Child of the Elder Blood: A Semiotics of Folklorism in the Soundtrack of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

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This level of analysis is concerned with describing how The Witcher 3 is structured as a text and how music functions within it. Put another way, in this section, it will be investigated how and in which contexts the player hears encounters in the game. The Witcher 3’s entire soundtrack essentially comprises a collection of individual tracks written by the game’s composers. ³ These individual tracks are implemented in the game in both interactive and noninteractive contexts. Interactive contexts within the case of The Witcher 3 refer to interrelated in-game geography, the in-game time of day, and combat states. Noninteractive contexts refer to the game’s cutscenes.

Since the player hears the soundtrack in The Witcher 3 alongside their interactions with and within the game’s world, it would be useful to describe how this world is constructed and how the gameplay leads the player to navigate it.

The Witcher 3’s playable game world is set in the fantasy province of Temeria, which split into five distinct playable areas: the small human settlement of White Orchard and its surrounds, the Royal Palace at the embattled Temerian capital of Vizima, the swamplands of Velen, the entire city of Novigrad and its surrounding countryside, and the old Witcher citadel of Kaer Morhen. The Skellige Archipelago is a group of six islands all of which are explorable by the player, and is settled by a society inspired by ancient Scandinavian and Celtic populations (Przybyłowicz & Stroiński, 2015). While White Orchard, Vizima, Kaer Morhen, and Skellige have their own individual maps, Velen and Novigrad share a map. As a result, Geralt can traverse seamlessly between these two regions. The player can also orient themselves in each region through pausing the game and selecting the “Map” icon in the pop-up menu. This brings up a topographical map which shows Geralt’s current location and nearby points of interest, such as village Notice Boards, undiscovered activities (indicated with a white question mark), merchants, armorers, and blacksmiths.

Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige, being the larger maps, feature numerous small settlements as well as a varied array of notable landmarks dotted around each. Velen’s landmarks, for instance, comprise among others Crow’s Perch, the stronghold of Phillip Strenger (a local warlord), and Crookback Bog, a mysterious, dangerous marsh near the map’s eastern border. White Orchard and Kaer Morhen are considerably smaller, possess some landmarks, but feature no settlements. Exploration in Vizima, by contrast, is restricted to the main chambers of the Royal Palace. The game-world simulates weather conditions and the passing of time, with automatic transitions from daytime to nighttime. The player can also pass in-game time manually through letting Geralt meditate for a selected number of hours.

In terms of interacting with the game world, the player is free to explore the larger maps mentioned above on foot, horseback, or boat. As such, each map has at least one looping “exploration theme” (“overworld theme” in gaming parlance), which is meant to immerse the player into the location Geralt is currently exploring. The most prominent instruments heard in the overworld themes are the kemençe (a type of bowed string instrument), the bağlama saz (a type of lute), and davul (a knee-mounted drum hit with a mallet; During et al., 2001; Grove Music Online, 2001; Morris, 2001).

The Novigrad-region has an overworld theme for each of the city’s districts, the surrounding countryside, and Oxenfurt, the latter a small, single district university town located to the southeast of Novigrad City. Novigrad and Oxenfurt’s overworld themes also change depending on the time of day. This is not true of the wilderness and its settlements; the overworld themes in Velen remain the same regardless of the in-game time. It should also be mentioned that transitions from one overworld theme to another are designed to be seamless, so as to be nearly imperceptible. It is thus possible for the player to “hear” themselves in Oxenfurt only minutes after entering the city’s surrounds.

Geralt will also encounter small groups of busking musicians in the streets of Oxenfurt, Novigrad City, and taverns in each of the numerous human settlements in the wilderness. These arguably provide the only source of diegetic music in the playable game world; whether the player hears them at all and the volume at which they are heard depend on their proximity to Geralt. The musician NPCs play one of two different tracks: “A Story You Won’t Believe” and “Drink Up, There’s More,” each of which is characterized by an upbeat recorder melody with percussion accompaniment. When the player hears them, these tracks are laid over the current overworld theme. However, whenever a tavern is entered, the music occupies both diegetic and nondiegetic roles: The player can see the musicians performing the tracks in the tavern, while hearing their current performance as the nondiegetic “tavern theme.”

