Let’s start with a simple example: I walked into a random rundown shack with the intention of ransacking the crap (and alchemy supplies and mugs and rotting jars of bear fat) out of it, because duh. This is how Witchers keep their business afloat. Not through monster contracts or random acts of grumpiness, but by stuffing 4364882 broken rakes down their trousers. For some reason, people don’t care if you swipe all their stuff (only guards—who largely prowl outdoors—even notice), so it was gonna be a routine in and out.
However, for the first time ever—around 25 hours in—I walked in not on people cooking or sleeping or idly chatting or
staring maniacally at me, melted eye sockets running like waterfalls of tar, but instead they were... dead. And the culprit, a bandit in triumphant tighty whities, still loomed over them, admiring the handiwork of his grim deed. I gasped, not because this was something I’d never encountered in a video game, but because I’d never encountered it in
this video game—especially not in the context of an easy, downright relaxing looting session. It was like opening a treasure chest and having a creepy jack-in-the-box clown pop out.
It served to further drive home the way this world works, too. Shit sucks. If you’re not being robbed blind by the so-called “hero” of the game, you’re being brutally slaughtered by a half-naked idiot and then robbed blind and then avenged by a guy who
just wanted to rob you. Fun stuff.
