The Witcher is getting a Netflix series

[RH92]

This isn't a necro thread

It basically was, the guy quoted a post from 2017.

[oplawlz]

It’s called a season finale cliffhanger.
It means that people will be looking forward to what happens in the next season

I loved the show, but I have to say that was a pretty poorly done cliffhanger. It's okay to have a hook, but every season should actually have a satisfying arc that completes in the finally. We should have at the very least ended with a fight scene between Geralt and Mr. Bad Man. Basically nothing happens in that last episode worth noting.

[Ihavewaffles]

It basically was, the guy quoted a post from 2017.

Regardless, the thread itself isn't necro..some threads stay relevant long time, like the game of thrones book/tv show thread..

[Sorshen]

Regardless, the thread itself isn't necro..some threads stay relevant long time, like the game of thrones book/tv show thread..

Not my post from 2.5 years ago tho.

Anyway, they should focus on the narrative for season 2 and do more practical effects than obviously bad cgi, upon rewatching some episodes i picked up on some changes that i kinda dislike.

[McNeil]

This show was quite enjoyable. It doesn't come without its flaws though, its mostly stuff that has been said a lot: Switching around timelines can get confusing, Triss is horribly miscast, Yennefer has way to much of a role and overshadows Geralt as the main character, there were some obvious budget issues to be found like the special effects of the monsters, the world itself had to few monsters and didn't felt as dangerous to travel compared to the games, the Ciri plot felt mostly pointless and the forest scenes were completely unnecesary.

Most of the shows strength comes from Henry Cavill's portrayal as Geralt. He obviously knows how to behave and sound like game's Geralt. Every scene with Geralt felt like a treat, especially some of the fighting scenes and the impact afterwards. I didn't find Yennefer as interesting but she had some good moments aswell. It felt like they did a huge disservice to the Nilfgardians by giving them armor that looks like a scrotum (its hard to keep myself from laughing whenever I see them on screen), and portray them unnecesarily evil. Hopefully if they do a season 2 and emperor Emhyr gets a role he changes their armor and makes them less like pricks.

I'd rate the show about a 7/10 or 7.5/10, not as good as it could've been but still enjoyable enough for me to wanna watch season 2. Its better to play Witcher 3 for the story and most loveable characters like Vesemir (please let Mark Hamill play him in the show) and grown Ciri. I wanna see more monsters, more of the world, some signs of the Wild Hunt preparing for their arrival. Hopefully we'll get more of this in season 2.

[FuxieDK]

Nice necro.

It's a reply to an old post, but not a necro at all, as the thread was well and alive when I made the reply.

[Aliven]

You are extremely over reacting and think your personal opinion about things are above all else.

Of course it is. It is mine.

[zenkai]

Guys, don't forget to toss a coin to your Witcher

[JDL49]

Your problem is that you see the books as a limiting factor rather than as a starting point. I confess I used to feel the same. But if you stick to that what you have is a story you already know so why bother with an encore ? After all you know how it ends. It's more or a less a summer rerun*. As long as they get the important stuff right I say let them change stuff. That way I can enjoy more like original material than as a repeat.



*reference is more or less archaic but then so am I.

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OK I finished Season 1 last week and all in I was entertained even though I pretty much abandoned the genre in print form 15 years or so ago and never started it in movies at all. One thing of note; I let myself get spoiled on one important point that actually improved my experience. I knew there were lots of time jumps and that the audience was not warned when they happened. Not getting hung up on those improved things a lot. Finally there was one problem; the Bard was LAME.

[Cynep]

Finally there was one problem; the Bard was LAME.

What specifically was LAME about the Bard, in your opinion? Most people liked him AFAIK.

[Airlick]

I don't think it's right to put both on the same level, as you consistently seem to keep doing.
ASOIAF had a gigantic fanbase and was widely renown across the world for a few decades already. I doubt the Witcher books enjoyed the same popularity outside of East-Europe.

There is just no competition between the quality of writing either way. The Witcher books are low-to-middle quality. ASOIAF books are considered among the highest quality of writing, which is also why they were much more widely known long before the GoT TV series.