Geralt’s adventure is not without its hardships. The player will inevitably run into adversity in the form of either human or nonhuman foes. When approached by enemies (intentionally or unintentionally), Geralt will automatically assume a fighting stance and draw one of his swords (“Silver for Monsters, Steel for Humans”). This situation is known as a combat encounter, and the player is dynamically presented with two choices: either fight or flight. The change from an exploration to combat state is reflected in the music as well; the generally placid overworld theme changes to a more upbeat battle theme. However, this musical transition is dependent on Geralt’s proximity to the potential foes, quite possibly triggered by his drawing of his swords. By contrast, flight simply involves running away until Geralt covers enough distance for his assailants to give up pursuit. He will then sheathe his weapons and the battle theme will transition back into the overworld theme. It should also be mentioned that the battle themes, much like the overworld themes, have “regional variants.” The player will thus “hear” himself fighting in White Orchard as opposed to “hearing” himself fighting in Gildorf, Novigrad City’s wealthy district.

“Steel for Humans” and “Song of the Sword Dancer” are examples of some of the game’s battle themes. In actuality, both are arrangements of extant Central European folksongs. “Steel for Humans,” Crookback Bog’s battle theme, is a version of the Bulgarian wedding song, Oj Lazare, Tuka Ni Sa Kazali. “Song of the Sword Dancer” appears to be a traditional Belarusian carol, Biehla Staroža and is heard while engaged in combat in Novigrad’s countryside (Percival, 2007). Yet as they are meant to inform the player of proximal danger, the battle themes are distinguished from the overworld theme at an expressive level. Whereas the overworld themes are relatively slow, gentle, and melancholic, the battle themes are quick and rich in suspense. The two examples mentioned above can further be distinguished by Percival’s female vocalists, Joanna Lacher and Kristina Bogdanova, who each sings with an aggressive, guttural vocal delivery. The transition between the two themes thus clearly signals to the player that danger is afoot, and to prepare for battle.

Other originally composed battle themes do exist. However, the examples mentioned above are some of the most significant contributors to the game’s folkloristic aesthetics, and will be examined in the below discussion of the soundtrack’s poietics.

Despite the fact that Geralt is conditionally free to explore each of the playable maps, in order to reach The Witcher 3’s end, the player must guide him on a series of quests. These quests serve as the primary mechanisms which drive the main plot forward. For example, in the opening hours of the game, Geralt and his fellow Witcher companion, Vesemir, arrive at the small settlement of White Orchard, searching for Yennefer of Vengerberg, who is a former lover of Geralt. Geralt learns from the commander of a nearby military encampment that Yennefer did indeed pass through the area, but in order to learn more, he is required to rid White Orchard of a royal griffin terrorizing the countryside. This information is delivered via noninteractive cutscenes, showing the relevant characters interacting with each other and providing the motivation for the player to continue the narrative. The quest itself is divided into multiple tasks that must be accomplished, from finding the monster’s nest to brewing a lure, and, finally, slaying the griffin and returning to the commander with its head as proof of the kill. The player is free to abandon the quest at any point and to explore the map. Unless the quest is not resumed and completed at a later stage, Geralt will not learn from the commander that Yennefer is in Vizima, and ultimately fail to progress the narrative through unlocking the next quest.

