I Learned to Appreciate Open Worlds When I Couldn’t Walk

November 5th, 2015 was supposed to be a special day. It was supposed to be the day I started getting my shit together and working to get out of the depressive slump I’d been in for months. My mom had just sent some money to help me out of a tight spot and I had promised my writing teacher that as of this date, I wouldn’t be missing any more classes.

That’s why I was crossing the street that morning. I’d spent the night at my now ex’s dorm and was heading to my car, parked in the neighborhood across the street, so I could get ready for class. The class I promised I’d be in. The last thing I remember clearly of the next 8 or so hours, was pushing the button to cross. After that, things get incredibly blurry.

My own memories of what actually happened are nonexistent, so all of us will have to cope with what I was told: at around 11:00am on November 5th, 2015 I was hit by a PT Cruiser turning left while I was in the crosswalk. Apparently, my body flew from the impact, and the right side of my head hit the median. I must have still been conscious despite this, because I was able to instruct a woman who came to help to call my mom.

I was taken to the emergency room where my head wound was sewn shut, only 2 stitches luckily, and it was discovered that the top of my tibia was cracked from the contact with the car. Because of this, I wouldn’t be able to put weight on it, and the jury was still out on if surgery would be necessary.

I left the hospital on crutches I didn’t remember learning how to use, and we went home. I spent the next week at my childhood house, under the attentive care of my parents. Another doctor’s appointment determined I wouldn’t need surgery and gifted me with a new brace that gave me a bit more range of motion. It also determined that the injury could not be load-bearing so I wouldn’t be allowed to walk for the next two or so months. In November in Colorado, this meant that I was looking at using crutches on campus in the middle of snow and ice, a prospect I wasn’t really looking forward to. Thankfully, all of my teachers and my internship supervisor agreed to let me continue the rest of my semester from home.

I returned to the ranch house I lived in in Boulder a week after my injury. We decided it would be better for me to stay there since I wouldn’t have to deal with stairs and I had a lot of roommates who could help out if I needed it. Around the time I came back to Boulder, one of my best friends needed a place to stay when he came to his weekend job. I agreed to let him turn our house into his weekend base and for the next two months, he’d come over, with his giant gaming PC in tow.

That PC, and the game we played almost exclusively, probably saved my life. Being stuck at home for the majority of the time was really starting to have a negative impact on my mental health. I was angry that someone had taken my mobility away and literally scarred me for life through carelessness, and I hated feeling like I was watching the world go by without me. I tried to stay positive, and my friends did their best to keep my spirits up by inviting me places with them, but at the end of the day, I just wasn’t able to do what I wanted most of the time.

I had started The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on that friend’s PC before my accident, and had found it charming and fun, if not overwhelming. But once I was more limited in what I could do and where I could go, it became everything to me. With its truly wild amount of additional content, it was easy for me to pour hours upon hours into it and never get bored. The feeling of being overwhelmed was replaced by the feeling of endless possibility. With Geralt, I could go anywhere in this world, and find just about anything.

I’ve never been much of an open-world person. Usually, I think it does more to detract from storytelling in favor of throwing a bunch of filer at you so companies can brag about how “expansive” their game is. But I didn’t feel like that with The Witcher, at least not after my accident. In my depressed state, I needed something to lose myself in. The Witcher was exactly that.

I started looking forward to weekends more than I had even when I was in school and working, because they meant guaranteed time with my friend and guaranteed time in the world of The Witcher. Between the sheer amount of things I was able to do in that game, and the overall quality of its storytelling, I finally understood what people meant when they said they felt immersed in an open-world game. And I desperately needed that immersion. My depression was becoming more and more inflated by my resentment of my situation and the boredom and loneliness I was experiencing on a regular basis. But knowing that come Saturday, sometimes Friday night if I was lucky, my friend would be there with the game we were experiencing together, made things a little easier to bear. For 48 hours a week, I got to forget that I was hurt, and angry, and now terrified to do something as simple as sit in a car.

As I got more used to moving around on crutches and finally felt comfortable driving again, I would go to my friend’s house in Bailey, Colorado (a pretty remote mountain town) for days at a time. I had never loved going up there, but now it felt like an escape. Up there it was basically just the two of us since his parents were often gone on trips, and we’d just play for hours. No one was fussing over me, or giving my brace weird looks. It was just us and Geralt, exploring the world.

By the time I finished the game, I was back on my feet, literally. The crutches had been benched (though I’ll never forget how instrumental they were in letting me move around), the brace was off for good, and thanks to physical therapy, my limp was gone, though I can still feel that my stride is different to this day. But that didn’t take the magic of the game away. I was still very much in love with it, and finishing it felt like closing that chapter of my life in a positive way, cheesy as that sounds. Things were better for me, and at least in my ending, things were better for Geralt, Ciri, and Yennifer too. They had gotten their happy ending, and I got a fresh start with spring semester.

I’m still not a huge fan of open-world games. More often than not, I do think they lean on quantity over quality. But after all this, I’m more willing to give them a chance. After all, you never know when you might need to get a little lost again.

Image courtesy of CD Projekt Red