Of course this only holds water if we can back it up with numbers, so my best attempt:
ASOIAF: Over 100 million copies sold worldwide
The Witcher: It's very hard to find numbers for the book sales, but all 3 games combined only score about 33-40 million copies sold, with half of them being the Witcher 3. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that only a fraction of those people also bought the Witcher books. So my best estimate is somewhere in the range of 9-10 million copies sold of the books, and with that I feel like I'm being generous.

ASOIAF awards and achievements:
The fourth and fifth volumes reached the top of the New York Times Best Seller lists upon their releases.
4x the Locus Award winner, 3x the Nebula Award nominee, 3x Hugo Award nominee, 3 World Fantasy Award nominee, 1x Locus Award nominee, 1x World Fantasy Award nominee
The Witcher awards and achievements:
-none to date-

Like, I understand you're a Witcher-fan, and I probably am an ASOIAF-fan, and maybe that is why it bothers me you trying to equate the two as them somehow being on the same level. Don't get me wrong though, the universe of the Witcher is pretty great. He did a good job world-building and I do like the cynical / semi-gothic approach to storywriting. It is very post-modern which suits just about all the fiction entertainment trend of the moment (everything is fucked, heroes aren't real heroes, etc.) I just think that other writers could do a better job. Take "the Witcher Tales: Thronebreaker" game for example; a very story-driven game with a lot of writing... written by 'Jakub Szamałek' who in my opinion did a much much better job writing Witcher stories than 'Andrzej Sapkowski' himself.

Well, this post is wrong on so many levels...

Did you even read the Witcher books? If you did, you wouldn't be saying things like "they are low/mid quality writing". They are amazing, and certainly not any worse than ASOIAF. Of course ASOIAF is going to have more awards in English/American contests, it's an English series, it's hardly a proof of it being better than Witcher. Frankly, Witcher didn't get many awards even in Poland, simply because it came out at a time that fantasy/sci-fi was an underground genre (aside of Lem and Asimov, who were very popular), in fact, the first short stories came out in a monthly sci-fi magazine that had some 5000 copies issued. And it was Witcher that started the fantasy hype. Witcher's popularity definitely suffers from it being a Polish book, the language is hard (doubly so for the books, which are written in highly stylized language) and I suspect many parts are simply impossible to translate without missing the point. This is why you might be claiming the writing sucks - bad translations that were rushed out for English speaking countries because of the popularity of games. There is a reason why Witcher became wildly popular in Poland and Eastern Europe even before the games, and it's not because we don't have good books here and we just settle for the best of the worst.

[Naramag]

What specifically was LAME about the Bard, in your opinion? Most people liked him AFAIK.

Perhaps he expected the bard to be a comedy relief. You know, the standard trope of stumbling idiot who can't hit a tune if his life depends on it.
But while he certainly was to some degree a comedy relief, he still was a living breathing character. The comedy came not from the character, but from the contrast to Geralt.

[Biomega]

Well, this post is wrong on so many levels...

Did you even read the Witcher books? If you did, you wouldn't be saying things like "they are low/mid quality writing". They are amazing, and certainly not any worse than ASOIAF.

That depends on how you determine better/worse. From a purely technical standpoint - at least going by the English translation - the Witcher books are quite clearly not written as expertly as ASOIAF is. Say what you will about GRRM but he is a master craftsman of writing who is very meticulous about style, composition, language, and so on. Often to his own detriment, some would argue, which is why his books are so big and take so long to make.

In terms of creativity and world building, it's hard to find objective criteria to go by. Not impossible, but hard. The world of ASOIAF definitely has more depth and complexity to it, however it's of a different kind - in many ways, it's written more like historic fiction rather than high fantasy. The Witcher, on the other hand, is more clearly fantasy, and has some elements to it that aren't found that much in the Western canon (the whole Slavic mythology). But aside from that, the Witcher is fairly generic in its world-building when it comes to the fantasy elements.

Awards are not a particularly good measure to go by except to get a very rough idea; especially when it comes to non-English books, biases can just play a bigger role than quality (however you want to define that). But having read both the Witcher and ASOIAF, I personally think it's not that unclear which series is better written. Which one you LIKE better remains, of course, a personal choice.

