Its name was mentioned everywhere - YouTube comments, message boards, social media. Began being included in "list" videos on YouTube. It began being pulled into debates and arguments about which of those two games were the best ever. Of course, then it began to parallel Skyrim as the best game ever, a game that you could play forever, etc etc. It seemed like it had lost its magic, its feeling of strangeness and its air of mystique. Around this time was when my eyes opened and I realized just how big The Witcher had become.
One time I walked into that friend's room and another friend of ours said "You know this game? We never uninstall it from our computers." A third friend called me over to show me how impressive the hair looked in the game. Focusing on all that seems to be missing the point of TW1, and that's mainly because of how different, polished and popular TW3 turned out be. This is also reflected in many comments online by players that discovered the franchise through TW3 that disregard TW1, calling it boring, clunky and saying that it hasn't aged well. Even though I've gotten over my irritation with him about this, the negative feelings towards TW3's popularity have remained. Him continuously playing TW3 while poking/ intentionally annoying me is probably one of the biggest reasons for the negative feelings I have for TW3’s popularity. He probably just did this to annoy me (and succeeded) I’d try to explain how the previous games were great too, but he wouldn’t listen. He /we aren't young, we're in our late 20s. He'd keep shitting over the previous two games and keep calling them crappy games in all aspects just because they were old, without giving them a shot. He'd keep talking about how much fun TW3 was. Still, none of that actually affected me until an incident with a friend of mine. I loved this strange and beautiful album that came with TW1 ("Music inspired by the game") But maybe the framerate is one of the main reasons why I don’t have fond and strong memories of playing that game (compared to TW1, where I clearly remember many of the moments) I don't mean that it isn't an enjoyable/ beautiful experience (I guess a 2nd playthrough on a new machine will answer that - I intend to finally do that after posting this blog!) but this post isn't about that. I was mildly disappointed as the world didn't include many iconic locations from the books (like the forests of Brokilon) but also my ageing laptop that could barely run the game affected my enjoyment quite a bit. I wore the shirt, framed and put up the map on the wall above my desk, and took a lot of pictures of it all. When the game reached my house, it was one of the most important days ever.
I trusted them to nail it (they did) An open world Witcher game? The world from the Witcher? I could actually immerse myself, explore and live in that world? Holy crap. CDPR seemed like intelligent devs (they are) that loved franchise. This was going to be the best game ever, no doubt. I'd never been this excited for anything. I was unbelievably hyped when The Witcher 3 was announced. One of my favorite images related to The Witcher. I loved the feeling of sitting in the tavern in Murky Waters at night, the warmth and coziness of the inside surrounded by the weirdness of the things that lurk in the darkness outside. This tone was never recreated in the subsequent games imo. Lebioda’s Hospital and the village named Murky Waters. I loved the strange environments, the dark, grimy cities, even the unique costumes and the strange, ethereal locations such as St. It was otherworldly, dream like and beautiful. The story, atmosphere, the greyness of morality and the general weird, dark tone grabbed me and took me to another world. I played The Witcher 1 in 2007, and it immediately became my favorite game ever.
(Note: Due to the 10k word limit, I'll post the rest of this as a comment.) Hopefully, posting this will allow me to get over my issues and rediscover the magic and my love for the Witcher franchise. I'm sitting in a train passing by foggy mountains, about to start a new life in a new place, listening to The Witcher soundtrack after many years as I write this (well ok, that's where I wrote the majority of this) It seemed like the perfect moment to finally get to it. Writing this all down and reading it now makes it all feel really silly and embarrassing, but it's something I must do, so here goes. Or maybe I've been procrastinating because it feels like a huge, impossible task to explain what I mean. Maybe it’s taken me this long because I've been scared of how people will react to an opinion of this sort. After over 4 years of planning to share my thoughts about this, I've finally decided to sit down and get it off my chest.
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