The Witcher III: A Week Later, The Inevitable Return To Digital Dust

A week ago, I wrote about finally breaking through with The Witcher III after years of false starts.

I was optimistic. I was engaged. I loved Gwent. I had made peace with the fantasy elements.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, this time it would be the game to get me back into "proper" gaming.

Reader, I have not touched The Witcher III since that day.

It's been exactly seven days, and the familiar pattern has reasserted itself with depressing predictability.

Monday to Friday disappeared into the usual work vortex.

When Saturday morning arrived – my first real opportunity to dive back in – I faced that crucial moment every casual gamer knows: the decision point where you either boot up the game immediately, or lose momentum forever.

I chose to make coffee first. Then check emails. Then maybe just quickly browse Reddit for a few minutes.

By the time I remembered I was supposed to be playing The Witcher III, it was mid-afternoon. The middle-aged mind considers a day over and done with by mid-afternoon.

The psychological barrier had rebuilt itself.

Sunday followed the same pattern, except with added self-recrimination.

It's Not Me, It's The Witcher III

The problem, I'm realizing, isn't necessarily with me.

A bit of research reveals that The Witcher III has something of a reputation for being notoriously difficult to get into and stay engaged with.

Forum discussions are filled with players describing multiple false starts, restarting the game repeatedly, and struggling to maintain momentum.

One player described it as "probably the most boring game that I've put more than 40 hours into".

Don't come for me, Witcher fans. I know that's (probably) not true.

It's oddly comforting to discover this isn't necessarily a personal failing.

The game that everyone calls a masterpiece is also the game that people repeatedly bounce off. Even when players eventually connect with it, many describe needing multiple attempts across several years. The very scope and complexity that makes it acclaimed also makes it resistant to casual engagement.

This got me thinking. Maybe I picked the wrong comeback game entirely?

Maybe trying to re-enter "serious" gaming with a 100-hour open-world RPG was like trying to get back into fitness by immediately training for a marathon.

Perhaps what I need isn't a game that demands sustained attention and memory retention, but something more... linear. Something with clear progression. Something without seventeen different quest markers cluttering up my map.

Which brings me to a perhaps counter-intuitive candidate: Dark Souls.

Yes, the game notorious for its difficulty.

The game that brought the phrase "git gud" to popular notice, and has a reputation for being punishingly unforgiving.

But Dark Souls isn't an open-world game. It's a set of branching, interconnected corridors.

Despite its reputation for complexity, it's fundamentally a linear game. You beat an area boss and move to the next one. The challenge is learning the mechanics, not remembering where you left fifteen different storylines.

Unlike The Witcher III's sprawling continental politics and branching questlines, Dark Souls offers densely packed areas rather than vast open lands.

There's no journal full of forgotten NPCs to catch up on, no complex crafting systems to re-learn, no romance subplots to track.

You're in an area, there are enemies, you figure out how to get through. It's mechanically demanding but conceptually simple.

This Is The One!

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. My gaming problem isn't that I can't handle difficulty. It's that I can't handle complexity that requires sustained memory between sessions.

Dark Souls might kick my backside repeatedly, but it won't ask me to remember who Baron Bloody von Bloodenstein was or what his daughter's problem was with the cursed werewolf six play sessions ago.

The irony isn't lost on me: the solution to being overwhelmed by The Witcher III might be a game famous for being overwhelming in an entirely different way.

I can't promise I'll actually boot up Dark Souls tomorrow. I've learned not to make those promises to myself anymore.

But if I do find myself with thirty minutes and the energy to fail repeatedly at something, at least I'll know exactly what I'm failing at, and I won't need to consult a wiki to remember why.

Ladies and gentlemen, after seventeen attempts at The Witcher III, I'm ready to try dying the same death fifty times in a row instead. Progress is a funny thing.