcher 3. A strength of Geralt’s adventure is how little of it really has to do with him. He’s in some important rooms, and he meets movers and shakers, but warriors live and die without him. Dynasties fall. Monsters kill the weak. The mechanisms of life happen, and he doesn’t have to be there to see it all unfold — that’s what makes his tale so compelling. He’s a hero when he’s around, and he’ll move or shake as necessary, but his world is not one driven by a protagonist. It is a humble fantasy, or at least presents itself as one, and by contrast, Cyberpunk 2077 was so self-centered on the part of the player that it seemed like people didn’t exist if they weren’t within my field of view. In that game, history happened so that protagonist V could be there to inherit it. Geralt is almost anonymous by comparison. The next-gen upgrade is going to make that available for more people, and I’m excited for that. But it did leave me with a melancholy feeling about where we’ve been and, given the future of The Witcher franchise, where a post-Cyberpunk Witcher game might go.”

• The Witcher 3 Is Now One Of The Best-Selling Games Ever [Kotaku]

“The Witcher 3 is now, based on publicly available data, the ninth best-selling video game in history, just slipping by Pokémon Red / Blue / Yellow, the first-ever Pokemon game’s, equally impressive 47.5 million units. Also below The Witcher 3 are huge hit games like Skyrim, Diablo III, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, GTA: San Andreas, and Borderlands 2. And it’s creepin’ up on Red Dead Redemption II, which sits at number eight on the current list. Rockstar’s open-world cowboy game currently stands at around 53,000,000 sold. In fact, The Witcher 3 has sold enough copies that, like GTA V, it’s starting to outsell entire franchises. For example, The Witcher 3—a single video game—-has sold more copies than Sony’s entire The Last of Us franchise. It’s also outsold the entireties of Saint’s Row, Watch Dogs, Horizon, Splinter Cell, Dying Light, and Dark Souls.”

• The Witcher 3’s next-gen update makes a beautiful game much smoother [The Verge]

“For all of its ambition, The Witcher 3 is also a game that has always been a little rough around the edges. It’s never as bad as Cyberpunk 2077, but a choppy frame rate and other visual issues can really bog down the experience, particularly in combat. But from what I’ve played so far, most of those issues have been ironed out — I haven’t even seen a Roach glitch yet — and, when combined with the 60fps mode and some slightly streamlined controls, the experience could even be described as smooth. It’s not a full overhaul of the game, of course. This is a next-gen patch, not a full-on remake like The Last of Us Part I. And there are plenty of things that make it clear this is a game that launched a console generation ago — dated character models, wonky animations, hair that moves about with a strong disregard for gravity. The first time I killed a werewolf, it flopped around the cave like a half-inflated balloon. Even still, the upgrades improve The Witcher 3 where it needs it the most. This is a game beloved for its storytelling and roleplaying elements, and those remain completely unchanged here. In fact, it’s remarkable how well they hold up, particularly given all of the excellent fantasy open-worlds that have launched in the meantime. But playing with an improved frame rate, smoother controls, and generally fewer technical issues makes the rest of the experience less of a chore.”

• Why you should play The Witcher 3 on the hardest difficulty [Polygon]

“First, allow me to clarify something. This is not about gaming masochism, bragging rights, or an elitist test of skill. With the exception of games like Diablo where ascending the difficulty levels is baked into the core design tenets, I am normally the last person to engage a higher difficulty level on games. This is because I am not very good, and life is short. Instead, my reason for advocating Death March difficulty in The Witcher 3 is that this setting actually enriches the gameplay systems of the game as well as the Witcher fiction itself. It leans into the game’s greatest strength and even corrects some of its flaws. [...] Aside from making the game more mechanically interesting and bringing out the best in its systems, Death March, in short, just nails the fantasy of being a witcher. This was already one of The Witcher 3’s strongest suits: its original, hyper-specific conception, derived from Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, of a mutant monster hunter, a skilled tracker and natural historian of the monster world who walks a poisonous tightrope as he alters his DNA for the hunt. The Witcher 3 excels as a role-playing game not because of any great freedoms it offers the player but, in part, because of its dedication to letting them inhabit every corner of this uniquely textured, alluring role. Death March difficulty illuminates these corners in every sense.”

posted by Fizz (38 comments total)

The mechanisms of life happen, and he doesn’t have to be there to see it all unfold — that’s what makes his tale so compelling. He’s a hero when he’s around, and he’ll move or shake as necessary, but his world is not one driven by a protagonist.

