The Witcher 3 is one of the best war games there's ever been

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The Witcher 3 is one of the best war games there's ever been

Just sharing an article with you about war in the Witcher 3. I thought it was insightful and well written.

The Witcher 3 is one of the best war games there's ever been

The thing that The Witcher 3 does best, better than most other games, is war. This doesn't sound remarkable until you consider the huge number of games that are specifically about war - that make you do war and be in it - and that war itself never appears in The Witcher, at least not directly. We see battlefields and garrisons, occupations and barricades, but never open conflict. War is in a constant state of passing through, enormous and unseen, always at some distant proximity, but written into the land of The Witcher 3 and the people on it, in magic and misery...

He also goes on a tangent about Geralt has an homage to samurai that I'd never really considered.

Geralt stands apart from the world and everyone in it, freed from impossible choices. He's a brilliant creation, the perfect body in which to tour the no-man's murk of Velen and beyond - a powerful, neutral force, like a wandering ronin. In fact bits of Geralt - his tied hair and long swords, his spinning fighting style and that wolfish look - are so reminiscent of Toshiro Mifune, the star of Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, that you get the feeling Mifune must have been in CD Projekt's minds as they built their version of Geralt.
 
That's what i love about Sapkowski, The Witcher is not only Medieval-Fantasy and so on...it also criticizes our Modern society and our Human behavior somehow!
Morality, Humanity and all these Topics!
 
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"This doesn't sound remarkable until you consider the huge number of games that are specifically about war - that make you do war and be in it - and that war itself never appears in The Witcher, at least not directly."

This is precisely what many people don't like of TW3. Me included. What's the point of living in a wartime and don't see even one battle? It's senseless. I would had enough just with a few skirmishes
 
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TW 3 is indeed one of the best games ever written. Too bad we never get to see that war in-game. And that image in the article it is very...very old... or I never found that place in the game.
 
"This doesn't sound remarkable until you consider the huge number of games that are specifically about war - that make you do war and be in it - and that war itself never appears in The Witcher, at least not directly."

This is precisely what many people don't like of TW3. Me included. What's the point of living in a time of war and don't see even one battle? It's senseless. I would had enough just with a few skirmishes

Well, I suppose the point is that the world feels lived-in and very much like one at war, and the human impact of the war is felt so strongly and richly that it trumps not witnessing soldiers actually fighting. Which is kind of the point of the article.
 
Honestly a rather rambling piece that skips much of what makes TW3 a great commentary on war. Also, 11 Bit did an admirable job of it as well, and you won't read about that on Euro gamer.
 
Sam2305;n3027742 said:
"This doesn't sound remarkable until you consider the huge number of games that are specifically about war - that make you do war and be in it - and that war itself never appears in The Witcher, at least not directly."

This is precisely what many people don't like of TW3. Me included. What's the point of living in a time of war and don't see even one battle? It's senseless. I would had enough just with a few skirmishes


So much this, the war is completly absent from the game and i would go even further as to claim that the game does a poor atempt to simulate one(sure the atmosphere is there, but it lacks any gameplay to go with it). Witcher 2 Chapter 2 did a far better atempt at it in my opinion.

There is a lot of talk of war in The Witcher 3, yet the communities still thrive as if nothing, peasants have abundance of supplies for us to loot, merchants have abundance of goods for us to buy, etc.
There is not even a single skirsmish during the whole game, not a blockade, not a siege, not an atack on a village, not a talk about spies sabotaging, nothing.

A lot of suspension of disbelief is needed for me to claim this is the best war game ever made.
 
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gregski;n9417421 said:
TBH it's pretty amazing that articles are still written about this game, 2 years after its realease.

I fully expect that in 25 years, people will still be referring to it as a gold standard. It simply unified so many open-world elements so well and blended them so seamlessly into the overall experience. Not to mention mature, developed storylines, voice-acting, and cinematic execution -- it's a magical combo. I set it beside Ultima VII insofar as it incorporates and balances so many variables so expertly. I think, whether people love or hate the actual game, they can't deny the accomplishment.
 
bengeddes;n123722 said:
He also goes on a tangent about Geralt has an homage to samurai that I'd never really considered.
Geralt stands apart from the world and everyone in it, freed from impossible choices. He's a brilliant creation, the perfect body in which to tour the no-man's murk of Velen and beyond - a powerful, neutral force, like a wandering ronin. In fact bits of Geralt - his tied hair and long swords, his spinning fighting style and that wolfish look - are so reminiscent of Toshiro Mifune, the star of Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, that you get the feeling Mifune must have been in CD Projekt's minds as they built their version of Geralt.
This is the message addressed to JP users from CDPR around 2 years ago:
TBH even from one Japanese viewpoint, I think identifying Geralt with samurai is not weird at all, rather comfortable to us.

