Cd Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a masterpiece- the gold standard for open world video games. The world is vast with seemingly endless stones to unturn and rich with NPC’s to interact with or to eavesdrop on. It feels alive and gives the player permission to participate in it for countless hours. The game, that draws from the many books and short stories of Andrzej Sapkowski, never runs short on back story or lore. This gives the player the sense they were dropped into the middle of a bustling mythical past. Along with the lived in and storied world lies another crucial device that draws the player in: the music.
The music is so well reflective of the fantastically medieval world that it signs the letter of authenticity in bold ink. Lead composer Marcin Przybylowicz and co-composer Mikolai Stroinski did an excellent job capturing the game’s spirit in melody, harmony and rhythm; but the unsung hero of their work is their choice of instruments and when to employ them- otherwise known as instrumentation.
The instrumentation of the Witcher 3 is primarily a marriage of two entities. The first partner being Slavik folk instruments like the kemenche (long and played with a bow), hurdy gurdy (boxy, using a wheel and strings) and lutes (stringed instrument which is plucked). The second, lush orchestral strings and a comprehensive percussion section. The blending of this duality personifies what life is like in the world of the Witcher. The game is full of salt of the earth personalities found in villages and kingdoms across the map. Personalities that are concerned with ordinary worldly things like caring for a sick child or losing valuables in a card game. Peasants’ clothes are in tatters, hair unkempt. Drunks are often spotted stumbling around Novigrad and side quests can include acting as a bouncer for the local brothel. These gritty aspects of the game are represented by the folk instruments, and, in the mind’s eye, they are played by musicians with dirt under their fingernails.
Then there is the other side of the game, a side of fantasy. The seemingly ordinary world is overrun with monsters. The protagonist, Geralt, underwent a series of mutation experiments as a child, leaving him with special powers. There is a guild named the Lodge of Sorceresses made up of mages who practice and hone their skills of magic. This fantastical side is portrayed by the grandiose orchestral strings and the thunderous percussion section, instruments that add an other-worldly quality. Like the game itself these two sides do not act separately but are blended together seamlessly. While playing, you might run across a peasant who has lost his sheep, he contracts you to track it down and return it. Sounds simple enough, however in the act of herding you encounter a Forktail; a monster you must slay in order to complete the quest. The music reflects how magic elevates the ordinary. At any time, music that starts with folk instruments playing simple melodies could be augmented and elevated with the intensity of a timpani and rich dramatic string pads.
The role of melodic/harmonic instruments vs. rhythmic instruments is also of note. During cutscenes, where the story is told, the music is mostly void of the percussion section and rustic hand drums. Instead, there is a focused use of the melodic/harmonic instruments like the string section. This decision makes sense from an underscoring standpoint, less for the dialogue to contend with, but also the tenderness of the strings add rhetorical appeal to the more emotional parts of the game. The moments of travel and combat are when the hand drums and percussion section really shine, letting the lush strings take a backseat. Instruments like the timpani are great for getting the blood pumping during a battle with a challenging foe, and the ruggedness of the hand drums are well suited for Geralt riding his trusted steed. This straightforward instrumentation might be music for video games 101 but it is always nice to see the composers wield the fundamentals with ease.
Another example of the masterful instrumentation can be found in the subtle variation of instruments based on where the player is on the map. In The Witcher 3, there are three main geographic areas, each with a distinct feel. The varied instrumentation reflects these changes in feel while maintaining continuity. Here is Mikolai Stroinski in a 2016 Game Audio Network Guild interview:
“Each of the three worlds in The Witcher 3 had its own sonic palette. Velen has the most Slavic sound for the reason I mentioned above, its roughness and unforgiving nature benefited from rough sounds of solo string instruments, kemenche, hurdy gurdy, fiddles and gusli lute. And very importantly, the vocals. It’s the technique called “white singing” that is typical to the Slavic region and is about utilizing as much of an individual resonance to give more power to the voice. In fact it’s a mixture of singing and shouting. Moving on, Skelige Islands had the Celtic and Scottish colors in them. Irish flutes, recorders and pipes really help paint the musical scape here and they always go well with strings, as well as stronger melodic motives. Finally, the City of Novigrad predominantly featured instruments like plucked strings instruments and a mixture of many others which reflected that the city was a mixture of cultures in the game”.
These reflective changes add a new dimension of authenticity to the player’s experience, giving them the sense that each geographic area has its own culture- much like the world we know. The changes also give the player variation which is always welcome in a vast open world game that requires 60+ hours to complete.
The creation of a video game is a multifaceted venture, many details adding up to become one experience. Once it is all put together it is hard to assign value to each discipline. Having said that- after logging many hours on the Witcher 3, the composer’s use of different instruments have stuck with me. This basic aspect of composition can add great dimension to not only the video game music itself, but the world that the game developers are striving to create.
