The following post by Emily Marlow, concluding her exploration of religious belief and the Gothic village in The Witcher 3
(you can read Part One here) is part of an ongoing 'Gothic Bible Blog Series' and part of the Gothic Bible project, a collaborative project run by Sheffield Gothic and SIIBS at the University of Sheffield, and also the University of Auckland. You can find out more about the project here, and if you want to contribute to the blog series you can email us at Gothic Bible@sheffield.ac.uk or tweet us at @GothicBible.
Velen
is tellingly referred to as ‘No Man’s Land.’ It is a vast swamp land that, as
of the beginning of the game, has recently played the role of the battlefield
for a war between the Empire of Nilfgaard, and the Northern Kingdoms. The two
factions have attacked from the North and South of Velen, leaving nothing but
bloody wastelands and devastation in their wake.
As
Geralt you traverse these desolate landscapes and are constantly told by
outsiders that Velen is a harsh, rotting mire of a place, not worthy of
attention or care. Despite these proclamations and warnings, there is much raw,
sublime beauty to be found in Velen. There are gloriously bright sunsets to
watch, breathtakingly high peaks to climb with spectacular views on offer,
there are magically moonlit woods to wander, sweet cottages with well-tended,
rustic gardens to stay in. This is a place of surprising beauty, but of course,
it is also home to many a monster.
The
villagers who populate Velen may be extremely wary (if not downright racist)
when you first approach them as Geralt. To these villagers Geralt, as a Witcher,
and perhaps more pressingly, as a man with bright gold cat’s eyes, is a very
distinct ‘Other.’ He is a being straight out of myth. This makes the
supplications they offer him, in the form of bounties and sometimes, desperate
roadside cries, all the more notable. In Velen, times are tough. There is
little time for discussions on the merits of faith or devotion, or of whether
one should or shouldn’t believe.
Ritual
in Velen is distinctly pagan. Many rituals occur at night time, in the open air
of forests, woods, by the rivers or in ramshackle abandoned castles. One such
ritual is that of Forefather’s Eve, or in Polish, Dziady. The quest takes its
name from a real world ritual that itself was the subject of an 1822 romantic
era polish poetic drama by Adam Mickiewic.
In
the quest Geralt is asked to protect a pellar and the participating villagers
from Witch Hunters and other monsters (this time Hags) who attempt to break up
the ritual. The choice presented to the player is one of either fighting the
Witch Hunters (who claim that the ritual, in which the spirits of the dead are
communicated with – is Necromancy) or standing by as they attack the pellar.
Whilst the Pellar has already been portrayed as a strange character – an old
man wearing a necklace made of chicken feet, living on the edge of a village
who has a ‘special’ relationship with his goat Princess, the Witch Hunters are
depicted as outright brutes that Geralt visibly dislikes. Perhaps
coincidentally they all have thick, almost cockney English accents, as opposed
to the slightly Irish/Welsh voices of the villagers. As we all know from films,
the English are always evil.
It
is repeatedly impressed upon the player that the people of Velen are
participating in these rituals because they have to, not necessarily because
they want to. This can be seen to form an interesting comment on class divides
as in Velen, belief and ritual are uncomfortable necessities, performed by
peasants standing knee deep in swamps or by the side of a road, whereas in
Novigrad, religion is a distinctly oppressive force controlled by the rich and
powerful, acted out in a temple located at the very summit of the city.
Novigrad
is portrayed as a vast, free city, covering
an in-game area of around 72km²,
something just a bit smaller than the real world size of Milton Keynes.
Despite its pretence as a free city, in Novigrad the Church of the Eternal Fire
rules supreme from a vast, nearly entirely gold church. The Church’s religion
is based around fire worship, with fire representing purity. This belief in
fire’s purification properties is visualised in the way in which members use
fire, mainly, to burn alive anyone they consider as a threat, especially
‘Other’ beings, such as supernatural creatures, and people who possess magical powers.
The Church has very little discernible
doctrine outside of ‘magic users are bad’ and acts primarily as an antagonistic
force used to demonstrate how ‘Other’ Geralt and his friends are. This is often portrayed as a political,
racially charged doctrine, speaking of optional exclusions, rather than the
desperate necessitity or ‘natural order’ that is used to define Velen’s
beliefs. Magic users and other supernatural beings are depicted as having
complex, overlapping belief systems with extensive histories, rituals and lore.
Geralt
can visit the Church’s grand temple but cannot enter into it. He cannot take
part in any of the Church’s rituals. By shutting these locations and aspects to
the player the game encourages the player to view the Church as something
inaccessible to them, which in turn could suggest a feeling of unreality, if we
are to follow the line that interactivity allows for immersion and therefore
believability. By not allowing the player to interact with the religious space
they are prevented from generating empathy towards the church.
Geralt
does have various interactions with members of the Church, however nearly all
of these are negative. In one of the first dealings with a Church member, a
wandering Priest, Geralt is hired to burn the bodies of dangerous Necrophages
scattered across the country side. Geralt completes this ritual twice before
finding out that some of the bodies he has been burning were actually humans
who had been killed by the Priest, who has been buying drugs off bandits and
attempted to kill them via the ghouls, hiring Geralt to actually cover his
tracks.
In
Novigrad, Geralt is continuously accosted by members of the Church’s Witch
Hunter enforcement group, who often call him a Monster, make racist comments
about his appearance or straight out start fights with him. By creating a gigantic opulent church that
the player cannot interact with, and by having religious characters react
negatively to the player without any real reason, the feeling of ‘Otherness’ is
increased, aligning the player even further with the supernatural and the
members of the neglected villages.
The
Witcher creates a gothic landscape by both including and subverting Gothic
tropes. It takes the definitively gothic trope of the haunted, desolate swamp
land and shows you a space where raw beauty is evident. It includes
stereotypical creatures of the Gothic and gives them added depth, allowing the
player to assess for themselves whether they are to be feared, trusted, or even
pitied.
The
Witcher encourages sympathy for the peoples of the Gothic Village of Velen
by placing them in the same position of helplessness as that of the daemon in
Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. Like the daemon, it is easy to see the
people of Velen as ‘…a representation (of) the exploited or oppressed class in
society…the English industrial working class.’
[i] Whilst
Geralt himself is not actually a part of these communities directly he too is
demonised by the ruling class. Like the daemon he is called a monster, an
abomination, and by showing this in parallel with the suffering of the people
of Velen the game creates a kinship between the two parties.
By
overwhelming the player with a landscape full of supernatural beings, and by
creating a character for whom the supernatural is the norm, the game creates a
world in which the supernatural IS natural, and the supposedly natural, or the
aesthetically beautiful is actually found to be illusory, fake, false. In The Witcher, the ‘real’ religion is
portrayed as mere finger puppets for a racially motivated regime, whereas the
‘occult’ and the supernatural are given time, consideration, and space, and are
shown to be made up of ‘real’ living people with mostly innocent and honest
concerns. By extension, and again, like Frankenstein, The Witcher
is a world where it is not the monsters but the humans who are monstrous.
Emily Marlow is a PhD researcher within SIIBS at the University of Sheffield, exploring religion and sexuality video games. She is currently researching Dragon Age romances, and is particularly fond of romances that involve the Iron Bull. Part of the Gothic Bible project, she is also the brains behind Gaming the Gothic which you can follow on twitter at @GamingTheGothic.
[i] Nicholas Marsh, Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, p. 177
