T w e n t y S i d e d

Strictly speaking, The Witcher 3 has a prologue (in White Orchard) and three acts, which I guess is four parts total. More generally speaking, it has two parts: the stuff that happens before the battle at Kaer Morhen, and the stuff that happens after it.

The battle at Kaer Morhen is the first major emotional climax of the game. The second will come at the ending. This is an important bit for the game to get right, and in my opinion, it gets it right. Pulling this sort of thing off is not easy, as evidenced by the number of games that have botched it over the years. I’ll get into some examples in a bit, but first let’s set the scene: we finally have a way to find Ciri, Geralt and Yen’s adoptive daughter, for whom we’ve been searching this whole time. Avallac’h has secreted her away on a mysterious island called the Isle of Mists.

One of the things CDPR successfully pulled off – for me at least, on my first playthrough – was making me worry that Ciri might be dead. This is tricky territory for a game narrative to navigate. Obviously, the average player understands that it’s unlikely that a major character will die offscreen. And yet the world of the Witcher universe seemed wild and unpredictable enough that I did, in fact, worry about exactly that. I worried if Ciri was Uma (the weird baby thing), and that maybe the trial of grasses would kill her. Later, on the Isle of Mists, I worried if I would be too late to save her. There’s one particularly excruciating shot where Geralt finally sees her comatose body in a hut on said isle, and I imagine most players (or, at least, me) will have their hearts in their throats for it.

(Then, they’re cheeky enough to throw in a teaser for Cyberpunk 2077. In this clip, the relevant part is at the 2:45 mark if you want to indulge in a bit of cheek.)

Ciri teleports Geralt and herself back to Kaer Morhen, and, since the Wild Hunt can track her when she teleports, we know they’ll be hard on her heels. Which is why, prior to retrieving Ciri, Geralt recruits various compatriots from the series so far to assist him in defending against their imminent attack: Eskel, Lambert, and Vesemir (his Witcher bros), Keira Metz (optional sorceress), Yennefer and Triss (non-optional sorceresses), Letho of Gulet (a heavy from the second game, one of my personal favorite characters), Roche and Ves (from the Blue Stripes commando group, also from the second game), Ermion (a druid from Skellige), Hjalmar (brother to Skellige’s new Queen, I wonder if Cerys shows up if you don’t pick her for Queen?), also from Skellige, and others that I hope I’m not forgetting.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Witcher 3: The Battle for Kaer Morhen, Part One”

Bob Case MrBtongue is the Pele of complaining about videogames and will soon be the Garrincha of complaining about TV shows. You can find his Youtube channel at youtube.com/user/MrBtongue.