The events that transpire in quests often feature tracks that aren’t heard in the player’s traversal of the game world. Quest-related cutscenes are often underscored with music suiting the scene’s atmosphere (Przybyłowicz & Remington, 2017). In Geralt’s cutscene interactions with the Three Crones of Crookback Bog, for instance, “Ladies of the Wood” evoke the eerie, mysterious nature of the witches. Other times, a quest’s task will restrict Geralt to a certain area until the relevant objective is completed. These sections are accompanied by music not generally encountered in the game world, perhaps to highlight the “narrativity” of this moment. The track, “Eyes of the Wolf,” is one such example. In the “King’s Gambit” quest, Geralt must save attendees at a banquet held at Kaer Trolde—a castle on one of the Skellige Isles—from an onslaught of enchanted bears. The music that is heard as Geralt fights the beasts is characterized by a driving beat provided by percussion, saz, and kemençe instruments, with aggressive, guttural chanting from Percival’s female vocalists, and high-pitched shrieks punctuating the music at random intervals.

Poiesis

For The Witcher 3 to rely on Eastern European folk or folklorically coded music as a means to evoke a folklorically Slavic world would seem an obvious choice. After all, as Bohlman (2002) writes: “In many different ways, folk music proclaims rather loudly that it is about place” (p. 71). Thus, to understand the Slavic referentiality in The Witcher 3’s soundtrack, it would be worth considering the particular ways in which the sound design team encoded place into the game’s soundtrack. To accomplish this, the term “Slavic music” will be problematized with reference to extant ethnohistorical and ethnomusicological scholarship on the subject and how it applies to the structure and style of The Witcher 3’s soundtrack.

Up to this point, the term “Slavic” has been purposefully used in its most conventionally understood sense: that is denoting or pertaining to modern geographically adjacent nation states which make up the majority of Central and Eastern Europe. These countries, stretching from the Balkans to western parts of Russia, have traditionally been grouped together in opposition to “Western Europe.” The term has also been used as a broad ethnic classification, often serving multiple political agendas. The idea of a unified ethnic “Slavdom” coincided with the rise of nationalist thought in many Eastern European states throughout the 19th century (Zlatar, 2007). This was also eventually used in expansionist Pan-Slavic narratives espoused by imperialist Russia and later by the Soviet Union, justifying the forcible absorption of weaker adjacent nations on the basis of shared ethnic heritage (Curta, 2004; Majkowski, 2018). As with most ideological conceptions of ethnic unity, the reality is considerably more complex. While it might be true that there was a prehistoric “Proto-Slavic” people, by the 10th century, internal patterns of migration had been responsible for their dispersion across the Eastern European region into roughly three broad linguistic groups. These would eventually become the ancestors of populations which today are considered the East Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians), the West Slavs (Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks), and South Slavs (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; Gimbutas, 2005). In addition, each Slavic family has since also been subject to much cultural and linguistic cross-fertilization, in no small part due to repeated subjection to imperial conquests, most notably by the Ottoman Turks and Mongols. This accounts for much of the diversity found within Eastern European folk music (Nettl, 1973).

Thus, the ethnic and musical heterogeneity ultimately complicates the idea of what could be considered Slavic music. One solution to this problem is to understand how The Witcher 3’s soundtrack constructs folkloric Slavism through Przybyłowicz’s collaboration with Polish folk band Percival Schuttenbach—henceforth Percival. As will be demonstrated, the aesthetic decisions resulting from collaboration delineates The Witcher 3’s geographic scope of Slavdom through use of instruments and music belonging to ethnomusicological musical-cultural areas (Nettl, 2005).

The complete soundtrack of The Witcher 3 is a combination of music borne from reworkings of existing Percival discography, Percival’s improvisatory recording sessions on folk instruments, as well as a relatively small amount of orchestral music employed for effect. The borrowed Percival music was taken piecemeal from a variety of albums. The overworld theme for the Novigrad Main Square, “Merchants of Novigrad,” is the main theme from the title track of their Eiforr album (2007). “Silver for Monsters,” the battle theme for East Velen, is a rearranged version of “Sargon” from Oj Dido (2008), albeit with more emphasis on vocalists Joanna Lacher and Kristina Bogdanova’s characteristically aggressive vocals.

