Geralt of Rivia: The Little Liberal That Couldn't

At the core of the game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the story of one man named Geralt of Rivia as he travels the war-torn lands of Velen and Novigrad to track down the whereabouts of his adopted daughter Ciri. Geralt is a Witcher, which is a mutated sword-for-hire who slays monsters. Witchers have supernatural abilities that make them both hated by the people they serve and also needed by them. This premise serves as an exciting tension as Geralt sorts out where exactly his loyalties lie: monsters or man.

I love this game. I binged it during the pandemic, and at level 65 and over 69 hours of gameplay (hehe) under my belt, I would say I have a solid grasp of the game at this point. I picked to romance Yennefer in my first playthrough, because like in the show, I love how headstrong Yen is. My favorite scene in the game involves you and Yen waiting behind a door, trying to listen to your adopted daughter Ciri talk to members of the Lodge of sorceresses. It shows warmth and tenderness to these two characters that you don't usually see in action games.

When we examine this game’s politics, though, there are a lot of internal contradictions: Geralt is an avowed centrist who hates politics but constantly meddles in the affairs of nations and kings; the misogynistic male gaze is present in nearly every scene, and character choice, but is coupled with some powerful female protagonists; the game allows you to decide the fate of entire regions and principalities, but all of them end up perpetuating a pretty awful status quo.

As I traveled on Roach across the lands of Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige, I came to understand more about this game's philosophy. The Witcher 3 is one of contracts, markets, and justice at the hands of a sword. Although it may be set in a medieval-seeming world, The Witcher's values are very contemporary — a celebration of liberalism, the philosophy that lays the foundation for our world.

So let's talk about the good, the bad, and the downright Nilfgaardian about the politics of The Witcher 3 and what that can tell us about our world too.

Now politically, Geralt as a character is a big ole' centrist. Witchers follow a code called the Path, where they are not supposed to be involved in politics. They are neutral. This gives him a narrative reason to constantly travel and not be very invested in the sides of man. Geralt serves multiple polities throughout the three main games, taking contracts for Nilfgaard, Redania, and more. His apoliticalness is a defining aspect of his character that remains unchanging. In fact, if you choose to spend your final days with Yen, the narrator, Dandelion, remarks that they "lived a calm quiet life far from all things political."

However, the main character's philosophy does not make it the same as the games. My favorite game is Disco Elysium (sorry, Geralt), and it allows the main character to adopt any philosophy you want: communism, neoliberalism, fascism. Take your pick. However, the game is coming from a leftist perspective. Even liberals in Disco Elysium call themselves "ultra-liberals," describing how they fight to preserve the powers of capital in a way that most real-life liberals would not. The game never shrugs from its perspective, especially when depicting opposing points of view.

Likewise, we know The Witcher game is not apolitical (if such a thing were even possible). From stumbling on vigilante thugs terrorizing elves to helping persecuted mages leave the city of Novigrad, Geralt is encouraged to fight against acts of injustice all the time. There are several moments where characters directly call him out on his apoliticalness. "Oh bollocks," chastises the former spymaster Sigismund Dijkstra when trying to get the player’s help in killing the xenophobic king of Redania. "That’s a convenient excuse [Witchers] try to hide behind every time the temperature rises. It’s grown hot, my friend." Dijkstra has moral standing in this scene. The music is soft and pleasant while the player patiently stands there and waits for him to finish monologuing.

It helps that Dijkstra's planning this assassination for a seemingly sound reason. He explains before this outburst that he's allegedly not doing this for self-enrichment but due to his ideals. "Any idea what made [Old Redania] strong?" he asks Geralt about why the old regime was better before Mad King Radovoid took over. "…[because it had] a strong state with healthy commerce, manufacturing, solid alliances, progressive science, and fair, independent courts that hand down just judgments."

This speech should ring some bells. You should be very familiar with how commerce and contracts control your life. These values are the ones a lot of viewers may agree with because they make up the bedrock of our current society: the enlightenment values of classical liberalism (e.g., believing that allowing someone to control private property is intimately tied to human liberty). Our world is currently ruled by an offshoot of liberalism called "neoliberalism" that heavily emphasizes using the marketplace to guide all human action. By waxing poetically about the philosophy of liberalism, the game is not only telling the player that their current political norms are awesome but signaling that Dijkstra shares them too.

In fact, if you choose to endorse Dijkstra to rule the North in the quest Reason of State, it leads to an ending where he triumphs against the Nilfgaardian invaders and economically industrializes the North. He is described by Dandelion in the closing narration as a ruthless but wise ruler, saying: "He knew that to preserve the peace he would need to prepare for war. Following Nilfgaard's example, he consolidated his rule over vast lands through a broad program of resettlement and industrialization. All for the good of his subjects — though often contrary to their will."

That's an interesting perspective because it subtly suggests to the viewer that although his rule is harsh, the tenets of liberalism (e.g., private property, courts that enforce contracts, a centralized state, etc.) do allow the country to "modernize." This framing is a moral choice the game makes to reinforce a specific worldview. It doesn't help that the other two options are letting the fascistic empire Nilfgaard conquer the entire continent, albeit potentially under the "benevolent" rule of Ciri, or allowing Radovoid to genocide all mages, nonhumans, and intellectuals from the North.

