The Witcher series

Anyone a fan of this series?

It's based on a series of books written by Andrej Sapkowski. There are three books of assorted short stories held together by a framing device and then a longer series of around six books I think. I think the series is still active... There's also a couple of interesting videogames based on them.

The stories introduce this world that has monsters and other nasty creatures; they're also something called Witchers who inhabit the world, professional monster hunters. Basically they're these genetically mutated experiments with extra human abilities designed to combat monsters more efficiently than ordinary humans.

The stories follow one Witcher Geralt. I'm not very far into the book series. I've almost finished the first book of the short stories to find out that the publisher hasn't released the others of the short stories in English and has no plans to do so in the near future. They're originally written in Polish I think and have been translated into a bunch of languages; the short stories haven't been though which sucks for me since it means I'll have to just go onto the main series after I finish this book I'm on.

The world in these stories is really gritty and unforgiving. Everyone hates the Witchers and calls them freaks; they're rejected as outcasts of society. It's a series I'm really going to try to get into through the games and books.

Witcher 3 the game is coming out soon too and it doesn't seem to fit the mold of typical licensed games   



I also hear that there's a six part comic series coming out soon.

There's a new trailer up for the Witcher 3 which looks pretty cool. I think Tywin Lannister is the voice of the emperor of Nilfgaard    




Also I've been reading the book series. I'm surprised by how well written it really is. I highly recommend giving the first one a shot to anyone who really wants to get into the series. I'm into the third one so far and am really liking it.
An excerpt I like:

" 'He was watching the monster with a smile, an exceptionally ugly one.
"Yeeees," said Nivellen slowly, digging at the corner of his jaws with his claw. "One has to admit you can answer questions without using too many words. It'll be interesting to see how you answer the next one. Who paid you to deal with me?"
"No one. I'm here by accident."
"You're not lying by any chance?"
"I'm not in the habit of lying."
"And what are you in the habit of doing? I've heard of you witchers - they abduct tiny children whom they've feed with magic herbs. The ones who survive become witchers themselves, sorcerers with inhuman powers. They're taught to kill, and all human feelings and reactions are trained out of them. They're turned into monsters in order to kill other monsters. I've heard it's high time someone started hunting witchers, as there are fewer and fewer monsters and more and more witchers... - Why don't you say anything? How much of the rumors about you witchers are true?"
"Practically nothing."
"And what's a lie?"
"That there are fewer and fewer monsters."

Indeed it is.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2993508/

Charles Dance is also appearing in the horrid-looking Dracula movie coming up. He looks the part I must say. Nice and corpse-like.

Witcher 3 looks amazing- but then so did witcher 2 and it still had major control issues and some very weird design and gameplay choices (like the potion thing, or making the tutorial much harder than the entire first section of the game).

But hopefully they can finally gt their world building attached to a decent game this time.

Never read the books although I heard good things about them- but are they not Russian or something, I assume you are reading a translation.

Forest- still not as creepy as the 1922 Nosferatu   

I just finished Blood of the Elves. A really good read. It's the first in the main saga now, so the perspective isn't exclusively on Geralt; it's neat seeing some of the other character's point of view as well. I went to the book store to pick up the sequel, since this one ended on a cliffhanger of sorts, but they only had Baptism of Fire which is two books ahead. I bought it since it was the last one, but I'm eagerly awaiting Time of Contempt, the direct sequel. The waiting game now...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Witcher 3 looks amazing- but then so did witcher 2 and it still had major control issues and some very weird design and gameplay choices (like the potion thing, or making the tutorial much harder than the entire first section of the game).

But hopefully they can finally gt their world building attached to a decent game this time.

Never read the books although I heard good things about them- but are they not Russian or something, I assume you are reading a translation. 

The books are really interesting. The very first one The Last Wish, is available in English. Its sequel, The Sword of Destiny, is not, though there are fan translations of it online. The next three are a part of the main saga and are available in English as well, but the two after that haven't been translated yet.

I highly recommend them so far. The first two can seem a bit slow at first since they're just collected short stories about Geralt and are maybe even at times overindulgent. But they set up the saga well enough. At least it seems like they have so far. One could probably get away with skipping them, but I feel that the sequel Sword of Destiny is really important.

In regards to the Witcher games, I like the way they deal with morality where everything isn't a boring binary right and wrong, good and bad - I think they do a good job of presenting the Witcher universe themes of different radians of grey. The mechanics are a bit wonky at times, but I can forgive that for the most part since the story characters are well written, as are the levels of player choice implemented.

I liked the cause and effect of what you do, I thought that was the strongest part of it as a game design.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I liked the cause and effect of what you do, I thought that was the strongest part of it as a game design.

I can agree to that. It's sort of like how the Mass Effect series should've have handled it.

I thought this song about Witcher 3 is cool.

The last two Witcher books, Tower of Swallow, and Lady of the Lake are actually available as pdfs in english