The Witcher 3 teems with scintillating spectacle. From the hedonic haven of Toussaint to the Novigradian side streets inhabited by bourbon-guzzling bon-vivants, its world is at all times subjected to a violent cacophony that renders moments of respite almost perpetually out of reach.
But there are somber scenes to witness here, tranquil times tucked away in the esoterica-shrouded background. If, for a minute, you decide that the Wild Hunt can piss off for a bit, you’ll likely notice that this world isn’t entirely populated by dragons and drunkards. From mysterious disappearances outside a dingy dive bar to the curious case of the White Orchard frying pan, most of what makes The Witcher 3 special — in the long run, at least — has nothing to do with the encroaching apocalypse destined to plunge a gift-wrapped Continent into the icy hands of a horde of spectral elves. It’s more about, “Is that blacksmith actually making his apprentice do all of his work for him? What an absolute twat.”
That’s not to discredit the more grandiose aspects of The Witcher 3’s narrative. I feel obliged to mention that The Battle of Kaer Morhen is one of my favourite — if not my favourite — video game missions of all time. The build-up to it creates suspense at such a gradual rate that the culminating tension is absolutely explosive. As speculative fiction author Margaret Atwood once wrote, “In a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”
But despite the fact that The Battle of Kaer Morhen is my favourite mission, I can’t, in good conscience, say that it is necessarily superior to some of the other ones.
Take The Oxenfurt Drunk, for example. At face value, it’s little more than an inconspicuous Witcher contract that, let’s be real, is relatively easy to overlook. It’s got nothing on the sweltering fires that erupt while wrangling with a wyvern, nor does it evoke the harrowing terror inherently imbued in a fiend fight. It’s a quest that has Geralt hang out in a bar for a while — and a pretty boring one at that. There’s only about three lads drinking there.
Anyway, this contract tasks Geralt with getting pissed on cheap wine and belting out Temerian ballads in order to attract the attention of an ambiguous assailant that’s been preying on drunks as they wobble their way home.
As it turns out, this malevolent miscreant is not just some kind of roguish petty thief. It’s a full-blown katakan — technically a Higher Vampire in appetite, but senselessly lower on the vampiric scale when it comes to the brutality it enacts. Drawn to the sound of Geralt’s drunken crooning — and perhaps more tantalizingly, to the pungent scent of alcohol denoting an easy target — the katakan, known as Gael, reveals itself. Obviously Geralt is still beyond inebriated, so the ensuing fight is not necessarily the most convincing testament to his witchering capabilities. But the fact this fight is one in which intoxication is mandatory marks it as an utterly unique experience in the game at large. It also proves that Geralt can get properly smashed and still know steel from silver.
Earlier in this piece, I mentioned the curious case of the missing frying pan — or, as it’s known in-game, A Frying Pan, Spick and Span.
This quest is one of the earliest side stories in The Witcher 3. It is very easy to miss, and given that there is largely no narrative reason to return to White Orchard after progressing to Velen, it’s one that a lot of players don’t even know exists. However, it serves as a perfect indication that, for all the difficulties involved in the violent profession of witchering, sometimes the most intolerable tasks are far more domestic in nature.
From Dandelion’s journal:
Many think that the life of a witcher consists of nothing but adventure after grand adventure, an endless stream of contracts on manticores, bruxae and other exotic beasts. In truth, Geralt would often take on more banal tasks, ones lesser bards fear mentioning, for they lack the skill required to make a masterwork of the mundane. By way of example, once in White Orchard he was hired to retrieve a woman’s… frying pan.
If you’re familiar with the quest, you’ll know that it’s a masterclass in brevity. Without relying on any hamfisted exposition, it posits that an old pal of Geralt is still knocking about against the will of the law, the government, and most likely nature itself. After meeting an old lady and breaking into an abandoned house, you’ll find a monocle, a burned note with more profanities than policies, and a monetarily worthless but emotionally priceless frying pan.
The pan, which has been scrubbed clean, was only taken for the absurd amount of soot it had collected over several years. By using the soot to scrawl near-illegible notes on a scrap of paper, the mysterious pan-borrower was able to communicate plots of Nilfgaardian spies, subterfuge, and murder in a sufficiently secretive way as to remain inconspicuous. Alas, the corpse in the corner of the room confirms that despite his best efforts, his painstakingly careful attempts to evade his pursuers were in vain.
I’m all for the perilous odysseys across swamps and seas. From the treacherous precipices of Skelligan peaks to the virulent thoroughfares of Velenian marshland, The Witcher 3’s landscapes — and the stories they tell — are some of the best to have ever been realized in a video game. But for every tale of Eredin, or Dettlaff, or Olgierd von Everec, there are countless more hidden away in the background, impossible to know unless you actively hunt for them. Although the main story of The Witcher 3 cements Geralt’s status as its hero, it only represents a relatively ephemeral part of his mutation-induced long life — the rest of what we learn comes from the quieter stories.
And so the day-to-day ramblings of a witcher on The Path are far more indicative of what a witcher gets up to when there are no monsters knocking about — which, let’s be real, is most of the time. Sure, it’s a bit more on the mundane side of things, but it’s also far more aligned with our own lives. And although one of the most intriguing parts of fantasy can often be its indulgence in sensationalism, it’s sometimes nice to remember that these heroes, like us in the real world, can’t get by without a decent frying pan either.
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