One of the most refreshing, beautiful things about Breath Of The Wild was that moment when you try to climb a rain-slicked cliffside and discover that you just... can't. When you learn that the price of waving a halberd around in a storm is that lightning can and will just kill you outright if you don’t respect for the world on its own terms. That moment you realize that you’re in a world that often as not completely unbothered by your presence in it, your story, by whoever you think you are.

I said once on here - about Majora’s Mask, that conveyed this same sense of indifferent beauty, at times - that I prefer my heroism untainted by the heroic. Game worlds like that become a places you can escape to and explore, not just bump around in like a pinball as the story congeals around you. Good movies, good books, great art can do that. Few games ever manage it.

I never played it, but I guess I’ve gotta go buy TW3 now.
posted by mhoye at 6:03 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Hmmm, wind's howling...
posted by Pendragon at 6:13 AM on July 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

Hrmmmmmmmmmm.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:30 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've only played about half of this game but I loved that first half and regret not finishing it up, but I've started a new playthrough and this game just satisfies such an amazing RPG itch. The story and world-building in this game are top-notch and thats what I always come back and chase. It just feels like a lived in world that you don't mind being inside of because Geralt is such a chill dude-bro about it all.

That game is not without its faults, its super-pervy and I wish the team at CD Projekt Red would be a bit better at how they write their characters (especially anyone who isn't a default white bro), Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have many of those same faults with its pervy-ness and poor character writing and how it depicts women. But if you can set that aside (and not everyone may be able to, which I fully get), the rest of the game builds a story in this very specific time and place that just clicks with the best parts of magical fantasy action monster-hunting.

I bounced off the game the first few times because its a bit overwhelming to just jump right into, but if you spend the time in that opening prologue section and chat with all the NPCs, find all the ? marks that dot the map, you'll start to see how rich this digital space is and you'll want to spend more time there. The side stories, the little comments that characters make when Geralt walks by, these little touches make Geralt feel so very real in the harsh war-torn world he's venturing into.

Easily one of my top 10 games of all time!
posted by Fizz at 6:48 AM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

> its super-pervy

yeah what's up with that. you know you don't HAVE to have *functional* brothels in a game. imagine if they cut the horniness from their games, CD Projekt Red might have bandwidth to fix some of the bugs before release.
posted by dis_integration at 6:57 AM on July 13, 2023

Said pervyness is the sole reason I have not and will not play the Witcher, despite it being entirely my kind of game otherwise. :/
posted by Dysk at 7:09 AM on July 13, 2023

imagine if they cut the horniness from their games

I don't get the hate! As a human person I am sometimes horny and I don't mind if there's a little horny in my games. Or books. Or movies. Or whatever.

Anyway, horny-quota not withstanding, Witcher 3 is terrific. One of the few (only?) games I can remember where when it wrapped my wife found me crying quietly at my computer. What a great narrative journey.
posted by kbanas at 7:17 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't get the hate! As a human person I am sometimes horny and I don't mind if there's a little horny in my games. Or books. Or movies. Or whatever.

No one is saying that games cannot be horny, lots of games are horny, just head on over to itch.io or log into a steam account and browse.

But the way this game is specifically horny and how it writes and depicts women as objects of a very specific type of male gaze can be problematic and are worth critiquing. Having a more diverse writing and game development staff that is listened to and a part of the process would help mitigate any issues that people have with this type of horniness.
posted by Fizz at 7:20 AM on July 13, 2023 [17 favorites]

Maybe it is time for a Witcher 3 restart. I just don't know if I can bear to play Forbidden West again, it's so inferior to the original in gameplay (and story). I need something for after my Assassin replay of Dragon's Dogma. I kept bouncing off Witcher because of all of its fussy upgrades and potions and stuff, which I'm just not really interested in. Why does it feel like such a dry spell for games I want to play right now?! Everyone else is so excited and I'm just ... bleah.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:28 AM on July 13, 2023

If you're playing the next-gen update version on a PC or console that has that capability, there are a bunch of quality of life improvements (outside of the 60 fps performance graphical modes): auto-apply-oils on your swords for buffs, remapped the ability to use quick-signs in a way that is not as cumbersome as it was in the original design of the game, bunch of other under the hood things that streamline the game and make it easier to get through.

