With most great games, you see ‘em coming. Not that many teams have the creative and technical chops to create superlative interactive entertainment, the kind that gleefully whisks you to a faraway place you want to spend dozens of hours exploring. And so the leaders in various niches are usually well known.
But every once in a while a game arrives out of the blue that redefines expectations for an entire genre. A game like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. If you enjoy single-player role-playing games on PC, you simply must play The Witcher 2. Innovative, unflinchingly mature and richly imagined, it is driven by fascinating, finely nuanced characters navigating a fantasy world of dark political intrigue and ambiguous morals.
The world of The Witcher is gothic, soulful and intelligent, yet mercilessly brutal. Innocent people die, and still almost all the characters consider themselves perfectly justified in their actions. After all, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, and which you consider noble depends on your personal circumstances. As the Witcher, an independent, mystical warrior set amid warring medieval kingdoms, you will have to decide what justice means to you.
Photo courtesy of CD Projekt
In the real world, many nations know about being riven by powerful external forces, about genocide, the death of innocents and the choices people must make in the face of soul-shaking horror — not least Poland. So as you become enveloped in the world of The Witcher 2, it gradually comes to make sense that it is based on the work of the Polish novelist Andrzej Sapkowski and was created by the Warsaw developer and publisher CD Projekt RED. In Poland it is considered a leader in digital entertainment; the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, gave US President Barack Obama a copy of The Witcher 2 during Obama’s visit there last month. (The game is being published in the US by Atari.)
I deeply regret not writing about the original Witcher game when it was released in 2007. It was always sitting on the shelf, but sadly, I didn’t get around to playing it until this year. The first was a cult hit. But this sequel deserves mass recognition. (An Xbox 360 version is scheduled later this year.)
As for CD Projekt, it is both clear and heartening to see how it got to the point of being able to make a game of such narrative sophistication. It turns out that the studio actually found its first major success handling the Polish versions of some of the best single-player role-playing games of all time, including Baldur’s Gate (originally released in 1998) and Planescape: Torment (1999).
Each of those, particularly Torment, was important in moving fantasy role-playing games away from la-la-land pixies and elves and into a grittier, more adult mode propelled by careful writing and textured characters. All these years later, The Witcher 2 joins them among my favorite role-playing games ever.
And that is because The Witcher 2 fully realizes the power of the concept of choice. It is a tenet of role-playing games that players must feel as if they were having an effect on the game world, and The Witcher 2 provides that feeling both more vividly and subtly than any other game. It immediately throws you into a story in which your decisions have far-reaching implications that are usually not obvious when you make them. Those results may be unintentionally catastrophic, but they never feel arbitrary. They make sense within the logic of the game world, and you may kick yourself for not foreseeing them.
In this world dwarves and elves are a persecuted minority treated not entirely unlike Jews in Eastern Europe 100 years ago. While a few nonhuman merchants and craftsmen are tolerated, pogroms are common, and a few human radicals wouldn’t mind getting rid of the nonhumans altogether. In this universe human children are basically taught that elves want to eat them, and battles rage in the woods between men and elves. The elves say all they want is an independent homeland and to be left alone, but if they have to kill human civilians to accomplish that, they will.
You, the player, will be thrust into this conflict, as well as into the political machinations among no fewer than five human kingdoms jockeying for influence in the strategically vital Pontar Valley. It all evokes Europe on the brink of World War I, with you, the Witcher, a force that can tip the balance of history.
For all that, the game’s technical interface could use some serious sprucing up. I shouldn’t have to spend several hours installing third-party modifications to do simple things like figure out which way is north. But a few rough edges can’t obscure the brilliance and importance of The Witcher 2.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built