Now - leveling up, the bread and butter of all RPGs. Geralt gets experience for the usual things, like slaying beasties and completing quests. Once you accumulate a certain amount, you gain a level, but you have to find a place to park your ass and meditate before you can distribute your points. You spend your points only on abilities, not directly on stats, but since the categories for your abilities cover strength, dexterity, endurance, intelligence, all your spells, and all styles for each of your two main weapons, it all becomes familiar soon enough.

Back to the story – the raiding party manages to steal some secret witcher formulas from the stronghold, and so it's decided to split up and find out all they can about the bandits. Now the game begins proper and Geralt has his work cut out for him. A couple of things you notice pretty early on is that the game strives for a more 'adult' image. Mutterings of “Your mama sucks dwarf cock” and “I fucked a she-elf once” become pretty common in the ghetto parts of town. And by pretty common, I mean it's the same audio clip played at several different places. I had to persuade myself that it wasn't some disgruntled townsperson following me around and hoping to get my attention by repeating the same thing over and over.

Flipping the bird to all the movements that have been made to try entice women into gaming, The Witcher makes no pretense about specifically targeting a male audience. Nobody was expecting a setup like Fallout 2 or Oblivion where you could play as a female, but the Witcher's heavy use of plunging necklines and the portrayal of Geralt as a veteran cocksman announces its intent loud and clear. Have you ever been playing a game, come across a female character and thought to yourself, “This babe is totally asking to be banged!” Well unlike long-standing teases like Princess Peach and Carmen Sandiego, the ladies in this game are more than willing to put out for mysterious white-haired strangers. Oh yeah, not only is the princess in the right castle, but the drawbridge is wide open, the moat is begging to be filled and...ok, I ran out of stupid witticisms there. If Geralt succeeds in his seduction, you're gifted a tastefully shot cutscene and a naughty picture. One thing no one can accuse him of is being partisan – whore, barmaid, nurse, knight, princess, witch, dryad, elf, vampire, sorceress – all of them and plenty more are fair game. I suppose it'd be theoretically possible to play the whole thing while being chaste, but that's hardly the direction in which the game prods you. Since the guy is also sterile (a side-effect of his mutation), there's no chance that news of little witcherlings is going to come knocking at the door a few months down the line.

If you heard about the 'moral gray area' in this game, then it's not all about the libido. There are a couple of groups in the game that have locked horns, and now and then you'll be asked to choose sides without fully knowing who's in the right. There's usually also the option to sit on the fence, but that could come back and bite you in the ass later on (like with my blacksmith dilemna). One side is the Scoi'atel, a band of renegade elves and dwarves, fighting for non-human rights by robbing and killing certain humans. So, like the gay rights movement, only more hairy and more homicidal. On the other side of the fence is the Order of the Flaming Rose, who to my disappointment weren't pyromaniac horticulturists. Instead, they're a bunch of self-righteous knights with some form of cleansing on their agenda. Goes without saying that the two don't get together for ale and wenching all that often. And since you're supposed to be a major badass, both are quite happy to recruit you whenever something out of the or'nery needs to be done.

That way, the story's pretty involving once you play long enough to get attached. There's a hefty amount of dialog to wade through (probably not as crazy as Mass Effect, though), though there are some awkward moments, like when characters say something and others make totally arbitrary responses, and you're thinking, “Geralt you fool! This non sequitur business may work in your crazy witcher town, but it doesn't fly in Vizima!”. A bit's probably been lost in translation, I guess – it's not all that big a deal unless you're a grammar/continuity/relevance Nazi. You can strike up conversations with quite a few of the characters you meet on the road, and while most will just ask you to piss off, it's still a nice illusion of open-ended assholery. While some are definitely going to feel like they're flooded with too much information, it does a good job fleshing out the world for people who aren't familiar with it prior to playing the game.

The voice acting is mostly good, except for a few under-par performances. My blood started to boil once I recognised the woman who played Jaina for Warcraft III doing the voice for Triss here, and while I grudgingly got accustomed to her, I was never able to completely shake off the irritation. Goddamn southern drawl. Visuals-wise, the game is powered by the Aurora engine (also used in Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic) and does a pretty good job, pulling off a nice looking day-night cycle and some cool water shaders. Shiny!