By the way, an exhibition is currently held in Japan featuring Przemysław “Trust” Truściński who designed television and theatre sets and graphic projects for computer games (The Witcher, among others).
http://www.uplink.co.jp/gallery/2017/48944
I'm sure that just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to hold an exhibition in Japan. I'd say this happens because TW3 not only gained popularity in Japan as well but also is one of the best game which articles are still written about this game, 2 years after its realease.
 
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I think there's two sides of this:

1. The game did a very good job of showing a land devastated by war, where life is really hard for the regular people caught up in it.

2. The game did not do a very good job of really showing us that war, or having questlines that directly relate to it. We don't see any battles (besides in the opening cutscene), or even any skirmishes. The Witcher 2 did a better job of having set pieces that showed battles. Early on, there are several quests that at least relate to the war (there are a couple early quests that relate to searching through battlefields full of dead bodies). Soon enough, though, there's really no quests that directly relate to the war. One can almost forget that a war is happening. This is probably a weakness.

Also I get that The Witcher 3 was meant to be a more personal adventure, rather than a geopolitical one like most big RPGs. And I think that was a good thing. But it would've been interesting to allow us to potentially choose sides in the war and have some effect on how the war goes. Perhaps Geralt should not be able to single-handedly determine the outcome of the war. But he could be involved in a major event. For instance, the game tells us a lot how Novigrad as at the tip of the spear. I think it would've been great for Geralt to be involved in a battle for Novigrad. It would've been particularly interesting, since the game does a good job of demonstrating that every side of the conflict was severely flawed (Nilfgaard is an aggressive conquerer, Radovid is crazy and basically evil, and Novigrad itself basically has state-organized pogroms). It would've been genuinely hard to determine who to side with, and the game could've easily shown some pretty bleak consequences of the victory of whichever side you supported.
 
lessthanjake123;n9509391 said:
But it would've been interesting to allow us to potentially choose sides in the war and have some effect on how the war goes.

This is actually possible in Reason of State and related side quests, even if the plot in these is not among the best done ones in the game. There are three possible outcomes to the war depending on the decisions made in the quests.

The explanation to the lack of actual battles shown in the game might be that they would have been too expensive to implement relative to their importance in the story, and Geralt's character probably would not be interested in taking part in them (in The Witcher 2, he had to because of the circumstances). From what I have read, there could have been somewhat more content related to the war nevertheless (see the quotes in TheImpZA's posts here), but it was cut from the final game because of not fitting well with the main story and not having enough time to finish it.
 
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sv3672;n9511131 said:
This is actually possible in Reason of State and related side quests, even if the plot in these is not among the best done ones in the game. There are three possible outcomes to the war depending on the decisions made in the quests.

The explanation to the lack of actual battles shown in the game might be that they would have been too expensive to implement relative to their importance in the story, and Geralt's character probably would not be interested in taking part in them (in The Witcher 2, he had to because of the circumstances). From what I have read, there could have been somewhat more content related to the war nevertheless (see the quotes in TheImpZA's posts here), but it was cut from the final game because of not fitting well with the main story and not having enough time to finish it.

Yes, I suppose Reason of State does allow us to take sides and have an effect on the war. But it feels a bit tacked on, and you still don't actually see anything relating to the war. It's basically having an effect on the war through subterfuge, and you don't really see any difference in the game world afterwards. So, while it does fulfill what I was talking about in some sense, I think what I would've ideally wanted would be a more thorough, well-integrated questline in which you actually are involved in the war effort, see the war firsthand, and see a change in the gameworld based on who succeeds. As I said, I think potentially portraying a battle for Novigrad would've been a good opportunity for this.

I agree, though, that this might have been too difficult to do relative to its importance to the story. Ultimately, TW3 is a personal story, and I think that's a good thing. And we certainly got plenty of content even without this. I just think that in a perfect world something like this would've been implemented as well.

 
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