Why on Earth would CD Projekt allow me to play the prologue out of order? Such areas are not the time to allow player agency because the choices are meaningless and playing them out of sequence seriously impacts the player’s enjoyment. It’s not necessary to have played the first game because this section deftly explains the opening plot without the constant threat of death. Clicking a different one sent me to the first part of the prologue, which calmly introduced that Geralt has amnesia and has thrown in his lot with the King of Temeria in a little civil war. To make matters worse, after I finally made it past that section of the prologue – on normal difficulty, damn you, I’m nothing if not stubborn – the game brought me back to the first four dialogue choices. I was so frustrated and pissed that any fondness for the characters I’d met so far was completely erased. Geralt, the famous Witcher, died so easily and so many times in the first seconds of the game that I began to wonder if I was just an idiot. Windows popped up with the knowledge I needed to survive, but stopping to read them only resulted in a quick death. As Geralt of Rivia I had to defeat three well-armed individuals without any knowledge of game mechanics or tactics all while dragon fire rained down around me. The first sign of trouble was when I chose a dialogue option that sent me to battle a dragon with little preamble. My experience with the prologue carried through the rest of the game.
I have no qualms with offering players a challenge, but too often I failed in the opening of The Witcher 2 because I simply didn’t have the mechanics properly demonstrated to me, not because it was actually challenging. The fundamental problem is that the game is terrible at teaching you how to enjoy it.
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