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Filling out that blank character sheet with a vision for the identity I wanted to inhabit was by far my favorite step when I played D&D, GURPs, Traveller, Shadowrun, and other tabletop RPGs when I was younger.
To me, the overriding point of a role-playing game is defining your role and inhabiting it. It’s creating my own alter ego to meet a certain fantasy, and seeing where inhabiting it takes me.
The Witcher 3 puts you in the shoes of Geralt of Rivia, a man with decades of history, the subject of multiple games, books, and a TV show. Geralt is as well-defined as they come, and while you get to make some choices for him, they still reflect the core of who that man is.
It’s genuinely impressive that The Witcher 3‘s writers managed to give the player meaningful choices within this framework. Each branching dialogue choice taps into different aspects of and conflicts within Geralt’s personality and values—the writing in The Witcher 3 is far above par, I’ll give it that. But ultimately, it’s just Geralt from different perspectives, not an identity formed by the player.
Geralt is indisputably a rad dude. He’s just not my rad dude.
Credit:
CD Projekt Red
Even Cyberpunk 2077, a game made by The Witcher 3 developer CD Projekt Red that I do love, offers a sort of middle path between these approaches. Yes, there is a named protagonist, and yes, they have some hints of a predetermined personality in much of their dialogue. But the player can customize how they look and define their background, and that background gives the player very different dialogue options. The major choices in the game reflect fundamentally different values, not just conflicts within one person with an otherwise consistent worldview.
The same is true for Mass Effect 3‘s protagonist, Commander Shepard. You decide what they look like, you pick their background, and you get to make a very meaningful impact on who they are through your dialogue choices, play style, and more.
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