Why can't I bring myself to play The Witcher?

So tomorrow is the day when the long awaited third instalment of the popular Witcher- series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This is probably one of the most longed for games of the entire 2015, for some people, and I can really understand why. The grand world and the great script and story makes this a game that is in many aspects, ahead of its time. So why can't I keep playing it?

A pretty little town, I'm sure nothing bad will happen here.

I've always had a very special relationship with The Witcher. I played the first game a couple of times, times that were far apart from each other, always starting over, because I wanted to experience it again, but I never got further than out of the castle before I stopped playing. It is odd, because I could never bring myself to play it again, every time I thought about it I just felt nah, I don't want to play that right now. The same thing happened with the second game, but then I stopped playing because it got a bit to hard to keep track of all the things you could do in combat, knives, traps, dodge parry, counter, oils, potions and sticking fingers up bums! There is a tutorial thankfully, and I have recently begun playing Assassins of Kings again, and I know it's hard and I don't mind, I love the story and the characters. I love this game, but I still had the same experience with this game, nah, not today, I don't feel like it.

It could have something to do with t he fact that The Witcher just isn't a game that you can just pick up and play, it will take up a far amount of time from your day. This means that The Witcher becomes very much a project, not just a fun game. And before you say anything, no I don't thing that is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I like a project, something I can really sink my teeth in, that I have to put a fair amount of time into in one sitting to enjoy. But it is a risky gamble for someone who works a lot, meaning that The Witcher isn't a game I would play on a day that I'm working, or when I have something else planed. Maybe on a free day, but even then I feel like I need to be in the right mindset.

A great example that Nintendo still sticks to the "pick up and play" mentality

I wrote about this two week ago too, the fact that games have very much become hard to start up. In the NES-days the "just pick up and play" was what made consoles different from computers. But now I feel like consoles just tries to be PC, but they never will be as strong, and I don't think they should be. But many games do a similar thing, where it can take half an hour of more before you get to play the actual game. I think that Nintendo is the only company who has managed to pull this of, even having the screen on your controller show the games so you don't have to go to the home menu when your start the Wii U, and can go straight to playing the game. I'm gonna say it, and maybe I will get a lot of hate for this, and I do think that the Wii U has a lot of flaws, but it remembers that it's a gaming console and not a media beast, like the PS4 or the Xone. I might do a comparison of the three one day but I just remembered, i was supposed to talk about The Witcher!

There are some inventive monsters in The Witcher

I read a review of The Wild Hunt and one thing that worried me was something that most people might see as a good thing, but I just really get this pit in my stomach. Every choice has a consequence, I love this, but the review stated that every side-quest had a twist, and you might get the feeling that you probably shouldn't have bothered with that which isn't your business. This makes me think of a thing that I really hated in the Game of Thrones game from Telltales. I talked about this in one of my Let's Filosoplay videos, and I'm going to put out a SPOILER ALERT here. In the first episode the game does something that the book and the series have done, it makes you feel like every character is in danger, by killing of one of the playable characters, and makes you feel like it's you fault. After that I just couldn't keep playing, because to fear for a character in the TV-series is one thing, and it can get pretty tense *cough*RedWedding*cough*. Then realize that the same tension is on you throughout the entire game, and it's worse because you're responsible and invest in the character you're playing. I just couldn't keep playing, it was too much for me, and yeah call me a wimp for it, but I mean, that is at the same time what made the game great and unique, but at the same time, it's what made me stop playing.

I hope that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt won't feel like this, because all in all, it's a game that I want to love, because of the world and the characters. I'm getting really pumped to play the second game again now, maybe I should begin a project today! Are you pumped for Wild Hunt? We'll see if a review finds its way onto this sight in the future.