For anyone who has bounced off but still wants to get into the game and its just not clicked, my main bit of advice is to spend time in that opening prologue area doing all the things. Talk to everyone, search out and explore every ? on the map (you'll get a shit ton of extra skill points which help make that first griffin-mini-boss a lot easier to take down), do all the side quests that various NPCs offer. Also, search underwater in the rivers and lakes and ponds, lots of decent gear and/or enough junk that you can sell and generate some gold to buy and craft proper gear.

Slowing down in that first zone will make all the systems click together so that the various battles you get into are just easier to push through.
posted by Fizz at 7:39 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

So I haven't done the bepenissed V / Kerry track ever because I figured out pretty early on that the one true victory in the whole game is [rot13] Nvanen Nyinerm gryy lbh gung lbh pna pnyy ure "Nohryn." [/rot13], and I mostly bounced off Witcher as a whole because a melee game turns out to not really appeal. So grain of salt.

But anyway, the problem with CDPR isn't that their games are horny. The problem is that they're leering-14-year-old-straightboy cheesy. Big "I find that the most erotic part of the woman IS the boobies" energy.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:55 AM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

for me W3 what you get if you take a giant block of pure crystalized creepy-creep sex-man and chisel a CRPG out of it. the result is a CRPG that might be entertaining to play at times, but it's made out of gross creepy sex-man.

i made it a little farther into CP2077. it was over a year after launch and i still had a ton of quest-breaking bugs. "just reload your save and try again", they said, as if i wanted to replay that stuff multiple times in order to progress to the next shit-sandwich the game forces me to eat. for a so-called open-world RPG i had a stunning lack of agency, with the game literally forcing my gun hand down when pointed at various entirely-inconsequential NPCs. the brain-dive system just seemed like video-editing work. like who prototypes than in development and think "this is a fun task to set before the players"? ugh.

i appreciate CDPR for GOG a ton but i abhor their first-party games, having nothing but negative experiences with any of them i've ever tried.
posted by glonous keming at 8:11 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

The problem is that they're leering-14-year-old-straightboy cheesy.

To be fair... I feel like people may be expecting too much of it? CDPR was a studio in Poland, building games off some local writer's lowbrow fantasy novels, and they only received real international attention after the Witcher 3 exploded in popularity. For Christ's sake, these novels were pure juvenile wish fulfilment, the Witcher has superhuman stamina, is conveniently sterile AND immune to diseases, is very hot and apparently irresistible to women, so he gets to have all of the hot sex he likes without consequences.

I wouldn't recommend the Witcher 3 to just anyone without warning them of this...

Cyberpunk is a somewhat more mature product conforming more to the (still evolving) American norms of how sexuality should be portrayed.

In the Hoyoverse game lineup, Honkai Impact 3rd was designed specifically for the male gaze, Tears of Themis specifically for the female gaze, then Star Rail was designed for an equal balance of the two. But it doesn't mean that we would necessarily slam Honkai Impact or Tears of Themis as being "problematic" while lauding Star Rail as the example to follow, they are simply different games with difference audiences. Or maybe not even different audiences, simply different genres - I legitimately enjoyed Tears of Themis despite being a guy, and I have to admit that I was greatly amused watching the fangirl reactions to new cards being released.
posted by xdvesper at 8:18 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Male Gaze thing, while obviously there in Witcher 3, is still less than it was in Witcher 2 or dear god Witcher 1 (which I think I'm still gonna pass on). I enjoyed 2 and 3. 3 took some time to appreciate and I dropped when I got to an area, then came back struggled with the controls til I relearned and then REALLY dove in, and LOVED THE HELL OUT OF IT.

