Non-Linear Storytelling

WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS FOR *THE WITCHER 2*


The Witcher 2.  When I first started hearing about it I was like, "Oh great, maybe they'll improve on the first Witcher!"  Which I'm sure is anyones normal reaction upon hearing a game they enjoyed is having a sequel made.  I did not actually finish the first Witcher.  The gameplay and what I perceived as "shitty animations" really dampened my ability to enjoy the game.  The Witcher 2, however, exceeds all expectations and is what I consider to be gamings first true example of non-linear storytelling.

It's that deadly final boss!  Or is it?  Only you can prevent forest fires.

Linear storytelling is a fantastic way to tell a story.  Games like the Final Fantasy series, God of War and Halo are all examples of linear storytelling - the story being told has no deviation, it has one outcome and you are essentially on a route to discover it.  No matter how you progress through the game, the ending will always be the same.  Games like Star Ocean, I consider to be a baby step into the direction of non-linear storytelling.  They give you great options during the course of the game that don't impact the story or the world, but can dictate the members of your party, who potentially lives and dies, and what kind of ending you receive.  The endings in this case are usually "paired endings"  or "good or bad" where you see an ending with a specific character or specific outcome based on your morality after you've defeated that deadly final boss.  But to have an honest and truely immersive experience, you have to give the player total control, and that involves falling into the dangerous pit of non-linear storytelling.



Games like Dragon Age are often misconceived to be non-linear games.  The reality though, is that after having played Dragon Age: Origins 4 times from start to finish including Awakening, the story really is the same.  There really isn't a way to get a dramatically different ending or even a game play experience.  The decisions you make dictate who lives and dies, who ends up in your party, who ends up in your bed, and then when it's all over the decisions you've made will dictate the postmortem of the story.  You don't get to see it happen, however.  It doesn't change your game until the game is over.  It is, in essence, yet another baby step into nonlinearity.  Reality would make it seem no different from a paired ending or a morality ending, something that can be wildly different from one another yet, it's just text or a visual at the end of the game.  The way the story is told remains the same, very few decisions can actually change how it plays or how you progress through it.


The Witcher 2, however, does it right.  Each decision you make will determine your own personal moral compass without tilting it.  The decisions you make can be so dramatic or mean nothing at all, people may live or die and that could have a real impact on the way the games story progresses.

For example, in the very beginning of the game you are sieging a castle to root out some traitors and recover some royalty.  At the end, you corner the leader and go through the dialogue choices to decide his fate.  Will you convince him to surrender peacefully so that his men will be spared?  Will you duel him to the death to end the conflict?  Will you leave him be and let the assaulting King storm his tower and utterly destroy him and his men?  These choices deviate far more from your standard "GOOD NEUTRAL AGGRESSIVE" conversational archetype.  They may seem as such, but, as you progress through them you get a sense that Geralt, our main character and the Witcher, is a very neutral person doing only what suits him best.  The choices you make can determine the outcome of the game without changing how Geralt himself acts.  Games like Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic reward you dramatically for picking a Good or a Bad side.  There isn't much point to staying neutral, it is actually detrimental.  They also enable a "Good or Bad" conversational type option which is only available when you are good or bad enough, and are often rewarding to pick.  This leads you to constantly pick your Good option if you are good and your Bad option if you are evil.  The Witcher has a style similar to it with occasionally offering a persuasive option or a mind control option similar to those other games, but it generally offers no real reward other than opening up new avenues in the story, or closing them.  If you choose to use them, it's not always going to result in a clear good or a bad choice, and it's this gray shade of morality that the game throws at you that makes you really think about your choices.  You don't pick the Good options just because it's there and it's rewarding, you pick it because your gut told you to.  It's inexplicable really, the effect that I've found that this has on people.  Some of my friends who I've gotten to play the game who have never really played RPG's found themselves getting sucked in because they feel the story shaping around them rather than being shaped around a story.

In this case, through some clever dialogue choices, I convinced Aryan La Valette, the rebel leader, to lay down his sword and surrender peacefully.  Then, later in the dungeons of the castle, I ran in to him.  He ended up destroying the castle - which seemed like a big deal at the time.  Later in the game, he re appeared briefly to attend a meeting of the rulers.  Out of the 5 friends I have that have beaten the game so far, not a single one even realized you could spare his life.  They all ended up killing him.  I had inadvertently picked a few options that had revealed a path through the story that none of them even knew existed.

