My column this week is a gimmick-y little thing illustrating just how ridiculously lavish the storytelling is in Witcher 3. It was originally part of my 2015 end-of-year list, but the idea kind of grew into its own thing. And speaking of my 2015 list:
I left out Kerbal Space Program. Then again, it was actually part of my 2013 list. Honestly, these end-of-year lists are getting to be really confusing. Games come out before they’re released, we play them before they’re done, and we finish them before they’re finished. It’s a madcap, topsy-turvy world we live in now and nobody knows what the rules are.
Also, if I’d thought of it I might have put Hexcells: Infinite on my list. I played quite a bit of that this year. Er, all of it, actually. It’s like Minesweeper, but about ten times deeper, and played on a hex grid.
Witcher 3 was the game I wanted to come back to all year. It’s stuck with me, and I keep thinking about how I’d like to handle situation A or B differently. Spoiler: The biggest one is that: In my play-through I left the Radovid problem alone. This is not a good idea and the people of the city had a Bad Time.
Also, I sort of defaulted to pairing up with Yennifer, because it felt that that was the most “canonical” way to play it. I acted like I was playing KOTOR: the game makes the most sense on both a story and thematic level if you go light-side, but they allow you to play dark side anyway. But later it became clear there was no “canonical” route through Witcher 3. All roads were equally valid. If I do another play through, I might pair up with TrisI loved the hedge maze scene. It’s not remarkable by movie standards, but it’s amazing by the standards of videogame romance. It’s probably the first time romantic tension in a videogame didn’t feel like flirting with a Protectron. or I might go for the loner ending.
Now if I can just scrape together enough hours to manage another trip through the game.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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