Let me argue devil's advocate for a second here. Playing through massive battles in first- / third-person is
awesome. The battle for Mel Senshir in
Amalur...the final assault against the Black Gate in
Shadow of Mordor...almost every single battle in
Mount and Blade... There's no denying that such sequences really suck you in as a player. And they add an enormous amount to the games in question. (Arguably, it's the focal point of
Mount and Blade.)
The
cost, though, is that those games are trying to make those sequences enjoyable, exciting, and thrilling. That's the emotional reaction that players have -- they're having fun. Any "negative" emotional impact is largely delivered through cutscenes or
(shudder) quick-time events. But the end result is:
"Wow...that was sooo cool!"
Inherently, The Witcher tries hard to avoid that reaction where the war is concerned. Now we wind up with a weird dichotomy...and I apologize for the length of this in advance:
War, if portrayed realistically, is not fun. A person in an actual wartime situation has a decided emotional investment, which is their own well-being, safety and that of their loved ones. This, obviously, is absent from any manuscript (novel, film, play, etc.). In such cases, the audience must be made to fear for
other characters, vicariously. Oftentimes, such emotion is easy to evoke, especially since the story has a forgone conclusion. (Even if the audience isn't aware of how the movie / book ends...the entire story already exists and is driving the audience very carefully to that eventual conclusion, manipulating their hearts and minds to experience the story as the author/director intended.) Such a linear approach means that wartime can be portrayed in such a way that "violence" or "battle" is uncomfortable, harrowing, or terrifying.
When a video game tries to do the same thing...there's an additional problem. There is a
second level of removal that the player experiences: the player is "there"...but they're invincible and untouchable. We
enjoy putting our avatars into dangerous situations, inducing horrible amounts of suffering on them for the sake of our amusement. Not even when "we" die during gameplay does it create anything along the lines of fear, sadness, or regret. Just mild frustration as we click on "Continue from the last Saved Game?" or hit the quickload key... Our anchor in the game-world tends to be the character we worry the least for. This is a massive disconnect.
That brings us to, how in the world I create a video game, putting a player in control of the action, make the experience harrowing without being "fun", but simultaneously create a drive to keep playing. Either it has to
1.) Happen through carefully crafted, forgone conclusions delivered like a linear manuscript (e.g. the cutscenes in
Shadow of Mordor...the scripted pilot rescue-->nuke-->aftermath sequence in
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare...the Leaving Earth sequence in
Mass Effect 3...)
2.) Create a less-is-more situation in which horror "underscores" the gameplay, representing the larger impact while focusing actual gameplay on more intimate / immediate considerations that reflect the aspects of war.
3.) It simply does not occur, and the game presents "wartime gameplay" as an enjoyable and exciting experience.
The truth of most games is that they'll fall somewhere in the middle. The most realistic approaches will create an experience that leaves players "loving" the experience the way some "love" sad movies. The opposite middling-extreme
p) is a game that presents the violence as fun, like some love watching action films. It's when things wind up in the very middle that the game loses impact. When I'm fighting and having a blast...but I'm also supposed to care about the "human" impact of the battle.
That's sort of the problem that the Star Wars prequels experienced. Especially the clone troopers arrival and battle for Geonosis. A whole army of faceless bug-people and robots I don't care about fighting a whole army of faceless troopers I don't care about. The battle was cool, with great cinematography and some imagery that had
aesthetic impact...but was ultimately set dressing. It would have been far more powerful, emotionally, to have NOT seen the fighting. To, perhaps, have had Ep. 3 open with Anakin walking through the aftermath of a battlefield later in the war, listening to the wailing and mourning of the defeated army, seeing the complete apathy of the clone troopers, realizing he was responsible for much of the death and destruction surrounding him, and beginning to question whether or not the Republic was in the right. Instead, the films were filled with "pew-
PEW-
PEEEWWW!!!", "
kaaaBOOOOOOMMM!!!", "WHOOSH-
whoosh-VROOOM!!!", "Spin-move /
twirly-whirl /
backflip!!!", "last minute
save /
reversal!!!" The addition of such elements severely damaged the more mature and developed themes within the story, cheapening the value of "what was at stake" by making me smile and enjoy scenes of war and devastation. I wasn't watching a scene of violence that I wanted to stop or look away from, I was watching fireworks and having a bunch of fun.
Having a full-on battle scene in TW3 would likely have had the same effect, I feel. The opening cinematic did a pretty fantastic job of setting the stage and creating a bleak tone for the war (even if a little "over-the-top" or "conveniently staged", it was still a relatively harsh scene). The rest of the game was very moving -- specifically the game never introduced anything that "cheapened" the weight it carried.
Others, of course, may feel differently. For the sake of the
narrative impact of the war on the events we do take part in, I feel less-is-more was the way to go. I think a battle directly involving Nilfgaard vs. The Free Cities would have been out of place for the story that was being told. No charging ranks or catapult impacts would have carried anywhere near the impact of Triss failing to respond to the signal arrow. Or rushing back to KM realizing that Ciri had come out of hiding.