I get it's not everyone's cup of tea and the combat is weird (I'm not a melee fan either). But the world just works. SO much better than 90% of "open worlds" IMO. I loved the characters and creatures and world.

I do plan on getting CP2077 & the new Expansion, but still waiting on sales.
posted by symbioid at 8:31 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I bounced hard off The Witcher 3, and for reasons I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.

I'm no speed reader, but I can read faster than most people speak, so I usually read the dialogue and click to get to the next bit. I've been doing this since before CRPGs had voice acting, and it had always worked for me.

In The Witcher 3 lets you do this, but not really. Some important details are absent in the text. You MUST sit there and watch the cutscene play out or things stop making sense.

I first noticed this early on when Geralt was having a conversation with his friend in a pub. I was going through the dialogue tree, when suddenly I found myself in combat, and I had absolutely no idea why. It was so completely incongruous that I guessed that I had accidentally double-clicked during the dialog and missed a segment, so I reloaded a save and went through again, being extra careful to only click once.

Same result. So I reloaded the save again and waited instead of clicking through. (And waited... and waited...)

At the end of one of the dialogue segments there came a moment when there was some banging on the door, and you can see Geralt reacting with surprise to this, and then came the combat. Finally it made sense. But again, there was nothing about this in the text.

I began to wonder what other details I had missed by reading the story like a book instead of watching it like a film.

The same problem came up again a few times. Not often, but often enough that I knew I couldn't rely on reading the text. I found myself saving before every conversation just in case I needed to reload and sit through the cutscene for some important reaction. I still had to wonder if I was missing something and didn't even know it. It really ruined the game for me, so I gave up on it. I know I could've sat and watched the cutscenes as the game designers clearly intended, but that isn't how I want to spend my time. The video game is in the interactivity. If I wanted to watch a film I'd have done that instead.
posted by swr at 8:34 AM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Like swr, I have bounced off TW3 (several times over the years), but for (yet) another reason. I just don't care for strongly-typed narrative RPGs, or however you would describe it where the main character just is what they are and there's zero character customization. That really kills the immersion for me as I rarely, if ever, identify with the cardboard protag most games of the type seem to have. That, and the combat in TW3 felt kinda weird to me for some reason, though it probably would have been fine if I were interested in playing it more.

Maybe I'll give it another shot, though. Goodness knows it's not doing anything useful sitting mostly unplayed in a dusty corner of my steam library.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 8:56 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I tried to get into Witcher 3, but I didn't enjoy the combat. I had also just finished the first Arkham game and was working through Deus Ex and just couldn't deal with another gravelly voiced white male protagonist at the time. I do still plan to give it another shot sometime, though.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:35 AM on July 13, 2023

Loved the witcher 3, totally agree that the sex stuff and female depictions were problematic. My wife loved it too, and she too thought the sex stuff was weird. There are some very strong female characters, though, so that (maybe?) helps a little.
posted by sid at 9:40 AM on July 13, 2023

The only Witcher I actually finished was the first. After about 20 hours I found 2 & 3 to become insufferably boring. The gameplay loop just doesn’t do it for me and combat becomes an absolute chore rather than anything approaching fun.

Maybe if Geralt were a traditional “blank slate” RPG character who truly blended into the narrative I’d find that part of it more compelling. But he isn’t—he has a defined character, and is the narrative focus. I’ve just always found his character to be…Exceptionally-boring-man-with-no-emotions.
posted by Room 101 at 9:41 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

I just don't know if I can bear to play Forbidden West again, it's so inferior to the original in gameplay (and story).

I didn't feel that with the gameplay (it seemed like a perfectly solid continuation to me) but the story, very much so. Aloy's transformation from a character trying to make it in a world more complicated than she'd previously understood to world-weary savior of humanity felt really rough. It's obvious that it was an intentional shift — NPCs literally comment on it and there's pushback that she needs friends to help her, but the dynamic made for a much less compelling arc over the course of the game. The discoveries, revelations, and personal changes didn't have anywhere near the heft of those in the first game.
posted by verb at 9:53 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

It took me a while to get into TW3, but by the end, I was sad to finish it. I definitely recommend the Blood & Wine expansion. I think it ended up being my favorite part of the game.

