Morality in The Witcher

I want to move on to a more complicated game, namely CD Projekt Red's (CDPR) The Witcher series. It came out just around the same time as Bioware released Mass Effect, and yet offered a far different experience.

Grey Area

When The Witcher first released in 2007, it was highly regarded and deemed a very different RPG experience than the usual "group up and save the world!" paradigm. It was dark, violent, and edgy, set within a fairly unique low-fantasy setting. The game deals with very real issues, such as racism, death, prostitution, and nationalism in a mature way. For this to work CDPR needed to include a way to make the player's decisions matter. But they did not include a measured system, such as in Mass Effect, you did not gain good points or bad points, simply because the choices made in The Witcher rarely just boil down to "good" or "bad." Most of the decisions come down to your own personal moral compass, and what you consider to be right; no behind the scenes points being added or detracted, just your choice, and the consequences that can come cascading back down on you later on in the game. That is the most interesting thing about The Witcher, no side, whether it be the humans, the mutants(elves, dwarves and the like), or yourself, Geralt, a half-mutant, was good or evil; each side was just carrying out actions which it believed to be right, and it was presented in a very believable way. As Geralt, you can choose to side with any of these factions, or stay neutral, and the game presents its' story very differently depending on your decisions, but it rarely ever rewards you for making a peculiar decision, besides with its natural consequence, whether that be positive or negative.

Resources

Bycer, J. (2013, August 1). The grey side of morality in game design. In Game Wisdom. Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://game-wisdom.com/critical/the-grey-side-of-morality-in-game-design