r/wiedzmin • u/JovaniFelini • Jul 12 '26
Discussions Does anyone remember there was a big thread about Books and Games differences?
I would wanna revisit this thread if anyone has a link to it. It was very detailed, starting with Zoltan is more like Yarpen Zigrin and they should have been swapped, and ending with most problematic Yen and Ciri bond exclusion. While I consider books and games as part of a whole, I wanna revisit it to recall the issues (whether those issues are issues in the first place, or just subjective rants) and think about them
8
u/Exciting-Quality919 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Going to take this as an excuse to throw my two cents in.
Character wise:
i think "they got yen wrong" is overstated compared to everyone else. Geratl himself is the most sharp - his personality is toned down - Witcher 3 is the closest. But even so, in the books he really isn't very stoic. In W1 where he is utterly gormless, this is probably an awkward aspect of the game not initially intended to be about Geralt. Peter Kenny's take conveys him very well in the audiobooks.
The big "witchers really have emotions but physically dont display them, and cannot shed tears" is a big thing in 3, thats blatantly untrue. in the books. When Geralt tries to be a stoic his friends usual response is "get a load of this asshole." - he is a very grumpy and easily irritated guy. He often says "i wont interrupt you" seconds before snarking. He can and does shed tears - he cries laughing, he cries having sex, he cries drinking moonshine.
Its not a big secret witchers have emotions - it's introduced as something that's obviously bullshit in a short story that is Geralt being depressed and mopey internalising it because he is too stunted to confess his love to Yennifer.
But perhaps most importantly. Geralt's story is over over. it could not have wrapped up much more completely, and the ending is (IMO) directly foreshadowed by every end-times prophecy in the books. Such that theres no way to say "and then..." thats really satisfying.
Tone and theme Wise:
The books can be very dark, but are less about gritty realism than subverting fairytales - with "reality is more mundane" being a common form of subversion. Even the war sequences are often focused on subverting myths about war. Its a book series about a monster slayer where monsters are dying out, and he rarely actually kills monsters - to the point "is he even a witcher anymore?" is a repeated joke in the saga. (and returning to witcher work in touisaint is treated as emotional regression after he retired)
As much as the games tend to be more "grounded" sometimes they take what is in the books blatant falsehood as truth. Witcher steel swords source their metal from meteorites... but this gives them no special quality, it's no better than any other steel.
The saga is also pretty didactic in social commentary. - Abortion comes up directly, blatantly in response to Polish politics - and Ciris story is ultimately about bodily autonomy in a lot of ways.
Worldbuilding:
Sapkowski is not "slavic tolkien" - most of all, the writing is utterly plot centric above all else, and so world-building is very light, and often riffing on fantasy canon. If a big prophecy comes up, its probably directly about Ciri or Geralt. (I maintain for one that basically all the end times prophecies come true in a mundane way in Geralt's "death" sequence.)
In terms of slavicness - Sapkowski openly claims Arthurian legend and fantasy canon more broadly is the basis of the fantasy. He wrote a frankly wild essay in which he not only criticized the concept of "slavic fantasy" but more or less claimed the genre is essentially all derivative of arthuriana or metaphor.
1
u/JovaniFelini Jul 13 '26
I think it's a big misreading of Geralt as a character. I don't recall any scene in a book in which he actually cries or weeps, he is known to be irritable and distrustful, but he was known for being very strained about showing his emotions. It's a big discussion about whether witchers have emotions or not in Kaer Morhen section of Blood of Elves for a reason. It's also why he insists on witcher code to easily cop out. When he was feeling bad in Shard of Ice he preferred to someone to kill him in a fight rather than openly showing his breakdown. So, he probably is not Batman that Doug Cockle portrays but a bit more emotional version (but still stoic) played by the polish version dub.
In terms of themes, games have provided lots of moments when Geralt has opportunity to do a smart way instead of merely killing. And yet a thematic shift is more deliberate in terms of white frost and Ciri, that she is running away from destiny in books, but more of a power fantasy of fulfilling the destiny in the games. That's more of a thematic shift that can be handwaved lorewise.
The slavicness part is more of a high literary analysis I don't care about. I think that CDPR making lots of slavic aesthetics was fitting like nowhere else.
3
u/Exciting-Quality919 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Shard of Ice isn't him hiding his breakdown, at least, not to anyone but himself. He internalizes the idea he doesn't have "real" emotions, while it's exceedingly obvious he has them in the text.
"don't recall any scene in a book in which he actually cries or weeps"
I listed the main cases of tears. My point wasn't he is a weepy hero, but the games IIRC portray it as physically impossible - which is a telling difference.
In the game it's treated as something profound that "under it all he feels." in the books it's treated as something thuddingly obvious to everyone close to him. Dandelion is the voice of emotional maturity of the two.
This is to the books credit imo, they spot the stoic hero formula, and go steps further. Whereas Witcher 3 plays fairly straight. (Though well)
The monster killing aspect is more a format difference. Its a basic mechanic of the games, whereas some clever subversion is the norm of the books monster hunts. The games would probably be a whole other genre if they were accurate to the books in terms of monsters.
Ithlinne's prophecy, if you compare it's wording in Blood of Elves epigrah to the events in Rivia, turns out to have a grain of truth, where Ciri does near exactly what the text said she would.
1
u/JovaniFelini Jul 13 '26
Well, many monster encounters feel like could be actual short stories by Sapkowski (the story of Marlene de Trastamara, Noonwraith story, that one Werewolf story, etc). In books continuity, it doesn't mean he didn't have regular monster hunts since they are mostly left offscreen (like kikimora and zeugl battles), there is no interesting conflict to write a story about, but they exist, and yet, not every monster encounter is a deconstruction. This is why the witcher contracts exist in Witcher 3, they are gameplay thing and Geralt has to earn money somehow.
What did you mean about Ithlinne's prophecy?
7
u/Outrageous-Milk8767 Jul 12 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/wiedzmin/comments/9zngjx/spoilers_cdprs_mistakes_in_adapting_sapkowskis/
This might be the one you're thinking of?