However, the most significant contributions arguably came from tracks in the albums belonging to the band’s Slava trilogy (2012–2018): a set of recordings consisting exclusively of arrangements of Eastern European folksongs. While the band had previously recorded arrangements of existing regional folksongs, the Slava trilogy can arguably be read as a rough ethnography of Slavic music. The albums already conceptually divide themselves in their titles according to the three ethnolinguistic families mentioned above. The first album, released in 2009, is named Slava—Songs of South Slavs, followed in turn by Slava 2—Songs of East Slavs (2014), and Slava 3—Songs of West Slavs (2018). Each comprises a collection of folksongs, as well as songs from ethnic minorities that correspond in each instance to the geographic grouping (Percival, n.d.).

What keeps Slava from being an earnest ethnographic project, at least in an academic sense, is that the arrangements in the trilogy are stylistically homogeneous and similar to the band’s other albums, thereby sacrificing the region’s musical heterogeneity which has been documented by ethnographers such as Bela Bartók (cited in Porter, 1993), Bruno Nettl (1973), and Alan Lomax (1968). Percival’s style of arrangement can at the very least be described as eclectic, consolidating regional techniques, instruments, and styles from across Eastern Europe. Their idiosyncratic, strident, guttural vocal delivery has been identified by Lomax (cited in Nettl, 2005) as belonging to folk music performed by ethnicities corresponding to Eastern Slavs. (The instruments used in their recordings, such as the baglama saz, kemençe, and davul, all of Near-Eastern origin, are typically played in the Balkans; Grove Music Online, 2001; Morris, 2001; Percival & Śliż, 2015; Spector et al., 2001.) Considering this alongside Slava’s relatively wide-ranging selection of folksongs, it would be reasonable to conclude that “Slavism,” at least for Percival, is ecumenical—an ecumenicity which is reflected by The Witcher 3’s narrative and soundtrack (Blacha & Kubiński, 2016).

Thus, to understand ‘Slavism’ as an aesthetic category, it should be seen as operating akin to what is more popularly considered as ‘Celtism’: as music identified within its loosely defined parameters that allows its practitioners “…access to—in their own terms—a domain of [Slavdom]” (Bohlman, 2002; Chapman, 1994; Stokes, 1994).

In summary, through its ecumenicity, the musico-poietic Slavism in The Witcher 3 does not index any Slavic nation in particular, but rather evokes a vast group of lands and peoples between Austria and the Ural Mountains which, though largely heterogenous, is unified not only by adjacency, but also a shared history of musical syncretism and cross-cultural fertilization. This is interesting, considering recurring motifs in the game’s reception narrative as a particularly “Polish” creative endeavor. Nevertheless, it will be contended that The Witcher 3’s Polishness is hardly tangential or peripheral to the game’s folklorism; instead, it becomes a mediator for larger Slavic repertories to emerge and be accessed by Western players.

Esthesis

The above discussion examined how Marcin Przybyłowicz contributed to The Witcher 3’s folkloristic aesthetics, primarily through his collaboration with the Polish folk band, Percival, which drew with equal measure on extant folksong repertories and improvisation on replicas of folk instruments. Even if the folklorism falls into the broader Slavic category—as opposed to the more specific Polish—the material of the extant folksongs worked into the soundtrack still make reference to their individual points of origin by virtue of their track listing on the Slava albums. Yet it is uncertain whether musical references to the broad (Slavic) or the specific (Bulgaria, Slovenia, Belarus) are actually apprehended as such by the game’s presumably Western audience. However, Nattiez (1990) notes that, even if poietic and esthesic processes do not necessarily correspond, esthesic inapprehension does not invalidate any poietic intentions, as those are already deposited within the neutral. Yet in the majority of the cited interviews, Przybyłowicz’s remarks toward a perceptual “Exoticism” on behalf of the game’s Western audience suggest that the poiesis is constructed differently in the esthesis: The “Slavic” is perceived as the “Exotic.” As will be demonstrated, this view is not entirely without merit. The ensuing discussion will examine Exoticism in terms of its commonplace usage and applicability in the concurrent discourses of globalization and mass media in video games. The issues raised will show how the player can, in fact, perceive The Witcher 3 as an exotic game by virtue of its Slavic folkloristic aesthetics.

