So that opening cinematic. I’m perplexed that so few folks have remarked on how it helps the player through the early stages of the game.
I mean…yes, yes. It looks freaking great, and as a promotional tool for the EE version of the game on 360 and PC you couldn’t ask for better. Let’s say, though, you’re like me, and sometimes have difficulty remember fantasy names (and the importance imputed to same) of characters you never met and won’t meet.
That was me in the original version of TW2. There’s a cutscene at the beginning of Chapter 1 in both versions of the game, with the title card of “4 Months Earlier”. When I first played the game, that scene made zero sense to me. Who’s head was that. Why was it in a crown? Was that Foltest? That didn’t look like his crown…and I’m pretty sure he didn’t get ol’ King Sister Lover’s head when he killed him, either. I was confused. I’m guessing there was a journal entry that mentioned someone named Demavend. I know I heard folks like Triss and Dandelion talking about him. I also know that I didn’t connect him in any way with the plot, my over-arching quest in the game, or any motivations that I as a player or Geralt as a character might have.
So. Now in the EE you get that amazing cinematic, and now when the later cutscene with Iorveth and Big Boy plays, you know exactly who’s head that is, and exactly what importance is ascribed to him in the story. That’s a neat–and difficult–feat to pull off.
See, you care about Foltest and what happens to him because of the interactive nature of the Prologue. Your motivations as player become one with Geralt’s as a character because you participated in saving the King throughout the Prologue, only to be left helpless at the end. Well done, that. The trick is, they’ve always wanted us to think strongly of Demavend too–in fact, the events as they play out in Chapter 2 kind of need to the player be thinking about the title of the game a great deal, and the whole “Who’s next?” aspect of things.
In the first version of the game, I guess Geralt puts those things together, and it becomes a piece of his motivation in the quest as a character…but as a player I had trouble sorting out who Demavend was or why I should care, and that separated my motivation from the guy I was controlling in the game. CDPR had to fix things so that as a player I would know who Demavend was and care about what happened to him in a larger context, without the participation aspect that’s there with Foltest’s fate. That’s a tall order for a cinematic. That it succeeded beyond any rights is something to be hailed, and why I’m bloviating so much about it. ;)
With that new intro, you get all sorts of foreshadowing with Foltest throughout the prologue that wasn’t there before. When that intro cutscene to chapter 1 plays, the whole plot makes a ton of sense, and when folks talk about stupid, doomed Demavend of Aedirn, you know exactly who they’re talking about and vividly envision his passing because that cinematic is so amazing, and it ties together everything wondefully in the game’s tricky political plot going forward.
