I’d like to start off by saying that I’m playing the Witcher games in the wrong order. I’ve just finished the Witcher 2 and I’m about to start the first one. However, I’m mighty impressed with the one I have played. The environments, character design and artwork are all beautiful, sometimes breathtaking, the dialogue is clever and effective, and the story is great to top it all off.
Basically, you play Geralt – a Witcher – and you’ve got amnesia. You start out as the king’s right hand man, you do’t really know what you did before that, and inevitably he’s murdered, by another Witcher named Letho, and you get the blame. You’re imprisoned, but manage to escape, and decide you must try to find the real murderer and clear your name, as well as recover your memory. You’re helped along the way by a number of well animated (both with and without clothes, although I can’t abide video game sex scenes, it just gets weird and somehow porn-y) and well acted sidekicks, although sometimes choosing to follow one of them may lose you another.
You get dragged into all sorts of political conflicts, wars and other malarky along the way, but you never lose sight of what’s important, your lover, Triss Merigold, and the struggle to clear your name.