I find the concept of a humble, wandering adventurer so much more compelling than that of a chosen-one hero tasked with saving the world. I'd have been perfectly happy if TW3 and Skyrim had no main story at all. Just let me be a nobody explorer that plunders ruins, kills monsters, and helps people.

The sex scenes were cringy. I don't know if it's even possible to do non-cringy sex scenes in video games. I just skip through them.

Someone online (possibly Metafilter) pointed out that Geralt is such a dad, and now I can't unsee it. Not specifically in regards to his relationship with Ciri, just in overall temperment: firm, kind, grumpy, sarcastic, and eager to provide a moralizing lecture. Such a dad. I'd prefer a blank-slate protagonist, but you could do worse than Mutant Dad: Monster Hunter.
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:14 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Kudos to CDPR for maintaining both their franchises, I guess?

TW3 was so highly regarded that I purchased it (on sale) years before I had a computer that could run it.

Years later when I bought hardware that was (barely capable) of running TW3 and started the game, I was so utterly bored that I uninstalled within an hour. Brooding super-powered hero that is "persecuted" and no one is supposed to like, yet everyone needs his help all the time? Pointless nudity for characters that aren't introduced? This is the vaunted "narrative"?

I think I got as to the first main story quest. It was a fetch quest; I pulled up a map, looked at how far I had to ride my horse, and was like "nope" and uninstalled. Granted, this was my roguelike phase so patience for traditional video-game things was very low (similar situation with BOTW).
posted by meowzilla at 10:44 AM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Cyberpunk is a somewhat more mature product conforming more to the (still evolving) American norms of how sexuality should be portrayed.


A bunch of us objecting to their treatment of sex and gender are not in fact American. Cultural differences exist sure, but it's not unproblematic to just shrug and say "well yeah, Poland". That cedes the ground to PiS and their brethren. These are not uncontested issues in Poland.

You might as well have made the same claim about the US. The culture war is getting to be pretty similar.
posted by Dysk at 11:06 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

There are some very strong female characters, though, so that (maybe?) helps a little.

100%. And that is what kind of sucks. They created some fascinating characters that are well written and have a lot of interesting story beats with what they do and how they engage with the politics of this weird world of magic and monsters. Yennifer, Ciri, Triss, & Keira are all amazing characters that are fun and have really interesting back stories and it just sucks that so much of that is undercut b/c LOOK BOOBIES!?! Ugh.
posted by Fizz at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

is there really less hero-worship-centering in TWIII? Geralt slays like a millenia old Headless Knight kind of super magic character doing a pretty simple trick? he is also one of very few (possibly the only) person to outwit O'Dimm? one of the only surviving Witchers? widely renowned champion of Gwent? outsmarts those Witches who are totally terrifying and immortal and incomprehensible like they're just some boss character? kills straight up mythical devils, gets private meetings with royalty, gets into their confidence right quick, puts down terrifying vampires with the help of a goofy, flustered vampire, owns a huge vinyard estate the literal size of one of the early game towns in TWIII, etc? is that just some... everyman?

like on the one hand the narrative is telling us yeah, he's just some dude but the game is showing us that actually, he's kind of like an unstoppable force in the Witcher world akin to a demigod, rivalling anything and everything remarked to be powerful in the worldbuilding

which is to say - the writing in AAA video games are always derivative, borrowing heavily from genre fiction. you want hero worship? great, play a AAA game. you don't want hero worship? great, never play any AAA games

of course genre fiction itself borrows tropes heavily especially when the writing is boring but good books will come up with neat deconstructions of existing tropes or create wholly new ones or merge together totally disparate ones in really cool ways. AAA video games, at least from what I've experienced, pretty much universally straight up copy and paste tropes in a way that it almost seems like they're going down a checkbox on TropesWiki to make sure the lowest common denominator has something familiar to ingest

probably the best writing I've ever seen in a AAA game is the Judy Alvarez diving mission in 2077 and that's just because it threw together tropes from the romance genre into a wlw story in a really pretty way and also set up Pyramid Song as the background soundtrack. that's good shit and wholly unlike the rest of her storyline about double crosses, gang members, and a kind-of-brothel that sounded like a 1:1 adaptation of some HK exploitation film crossed with City of God
posted by paimapi at 11:51 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Cyberpunk is a somewhat more mature product conforming more to the (still evolving) American norms of how sexuality should be portrayed.