At the end of chapter 1 of this 3 chapter game, you make a choice, to either side with Vernon Roche, the leader of the Temerian [read: human] special ops unit the Blue Stripes, or Iorveth, an elven renegade.  This is the major defining choice of the game, and it really tests your moral compass.  As someone who chose Iorveth, you can tell almost immediately once Chapter 2 begins that the game is going to be wildly different for those who chose Vernon Roche.  As I talked with my friend who picked Roche after we had both finished the game, we realized that not only did we fight on opposite sides of a major war due to our choice, but the outcome of that war, the maps and levels we played during it, the people we met, the people we learned of and also the choices we made were so dramatically different it was almost as though we played two different games.

Ioverth, Commander of the Scoia'tael

Vernon Roche, Captain of the Blue Stripes

I'm not going to go in depth in this part, but I will examine certain differences between the two sides.


I don't want to spoil too much, but reader beware, if you are worried of spoilers, read no further!

For Iorveth's side, we went to the Vergen, a Dwarven town about to be besieged by the human kingdom of Kaedwen.  Ruled by the noble Saskia, the Vergen is a town preaching equality for all: elvens, dwarves and even humans.  In other human territories, and as anyone who's played through chapter 1 is aware, non humans are looked on as the scum of the Earth.  As I delved deeper into Chapter 2, I learned that Saskia is more or less the only one righteous enough to lead such a group - the people of the Vergen love and respect her as one, none could truly take her place.  Should we win the upcoming war and fend off the invasion, the Vergen will control the central mass of land that the human nations fight over, creating an independent state where all are free to, well, be free.  In my game, I won the war with flying colors and made the enemy king submit, which was helpful in the coming council of rulers in chapter 3.  In the end, Saskia lived, and while it is not guaranteed or specifically mentioned, it is implied that the independent Vergen was under her rule. For if she was not there to rule it, the races in the Vergen would likely begin to squabble over who should rule, each wanting to appoint their own King or Queen.  The in fighting would eventually destroy what they once fought for.

For my friend, who played on Roches side, he was never properly introduced to Saskia, being that he was on the side of the war looking to conquer the Vergen.  At the end of the council in chapter 3, not knowing what I knew about who was best to rule and even who Saskia was, he slew her.  It may not have seemed like a big deal to him then, or even impactful to the story, but as I explained to him exactly who she was and the bearing she had on my own story, he went..."Well, shit."  There were many, MANY differences between the two stories but this one seemed the most impactful to me.  Were they to make a Witcher 3, this one decision alone could have such dramatic effects on that story it seem a game save import would be the only way to handle it.  Even at the end of my game, there was the option to slay Saskia.  I chose to stay my hand and not do what I believed was a heinous act, but if I had, who knows.  There were many points in my own story where I thought about loading a previous save, just to see what happens when I go down a different path.  If I let this person live, if I kill this person, if I choose to do this or that...It all seems to have a meaningful impact on the story.

The Forest of Flotsam.  Beautiful, isn't it?

The important thing though, is that you can see the story unfold from your actions rather than it unfolding from being "told" to you like in most other RPG's.  Instead of your actions being almost "planned" in the story, the decisions you can make in this game really unfold some dramatically different paths.  While I enjoy both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, Mass Effect's story seems to achieve non-linearity as it enters it's third game, using the choices you made in the previous ones to create that sense of nonlinear progression.  Dragon Age did not seem to have any of this, it simply gave the illusion that it was permitting you to change the story, really only giving you what you wanted, the results, at the end after all was said and done.  While playing The Witcher 2, you really get the sense that it is YOU who is controlling the story and not the story that is controlling you.  I think any western style RPG studio that wants to succeed should take a page from CD PROJEKT.  These guys get my kudos for making one of the best RPG experiences I have ever known.

I highly recommend this game for any fans of RPG's or Action games.  The Witcher 2 is by CD PROJEKT Red, a champion game studio based in Poland.  Available only on PC, The Witcher 2 retails for $49.99 and can be bought through all major retailers and digital download providers including Steam.



P.S.

Dwarves have the best dialogue!  "I'd sooner split stone with my dick than arm wrestle ye again!"