TW2 Act 2, Roche's path: Question about the significance of the end scene in Blood Curse quest

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(Very mild spoiler.)

Long story short, Geralt has to guide Henselt to draw a symbol by lighting the dots with a torch until they connect.

The symbol happens to be a goat skull. The context is communicating with the dead, with expected attention from wraiths and such like. The symbol is drawn for protection. The journal describes the whole scene as an exorcism.

So can the goat skull — the satanic connotations of which are quite obvious — (A) be reasonably understood to represent the threat that is being warded against? Or is it more likely to imply that (B) Geralt and Henselt are consorting with daemons to ask for protection or doing something similar?

This is a serious question. I know it's just a game, but I draw a line at B in my for-fun activities. When developers ask players to act out satanic rituals, I uninstall their games. The problem with TW2 is I'm neither at the beginning, nor at the end, but precisely in the middle, so there's still much left to see and 'investor syndrome' is kicking in strongly, so I though I'd rather ask others about their understanding of the situation instead of overreating if I'm not right.

Thoughts please?

 

I'm actually playing through the Witcher 2 at the moment (going through the whole trilogy), though I'm not yet in Chapter 2, and I don't quite remember this part from my first playthrough of the game.

Perhaps I'll have a different opinion once I've played through chapter 2 again, when the context is more clear in my mind, but it seems to me that there is no single god in the world of the Witcher, and there are clear references to smaller gods, in the games and the books. You even talk to one of them in the first game. Though the Order of the Rose seems to have some clear christian influences, a satanic ritual seems rather out of place in the world of the Witcher, and I don't think that there even is a satan in that world. A more likely base for the ritual would be druidic in background, in my opinion.

Though I suppose that was viewed as consorting with the devil in the middle ages, I don't think many people nowadays would have such connotations when thinking of druidic rituals.

 

Almost every sign that exists has had different meanings and users over history. The Nazi Hakenkreuz is nowadays condemned for it’s use during their reign of 12 years - despite being used for thousands of years before by other religions as a sun symbol and even the catholic church.

The Pentagramm nowadays is mainly seen as a symbol of occultism and the devil - but before the spread of wichhunts it was used as a symbol with completely different meanings (e.g. Drudenfuß as a symbol for protection).

The Magen David, nowadays the symbol of Israel was the match of Solomons signet that was used on the flags of the turkish muslimic Beyliks of Karaman and Candar (nowadays in Turkey).

And parts of animals were everywhere. Horses heads for everything that is saxon (Hengist, Horsa, founding myth of the saxon invasion of Britain). Horse tails for the mongols or ottoman standards.

So I would not have second thoughts about a goat head being used in a ritual in a fantasy game with some horror elements.

The much more pressing matter is if you should be allowed to watch TV or use the Internet if you are easily influenced by what you see...

 

I think it's not so much a matter of being influenced. I can sort of see where he's coming from, him being a devout christian. I imagine it's much like how I feel when listening to Rammstein, once the lyrics start to filter through and it starts making me feel a bit uncomfortable to listen to.

Or to stay within the Witcher series, siding with the Order in the Witcher 1 made me feel quite uncomfortable as well, especially when they go full on genocidal zealot at the start of chapter 5.

 

Well assuming him being a "devout christian" - shouldn’t that mean that he would be tilling the field in Amish country and not playing videogames at all? I mean doing the work of the lord, ora et labora and not idling away the precious little time he has on this world?

Everyone living in the real world outside fundamentalistim should be able to go to the movies or play a game without having to question the morality of a fictional story in a video game. After all it has a reason the game is labelled 18 by PEGI. Astonishingly german USK rating it only 16.

BENZIN! Or in context of this thread perhaps rather "Erst wenn die Wolken schlafen gehn, kann man uns am Himmel sehn..."

Good. That means the game tells a moving story and that you are not a psychopath being unmoved by that.