The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Review
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Given a limited budget and an expensive game in graphics and voice acting, it's not really possible to offer such a wide-sweeping consequence for every choice. Some consequences are limited as CD Projekt wanted to keep specific NPCs alive no matter what choice you make, which means certain "rescue NPC" choices are dulled in impact. Furthermore, many choices have minor consequences, like minor monetary rewards or either preventing or causing a fight. Not exciting, but better than nothing at all. But despite having no sweeping consequences, these choices still feel important thanks to the good writing of the game. Where most other games offer binary good or evil choices where the consequences are easy to foresee, the Witcher 2 is what you would call genuinely mature. Not in that it has swearing, violence and nudity, though it does have all of those, and in particular gets really gory at times. But its mature stems from the fact that people aren't always what they seem, and most people in this harsh unremittingly bleak world are bastards, either because they have to be bastards to survive or because they just like being bastards. The Witcher 2 delights in having you decide before every single fact is known to you, and in offering you to choose between two things you don't want to do or two things you want to do, a hard choice in both cases. Do I chase down the bastard commander who trapped elven women inside a burning building, or do I save the elven women? I want to do both, but I can't, which is typical of this game. So, Act I is about making a big choice, and Act II plays out completely differently depending on your choice. You may have noticed I haven't talked much about Act III much, and that's because it is a bit of an odd duck. The side-quests play out the same regardless of the main path you followed, though some are dependent on you finding certain objects in earlier acts. The map is smaller and the act is shorter than the two proceeding ones, with the side-quest activities essentially consisting of (get the best gear in the game), which you then get to utilize in the final hour or so of the game. Now this final hour or so is really good as an ending area, and has about five significantly different ways in which it will play out depending on choices you made before and the choices you make in this Act, before culminating in an appropriately (epic) if somewhat ridiculous fight with a boss monster.
Thing is, the Act should either have been focused more on that ending sequence, or have some significant meat to its sidequests. It doesn't exactly feel rushed, but coming out of Act I and II it feels very abrupt by comparison. The structure is unsatisfying too, as you don't have to do very much to get the best equipment, and even on Hard the final fights are really much too easy for your high-level character though the chapter also contains an optional puzzle sequence and a fight that is the hardest in the game, reminiscent of Baldur's Gate II's Twisted Rune fight. The low challenge level is fine for the most part, as the enemy sends in mobs to kill you that you can now easily despatch, a way to highlight how strong our hero has become, but when I am going up close and personal with the final boss monster, I'm expecting at least some challenge. The combination of this odd gameplay design (largely caused by the lack of balance in the character system), the lack of it tying up a few loose ends satisfactorily, and the use of dialogue exposition dumps make the final act slightly unsatisfying. It's not bad by any measure, and it's very satisfying as a narrative ending especially with the epilogue that follows, but it is just disappointing compares to the first two acts.
Conclusion
Honestly, what more can I say? The Witcher 2 is a lovingly crafted, beautiful, and detailed RPG, with a riveting and genuinely mature story. Many of my points of criticism were minor, though some are potentially bothersome, including the odd decisions with the game's interface, camera angle, and aspect ratio, as well as a semi-flawed combat system. And, sure, I would have liked to see more complexity and more balance in the character system. But that doesn't take away quite how strong the core the game is, the choice and consequence playing off against the realistic setting brilliantly, while the level of care having gone into the game helps give weight to the choices offered by making the fleshed-out world feel real.
Considering where mainstream RPGs have been trending towards lately, the Witcher 2 is a great step in the right direction. I don't feel the combat segment of RPGs has to be action-based, quite the opposite, nor do I understand the need to add gimmicks like QTEs to the RPG genre. Yet, if someone wants to craft an (evolved) RPG with action-based combat, this is what it should be. It is about gaining complexity and becoming more mature, instead of simplifying and schlock stories. Leaving aside the debate on combat and camera angles, the core mistake of where the RPG genre is thundering to is that developers do not respect players. The Witcher 2 isn't unremittingly hard, nor will it win awards for complexity in its combat or RPG systems, but what sets it apart from the Dragon Age IIs of the world is both the enormous amount of work put into its every detail, and in not being afraid to challenge the player and offer him or her real and mature choices. It is for those reasons that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is easily our early frontrunner for "RPG of the Year", with no title released so far this year even coming close.
