The Witcher Reviews

Pro-G has reviewed the Witcher, deeming it a strong game with a few minor flaws and giving it an 8/10.

The story is interesting while not exactly inspired, but characterisation (not least of Geralt himself) is strong and the relationships between the major characters feel natural and realistic. Voiceover work is fairly decent, but there are a few problems with the script, betraying the fact that it has been translated into English from the developer’s native language. At its best, the script flows nicely, but occasionally there are moments where you can see where dialogue has been trimmed and toned down during the translation. Fortunately, the script issues never descend to MetalHeart: Replicants Rampage or Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon levels of farce: it clunks along in places, but never has you scratching your head in perplexity. Despite the occasional translation issues, one thing I liked especially was the fact that script is refreshingly foul-mouthed: in places it would make a paratrooper blush. This is all part of The Witcher’s billing as a “mature RPG”. The PEGI 18+ rating is well-earned, thanks to not only the violence and bad language but the inclusion of sexual content, as well.

The thought of the very presence of sex in a videogame may conjure up visions of the puerile Lula games and the equally lamentable Playboy games. Thankfully, The Witcher deals with sex in a more mature way – though not by a very large margin. The Witcher is not the first RPG to feature the ability to sleep with other characters – all of Bioware’s RPGs since Baldur’s Gate II have touched on the subject, for example – but The Witcher is perhaps unique in that it is a whole lot more upfront about the subject, to the point of even providing mementos of each sexual encounter Geralt has, in the form of portrait cards, with your conquests in various states of undress. Naturally, this has caused a lot of consternation and debate, especially among UK and US audiences. I should say at this point that I didn’t have a problem with their inclusion and certainly found nothing to be offended by. Each liaison is entirely optional and since Geralt’s status as a Witcher renders him sterile, it’s entirely in character for him to have the sexual proclivity of a Dickensian cad – after all, he’s not capable of leaving a trail of illegitimate sprogs behind him, so such a casual attitude to sex is perhaps to be expected. The cards themselves are cheesier than a Babybel packing factory, but any objections to them can mainly be put down to a lack of perspective: saying that graphically depicting violence and death in a game is fine, but that the odd sex scene or bared nipple is the end of civilisation as we know it strikes me as a rather ludicrous moral position to adopt…

In addition, the Witcher official site is pointing out a long list of international reviews, which appears to all be praising the game.