How I got introduced to The Witcher
When Netflix released "The Witcher - Season 1" on December, 2019, all my friends in college watched it and started recommending it to me. The funny part of it is when people who get movie recommendations from me suggested the series to me. I generally don't watch series since I hate them. So I never watch any series unless it is something that deserves my attention and is so good. Until that point, Black Mirror was the only series I watched.
The only clip of the Witcher series that I watched was the fight scene in the market. It was since then, Geralt was known as "the butcher of Blaviken". We can talk about it later on. I personally like Henry Cavill since I saw him as Superman. So I thought of watching it at least for him but I dropped the idea soon after.
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| Official The Witcher 3 - The Wild Hunt GOTY edition poster. |
Once I got my laptop, I decided to play games that I wanted to play for so long, which I couldn't afford to buy on my Xbox. So I played GTA V, Watch Dogs 2 and other games initially. Once completing all these games, I'm left game-less. So I asked Nexus for game recommendations. I asked for an open world game, like GTA and he suggested me try "The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt" by the famous, one and only, CD Projekt Red. He has played the game before me and read all the Witcher books. He's a Witcher fanatic. He thought I won't play that game.
Initial days
So after completing Dishonored, I pirated the game. I know it's wrong but initially I pirated games until my laptop got ruined by virus. Since then, I started either buying games when they're on sale or play only F2P games. F2P is free-to-play, like Valorant (of course they'll milk money from you by other means).
When I started playing the game initially, I started skipping cut scenes since they were talking too much. I know I was dumb back then. Also, I made a grave mistake of turning off the game music. One day, Nexus asked me to stream the game for him since he was bored and wanted to see the way I play the epic game. I was playing this one particular mission called "The Ladies of the Woods" and that's when he found out I'm skipping scenes and muted game music.
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| Discord chat between me and nexus when this happened |
He was clearly disappointed and he made me realize why this game was one of the greatest release of all time. He told me this, "Play this game thinking you're Geralt of Rivia and listen to the background scores to hype you and watch the cut scenes as if you were watching a movie." Since then, I stopped skipping cut scenes and watched everything.
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| Discord Chat between me and nexus |
The Way I play
I realized that what I thought as RPG genre is wrong and the way I thought of playing the game is completely wrong. Since then, Nexus started watching me play to guide me as a responsible veteran. Playing that game made me understand how each genre of games are supposed to be played. I used to stream to nexus on discord. Sometimes atikin, TrillX, rakavid and thalasanty show up to watch the stream. But mostly it'll be both nexus and me playing the game all night.
He used to laugh at the way I play since I die so easily. I don't play tactically, using all abilities of a Witcher, I just rush into enemies and monsters with a sword and start attacking to get one shot by them, followed by a long-ass laugh from nexus. He really made me look like I'm not fit for playing these sorta games. FeelsBadMan.
But as the days passed, I started adapting to the concept and understood the Witcher arsenal. Only then, each battle was easy. During that time, The Witcher games came on sale on steam. So we both bought the game on steam. Which means we own the game legally and we don't have to pirate it to play again. After I bought the game, I copied the save files, uninstalled the pirated version and installed the official version from steam.
The Break for Witcher 3 and hopping into Witcher 2
I bought "The Witcher 2: The Assassins' of Kings" as well on sale since I started liking the Witcher and wanted to play all the games(I didn't play the first game due to horrible control and graphics since it is an old game and I started getting headache due to FOV). So we gave a break to The Witcher 3 and started playing The Witcher 2. Since Witcher games are choice-based consequences game(the story depends on the dialogue choices you make in game), we played the second game twice to play two different playthroughs.
I took us 45-50 hours to complete the Witcher 2 game completely through both different gameplays. I hated that game initially since the controls were old school and graphics was triggering, But that's justifiable for a game that was released way back in 2011. The third game was released on 2015 and the first game came in 2007. I own the first game as well but the graphics and the controls is giving me nightmares and I decided to skip it.
One notable thing to talk about CDPR and the Witcher games is they are good in filling the games with steamy scenes. Even such scenes were made so well for a game and that adds to why the games are the best. If you've played the games completely, you'd understand.
Back to The Witcher 3
So after completing the second game for the second time, We continued our third game journey. This is the time the best phase of the game was coming. Geralt finding his true love in a female character(Triss or Yennefer; choice is yours to make. Spoiler: you can't have them both as your love interest. You can try if you want lmao), His father-daughter relationship with Ciri, His relationship with Vesemir, damn never have I ever thought I'd cry for a game.
