21-Aug-2015: I Love Novigrad

Witcher 3 is a great game. It surpasses Skyrim in many areas but falls short on some others. Maybe the Perfect Game would be combination of the two, since they would fix each others' faults. I already rated Witcher 3 in FB and gave it +4. It is one of the best games I've ever played, even with all the bugs and nonsensical controls. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about a feat unsurpassed in computer RPGs: The city of Novigrad. It set the bar for fictional cities in computer RPGs so high I can scarcely see it anymore from Skyrim. Also, as a history buff, a lifelong geek and a student of Medieval Studies in the University, I know something about medieval cities. Novigrad might well be the most realistic medieval city in video games, including the reality-based medieval cities of the Assassin's Creed series. CD Projekt Red has been criticized for being a slave driver and while that is certainly lamentable, I cannot help but admire the result. This attention to detail... this attention to ultimately non-relevant detail... I've never seen anything like it.

Cities in Skyrim have half a dozen houses and a bunch of people loitering around with time-sensitive idle tasks. Novigrad is about the size of the late medieval city of Prague. It is a true metropolis for the period and looks, feels and matches the size of the part. You can't enter all the buildings but quite a few, either casually or as part of a quest. And even if the doors stay locked, there are hidden paths, parkour routes, roof-bound treasure chests and whatnot. Different districts have unique look and feel to them and my jaw dropped when I began to find slipways for boats and ships, cargo magazines, the cloth dyers' yard, dock hands leaning rails and so on. Anyone will put a butcher's shop into their medieval city. But cloth dyers? And you can't even buy anything from them! It is just there. The whole fucking yard! Something you can just stumble onto! Many players probably never will but it is right there! With all the right things in it!

There are good and bad parts, market squares, main streets, side alleys, the hovels for the poor built next to the wall (a fire hazard often torn down should the city be under siege). No computer in the world could render the real day-time throngs of such a city but Witcher 3 does a good enough job at it. Novigrad feels alive, inhabited and even crowded, especially in the markets during the day, or the toll bridges where goods being brought into the city are checked and taxed. My suspension of disbelief holds, especially since the distribution and nature of the crowds changes logically by the time of day. They could have set the game just into Novigrad and I wouldn't have complained. The only blemish here is merchants and craftsmen staying open 24/7. Even Skyrim had open and closed hours for shops.
 

Of course, as with many things in Witcher 3, Novigrad is a city of assholes. I've always detested witch hunts and burnings. Somehow, CD Projekt Red got wind of this and went out of their way to make smoke come out of my ears whenever I see the bad guys in Novigrad. Moral ambiguity is a running theme of the game but my bias against witch-burning is so strong I would have loved to tear out Radovid's throat with my teeth. And to impale the priests and witch hunters of the Eternal Fire onto the spires of their own temple. And if I have to burn Novigrad to the ground in the process, so be it.

Rumor has it that Novigrad in Witcher 3 is based on the real medieval city of Novigrad in Croatia. Perhaps. I wouldn't know. What I do know it has set an impossibly high bar for fictional game cities in the future. In terms of detail and embedded knowledge, I wonder if it will be ever surpassed. In fact, if Witcher 3 had been an open-world urban fantasy game set just in the city of Novigrad, I would have still been happy.      

27-Jul-2015: Back from Jaconia

Hi!

Long time no see!

I just got back from Jaconia and believe me, the jetlag is a killer. In truth, I spent a good deal of June and virtually all of July hammering out my next novel, Käärmetanssija. And very early this morning, the alpha script was finished at last. And it is massive. At 750+K characters the script would make a roughly 450-page novel. I expect it will be cut down a little but Käärmetanssija will still be a hefty tome (unless my prospective publisher decides to split it into two parts or something). It took me roughly six months to write it and I feel like I have been living in Jaconia all this time. Finishing it was a surprisingly emotional experience. I suddenly had to say goodbye to a host of lovable characters with whom I've been to strange and wonderful places and on so many harrowing adventures. You never existed and yet I will miss you all.

In other news, meet DEATHWATCH, the best iOS game I've played so far. It is the love child of Laser Squad and WH40K, with you commanding a Deathwatch team of WH40K space marines in a desperate attempt to derail a Tyranid excursion with special operations. It is a premium title (€4,99) and once you've paid for it, you are set to go. However, I have to confess that once I decided I loved this game, I paid €20 to get my hands on some extra cards which can give better equipment and more experienced marines. You can get the very same cards just by playing the game but I wanted to build a dream team of heroes with high-tier mastercrafted weapons. Mainly because it looks so damn cool! And I am sure the devs could use the money.