The Witcher 2 drops you right in the thick of it, and expects you to deal with it. Plenty of games shield you from their lore, afraid that it might scare you off. It expects you to be intelligent and interested, to care about the political machinations, racial tensions and complex history of its world. The Witcher 2 is a game for adults, and not just because of all the sex and violence. Though sworn to impartiality on matters of the state, he is drawn into this complex political maelstrom by a series of regicides that brand him a criminal and pull him back into his own, forgotten past. The various kingdoms are in the on the precipice of war, led by despotic kings who play their personal vendettas out on the battlefields at the expense of their armies' lives.Īnd who are you, amongst all this? You're Geralt of Rivia, a stoic and distinctly un-heroic monster hunter with a few memory problems and a faintly inexplicable way with the ladies. The dwarves, typically cheerful, hard-working sorts, live in a city of worn rock that runs off the fumes of their former industriousness while its current inhabitants drink, joke and fornicate.
The elves that you'll meet in Temeria aren't charming, ethereal forest-dwellers, they're guerrilla insurgents raining death on humans from the trees. It subverts the old high-fantasy stereotypes even as it employs them. The Witcher 2 is not a normal video game, and it's not a normal fantasy.
