![]() Just as it draws from the techniques of movies, books, and everything else, it confidently offers itself as a possible reference point, as though it werent preposterous at all to think that someones future movie could be like The Witcher 3. I remember one of my favorite professors arguing that the novel was a literary turducken because it could contain and consume everything from poetry to classified ads. Unlike many big-budget games (lets face it, probably most of them), The Witcher 3 not only behaves as though its aware of the existence of other art forms but seems entirely willing to converse with them in both directions. The score draws from a pan-European blend of folk styles the camerawork proceeds with a canny understanding of the reaction shot, pinging desperatelyin a way that heightens the moments uneasefrom Geralt to interlocutors that cant be framed. The tapestry looks Pre-Raphaelite, its figures flattened and serpentine the rhyme couldve been extracted from the Brothers Grimm the witches themselves, evil yet never quite inconsistent, take us all the way back to Macbeth. One way to praise this scene without just flat-out saying its atmospheric as fuck would be to talk about how densely and subtly it blends together elements of other genres and other media. In the foreground, the cinematographyaside from dialogue, consistently the games best and most expressive aspectjumps to and from the figures on the tapestry as they converse with our white-haired hero, heightening their implacability and, as always, heightening his. ![]() ![]() In the background, a ragged violin pursues its neverending project of furious lamentation. Grans eyes roll back and the witches begin to speak through her, the games top-notch facial animation capturing the uncanny microexpressions of the possessed (as opposed to most facial animation, which makes characters look possessed 100% of the time). The camera lingers on a tapestry of three young women standing before them, she utters a plaintive, withering plea:īefore you a worm crawls, wretched and small At a certain point, Geralt arrives at the cabin of an old woman simply named Gran, hoping to commune with the witches who control her. ![]() I still find myself struck by a cutscene from what many regard to be the games most captivating and devastating sequence: the Bloody Baron questline, which requires mutant monster-hunter Geralt to travel across the wastes of Velen looking for the wife and daughter of a self-proclaimed provincial despot. ![]() Think of a scene in the game, any scene, and how much care and craftsmanship it exudes from every pixel, every sound, every word, every aesthetic and narrative choice. Its hard to describe why The Witcher 3 is good without letting goodness itselfsheer qualitybe the unit of measurement. ![]()
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