Locke (2010) defines Exoticism as a tendency for some cultures to evoke “…a place, people or social milieu that is (or is perceived or imagined to be) profoundly different from accepted local norms in its attitudes, customs and morals…” in its art. Suffice to say, national identity as articulated through music also inevitably forms part of exoticist discourses, as the Self needs to be as much defined in opposition to its Other (Taylor, 2007). The concept of “exoticism” crystallized (albeit with related monikers such as “orientalism”) within postcolonial studies, most notably in the work of Said (1978), in which the socio-cultural processes contributing to exoticization are examined and critiqued. As such, exoticism in its most conventional understanding is almost inextricably linked to the production and reception processes of high artistic artifacts borne from/within Western colonialism and imperialism (O’Flynn, 2007). The conventional view that exoticism is a property of the colonizer’s specious and crude representations of its colonized Others has since been complicated. Locke (2009) asserts that the “other place” specifically evoked in exoticized Western art music need not only be geographically distant or evoke a West/East binary, but can also be temporally displaced (Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson et Delila and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler), and even be referenced across class-lines (Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro). The main qualifying factor for something to sound exotic, at least according to Locke, is that it is felt to be substantially “different” in terms of the subjectivities of its listeners.

In recent years, the concept of exoticism has found itself on shaky ground. This is no doubt due to the current Information Age’s metaphorical closing of the spatial gap between disparate peoples and cultures, brought about as a consequence of the accelerated globalized industrialization characteristic of 21st century Late Capitalism (Straubhaar et al., 2012). Taylor (2007) goes so far as to contend that, because of globalization, tourism is in a way redundant: “…everyone is in some sense a (post)tourist: there is very little in the world that is not accessible, whether in person or commodity form.” Most exotic encounters, while not completely obsolete, are largely mediated by ubiquitous technologies. It’s possible to stream a concert of a British folk rock band, watch a film visually and musically depicting indigenous Polynesian cultures, or indeed play video games set in magical elsewheres, all the while being located at another place entirely (Bohlman, 2002).

Discourses of globalization also suggest that the Self/Other binary collapses entirely, as seen in the destabilization of the traditional East-West divide which, hitherto, has been the raison d’etre of discourses concerned with exoticism (Locke, 2009). As such, it would be easy to dismiss nationalism and by extension exoticism as relics of a bygone age, best used to critique articulations of self and other in cultural high-art artifacts conceived before the 1950s. Pieterse (cited in O’Flynn, 2007) however disagrees, contending that issues of nationality and ethnicity not only persist—albeit with less clearly defined borders—but in fact constitute necessary components of globality. The difference between modern and postmodern conceptions of the two, however, lies in the fact that the latter is characterized by its ongoing processes of cultural flux, keeping tread with the “…increasingly ‘transnational flow’ of national identities” (O’Flynn, 2007, p. 22). Similarly, binaries of Self and Other, far from extinct, are also constantly in flux and as a result more complicated, ever linked to the fluctuating cultural conceptualizations of nationhood and national identities (Locke, 2009; Taylor, 2007). O’Flynn (2007) describes current globalized notions of musical national identity, whether real or exotic, as such:

Nation-states continue to promote the idea of music as cultural symbol and/or national product, just as global markets have an interest in perpetuating and commodifying musical difference at the level of nation. Conceptions of national identity and music can range from exclusivist notions of musical essence and origin to those that celebrate diversity and hybridity.…Within this perspective, the construction of identity and difference can be seen as part of the same process. (p. 37)

The Witcher 3 can be read as exotic by geographic connotations alone, regardless of its soundtrack. From a purely post-imperialist perspective, there has been much debate in Western historiography on whether to consider Eastern Europe as part of the Western world (and its connotations as a “hotbed of imperialism”; Majkowski, 2018). Curta (2004) writes: “When Slavs come up in works on the medieval history of Europe, they are usually the marginalized, the victims, or the stubborn pagans…[and] like the Irish, appear only as the object of conquest and colonization.…” (p. 2). The conceptual division of Europe leaves the Slavs out of the main “core” of European history, though not too far from its advancing frontiers of “progress” and “civilization.” Given that exoticism is based on the perception of a peripheral culture, whether real or imagined, any Western player who is familiar with The Witcher 3’s reputation as an expression of Slavic folklorism from a Slavic development studio will most probably view it as exotic within the current Western-dominated games industry paradigm. Additionally, Locke (2009) notes that mere contextual information can automatically prime audience expectations to specifically pay attention to the putative exoticism within any artistic work.