You might well have meant something different but this reads kinda like a "prudish Americans versus sophisticated Europeans" thing.

If so, no. The problem is not that gasp it shows breasts and pubic hair will nobody think of the children. The problem is that it's a bad portrayal of sex, that it's a 14 year old virgin boy's idea of what sex is. That it isn't sexy, or hot, or interesting, just cheesy and awkward. It would be better if they'd gone right to oglaf-level porn. At least oglaf characters seem interested in what they're doing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:52 AM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

While I do get why some people might bounce off of W3, I enjoyed the game play and the story of Witcher 3 fairly well (haven't played Cyberpunk 2077). I suppose, when it comes to games from a large studio that isn't Nintendo, if I had to choose between leering perverseness or libertarian edgelord in a mainstream game (looking at you Bioware, Rockstar Games, Naughty Dog Ubisoft – they all vary in this but i can often barely stomach them), I guess I go leering? It is telling that I won't let my young teenager play it, so make of that as you will. I do prefer open-ish RPG fantasy worlds generally and I don’t think I’ve encountered a game that had the kind of nuance I want in character customization so I’ve come to not expect any.

I think the game is what is—fairly true to its trashy pulp roots (though some of the stories are actually a lot of fun and go in interesting directions but not necessarily the main novels) and they are wanting to make it a multimedia game so cut scenes are important but how they handle them is variable (the example swr uses is one I encountered as well but I adjusted my game play and my expectations and didn’t encounter one nearly as bad in the rest of the game). There are coded gay characters in the game (and the stories) but you just can't play one which is a weakness for sure. I don’t have the patience for it (in some of the trickier boss battles I reduced the difficulty) but I do think playing it on Death March difficulty would make that game more immersive, not as a character really, but definitely makes the world more like that in the books – Geralt fails, often. He doesn’t care about political machinations or that there is a Ragnarok style apocalypse coming to destroy his world. He’s in it to save & be with his adoptive daughter, that’s it. He’s a mutant dad in a profession that is dying out and will eventually kill him. He is not a saviour.

Generally W3 had enough other things to keep me interested, certainly less generic than say the Dragon Age games (which I did like but tended to be repetitive with a fairly boring story) or tediousness of the Souls type games. YMMV I guess. Games are like pizza – your enjoyment of them can be very subjective.

Really the only contemporary mainstream games that are legitimately masterpieces, IMO, are the 2 Switch Zelda games (but I get why people bounce off these as well).
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:53 AM on July 13, 2023

But anyway, the problem with CDPR isn't that their games are horny. The problem is that they're leering-14-year-old-straightboy cheesy.

I'm going to put out a slight defense of Cyberpunk 2077 here: The world is so dystopian that the objectification feels like it belongs - and is more equal opportunity than I expected, to be honest, because men are objectified as well. Of course, one could also make the argument that CDPR is using that as an excuse. It would be absolutely fair to point out that they still fail, that the game starts with a traumatized, naked female body, that the sex worker character is predictably killed, that the male romance options are less interesting than the female ones, and so on.

(Tangent: I still suspect that V can't romance Takemura because CDPR still has baked-in prejudices, both racist and sexist, that put that outside of their realm of imagination. Or perhaps they considered it, but decided it wasn't worth their development dollars because they're still designing for mostly straight men - thus we get male romance options that are less integral to the main story, meaning less effort to develop the branching options and also less dialogue options that might alienate men who are deeply uncomfortable with even the idea of even fictionally romancing a man.)

All that said, the thing that bothers me most about CDPR's treatment of women is actually just their visual design. It strips away the argument that it's the world or narrative perspective that is the reason. Major female characters are just not allowed to exist outside the focused-grouped, least common denominator, average straight male gamer would find attractive. Male characters, on the other hand, are far more varied. Compare the difference between Geralt and Lambert, and Yennefer and Triss. In Witcher 3, they all had fucking high heels as well. CDPR has written some amazing female characters but they're undermined by their visual design and game choices, and it's so frustrating.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:08 PM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

> Really the only contemporary mainstream games that are legitimately masterpieces, IMO, are the 2 Switch Zelda games (but I get why people bounce off these as well).

