Binary Swan

This is basically an expansion upon a comment I made on the Decision Dilemma podcast from the guys over at Experience Points. I lamented the absence of The Witcher because I feet it provides a model of decision making that is both effective for its own narrative purposes whilst also providing a dilemma for a player due to its lack of a binary set of ethics in the game world. It is slightly different from the niche I have created for this blog but I feel that the decision making processes of games are one means by which our experiences become subjective and allow us to take our own path of exploration through the games we play.

There are a number of major and minor decisions in The Witcher that deal with morality but in a unique way. This is because, in general, you’re are not presented with a world of good and bad people. The people you encounter are more likely to be greedy, selfish, arrogant or even weak. Almost everyone is shown to have some flaw to their character without being too conspicuous, a testament to the quality writing of the game. The player as a result cannot make a good or bad choice, ethically, because each choice benefits different people, none of which are wholly good. This can be contrasted to other well known “games of decisions” such as Mass Effect and Bioshock which offer decisions that provide two opposing choices. As a result a decision with two choices in The Witcher provides an ethical dilemma because it is not a choice between two predetermined binary ethical positions. I think this provides a greater opportunity for meaning because people have to invest some thought into how they feel about each situation rather than role-playing the good path or the evil path.

In regard to podcast’s conversation regarding the permanence and effectiveness of your decisions, The Witcher is set up so that there are firstly immediate consequences for a decision, impacting that next step in dialogue or action. This is an obvious design choice providing the player with a feeling of control in a given situation and thus a sense of identification with it. However there are also ripple effects that flow on from these decision that might not emerge until much later in a playthrough. For example: I made what I thought to be an easy and minor decision early on to let some elf smugglers continue their work outside a village. This gave me a sense of gratification as I was snubbing the law handed down by a rather hostile and hypocritical preacher in the area. I later found many hours down the track that a less than reputable contact that would’ve helped me with my investigations had been attacked and killed by people wielding the very weapons I had allowed to be smuggled about the world. My earlier confidence in my decision was undermined and revealed my tendency to treat such a decision as being only of short term, non-permanent status. The frivolity of my decision making process was shown for what it was and caused me to reflect on my conditioning to act that way in an RPG. This new ripple effect in The Witcher exposes some of weaknesses of decisions presented in games like Bioshock and Mass Effect. When this ripple effect emerges and is made recognizable to the player it gives each decision a greater weight and also makes the save/reload technique obsolete as immediate rewards are not the only consideration anymore.  To go back to a save point before a decision is to jump back over a vast chunk of playtime. There is a permanence later down the track that the player m deepust now acknowledge and as a result they must think more deeply about the game world, its characters, its culture and how what might result from the decisions they make. The quality of the writing in the game is not to be underestimated as it makes these later effects feel logical and real, a direct consequence of the player’s actions within the world of the game rather than the system of the game.

The final aspect of The Witcher that I think might also contribute to its effective decision making process is that whilst you level up and customize your Witcher is typical RPG fashion narratively, you are always Geralt and therefore  a character with pre-existing morals and ethics that you must explore in your playthrough. Players are not given an empty shell that they must fill completely, they are given a character to explore and uncover rather than an avatar to control. This kind of character is most definitely reminiscent of The Namless One’s story in Planescape Torment. Geralt is a whole character that players can respond to and bounce off of, not control and create.

At first glance The Witcher feels and plays like a staple RPG system. It contrains many elements that make the decisions made in the game feel more meaningful. What is interesting is that upon examination they run contrary to accepted practise in the RPG genre, and whilst they are not wholly unique they do come together to great effect. The ethical system that lacks any binary good or evil, the decisions that have effects later on to the narrative in a fundamental way and the lack of an open slate character that the player has free reign to design allow The Witcher to present many dilemma’s in the decisions of Geralt and thus provide a more compelling experience and exploration of the game’s world and ethical system.