Honourable Mentions: The Witcher (Enhanced Edition) – PC Game

Those who are long time readers of the blog will know I made the conscious decision not to review games on this blog. However I am not opposed to giving the odd one an honourable mention as I come across them. To be honest, it has been a while since I had a good gaming session, but that occurred recently when I bought the Witcher.

Based on a Polish series of books I was grabbed by this RPPG from the start. Its biggest draw was a wonderful balance of story and freedom. It doesn’t, perhaps, have the same freedom as Oblivion but it has freedom within choices and the choices you make massively effect the development of the story. You will eventually reach the same place, but on another road and for, perhaps, another reason.

The other great thing about the game is the fact that it is so... mature is the best descriptor I can find. Not just in gore levels, expletives and the fact that your character will sleep with just about anything – with sex cards (collecting them is kind of like a mini game) over a blurred back video and, incidentally, I believe that these were censored for the US release. But in the topics covered. There is a story about racism here and about monsters – the monsters within man compared to the beasts that haunt the night and our nightmares.

I have completed the main game at time of writing this and am about to embark on playing the additional adventures that ship with the enhanced edition of the game. The game does feature vampires – and a variety of them at that. We have a variety of minor vampires appearing as enemies through the game. Such creatures as Fleders and Garkains. Hideous bat like creatures who haunt the night and can stun victims with, what appeared to be, a bat like sonar.

The game does feature vampires in a side quest and main quest. The Side Quest concerns a brothel run by the Queen of the Night – a bruxa. She has her sisters with her, a pair of alps. As your journal says: “No other monster inspires so many myths and fallacies as the alp. People believe that this vampire is able to turn into a black dog or a venomous toad. They mistake alps for succubi, believing them to be lecherous and inclined to seduce handsome young men. Folk tales describe their charm and their beautiful, seductive voices, as well as their loathing of virgins. What is true beyond any doubt is that they move noiselessly and attack by surprise, rarely giving their victims as much as a chance to scream in terror.”

Play your cards right on this quest and you can end up with a bruxa and two alp orgy! Actually this quest really does underline the game’s desire to play with the concept of what, and who, is a monster. It also highlights the way the game will throw little bits of information at you and give it an importance later as you are told in an earlier chapter of a friend you once had, a higher vampire, and this piece of information seems throw away. You discover, in this quest, that he and the Queen of the Night were lovers. Marvellous stuff.

Towards the end there is a case involving a type of vampire, the striga. I won’t spoil the quest or the story leading up to it but we do discover that these creatures can be created through a curse and, in this case, incest is involved within the curse. Of course such unions have been the source of vampirism before. The film Mark of the Vampire had this as a source of vampirism (along with suicide) until the censors expunged that entire back story. Though the incestuous source is somewhat different in this story.

Anyway, if you game on the PC and you like your role playing games morally grey, you could do worse than give Witcher a go.