Post by 500metrictonnes on Jul 27, 2014 18:45:56 GMT -5
Thank you for your responses.
I just finished reading this Twenty Sided post, which sum up my feelings perfectly.
When I play an RPG, I prefer to control every aspect of my character, such his gender, race, personality, class, and appearance. To me, that's half of the fun of playing an RPG. Being forced to play a one particular, especially a character I don't like, is usually an insurmountable barrier to enjoyment.
The reason I dislike Geralt is not only because he's cliche, but because he feels like an awful relic from a mid-nineties comic book. Beyond that, he feels like a character designed specifically to appeal to teenage males:
- He's male, ruggedly handsome, and unambiguously heterosexual, because the worst possible thing for a teenage male is to be accused of being gay. (Geralt always reminds me of the American rock band KISS who, despite borrowing the aesthetics of glam rock, such as makeup and flamboyant outfits, but were fiercely heterosexual, so that no one could accuse you of being gay for listening to them)
- He's an outcast, hated and despised for being "different." But he's not hated because of what he does, but because the people around him are fearful, ignorant, and stupid. It feels calculated to appeal to the egocentric teenage mindset..."No one likes me! No one understands me! It's all their fault that they don't like me!"
- He speaks in a low, guttural, gravelly voice, largely devoid of any emotional inflection, and is facial expression is a near-perpetual po-faced grimace. Why? Because Men Don't Show Feelings. Showing feelings makes you whiny, effeminate, or worst of all...gay! (*gasp!*)
- And despite being a hated outcast, women are just oh-so-eager to hop into bed with him, to the point where the first game encouraged you to collect sexual partners as if they were Pokemon. In other words, he gets all the "benefits" of being an outcast ("I'm special! I'm so badass ordinary people can't stand to be around me!"), with none of the downsides (that women might find him repulsive).
- Witchers are both sterile and immune to disease. So not only can he have copious amounts of sex with women, he'll never have to worry about siring bastard sons or catching some unpleasant STD. In other words, he gets to have lots of sex without any consequences whatsoever! This is what I mean I say he feels like some teenager's power fantasy.
That said, I agree with people who say that in, The Witcher, your choices matter far more than in a typical BioWare game, and that the choices are usually more complex than "save the puppy" or "kick the puppy." But if I don't care about the main character - the one who is making these decisions - then the decision itself carries no weight for me. The big choice in TW2 is, "Do I follow Iorveth, the bigoted, elven freedom fighter who has committed atrocities for his cause, or do you I side with Roche, the king's right-hand man who has committed atrocities for his monarch?" This should be something I would have to give some thought to, but in the end, I didn't care about Geralt's story, I didn't care about the world he inhabited, and I didn't find a single NPC in the entire game that I cared about. So the choice basically came down to "Well, do I want to see the Iorveth or Roche path this time?"
And I will say this: Witcher fans are generally a lot better about accepting peoples' dislike of the game than, say, BioWare fans. Specifically, I do not see them resorting to the "You don't like it because there's something wrong with you!" defence as often. I don't know if this is simply because Witcher fans tend to be older on average, or if they simply realise that this sort of game with a rather narrow appeal.
But since I don't want to sound completely negative, here are the things I liked about The Witcher games:
- I liked how many of the monsters and creatures were inspired by (or lifted) from Slavic mythology, such as the striga, the rusalka, and vodyanoi, which is a field of mythology that tends to be ignored in most western RPGs in favour of Germanic mythology (elves, dwarves, orcs, and all that)
- The clothing and armour worn by the inhabitants of the world looks far more realistic (in the sense that it resembles what people would have actually worn in the High Middle Ages, as opposed to the over-the-top armour featured in games like Dragon Age)
- That the game world is dark and gritty, but sill features a wide colour palette instead of monotonous browns and greys (like Dragon Age)
I just finished reading this Twenty Sided post, which sum up my feelings perfectly.
When I play an RPG, I prefer to control every aspect of my character, such his gender, race, personality, class, and appearance. To me, that's half of the fun of playing an RPG. Being forced to play a one particular, especially a character I don't like, is usually an insurmountable barrier to enjoyment.
The reason I dislike Geralt is not only because he's cliche, but because he feels like an awful relic from a mid-nineties comic book. Beyond that, he feels like a character designed specifically to appeal to teenage males:
- He's male, ruggedly handsome, and unambiguously heterosexual, because the worst possible thing for a teenage male is to be accused of being gay. (Geralt always reminds me of the American rock band KISS who, despite borrowing the aesthetics of glam rock, such as makeup and flamboyant outfits, but were fiercely heterosexual, so that no one could accuse you of being gay for listening to them)
- He's an outcast, hated and despised for being "different." But he's not hated because of what he does, but because the people around him are fearful, ignorant, and stupid. It feels calculated to appeal to the egocentric teenage mindset..."No one likes me! No one understands me! It's all their fault that they don't like me!"
- He speaks in a low, guttural, gravelly voice, largely devoid of any emotional inflection, and is facial expression is a near-perpetual po-faced grimace. Why? Because Men Don't Show Feelings. Showing feelings makes you whiny, effeminate, or worst of all...gay! (*gasp!*)
- And despite being a hated outcast, women are just oh-so-eager to hop into bed with him, to the point where the first game encouraged you to collect sexual partners as if they were Pokemon. In other words, he gets all the "benefits" of being an outcast ("I'm special! I'm so badass ordinary people can't stand to be around me!"), with none of the downsides (that women might find him repulsive).
- Witchers are both sterile and immune to disease. So not only can he have copious amounts of sex with women, he'll never have to worry about siring bastard sons or catching some unpleasant STD. In other words, he gets to have lots of sex without any consequences whatsoever! This is what I mean I say he feels like some teenager's power fantasy.
That said, I agree with people who say that in, The Witcher, your choices matter far more than in a typical BioWare game, and that the choices are usually more complex than "save the puppy" or "kick the puppy." But if I don't care about the main character - the one who is making these decisions - then the decision itself carries no weight for me. The big choice in TW2 is, "Do I follow Iorveth, the bigoted, elven freedom fighter who has committed atrocities for his cause, or do you I side with Roche, the king's right-hand man who has committed atrocities for his monarch?" This should be something I would have to give some thought to, but in the end, I didn't care about Geralt's story, I didn't care about the world he inhabited, and I didn't find a single NPC in the entire game that I cared about. So the choice basically came down to "Well, do I want to see the Iorveth or Roche path this time?"
And I will say this: Witcher fans are generally a lot better about accepting peoples' dislike of the game than, say, BioWare fans. Specifically, I do not see them resorting to the "You don't like it because there's something wrong with you!" defence as often. I don't know if this is simply because Witcher fans tend to be older on average, or if they simply realise that this sort of game with a rather narrow appeal.
But since I don't want to sound completely negative, here are the things I liked about The Witcher games:
- I liked how many of the monsters and creatures were inspired by (or lifted) from Slavic mythology, such as the striga, the rusalka, and vodyanoi, which is a field of mythology that tends to be ignored in most western RPGs in favour of Germanic mythology (elves, dwarves, orcs, and all that)
- The clothing and armour worn by the inhabitants of the world looks far more realistic (in the sense that it resembles what people would have actually worn in the High Middle Ages, as opposed to the over-the-top armour featured in games like Dragon Age)
- That the game world is dark and gritty, but sill features a wide colour palette instead of monotonous browns and greys (like Dragon Age)