One of these three options is definitely framed better than the others.

Furthermore, Dijkstra's values of a strong economy and independent rulings are core tenets of the game. We see this through the contract-heavy focus of Geralt, whose trade requires that he take work and haggle for pay. Contracts are the highlight of the game for many players because they turn into mini-CSI episodes. You have to track down various leads using your supernatural "Witcher Sense" and try to determine what monster is terrorizing the local area. These quests are enjoyable, and occasionally they even end as de facto courtrooms, where you get to pass rulings and judgments.

Another way we see this philosophy emphasized is by the types of enemies the game chooses to focus on. There are many monsters to destroy in this game (looking at you drowners). Still, when it comes to our human enemies, we don't spend much time mowing down the warriors of Nilfgaard or Redania — that would require the game to frame certain sides as unlikable mechanically. Instead, we spend much of our time chopping down deserters, bandits, and pirates: enemies who are pillaging the local economies.

A mini-quest you can do in the game is to liberate areas occupied by monsters and these human pillagers. A satisfying animation happens when these quests are completed. Geralt sits down to meditate, and as time passes, the former occupants return to the area. With peaceful music, it’s always framed as a good thing regardless of whether this lets Redanian or Nilfgaardian forces recapture the land. I always found it strange to celebrate these moments because I despised both of these forces in my playthrough. I honestly would rather a strategic point be occupied by drowner monsters than given to either of these fascist empires. Yet, those considerations are not what’s thought of as essential mechanically. The fact that violence has ended, and that current landholders can restake their claims to this land is what’s celebrated.

And so when Dijkstra monologues about the need to create a healthy economy and independent rulings, I found myself nodding along with him because these are the values the game has subtly been reinforcing the entire time. Geralt's livelihood as a Witcher depends on fair contracts being enforced. He's also spent half the game restoring the local economy by clearing out bandits, pirates, and monsters. If there is one person who values healthy commerce and fair judgments, it's our protagonist.

Now there are a lot of criticisms of liberalism as a philosophy. Someone more on the Left might say that this system prioritizes those who hold favorable contracts to property rather than the workers who produce much of that value. In contrast, others on the Right would probably devolve into incoherent ramblings about nationalism and racism (you can probably see where I stand on this spectrum). But while we see the Right firmly represented by Radovoid, who is rightfully (pun intended) portrayed as a monster, we never really focus too much on the affairs of peasants and workers, outside of haggling for payment (and making sure they deliver on their promised coin).

Why focus on those who do not hold property or wealth in a game that's not really about them?

Liberalism is a very individualistic philosophy, but it's also one that celebrates a particular type of individual: i.e., the property owner or what a particular German philosopher might call the Bourgeoisie. So it's unsurprising that we instead end up focusing on a Great Man version of history. The game places a premium on the choices of a few individuals, especially during narrator Dandelion's closing monologue. We learn that if Radvoid lives, the North wins the war, despite him purging the land of all of his intellectual and magic users because he's a "tactical genius." If Ciri takes the throne of the fascist Nilfgaard, we are meant to believe that things will be better for the world because she was taught "simple human decency" by Geralt. It all comes down to what a couple of actors choose to do, and not so much about breaking down the systems of power that make this world turn.

We walk away with a celebration of the dominant ideology — inside the body of a snarky mutant who always asks for his money upfront.

All this being said, I still love this game and how it sometimes subverts your expectations. Throughout this series, you make many decisions about what quests to take and what people to let live or die. Yet the most crucial choice of who gets to save the world is not one you can make at all. Ciri is the one who saves all of reality from the entropic force known as the White Frost (a metaphor for what is effectively climate change), telling Geralt when he asks her not to sacrifice herself: "What can you know about saving the world, silly? You're but a witcher. This is my story, not yours. You must let me finish telling it."

That's probably one of my favorite lines in all video games. I get a particular joy imagining people's reaction to it when it was first uttered back in 2015, during the height of Gamergate. It must have been something to see a bunch of gamers being told that the world didn't revolve around them.

However, this fleeting moment of catharsis aside, for most of the game, you are in the body of a centrist navigating through a liberal world. Our Witcher continues to take contracts (predominantly for the wealthy) and tacitly fight for the powerful, albeit begrudgingly so, all while delivering some very misogynistic humor. He is kind of the perfect avatar of our world's dominant philosophy. And given where we are right now, we have to question if that's something that should go unchallenged? If not even his own daughter considers him a hero, why should we?

Because unlike in the game, our own White Frost (i.e., climate change) isn't some natural force brought on through magical entropy storms, but one caused by our society and its ideals. The values of liberalism and neoliberalism have brought upon us an impending existential crisis, and we don't have a Ciri to save us.

Instead, we have to question the avatars of the Carbon Age. And unfortunately for the aspiring Geralt's of our world, that means caring more about politics and the people that it affects.