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| Me and Nexus' initial longest gameplay duration |
The game deals with all kind of emotions and can make any grown man experience all sort of feelings when he plays the game. The beauty of the game is how they made all these choice-based. Like you have to be a good dad(making correct choices) to Ciri to have a healthy relationship with her that can even save her life at the end of the game. The same goes for many scenarios where the entire story changes as a consequence of your choices.
I can go on and talk about the game but I can't do it without spoiling. I've spoiled enough already. So I'll stop talking about the story. Let's talk about the way Witcher affected me.
The Witcher effect
Ever since I got attached to the game and its story and the Witcher universe, I was so obsessed with it. Of course I'll say that for any new universe that I get to know about. My childhood habit. But this game is beyond anything that one can only imagine. Gamers are known for their toxic, tilted, emotionless character throughout the world. But this game can make them cry, give them joy. It's like a beautiful journey when you finish the game. I feel it after playing for like just 158 hours. There are people who have played it more than this, multiple times, and some people still playing the game to find hidden scenes, rare dialogues, rare encounters, even after playing it for more than 1000+ hours, One such person is xLetalis.
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| Even our discord server roles are based on The Witcher characters |
I was so obsessed with the Witcher that I decided to change the names of the roles of people in our server to the characters based on the story.
I finished the game recently after sitting 9 straight hours with nexus and completed the beautiful journey as the Geralt of Rivia. I'm 21 year old at the time of this post and this game made me feel like a dad, husband, monster hunter, a chick magnet, a hated person among people(irl but in game as well), a badass, a clown, a genius, a brave warrior and what not?
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| the last stream :( |
There are times people used to hop into voice channels to watch our stream just for some steamy scenes. And trust me, they are worth it :) I can't attach any clips of them since they were explicit for a public forum. You can play the game to experience all these moments if you play 150 hours and make the right choices. Trust me, you won't regret it. But you'll experience this post game depression that you can't do anything as a Witcher in game anymore. You can still explore the whole Witcher world, show off your weapon and armor, paintings, wine, statues, trophies collection in your own estate where you start living a retired life after the game is over.
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| My post game retirement Outfit (inspired from Nexus) |
Let's talk about the series and the books for a moment. So I decided to watch the series after completing the games because I was obsessed with the game so much. Henry Cavill is a living geek god who is a big Witcher fan like me as well, perfected the role as Geralt of Rivia. Also the series talks about the things that happened before the third game and things happened before and during the first and second games. After watching the series, I got to make a picture of the whole story of the Witcher. All that's left for me is to read the books which I'm planning to do sooner. So once I read all the books, I'll talk about them in a separate post and of course I'll share my opinion of both the first and second season of the Witcher Netflix series once it is released on December this year.
Should you play this?
If you ask me for a game suggestion, Witcher will be my second suggested game after GTA. But I recommend it only if I know you'll play this whole game, by spending 100+ hours to fully explore and experience the game as a Witcher yourself. If you're a casual gamer, this is not for you. That is because you only want to play a game to pass your time. You are not ready to play the game as a protagonist. This is one of those games where you should feel that you are a protagonist to get the full-game experience.
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| Geralt with his horse Roach, standing majestically before the City of Toussaint |
You have to do a lot of things when you play this game. For example, you need to craft a nice armor, sword for your build, work on your mutations, brew potions and oils, learn about different beasts and their weakness, manage your inventory, learn to trade, learn the use of signs and try different combos using them while fighting; followed by understanding the game so that you can choose your dialogues that determine the consequences of the story. Remember, the story depends your choices. So if you make choices just like that, you'd end up with a bad ending and you'll regret it after playing for so many hours. Of course you can save often so that you can reload and change your choices(that's how I did a lot of times).
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| Geralt walks on water, is he Jesus? |
The above scene is from the DLC, Blood and Wine, where his mission was to get a sword from the lady of the lake. The sword is one of the fan favorite from the first Witcher game and so CDPR bought it into the third game via DLC.
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| Sexy Geralt, the man every guy wishes to be. |
There are few games that gives you satisfaction when you complete. This is one of those games but it also gives you a feel of sadness that you've completed the game and now you have to snap back to reality. But after playing this game, I was able to learn a lot of human minds and philosophies as well. This game is not just about killing monsters, banging women, playing cards; they are just a part of it to spice things up. Beyond these, they talk about human relationships, political statements, social discrimination, corruption, and all things that happen in our very world. That makes this game so big, so special and makes it more than just a game.
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| He smiled! The last frame of the game before NG+ |
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