[therealstegblob]

ASOIAF books are considered among the highest quality of writing, which is also why they were much more widely known long before the GoT TV series.

I had you on ignore for whatever reason but saw your post in someone else's quoted message. I am by no means a fan of the Witcher Netflix series (it's, uh, really kind of mediocre and feels like PG-13 Goosebumps more than anything else), but holy fuck lol. ASoIaF is most certainly not considered the highest quality of writing what the absolute fuck are you talking about.

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Say what you will about GRRM but he is a master craftsman of writing who is very meticulous about style, composition, language, and so on. Often to his own detriment, some would argue, which is why his books are so big and take so long to make.

No he's not lol. GRRM is actually a really sort of poor mechanical writer. In fact, he's the opposite of 'meticulous' about style, which is why his work is often plagued by so many repetitive turn-of-phrases and bad descriptions. Like, god damn how delusional are some of you people.

The reason his books take so long to write are because they're long and because the plot is beginning to get convoluted (due to Martin's own lack of planning his story or outlining anything) and Martin doesn't write when he's not at home (which he often isn't these days). He's an obese geriatric on the last decade of his life who is spending what time he has left vacationing in comfort and putting off finishing his massively fucked up mess of a book series; he's not slaving away to WERDSMITH out the most perfect and highly articulated language. God damn, dude.

[Witchblade77]

That depends on how you determine better/worse. From a purely technical standpoint - at least going by the English translation - the Witcher books are quite clearly not written as expertly as ASOIAF is. Say what you will about GRRM but he is a master craftsman of writing who is very meticulous about style, composition, language, and so on. Often to his own detriment, some would argue, which is why his books are so big and take so long to make.

In terms of creativity and world building, it's hard to find objective criteria to go by. Not impossible, but hard. The world of ASOIAF definitely has more depth and complexity to it, however it's of a different kind - in many ways, it's written more like historic fiction rather than high fantasy. The Witcher, on the other hand, is more clearly fantasy, and has some elements to it that aren't found that much in the Western canon (the whole Slavic mythology). But aside from that, the Witcher is fairly generic in its world-building when it comes to the fantasy elements.

Awards are not a particularly good measure to go by except to get a very rough idea; especially when it comes to non-English books, biases can just play a bigger role than quality (however you want to define that). But having read both the Witcher and ASOIAF, I personally think it's not that unclear which series is better written. Which one you LIKE better remains, of course, a personal choice.

becasue I am bilingual and my first language is not actualy English, i may potentially be more aware of the difficulties in translating books. especially when there are so many cultural differences so you lose both the nuance of the language AND the nuance of the culture. for example. one of the first books I've read in English was Stainless Steel Rat. now, i loved it in Russian, which was part of the reason why I chose to read it in english and... the difference was pretty stark. its not that it was a bad translation, but rather a lot of nuance was lost. another book that i've read while still learning english was Catcher in the Rye (it was one of the books they made us read in ESL classes). it took me a long time to understand it and even longer time to reconcile it with a translation I read (translation that attempted to not just translate the language, but also cultural differences, adopt them if you will - so quite a few references were changed, and it confused the heck out of me. think Captain America and his changing list of things to catch up on, depending on which country Winter Soldier was airing, but on a larger scale). and then... there was a matter of Robin Hood, men in tights movie. so many of the jokes lost most of their meaning when translated into russian, I wouldn't be surprised if people judged it harshly and thought it was overrated as a comedy. and so on and so forth.

now, I'm not a fan of Martin because he pads his writing way WAY too much IMO. you'd think he was getting payed by the word rather then by the book release (the way Dickens and other writers of his era were, so at least in their case, I understand the padding). and even with simplified translation with quite a bit of nuance lost in translation from polish to english (according to people who speak both polish and english)? i still prefer Sapkovski. almost makes me wish i could learn polish, just so i could read him and a few other polish authors in original... but then I remember that this is a language that for some reason absolutely HATES vowels and the urge passes :P nonetheless. are we judging the books to be generic becasue we've seen so much of the similar fantasy (that more often then not was published years AFTER?) or because some of the mythology is similar across the borders?

