Justice for Novigrad
The Witcher 3's landscape of choice is driving me to question justice in our own society.
"prison 15h-10" by valery.photography is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
From time to time I’m struck by an experience in a way that demands I not adhere to my typical “one cool thing” format. After 35 hours in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I felt the need to write about some of the things it has provoked in my thoughts.
Choice in a typical RPG is usually so blatantly Lawful Stuffy or Chaotic Jerk that it isn’t a choice, but a reminder to the player that they pre-committed to earning one Trophy (or Achievement) versus another. The Witcher 3 defies this cliche regularly by putting life and death in your capable hands while completely sidestepping the notion of good or evil. It’s all really, really gray.
The brilliance of this experience is that you are not solely encountering these conundrums for the big, cornerstone quests. You might encounter a desperate drug dealer in an alleyway and confrontation is forced upon you. Do you let him try to earn enough to eat, while peddling deadly drugs to others? Or do you stop him by killing him? This is a moment you may innocently bypass the same as I might ignore an argument between two motorists in my daily life. Typically, I just keep moving.
In another instance, a man betrayed his lover and cast her out. He treated her wrongfully. However, the curse she placed on him will kill his child, who is innocent. If she removes the curse, life will just proceed normally. But, she will not do so, which means you need to destroy the curse - which will kill her. Or, let the child die.
The child is innocent. I (obviously) (?) favored its survival. But, the woman was wronged, and in the society of the game, her life was altered permanently as a result.
I want to share one final example. I arrive at a village in response to a notice requesting a witcher’s help. There, a father is enraged. Another witcher arrived, claimed he would kill the monster, took payment for the job, and slept with the man’s daughter. After a quick investigation I find the man: he is not a witcher, but swindler. He is taking advantage of people. When the town’s people came to check on me, I revealed his secret to them and left the swindler in their hands for justice.
I can only assume he is now dead.
The Witcher 3 offers very few perfectly innocent parties, but it does make it clear one side must be given deference. By this, I mean you will regularly decide who is more guilty, and therefore less deserving of a beneficial outcome. The game regularly asks you to right a wrong according to your client, but how do you assess penalties on a sliding scale with multiple inputs? And, how do you assign binary consequences as the result of the infractions on this sliding scale?
If video games are a series of interesting choices, The Witcher 3 is a hell of a video game. I am 90% convinced it would be just as good without a moment of combat, such are its moral choices. The game points its silver sword directly at the heart of the very concept of justice and fairness and in 2023 I cannot help but pause to think about our own world.
Above, I mentioned two things:
A spectrum of inputs
Binary consequences
The lack of options in consequences are somewhat a feature of the society, its time period (approximately the 14th century), and science. Capital punishment is common and accepted. But also, what are the other options? The swindler mentioned above did not commit a crime worthy of death, but he also shouldn’t be allowed to rob desperate people. How would this society track him? They don’t have the internet or smartphones or satellites. Who should bear the cost of imprisoning him (food, space) and what are the chances he repents upon release? His literal best shot is to remain a criminal, travel a few miles past the prison, and swindle another town. He is already an outcast and anonymity is granted just over the hill. How the hell with they stop him?
In one case I executed a murderous crime boss who was clearly a sociopath. There was no hope for him and I did not feel badly - in the context of this game - for killing him. But, I stopped to think what could have been done instead. In 2023 we still do a lousy job of diagnosing, treating, and de-stigmatizing mental illness. We just barely recognize post-traumatic stress disorder - a fairly overt symptom with a clear cause and effect - so I’m not sure I can expect the municipalities of the witcher to take a measured and scientific approach towards something as complex and difficult to diagnose as sociopathy.
The Redanians and the Temerians and the Nilfgardians don’t have too many excuses, unless we start aggressively judging them by the standards of our times. But, as a society, what are our excuses? We do have the tools, the wealth to endure the costs, the tools to rehabilitate, but we don’t. It is not the 14th century, yet we still employ binary penalties much as if we were.
I don’t have the solution. And, I’ve spent my spare time a.) playing The Witcher 3 and b.) writing about it, so I’m not exactly leading the charge for change here. But, this phenomenal game not only inserted itself as my favorite RPG, but it is living in my brain and reminding me of terribly real stories about migrants, criminals, victims, and injustice even when I navigate the fictional streets of Novigrad.
That’s a much more powerful lasting impression than is typical of games. Or, even other forms of art, for that matter.
Edited by Joshua Buergel
I love this game for being one of the first games that made me feel like my choices in the game had an impact on me outside the game (as well as later on within the game itself). Having to make a choice without a morally obvious “correct” direction gave even the more mundane quests a lot of impact. You form Geralt’s character and reputation organically over the course of the game and it doesn’t even matter that much mechanically, but you remember it. More RPGs should actually ask you inside your character’s head like this.
Super interesting write up! This is a great example of how the interactivity of games can create new layers of meaning. It's one thing to watch Geralt make decisions and judgements, and it's an entirely other thing to make those yourself.