Screaming in Sekiro (also last of us part 2 is a masterpiece)
posted by dis_integration at 1:37 PM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is just a single observation of mine that resonates with the pull-quote in the intro and not a deeper critique of the Witcher games of which I've played all nor of Cyberpunk which I haven't:

The Witcher 3 was the first video game - and really the first modern cultural artifact among movies, tv, and games - where the scale of the world and its parts felt sufficient to support the world as-is. Specifically, there are (roughly) enough farms to support everyone. In concordance with the article's premise that made it feel like the first game world where the world wasn't some set piece dedicated to my hero's existence. Contrast that with Minas Tirith in the LOTR movies or Skyrim and Oblivion.

tl;dr: TW3 had enough farms.

NB: Have not played Morrowind
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:42 PM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Having read the other comments now as well: yes, on the sex stuff 'cuz, I mean, jaysus! and, also, Meowzilla, I get being disappointed by the experience of riding Roach on a fetch. What made that workable for me was having the graphics settings turned UP. It's a really pretty world even if the tree-wind effect is a little too affine transform-y at times.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:51 PM on July 13, 2023

I totally bounced off previous Witcher games, but I picked up Witcher 3 for ann absurdly low price at some sale, and liked it a lot. I played it rather intensely for a while, but then got to a quest, which I think was mainline, where you end up in the home of a serial killer. The whole house is full of graphically murdered women. It takes a lot to shock me, but this really did, and I stopped playing.

I ended up blocking it from my mind, and the big update prompted me to start playing again. I was enjoying it, and then I had a conversation with a friend about the game, and during that I found myself recounting that scene, and I just stopped again. I’ve been told, subsequently, that this is as bad as it gets, and that it’s worth finishing the game, and I might do that one day, but I haven’t found myself wanting to play it.
posted by Kattullus at 4:48 PM on July 13, 2023

The problem is that it's a bad portrayal of sex, that it's a 14 year old virgin boy's idea of what sex is.

It is a lot of this, but it's not ALL this. And the part that isn't doesn't really exist much in any other AAA game. The threads of W3 I love are the fantasy romance stuff taking center stage (and a few side stages) -- at least, for the first giant half of W3. As it goes on, and hooks back into to the political plots, it gets pretty boring. (To anyone who only played the first half of the game -- you cashed out at a good time, imho! I think it's worth it for the closure for Ciri but it's a slog.)

CP2077 is a step backwards here, to BioWare style romances... vend-o-matic romances with hugely passive NPCs which are going to be very contained and modular feeling.

For me, the fundamental problem with the typical DragonAge or ME or CP2077 type romances is that they are so one-sided. The games give themselves over to letting you play your character, to BE your character, to get immersed! But when there is a romance, it's all about the other person, and there's nothing about 'you'. Because, if your character can be anything, they are nothing. It feels so bizarre to be such a cipher in a romantic context! It is a weird, manipulative, inhuman perspective on a romance and IMO there's a gross feeling to it. Vs., when Geralt and Yenn are disagreeing or making up or whatever, at least I am learning about two characters. I would rather be told a good story than insert coins and pull levers to get vended some mad lib.

(I should say the DA:I romance with Solas was okay since it's woven into the main aim of the plot pretty well and it makes sense he doesn't give a shit about you.)


Someone online (possibly Metafilter) pointed out that Geralt is such a dad,

He's sort of a dad but I think he's more of an uncle, and that's what's fun about him. Part of the story is him learning to be a father figure to Ciri but even that is more like an uncle taking on dad duties than like, hng dad angst.
posted by fleacircus at 5:32 PM on July 13, 2023

Fleacircus, totally agree with you on the vend-o-matic romances in many Western games. Witcher 3 felt like it worked because Geralt and Yennefer / Triss felt like they had a life and relationship of their ownthat existed before you joined the game, and will continue offscreen even when you're gone. Like the post says, it's exactly this - "so self-centered on the part of the player that it seemed like people didn’t exist if they weren’t within my field of view"

I don't think being a cipher in a romantic context is necessarily bad on its own, but it really does reinforce the "badness" of these vend-o-matic style romances.

