Maturity is a funny word that isn’t very well defined in our culture. One person will tell you it has to do with age; someone else might say it’s more about wisdom. A noob would probably tell you it’s all about the f-bomb and scantily-clad women.

Sadly, the minds behind the nearly-great The Witcher belong to that last camp. The Witcher was released some time ago, and was later re-released as an enhanced edition which indicated that it was no longer broken (the original release of the game was fraught with more than a few technical issues). As is so often the case, a sale on Steam prompted my decision to pick up a review copy.

As far as gameplay goes, The Witcher moves along fairly smoothly. Graphically speaking it’s nothing special, but a unique combat system and fairly solid roleplaying elements make up for it. The story and setting are also intriguing, if only in their distinctiveness.The game is set in a fantasy world, but one that differs from most fantasy game worlds in that it doesn’t feel like a page ripped from The Lord of the Rings. Instead of battling orcs you’ll be chopping up drowners, alghouls and the carnivorous plant-like echinops.

But it wasn’t really any of this that intrigued me about The Witcher. Much of the hype surrounding the game had been based on its supposed “maturity.” It was billed as a game in which there was no right or wrong, only choices and following consequences.

That’s an interesting concept. Moving away from the overused save-the-puppies equals good, punch-infants-in-the-face equals bad morality model is a good thing from a pure game-mechanics perspective. Clear-cut, black and white moral choices, while appropriate at times, quickly become cliché and also seem to question the intelligence of the player to a degree.  And in truth a definitive black and white moral decision isn’t all that common in the real world either.

However, The Witcher isn’t at all content with just attempting to change up a game mechanic.  The overall theme of the world is supposed to be one without any hard and fast morality.  One of the notable early attempts to shoehorn this into the player’s consciousness comes at the end of the first act. Through a series of unfortunate events, the player is confronted with a decision: side with a mob of angry villagers and lynch a woman accused of being a witch, or side with the woman. The villagers are a rather dirty lot, guilty of everything from adultery to murder to child trafficking. But the woman isn’t a much better example of all that is good and right in the world – she’s had a hand in most of the crimes the villagers committed, including providing the poison for one man to kill his fiance with. Side with the mob, the woman gets murdered. Side with the woman, she walks free. Either way, you become an accessory to all the crimes of one party or the other.

The point is supposed to be that good and evil are relative depending on your perspective. But no matter how twisted the scenario is presented, it can’t stop the innate response most players will have when trying to make such a decision. Unless they’ve had their consciences calloused over by running over old ladies in “GTA IV,” the player will walk away from each of these scenarios feeling like they’ve done something wrong. The game doesn’t allow you to feel noble or heroic for saving a woman from a lynch mob, but rather makes you feel slightly dirty and unsure of whether you chose the lesser of two evils.

String enough of these flashpoints together and you end up with a chain of just really depressing events.  Again, supposedly this is mature…felt more emo to me, but what do I know. Granted, it could be argued that this is a realistic kind of scenario, where you never really know if you did the right thing in a given situation. But that would assume two things: first, that there are no knowable moral absolutes (aka, the kind of morality that only works in a fantasy world); second, that it’s therefore fun to play in a video game.  I’d be the last to argue that all games need to be lighthearted and fun, but The Witcher crosses the line that separates an enjoyable, thought-provoking experience and an experience more akin to stuffing handfuls of broken glass directly into a major nerve cluster.

All in the name of maturity.  The same maturity that apparently dictated the game needed full frontal nudity, rampant casual sex, and foul language (most of which is so ridiculously out of place in a fantasy game it shatters the immersion).  I must not have been watching when the word mature stopped being a characteristic of the adult and started being the catch all label for things that real adults look down on.

In conclusion, this is a game for the truly mature to pass on.  Look to Half-Life 2, Bioshock, or Deus Ex for some real examples of games for grown-ups, and I’ll let you know when the next game worth spending your money on hits the shelves.