I got into Pokemon Go pretty late – during the pandemic, in fact. Not the best of timing, I will admit, but I had a blast walking all around the countryside with absolutely no PokeStops to be found. There was the odd gym if I was lucky and ended up in the vicinity of a pub. Other than that, though, my main interest in PoGo was based on the simple idea of catching my favorite ‘mons while I walked – that’s why I’m so giddy at the prospect of CD Projekt Red trying its hand at something similar with The Witcher.
The trailer dropped and naturally it was on our own Cian Maher’s Twitter page that I first encountered it, him being TheGamer’s own Witcher connoisseur. Going for a walk and seeing drowners pop up in your town center, ready for a good skewering, or perusing the countryside just to be jumped by alghouls sounds fun, but it’s just another day dealing with the souls that wander Newcastle’s streets, I suppose. Expanding the bestiary by taking a stroll with your digital silver sword in hand sounds exhilarating, especially if you live right beside an English nature walk that feels ripped right out of the original, eerie Witcher game.
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Pokemon Go makes sense for augmented reality. It’s brilliant in its own right and for a while, the novelty alone had me hooked. Every walk, I’d have my phone in hand, watching the battery plummet from a satisfying 100 to an anxiety-inducing 13 percent as I walked my fish. You do that without the augmented reality bit and you’re a weirdo, but walking your not-real Magikarp in a not-real game while you go for an actual real walk is socially acceptable. It’s fascinating what technology does to society. Anyway, I’m going off-topic into a feature all about attaching a leash to your Goldeen like some villainous scientist from Fairly Odd Parents or something. The point is, I get it. It’s a great way to add value to walks and use gaming as a vehicle to incentivize normal exercise. It got me active in a time where being active felt pointless. The pounds were packing on, the mental toll of lockdown was bearing down, and life felt a bit monotonous. For a spell, Go alleviated all of that. But it still just offered what the normal games did, rather than trying something unique. That’s why Witcher has me far more interested.
Sure, normal Witcher games have you walking from town to town, stabbing the odd monster here and there, but there’s a story, a flow, and a variety of objectives to complete. It’s never about filling out the bestiary, which is a tangential part of your adventure you’re likely not conscious of. I certainly wasn’t keeping tabs throughout any of my playthroughs in the trilogy. A game that’s entirely about just going around, killing monsters, and taking notes of your discoveries would be a new angle for the Witcher series. The books tell us about witchers, a band of mutated brothers in arms whose one job in life is to fell monsters. We see as much with the likes of Vesemir, Lambert, and Eskel, but Geralt’s story is intertwined with political intrigue and world-ending threats – he’s not your run-of-the-mill example. This new mobile game will let us play as just that – a bog-standard, monster-slaying Witcher – and that’s why it’s so exciting.
It’s mundane in comparison to Geralt, but everything is relative. Compared to a normal walk, one where you’re swinging your sword at nightwraiths and cockatrices isn’t bland. Some of my fondest memories of The Witcher 3 are tied to killing monsters and garnering experience, whether that was meandering about the open fields, stumbling across fiends and chorts – which are different, by the way – or tackling the many contracts I undertook as Geralt of Rivia, witcher extraordinaire.
The mundane is what always appealed to me. An entire game dedicated to a witcher being a witcher is exciting because the very concept is fascinating even without all of Geralt’s wondrous story elements piled on top. That’s why it’s the perfect series to do something a little bit different. In Pokemon, everyone and their mother wants to be the very best like no one ever was or to catch ‘em all. In The Witcher, there are a select few of these mutant monster slayers, and for the most part, they just take coin from townsfolk, learning as much as they can about the universe’s beasties and creepy crawlies in the process. The odd few go above and beyond like the kingslayer in the second game, but we’ve already seen that side of things – now we get to enjoy the life of a normal witcher.
When it launches, you bet I’ll be out there padding out my bestiary, slaying every damned monster I can find. I can imagine that could be a bit jarring in the packed streets of Chicago or among the bustling nightlife of London, but the prospect of hunting monsters while you go for a little walk sounds intrinsically unique. I’m just hoping that I don’t have to go out at midnight to find the nightwraiths because simply put, that would be terrifying.
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