[Biomega]

becasue I am bilingual and my first language is not actualy English, i may potentially be more aware of the difficulties in translating books.

Translation could be one issue for sure, however I've been told by people whose judgement I trust that the English translation of the Witcher books is fairly good as far as such translations go. Obviously it will never be the same as reading in the original, but you go by what you can. And it's not like we're talking about highly sophisticated literature here that stretches the limits of translatability.

I'm fairly confident that the English translation allows enough structural and technical analysis to make a comparison, and the world building etc. is usually also something that works well in translated works. The cultural differences are another thing, but honestly, I did not find the Witcher books too idiosyncratic. Then again, I have a Slavic background myself so that might be it.

nonetheless. are we judging the books to be generic becasue we've seen so much of the similar fantasy (that more often then not was published years AFTER?) or because some of the mythology is similar across the borders?

I wouldn't simply call the Witcher "generic", at least not in a pejorative sense, but it's not exactly a revolution of the genre. The Slavic touch is nice and appreciated (gods know we could use more cultural diversity in fantasy literature) but it also doesn't exactly transgress any boundaries. Most of it is put together in a reasonably interesting way, but it's largely just familiar elements.

Now, it's not like ASOIAF is radically different either, of course. It just comes with more meticulous writing and world building than most mainstream fantasy, and, I suppose, a kind of gritty realism that was often eschewed in the genre in favor of epic tropes.

[Nerovar]

Started watching it again and made it to episode 3. MUCH better. I’m hooked.

Happy to hear that.

[Orby]

Guys, don't forget to toss a coin to your Witcher

Frog Leap Studios did one too.... I expect all my music content creators to be covering this soon :P

[Airlick]

That depends on how you determine better/worse. From a purely technical standpoint - at least going by the English translation - the Witcher books are quite clearly not written as expertly as ASOIAF is. Say what you will about GRRM but he is a master craftsman of writing who is very meticulous about style, composition, language, and so on. Often to his own detriment, some would argue, which is why his books are so big and take so long to make.

In terms of creativity and world building, it's hard to find objective criteria to go by. Not impossible, but hard. The world of ASOIAF definitely has more depth and complexity to it, however it's of a different kind - in many ways, it's written more like historic fiction rather than high fantasy. The Witcher, on the other hand, is more clearly fantasy, and has some elements to it that aren't found that much in the Western canon (the whole Slavic mythology). But aside from that, the Witcher is fairly generic in its world-building when it comes to the fantasy elements.

Awards are not a particularly good measure to go by except to get a very rough idea; especially when it comes to non-English books, biases can just play a bigger role than quality (however you want to define that). But having read both the Witcher and ASOIAF, I personally think it's not that unclear which series is better written. Which one you LIKE better remains, of course, a personal choice.

Well, this, as I said, is a problem of translation, not original quality of writing, which, and you may or may not take my word for it, is through the roof. I'd say dialogues and character development in Witcher books are way ahead of ASOIAF, in fact, and I say that knowing that this is what ASOIAF is supposedly best at. It's not easy to write a convincing dialogue between, for example, a rude dwarf, a peasant archer girl, a grumpy witcher and an ancient vampire disguising himself as an alchemist, and have them all speak with their own manners and quirks, slight differences in vocabulary or straight up in a different dialect. Witcher is filled with dialogues I could probably quote from memory, because they are that good and memorable. Of course noone is going to learn Polish in order to experience the Witcher books in the way it's meant to be experienced, but you do have to keep in mind that translations are never perfect and can significantly affect the reception. I mean, I'm not going to drudge through English translation of the Witcher just to prove a point to anyone, but I've read ASOIAF both in Polish and English, and I think I have a pretty good basis for my claims.

Just to specify, I'm a fan of both series, I definitely am biased towards Witcher since it's culturally closer to me, but I also think I can objectively say that Witcher has absolutely nothing to be ashamed about (other than translation, possibly) when compared with ASOIAF, and it does some things better, like pacing of the story, which is just dreadful in ASOIAF.

[Gaidax]

The only real big problem with the series is that they have totally butchered Triss Merigold. Did they run out of budget for decent looking actresses or what?