When it comes to the actual playable text of the game itself, it’s hard to see whether exoticism can be conveyed through its gameplay or visual aesthetics alone. In terms of gameplay, The Witcher 3 is a variation on typical role-playing mechanics codified in other Western games of the genre. In terms of its visuals, its depiction of rural areas evokes more occidental, Tolkienesque associations than exotic ones. For instance, the Velen, Novigrad, and Oxenfurt countrysides, which collectively comprise the majority of the playable game world, are dominated by farms, marshlands, and small hamlets of thatched roof huts with inhabitants speaking in rustic, Northern English accents. This is not unlike depictions of rurality found in other popular “high-fantasy” games, such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Game Studios, 2006) and Diablo III (Blizzard Entertainment, 2012)

The familiar visual aesthetics mentioned above therefore lends credence to Przybyłowicz’s claim that The Witcher 3’s soundtrack is one of the most important agents in constructing the game’s putative exoticism. As will be shown, the soundtrack, when considered in isolation, falls into that oft-contested and fluid category of “World Music,” which currently constitutes the most prevalent example of musical exoticism in the West. Due to its “fetishization of place,” world music quite aggressively links its musicians to their native nations through problematic repeated claims of “authenticity.” This distinction between Here and There (whether real or imagined) is also a well-known exoticist trope, perhaps magnified by world music discourse’s ubiquity (Locke, 2009). As Murphy (2007) further notes: “…world music is concerned with marking out ‘otherness,’ whether linguistic, ethnic or racial” (p. 39). As such, the world music dimension of the soundtrack, when experienced within the context of playing the game, allows the player to reinterpret otherwise familiar visual aesthetics with reference to more exotic ones.

Eastern Europe’s bid as a producer of world—and thereby exotic—music largely had its origins in the 1950s. Soviet choreographer Igor Moiseyev masterminded the exportation of folk song and dance ensembles to the West. This was done at a time where anything east of the Iron Curtain was considered to be antithetical to universal capitalist sensibilities, and therefore a clearly constructed Other. The dancers and singers were trained in a hodgepodge of regional styles, yet still received by contemporary audiences as strikingly “different” (Locke, 2009; Slobin, 2011). The idea of Eastern European music as exotic was undoubtedly consolidated by the mainstream success of the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir, marketed in the West as the Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (“The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices,” henceforth LMVB). LMVB was conceived by a Swiss engineer, Marcel Cellier, and borne from his encounters with female choirs associated with various professional folk troupes during a business trip in Bulgaria. Recordings of the choirs, taken from both state radio archives and his private collection, were compiled on a disc, sent to an independent British label specializing in “ethnic” (read world) musics, and released with his proposed French titling. The first volume of LMVB sold at least 26,000 copies, before grabbing the attention of larger recording companies and as a result attaining even greater critical and commercial success (Lantos, 1997). Lantos (1997) describes the marketing frenzy surrounding the choir as resulting in a “…a glut of Bulgarian and other East European vocal musics in American record stores, much of it produced in Western Europe, suffused with mystical imagery, culled from the LMVB trend, titled in French, and promoted as popular culture” (p. 36). What’s more, LMVB became instrumental in constructing as well as influencing a new trend within world music, which was often employed as musical accompaniment to television advertisements in the 1980s and early 1990s. The “television ad” world music was largely characterized by soaring female or childlike vocalizers singing either melismatic vocables or gibberish choruses (in the same strident, nasal delivery done by LMVB), primitivist style percussion and flute accompaniments, and modal tonalities. This particular style of world music would eventually influence other Western world music projects like Karl Jenkins’ Adiemus albums (Taylor, 2007). What is important to note about LMVB is that contrary to world music fetishizations of locality, this new genre of world music was striking in its placelessness. That is to say, the generic world music that was inspired by LMVB’s vocal style was otherwise drawn from constructed tidbits of musical exotica rather than an actual fusion with other regional styles in order to evoke a certain type of primitiveness (Taylor, 2007). The placeless primitivist exoticism, which in this process came to be associated with LMVB’s music, led to their inclusion in soundtracks for films that depicted (usually nonspecific) Indigenous peoples. The most notable example that shows this process in action is the “transformation” scene in Walt Disney Pictures’ Brother Bear (2003). Kenai, a Native American warrior of nonspecific origin, is transformed into a bear as punishment for his hubris. The scene in question accompanies his transformation with vivid imagery of spiritual animals accosting him, all the while being accompanied by a nondiegetic chorus sung in Inupiaq (an indigenous North American language) by LMVB (Tulk, 2010). As Tulk (2010) further writes:

The Bulgarian Women’s Choir illustrates an important aesthetic choice woven throughout Brother Bear, namely, ambiguity. Their sound cannot be placed when heard in the context of the film, especially since they are singing in the style they cultivate but in an Inuit language that is foreign to them. (p. 132)

Thus, even though no specific place is evoked by this style of world music, it is still perceived by a typical Western audience as being exotic, specifically in the way of evoking faraway ancient rituals and ancient lands through its cultural association with aesthetically similar media (Taylor, 2007; Tulk, 2010). As mentioned above, this “placeless exotica” is ubiquitous within Western society, usually disseminated through television ads or film. With regard to the The Witcher 3, Percival’s contribution to the soundtrack lies stylistically very close to LMVB’s “Placeless Exotic,” especially in the raspy and strained delivery of the female vocalists. Taylor (2007) remarks that in Placeless Exotic music, female voices generally connote musical associations with the natural, primal, and elemental. Given Percival’s particularly aggressive vocal delivery, it could be said that those associations are even more amplified in The Witcher 3. Locke (2009) notes that the locales evoked by exoticism still need to be rooted in some perceived familiarity, so as not to completely seem alien. In the case of The Witcher 3, this familiarity is provided by the game’s visual aesthetics, as already suggested. The soundtrack is thus the exotic membrane through which the game’s aesthetics are filtered.

It would also be hard to overlook traditional exoticist associations linked with Percival’s music and how they’re foregrounded particularly in the game’s depictions of sexuality. Throughout the game, Geralt is given the opportunity to court the supporting characters of Yennefer of Vengerberg or Triss Merigold, as well as having the option to solicit sexual services from prostitutes in Novigrad. All three interactions typically lead to a love scene between Geralt and the relevant character. Throughout the scene, an instrumental version of the Percival arrangement of the Serbian folksong Gusta mi Magla is heard. The arrangement itself is dominated by episodes of highly embellished saz, recorder, and kemençe cadenzas in unison, heard over a davul and zither ostinato. These instruments in particular are also more commonly associated with Turkish folk music, and their appearance in Eastern European folk music owes much to historical cross-cultural fertilization, particularly between Slavs and the Ottomans (Grove Music Online, 2001; Morris, 2001; Spector et al., 2001). Furthermore, some stylistic features of the arrangement, that is, its distinct repetitive rhythmic pattern and highly ornamented “Arab-esque” melodies, have been observed by Locke (2010) to often indicate a sense of “Middle-Easternness” to Western listeners. Thus, the perceived close stylistic proximity of The Witcher 3’s Gusta mi Magla arrangement to Middle Eastern or Turkish folk music, and its employment in the game’s love scenes, makes it hard not to also perceive exoticist connotations of sensuality which have come to be associated with those repertories (Taruskin, 2005).