Dude, who even knows.
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Still playing Witcher III. Got me thinking about how 3D open-world sandboxes have all been converging on some sort of all-genres-in-one standard.
You know, combat and climb-based 3D environmental navigation from beat-em-ups; leveling, skill progression, simultaneous quest-based structure and loot from corpses by way of RPGs both C- and A-, simple “mysteries”, dialogue trees, and collecting random objects to assemble into tools from point-click adventures…
But that’s not ALL genres, is it? And I think that’s why granddaddy of the field GTA is starting to show its age - it derives its lineage from different genres: vehicles from racers and flight sims; combat and multiplayer modes from FPSes (rendered, uh, TP); jump-based ascent, self-contained mission structure, character power increasing from weapon powerups and currency objects that spawn on enemy death and get tracked in the HUD from platformers.
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The Witcher III is not the first CRPG-derived 3d ARPG I’ve played where a questline’s big twist was “actually the guys who seem weird but pleasant in the middle of nowhere *aren’t* cannibals”
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Been playing the new Witcher.
Mechanically, it hits the sweet spot between Dark Souls and Dragon Age.
Thematically, it is Polish as hell, holy shit. Most of our RPGs derive their worldbuilding from a British tradition, we actually get a bit of German by way of Japan (lancers, dragoons, 2h knights, one-city realms and threatening emperors and conniving chancellors), Dragon Age was bidding for novelty by doing French.
But this is definitely Eastern European. It’s not just the questlines and bestiary out of Grimm’s and Slavic legend. Part of it is the peasant’s-eye view. There may be great wars and cosmic forces at play but to a significant extent they just account for why a questgiver is in a particular location.
The more common viewpoint expressed is of a peasant - not even in a castle keep! in scattered villages and hamlets! varying from squalor to bucolic! according to their economic position! as you can tell from the actual productive activity the environment and animation design dramatizes! - who just desires that as few of his fellows suffer and die as possible.
Witcher got some knocks for having such a monoethnic world, especially by comparison to DA, because of course it did. But I think both routes *work*, creatively - DA only showed you a thimbleful of villages and two blocks of a capital city and called it a great civilization, venue for ageless deeds, and the range of accents and skin tones and styles helped sell that.
In contrast, just the *sameness* of Witcher, these dirty poor farmers and THESE dirty poor farmers, you can have a much bigger world but it still leaves the machinations of kings coming off as detached and pompous, and the dirt where you work as the *real* world.
And you want to talk races, human/nonhuman racism is the in thematic in “gritty” fantasy these days, but a lot of games play that as a supercharged version of the refugee/immigrant experience - you live in the REALLY bad quarter of town, and people stand around in public having conversations about how TERRIBLE you are, or walk through your streets for the SOLE purpose of calling you names.
Because I suppose even the most branched multi-release choice-consequence tree has a hard time making a dramatic antagonist out of a guy being polite and charming in working with you and then going home and spending three decades NOT spending energy on your behalf to upset a settled order that has already been mythologized as proper and on which he and worthy institutions he values materially depend.
But the Witcher, yeah, this clearly comes from a culture that KNOWS a thing or two about how ethnic conflict in a feudal society works. There’s a bit in the playroom zone with a dwarven blacksmith that does it great. People will know you’re different, but they’ll accept you as part of the community. But know you’re different.
And when things get stressful they might link you to the stresses. And want to take it out on you. And convince other people they gain from your loss.
But wait, there WILL be people that value you. Authorities that will protect you, put your contribution to the community above petty bigotry.
But authority - whether established or upstart-aspirant - has enemies, and if those enemies either win, or the authority ever needs to buy their favor cheap…
Other than that, I like the pulpiness of it all - it clearly comes from the kind of book that could be described as “rollicking”. A ridiculously OP protagonist - magical Han Solo Batman, basically - threading a plot advanced by femme fatale teases, with eventual consummation… James Bond was pulp.
Pulp - stories that just exist as off-the-shelf daydreams, no higher pretensions - I dig pulp.