In this video and montage, Keira’s fate is shown to be a lot more tragic as she miscalculated the willingness of Radovid to listen to her deal. Rather than abruptly disappearing from the game, however, narratological closure is developed in this situation as well (credits to xLetalis TW: for blood and impalement): Unfortunately, she meets a violent death because Radovid didn’t trust her. By extension, the narrative arc of Keira’s life moves in a completely different trajectory because of the completion of the side quests.Ĭonversely, Keira’s story doesn’t end right away in her worst ending either. Because of Geralt’s momentary choices in dialogue as well as the successful completion and exploration of all the side quests, one character’s fate completely changes. The ending montage reveals that she ended up being successful at curing the plague with Alexander’s notes and had a happy relationship with Lambert. Not only does Keira save Lambert’s life (had she not been recruited/saved, Geralt would have had to save Lambert himself with a chance at failing), there is a ripple effect and her own story completely changes. The following video (credits to ECSESS ) shows two of those options. Through a series of dialogue choices, Geralt can either convince Keira to go to Kaer Morhen (a witcher stronghold), to let her go, or to kill her on the spot. It is here that Geralt is able to make a narratological choice - something that is unique to video games. Either way, the narrative of Keira’s questline contains many hooks in order to keep the player engaged in both the story and the environment.īy the time Geralt (and the player) hits “For the Advancement of Learning”, they realize that Keira’s true motive for the notes is so she can discover a cure for the plague and bargain with Radovid for clemency, who is a king despises witches. In this situation, the player is invested in many ways: the player could be invested because of an interest in Keira’s character and where her story goes, or because they were interested in learning more about the human experimentation aspect of affairs. This system of engagement in the environment coupled with the reward of lore can somewhat be compared to what is mentioned in Juul’s article, where he discusses the concept of immersion. But for someone who keeps following the chain of sidequests, their curiousity is rewarded. If the player stops here, then it would stay as a loose thread. While the issue with the ghosts becomes resolved by the end of this sidequest, Alexander’s notes (the person who conducted human experimentation) and the topic of human experimentation seems to be a loose thread. A snippet of this can be seen in the video below (credits to xLetalis). As Geralt explores this tower in order to help Keira in “A Towerful of Mice”, he slowly unfolds something horrific: there was evidence of human experimentation in the tower (result of an attempt to figure out the source and cure of the plague) and that there was a massacre at the tower. While Geralt himself is immune due to his mutations (as is standard for every witcher), the average person is not. For a little background information, one of the ongoing issues in this game is that there is a plague called the Catriona plague that is circulating in the world of the Witcher. Although they aren’t directly connected together, they are connected due to the lore involved. One instance of this in particular is in the quests “A Towerful of Mice” and “For the Advancement of Learning”. However, as this chart reveals, the game inherently encourages the exploration of these sidequests in order to get the maximum experience. Geralt himself is technically free to leave or quit anytime he wishes and the game will eventually default to a specific ending. However, even though Keira Metz’s chain of quests are considered sidequests, they still emulate the complexity of a branched narrative that are usually used to define the storylines of entire games (Stone). To summarize the above flowchart succinctly, Keira Metz only has one or two required quests that are relevant to the main storyline everything else is optional and has a time limit for completion (end of Act I). Not only can Geralt make or break her fate (as seen below), her side quests are full of information regarding the state of The Witcher’s world. In many ways, she embodies the depth this game has to offer in terms of side stories. As one of the very first relevant characters the player is likely to meet, Keira Metz contains an extremely extensive questline for someone who isn’t a main character.
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