The Witcher 3 contains one of the most relevant messages that all "nice guys" need to hear.

[Bandersnatch]

I've been playing a lot of Witcher 3 lately. Even though I've beaten the game a handful of times, I've never gone through the Blood and Wine content until now. Last night, I did the quest "The Warble of a Smitten Knight" and there was some dialogue in it that really struck me as relevant in today's day and age. Anyway, here's someone's playthrough of the quest. It's about an 1h 16m long, but I'll highlight the two relevant dialog events further down.



The back story is that a knight - Guillaume - is trying to win the affections of a certain Lady in Waiting - Vivienne. Guillaume has pledged to bring the heart of a beast to her as proof of his affections and win her heart. However, during one of these attempts to do so, Guillaume gets mildly injured and can no longer participate in the knights tournament so he asks Geralt to take his place. He mentions that Vivienne is withdrawn and that there is something wrong with her so Geralt must use his opportunities to have audiences with Vivienne from winning the tourney to find out what.

Geralt discovers that there was a curse placed on Vivienne from birth, but Vivienne swears him to secrecy. Geralt also promises to help lift the curse. (55:20) Upon returning to speak with Guillaume who presses Geralt about what he has discovered regarding Vivienne's condition, Geralt chooses not to disclose what he's discovered to Guillaume. Guillaume then throws a shit fit, saying that he's trying to do what's best for Vivienne, that he's the one who ask Geralt to help her and so he should be informed of what's wrong with her. Geralt tells Guillaume that sure, Vivienne might understand that he's the one who asked Geralt for help and set the whole thing in motion, but the world does not revolve around him (Guillaume).

After lifting the curse, Vivienne sets off to live the normal life, free of the curse. Geralt goes to speak to Guillaume one final time (1:15:06). Guillaume throws yet another shit fit that Vivienne left without him and does not return his affections. Geralt plainly tells Guillaume that just because Guillaume did something nice for Vivienne, it does not mean she owes him anything.
As a man, I found these two points made by Geralt incredibly powerful and relevant to today's society. Guillaume is a typical "nice guy" and felt that he should be involved in everything that has to do with the object of his affections and that by doing things for someone he has affections for, automatically means that person owes him their affections back. The message that; no, this person doesn't owe you anything just because you did something nice for them; is an incredibly powerful one to include in a video game.

The video game (sub?)culture is still male dominated, even if that is slowly changing. When I think of all the horrible shit that has been committed against women in recent years the "me too" movement, the reddit threads on "nice guys"; it becomes painfully clear that that this is a message that needs to hammered into the minds of young males using any vehicle to do so. If only this message had been in more forms of popular media that is either male dominated or targets young males, maybe those shitty things wouldn't have happened. Maybe, if popular media didn't glorify or emphasize that being nice to women makes them fall in love with you, we as a society would be instilling better values into young males. Maybe, being brutally honest in saying "no, she doesn't owe you anything" is what should be the standard message going forward.

 

[ScottThunes1960]

 

[soliloquy]

i agree with the sentiment 100%. And that is why women have trust issues. That is also why good guys (not nice guys) walk away as the effort they put in is not worth it. Good guys are being good for the sake of being good, and not expecting anything in return.
nice guys are being good to expect a reward.
women mistake good guys with nice guys, and end up taking them for granted, or just end up using them.

but yeah, the game was brilliant in offering so much wisdom in random corners of the story.

 

[Yul Brynner]

And to think people were saying all the tits and ass proved how The Witcher was just a typical barbaric male pig fantasy...

 

[KnightBrolaire]

And to think people were saying all the tits and ass proved how The Witcher was just a typical barbaric male pig fantasy...

anyone who's played the series wouldn't say that. They have a lot of heady content spread between the games and books dealing with racism, perception vs reality, morality being shades of grey, ecoterrorism, insurgency, abortion and more.

 

[Bandersnatch]

anyone who's played the series wouldn't say that. They have a lot of heady content spread between the games and books dealing with racism, perception vs reality, morality being shades of grey, ecoterrorism, insurgency, abortion and more.

Agreed. The core game offered so much blatant exposition on racism, particularly in Novigrad if you helped Triss get the mages out of the city. The guards and citizens turn their wrath to every non-human and it actually does affect how some quests turn out. During one quest, if you ask Zoltan for help and have already helped Triss, Zoltan will turn you down citing that the city guards have turned their attention to the non-humans in the city and it's too risky for him (a dwarf) to do anything even mildly suspicious.

There's much deeper content in the Witcher franchise as a whole that most people just gloss over and dismiss as being "part of the story", but in reality, it's heavily tied to and inspired by current events in the real world.

 

[TedEH]

The video game (sub?)culture is still male dominated, even if that is slowly changing.

I don't think there's anything slow about it. Game dev knows how much influence they have, how many eyes they have on them, and there are some who are very invested in that opportunity to send whatever they think is the correct message to people. To my eyes, it's very deliberate.

If only this message had been in more forms of popular media that is either male dominated or targets young males, maybe those shitty things wouldn't have happened. Maybe, if popular media didn't glorify or emphasize that being nice to women makes them fall in love with you, we as a society would be instilling better values into young males. Maybe, being brutally honest in saying "no, she doesn't owe you anything" is what should be the standard message going forward.

I'm glad that you got a positive message out of the experience.

I think a lot of people would be willing to debate a lot of the smaller points here though. Like whether or not it's the responsibility of games (or movies, books, etc) to be pushing to instill values in people, or whether or not it's media's fault that people behave the way they do in the first place. There's almost a chicken and egg question - did the "media's" idea of how relationships work happen first, or did some author(s) out there need to think that's how things really worked in order to come up with that narrative in the first place? As with any similar chicken/egg scenario the answer is probably that we're oversimplified the question and reality lands somewhere in between with elements of both.

We've had similar discussions in other threads -> do rapey lyrics in songs really make people more sexually aggressive? Do violent video games instigate real-world violence? Do movies indicate to people what "normal / real" life is supposed to look like?

 

[bostjan]

I don't think there's anything slow about it. Game dev knows how much influence they have, how many eyes they have on them, and there are some who are very invested in that opportunity to send whatever they think is the correct message to people. To my eyes, it's very deliberate.


I'm glad that you got a positive message out of the experience.

I think a lot of people would be willing to debate a lot of the smaller points here though. Like whether or not it's the responsibility of games (or movies, books, etc) to be pushing to instill values in people, or whether or not it's media's fault that people behave the way they do in the first place. There's almost a chicken and egg question - did the "media's" idea of how relationships work happen first, or did some author(s) out there need to think that's how things really worked in order to come up with that narrative in the first place? As with any similar chicken/egg scenario the answer is probably that we're oversimplified the question and reality lands somewhere in between with elements of both.

We've had similar discussions in other threads -> do rapey lyrics in songs really make people more sexually aggressive? Do violent video games instigate real-world violence? Do movies indicate to people what "normal / real" life is supposed to look like?

I blame Pac Man for our current high obesity rate and drug epidemic in the USA. Teaching all of those 70s and 80s kids to go around gobbling up food pellets and pills. Look at where that got us as a society 40 years later!

To think where we might have backslid had Mayor LaGaurdia not smashed all of the pinball machines in NYC! We'd all just be mindlessly bashing our bodies into everything!

 

[BenSolace]

A good message that I think applies across the board, not just between genders/ethnicities etc. I love that it was delivered by a video game, a medium that has been dismissed over the years as, at best, a waste of time and for kids, and at worst the cause of violence and murder