This article considers how folklorism (i.e., artistic representations of folk culture) is aesthetically coded in the soundtrack of the commercially and critically successful The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video game. Using the tripartite model developed by French musical semiotician Jean-Jacques Nattiez, I consider how the player encounters music and its attendant folklorism in the game (neutral level), how folklorism is embedded in the text through composer activities (poiesis), and how that folklorism can be interpreted by the game’s primarily Western Anglophone player-base (esthesis). The soundtrack’s folklorism as a stylistic musical phenomenon is also related to relevant ethnomusicological scholarship and considered within the larger cultural industry surrounding the game. In doing so, it is shown not only how The Witcher 3’s musical folklorism contributes to the game’s spatiotemporal aesthetics but also how creative musical intentions are transmitted, received, and mediated through the video game medium and its surrounding cultural discourses.
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