The blank protagonist, can work, say in Katawa Shoujo... in one of the earlier beta versions -

Hanako is an orphan girl with severe burn scars and depression. If Hisao tries to get to know her, she eventually opens up to him, but then later she has a relapse.

She goes on high strength medication that flattens her emotions and leaves her constantly fatigued and robot-like. She gets frustrated with herself and also with Hisao, and demands to know why he is still hanging around her even when she is so unwell and incapable of taking care of herself much less being a friend to someone else. Then she says, I know what all guys want, and she takes off her clothes, and goes, "so?"

It's basically a no win scenario, if Hisao accepts her offer she just coldly goes "I thought so..." while if he rejects her and backs away she assumes he's rejecting her for her physical scars and she says "Disgusting" (EVA callback, anyone?).

On the other hand, if convinces her to discontinue her medication, the old Hanako that he knows returns, so he thinks everything is ok, they go on a date like everything is normal, and you think you're on the path to the good ending, and she apologies again for hurting him and then jumps in front of a train and kills herself.

I usually hate games where the main character is a blank canvas but I found if the story is well written it's actually still pretty immersive. This is exactly the sort of narrative The Witcher 3 tries to go for, the gritty realism / shock value / emotional stakes and it mostly succeeds at that, and I wish more games gave us that.
posted by xdvesper at 7:48 PM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

TW3's sex scenes reminded me of when Resident Evil games pause to show you something horrible happening to a character. I now play a chaste Geralt.
posted by BinaryApe at 1:05 AM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

where the main character just is what they are and there's zero character customization

So much what made me nope out as well. Geralt is just such a sexy cool bro (or at least the first few minutes presented him that way). If I am in an RPG I want to have some say in who I am.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:11 AM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

That game is not without its faults, its super-pervy

Not as pervy as TW1. It literally has women as trophies.
posted by Pendragon at 10:06 AM on July 15, 2023

Sorry to go off on this again but I'm just now thinking how to put into words these feelings I've been having for years. The bee is in my bonnet.

The situation with SkyRim et al reminds me of the time I played a Pathfinder TTE adventure path. In that mode of play, all of our character choices came down to mechanical build stuff. Is my character a Paladin or a Monk? The answer is 100% mechanical. The only PC interaction I had with someone was his character trying to tell my character what feat to take. Is anything else important about my character? Their name? Their background? Their anything? No. None of it will matter at all.

Except, the DM has important NPCs. The DM has professionally drawn, detailed illustrations of these NPCs and will show them to us. We are supposed to care and we are kinda supposed to remember their names, or at least write them down. Their wants and desires are important because we're probably here to help them, to carry them out. We're here to cater to their feelings. Our PCs meanwhile might as well be formless gray mist. We are supposed to engage with the world, but the world will never engage with us.

Our characters are like, ego puppets, and the only real route to making anything out of them is to be a gimmick or a clown. Just to force the world to react, in some way, like we are shouting and clawing at the barrier, like children just wanting to be noticed.

People might counter that this is kind of a failure mode of TTRPGs. What I'm saying is that this is not seen as a failure mode for your DragonsAge, SkiesRim, but IMHO it is. They supposedly deliver "you can be anything you want!" but you're actually nothing. It's weird to me.

Maybe what people really do want is the world's indifference. They simply don't want the game to tell them they're anything at all. Just let me go around and do shit and don't presume I'm straight or whatever.

But IDK, I could pretend when I'm playing DOOM that my character is actually a giant mouse and the game doesn't get any points for not being incompatible with that.

I have strong preferences for the characters I like to pilot around as well, and there's a lot to be said about the kinds of identification that happen. But whereas, for example, Nathan Drake is in a sense the epitome of bland brunette male protags, nevertheless in that scene in U2 where he's in prison and making little hand puppets to mock other characters, he is showing more depth of character than a whole franchise's worth of bespoke Khajit PCs, combined.
posted by fleacircus at 1:28 PM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]