The Witcher Diaries: Starting a New Game
I have two versions of this game in my memory. The first, a playthrough where I knew nothing and this world was as new to me as it was for a memoryless Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher, game one. I was clueless but intrigued. The second version being an observer with a wealth of knowledge and backstory of the entire Witcher Universe leading up to the moment when but four words appear on screen; The Witcher Wild Hunt.
However, I don’t think any experience can quite live up to the dramatic way this story was unveiled to me through my first playthrough. Simply an unknowing voyeur slowly learning the truth about this dark and twisted world, one tantalizing clue at a time. It required me to read into the context of every conversation as they play out before me, revealing just enough to provide the information I needed to start to piece together the history of a single white haired Witcher destined to forever be forced to make hard choices. But can we truly know what choices will lead us down the path of a lesser evil? That is yet to be seen, as we, or Geralt, are forced to make choices that will unknowingly mold the future of the entire world we are just now entering.
Note: It becomes almost jarring now, going back to play the original Witcher game that started it all and ultimately led to this AAA game we all know and love today; Truly a game that all other games are compared to. In the first game, the stories and characters are over explained at every point, with so many dialog options and questions to be posed which explain not only your own personal history as Geralt and the memories that you forgot, but the history of the world you are trying to learn and understand. Despite interacting with a world of characters that know Geralt intimately and that we do not know at all - it feels so unnecessary to explain this with dialog rather than showing us through story lines and quests. Instead we find ourselves conversing with practically every nameless NPC for an absurd amount of time that does nothing but pad the game time. I should add that I don’t dislike the first Witcher games, it is just that they are very flawed pieces of artwork.
Our interaction with this game starts by triggering the game to load with a single click; we are greeted with a voice, a narrator. As he speaks he lays out a brief history of a Temeria under siege, an attack sanctioned by Emperor Emire, and a world full of insignificant people. He shares a series of events: a time known only as the Conjunction of the Spheres, the sudden appearance of different races and terrifying monsters, and a new world that has been blessed - or perhaps cursed - with the power of magic. We are then introduced to the crux of this story: mere boys who were mutated and trained to be lethal killers known as Witchers, and an army of riders these Witchers now face known simply as The Wild Hunt.
Opening Cinematic
The Witcher The Wild Hunt opens with a dramatic cinematic experience introducing us to a war torn Temeria, in the year 1272, amidst an epic battle between two warring factions. A raven haired woman rides into view as a soldier brings down his sword and decapitates the horse this woman is riding. She flies and rolls across the ground. She is left to crawl, struggling to escape the soldier. Suddenly, a raven appears and it starts to burrow its way through the eyeball, the brain, and only seconds later, his skull - ripping through his head and reemerging out the other side. In this moment we are brutally introduced to the horrors this world has to offer.
An unknown amount of time later, we see the woman as she notices a line of soldiers who release a volley of fire arrows in her direction. They fly over head as she turns to look. A stampede of enemy soldiers come riding, barreling towards her and the soldiers behind her. She bends down and as they approach she drops something. It releases a powerful spell, a shock wave and a large billow of smoke that blows the incoming riders up into the air. The black smoke draws in the ejected soldiers and we soon lose sight of their struggling bodies as the smoke consumes them. We see the remaining men ride past the woman, and she sees a horse with no rider whom she mounts. The raven follows the woman and as she rides away. The spell wears off and the raven turns into a shock of smoke and all that is left is a single token, a raven skull made of crystal falls to the ground.
Throughout this cinematic we also get to see glimpses of two men who are tracking our raven haired woman, expertly reading the signs and unraveling the mystery of what happened to her as if they were there to observe these events themselves.
Iconic Imagery
The sequence that soon follows is the most iconic scene in the entire game to ever grace pop-culture, and a moment that is replicated in the Netflix live-action adaptation. We enter a cut scene of Geralt relaxing in a hot bath of water. We see the bottom of his feet as they are propped up on the side of the bathtub and, between them, we see Geralt’s face: relaxed and his eyes closed.
A woman, as we soon learn, is just off to the side. A crab-like creature crawls into the tub and pinches Geralt in the, well we don’t know, but this prompts him to speak to the unknown guest. She urges him to get out of the bath and attend to a character only known as Ciri. Begrudgingly, he complies, but not before stealing a passionate kiss from this mystery woman.
We are led into a tutorial sequence, a quest known as Keir Morhen.