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michelle's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4)
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| [January 20, 2017 12:00:40 AM]
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Today's session went A LOT more smoothly than yesterday's. The objective I was stuck on yesterday was to "Follow the Nilfgaardian soldiers' tracks using your Witcher Senses" in the "The Beast of White Orchard" quest. For some reason, I kept going to this same location and getting killed by wild dogs. So today when I started off, I decided to follow a different objective of the quest first which was to "Ask the herbalist about buckthorn". I followed a map and talked to an herbalist who told me about where I could find a specific herb, buckthorn, in order to lure a griffin that has been harassing the village of White Orchard and killing people. I then gathered the buckthorn and then decided to try again on the first objective I was stuck on and surprisingly I completed it pretty quickly.
Next, rather than luring the griffin right away, I decided to do some side quests to gain more experience and level up. The secondary quests I completed were very interesting and showed more depth about the game and the game's creators.
One of the quests I completed was "Twisted Firestarter". The context of this quest is that there is a dwarf/blacksmith in White Orchard named Willis who accepted money from the Nilfgaardian soldiers and helped craft their armor and weapons. As a result, Willis believes this made the villagers angry as they have shunned him and his forge was burned down. Willis asked me, Geralt the Witcher, to find out who set fire to his forge. When I discovered the arsonist, he was very drunk and angry and was shouting derogatory things about dwarves and how they are selfish, stingy beings. Again, we note how the creators of the game have incorporated a theme of class levels and discrimination into their game although they used fictional groups such as Witchers, dwarves, and the Nilgaardian soldiers as the people who are discriminated against. The arsonist tried to bribe my character with gold into not turning him in. I like how the game let me make the choice of whether I would take the money or whether I would turn him in. This allows players to make decisions of what they think they should do and the game is influenced by this choice. After I chose not to take the bribe, the game let me choose whether I wanted to fight the arsonist to bring him to Willis or to be calm, put a spell on him, and say "No, you're coming with me." When I chose the second option, I gained experience points, which was cool because it's like I was rewarded for making the less violent choice. This encourages me to perform in a moral way when playing the game in the future so I can be rewarded with more experience points. I was surprised at how the dwarf handled the case of the arsonist though. Rather than talking it through, Willis called over the Nilgaardian soldiers who took the arsonist away to be hanged on a tree! I was shocked and chose the dialogue option, "That seems harsh" to which Willis seemed completely justified and said that it was justice.... Makes you wonder.. like the quest description says, "Harsh justice - or maybe just harsh?".
Another secondary quest I completed was "Missing in Action". In this quest, I was asked to help a peasant from White Orchard, Dune, find his brother who enlisted to take up arms against Nilfgaard, but never returned from battle. We went to the battlefield and searched around until Bastien's (the missing brother) dog caught onto his scent and led us to a hut where we found Bastien fraternizing with a soldier. Geralt asked them what was going on and Dune was quick to assume that the soldier had taken Bastien hostage (again.. theme of discrimination and stereotypes appears here). Bastien replies that the soldier saved his life and that he needs a place to stay. Dune is hesitant about taking in a soldier but then I was given the option to choose between telling Dune either: 1) "You're right. His smell will put off the others and draw too much attention" or 2) "C'mon. He saved your brother". I, of course, chose the morally correct option 2, which convinced Dune to take him in. He paid me for helping him then I was on my way to kill a griffin!
That is where I currently am at in the game. I tried to kill the griffin twice but died both times so I'll probably continue to play when I'm free and level up with other side quests before trying again. I am liking the game a lot more now after my successes today. I also learned more about collecting items to making potions and go to craftsmen to have armor and weapons made, so I will be using that knowledge to my benefit in the future.
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| [January 18, 2017 11:50:20 PM]
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Not much happened in today's gaming session. I basically just ran around the map the entire time still trying to figure out how to accomplish my current quest. The quest was to go to the site of the murdered Nilfgaardians and use my witcher senses to try to gather clues. However, I kept running into wild dogs and then they kept killing me so I'd have to start over from the most recent saved state. So that was annoying.
So, in yesterday's log I said I felt guilty when I had to slay the wild dogs, but honestly... after today, I got so frustrated and the dogs were so mean that eventually killing them did not evoke that emotion for me.
I noticed something interesting though when the hunter took me to the site where the Nilfgaardians were murdered. He seemed very distraught about their death whereas Geralt's character was unphased. All he said as a response was that "life moves forward. They were just Nilfgaardians" to which the hunter replied something along the lines of "Nilfgaardians are like the rest of us. Except they wear black armor." This shows that even in gaming worlds, class and racial disparities are present. To further illustrate this point, the loading screens of the game shows a scene from the game as well as little hints and sayings at the bottom. One of the times when I had to restart the game, the saying said something like, "Humans and non-humans don't get along. Often times, when they are together, a massacre occurs." This shows how the creators of Witcher tried to portray real life issues in their game which could encourage ethical reflection by players.
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| [January 17, 2017 09:17:35 PM]
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I played this game for the first time today. I expected to play for around an hour, however, I spent more around 2 hours to get to where I am at in the game. This is because the tutorials and opening intros and storyline took quite a bit of time. I currently am not too entranced in the game right now.. the map is really frustrating to follow and there are a lot of controls to remember. I do like the visuals though. The movie scene at the beginning where Geralt is tracing the footsteps of a girl is very beautifully drawn out and makes me feel like I'm watching a movie.
The quest I have just completed is asking the Nilfgaardians about Yennefer and now I am trying to kill the griffin in the town to get more information from the commander of the "black ones" about Yennefer's whereabouts. So far, what I've already noticed about the game is that it contains common motifs seen in video games such as a strong male lead, violence, and sexualization of women.
We play a character named Geralt who is currently on the search for his love, Yennefer. It is unclear where she has gone or why she is missing. At the beginning of the game, Yennefer is shown in Geralt's dream butt-naked and the view mainly focuses on her behind. Geralt is also shown naked in a tub, however we are never shown his butt. There is also a scene where an adult joke was made about a unicorn and how Geralt and Yennefer used this unicorn as a bed (I'm not really sure if this was sexual?? this part was vague and lightly touched on). The topic of rape was also brought up nonchalantly a couple times because soldiers in the game rape women when they come through villages. This sort of representation of women and rape seemed so casual that I can't help but to wonder if the people playing the game have learned to become desensitized to these sorts of things.
Something else that is interesting to note is that Geralt has two swords. In the tutorial, it states one is a silver one to slay monsters and the other is steel to kill humans. I noticed for some reason that I did not feel guilty when killing monsters or angry guards, however, when killing wild dogs, I felt a little bit guilty. Why does this difference in emotions felt occur? Is this normal? Should I feel guilty about attacking both humans and dogs since they're more realistic? Am I not feeling guilt about killing monsters and angry guards because they're not pure and innocent like most dogs? I think that is what I'll use as a justification for my evoked emotions.
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michelle's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 17 January, 2017
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