The Witcher (Netflix) - 2019/2020

Polly101 said:
I've only ever played the games and loved them

Are the books worth getting?
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Books are not easy to read.
The translation is pretty bad at times.

Rather get PDF's

After Sapkowski sued CD Project, because he was an idiot when he sold the rights he does not deserve your money.
Screw him. He is a arsehole.
 
Prawnapple said:
How much are the games based on the books though? I can only hope they're based mostly on the books. As opposed to say 50/50.
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The games follow after the books. The story in the games are CD Projects own creation.
 
Negative blue ranger. They’re his works and if you’re enjoying the books, he deserves every cent as it’s his IP. Without him the games wouldn’t exist.

Chop.
 
UrBaN963 said:
Negative blue ranger. They’re his works and if you’re enjoying the books, he deserves every cent as it’s his IP. Without him the games wouldn’t exist.

Chop.
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After mocking the games and refusing to recognize that without CD Projekt his books would never have reached the popularity that they have, this series would not exist and then suing them for the pleasure, he can go screw himself.
 
Beyond.Celsus said:
Books are not easy to read.
The translation is pretty bad at times.

Rather get PDF's

After Sapkowski sued CD Project, because he was an idiot when he sold the rights he does not deserve your money.
Screw him. He is a arsehole.
Click to expand...

Although Sapkowski is an arsehole, CDPR was also in the wrong. Under Polish laws, they've profited ridiculousnessly off of his works, and he was owed remuneration. The two have settled amicably, honestly both were taking this piss and now it's sorted.

The books are great (books > games ez, witcher 2 got close but then they backpedaled) and saying people shouldn't buy them because Sapkowski can act like an ******* is ****ing stupid chomma. There would literally be nothing without him. A lot of the time he is also mistranslated or misinterpreted, he's sarcastic AF and in Polish people think he's less of an arsehole than in English.

Jopie Fourie said:
So, anyone started watching as yet? Any good?
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I've watched EP3 to completion. It's the best one so far, I think. Yeah, it has some pacing issues, and I think cutting between the past (Geralt and Yen) and Ciri (present) is a bit jarring and will confuse people who don't know the lore and who aren't paying complete attention.

A big issue with the show for me is that I'm comparing it to CDPR's vision of the characters, costumes ect, and my vision from reading the books. I wasn't a massive fan of the screen time they gave Foltest (I really like Foltest in the books and the TW2, they made him look like a chop in EP3), but the show is pretty good overall and I think season 2 will be even better. Cavil really put in the work, and at times he does look a bit silly, you can see if gives a **** about the role and wants to do it right. I thought he was going to be terrible, but I'm glad I was wrong/

I think trying to integrate the short stories with the overall plot might not have been the best idea, but I understand why they had to do it and next season obviously, will be just the plot of the 5 novels. There's some short stories that they didn't adapt, like A Little Sacrfice which seems silly to be as it's one of the best, but I guess they didn't have budget for those CGI Vodyanoi.

EDIT: Also boobs. Really nice boobs. A+ They knew all the words, great guy. The BEST.

Oh, I was expecting more from the music. It's not bad but I don't think it's good either. It doesn't sound right and the music from the three games fits the Witcher better. They need to work on that for season 2. Just hire Adam Skorupa he'll make you those bangers like from TW1.
 
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Polly101 said:
I've only ever played the games and loved them

Are the books worth getting?
Click to expand...
The books and comic tie-in series are superb within it's own right, but there are better same genre works out there. Interestingly, the book series composers praised the game developers because the games resulted in increased book sales.
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
Oh, I was expecting more from the music. It's not bad but I don't think it's good either. It doesn't sound right and the music from the three games fits the Witcher better. They need to work on that for season 2.
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Was hoping for some folk as well. Kinda lost the slavic folklore feel in favor of a global netflix audience. Should've featured gingertail.
 
Beyond.Celsus said:
After mocking the games and refusing to recognize that without CD Projekt his books would never have reached the popularity that they have, this series would not exist and then suing them for the pleasure, he can go screw himself.
Click to expand...
Just read this, and the upvoted answer,

literature.stackexchange.com

How did The Witcher games affect the popularity of The Witcher books?

I often hear/read people saying that The Witcher books became popular because of the games, but I personally don't believe that. Recently I heard an interview with the Brazilian translator of the...
literature.stackexchange.com literature.stackexchange.com
 
Just watched Episode 4. Yeah, this one really came together. Can't wait for non book readers to find out the consequence of that episode.

Only thing I didn't like was what they're doing with Yen. I thought the beach scene was cringy AF and yeah, didn't feel like Witcher at all. In fact, Yen's dialogue so far has not been great.

Unrelated note, haven't got there yet, but Doug Cockle should have been cast as Borch Three Jackdaws. It would have been great, he has the acting chops, he could have done it. Imagine Geralt mocking Geralt in Geralt's voice. Wasted opportunity.
 
The_Imp_ZA said:
Although Sapkowski is an arsehole, CDPR was also in the wrong. Under Polish laws, they've profited ridiculousnessly off of his works, and he was owed remuneration.
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I disagree with that statement.
Out of Sapkowskis own mouth he admitted that CD Projekt offered him percentages of the profits when they wanted to make the first game. HE turned THEM down and rather wanted a lump some of cash immediately, because he had no faith that the games would ever make any money.

He got the money he wanted, CD Projekt didn't owe him ****.
 
Fulcrum29 said:
Just read this, and the upvoted answer,

literature.stackexchange.com

How did The Witcher games affect the popularity of The Witcher books?

I often hear/read people saying that The Witcher books became popular because of the games, but I personally don't believe that. Recently I heard an interview with the Brazilian translator of the...
literature.stackexchange.com literature.stackexchange.com
Click to expand...

Props to that guy for going through the effort.
It's blatantly obvious that it would never have reached the popularity it has without CD Projekt.

All respect to Sapkowskis work. He created characters and a world which few can equal and that needs to be acknowledged.
But as a person I find him to be a dislikeable and arrogant cnut.
 
I watched the first episodes. Pretty awful so far.

Hope it gets better.

All the actors apart from the Witcher seem so forgettable. They are just reading script making it sound like students reading Shakespeare. Too much pointless Shakespearean talking, too little action.
 
Beyond.Celsus said:
I disagree with that statement.
Out of Sapkowskis own mouth he admitted that CD Projekt offered him percentages of the profits when they wanted to make the first game. HE turned THEM down and rather wanted a lump some of cash immediately, because he had no faith that the games would ever make any money.

He got the money he wanted, CD Projekt didn't owe him ****.
Click to expand...

He made a mistake asking for a tiny lump sum instead of royalties, because the first time Metroplis tried to make a Witcher game it failed hard and he got basically nothing. He's also an old codger who doesn't understand other forms of media, and honestly I can't blame him for thinking TW1 would fail. Logic says it should have failed. It had no veteran developers, and a hard, almost 7 year long development. If you read the stories from back then, it's bad, the crunch was insane and the vast majority of people who worked at CDPR during TW1 dislike the company and refuse to go back. There's a great doc on Youtube about it.

But they do bud owe him. There's a specific Polish law, the best seller clause, something like that, that basically allowed him to request additional remuneration due to the fact that CDPR has made a ridiculous amount of money off of his works. Whether you like him or not, whether you think he made a stupid choice or not, he was owed remuneration. The lump sum they paid him in the early 2000's was tiny. For CDPR, guys who claim to be such fans, not comprising would have been a bad look and there's a decent chance they would have lost if they went to court. I doubt they gave him the $16 million he wanted, but it wouldn't surprise me if he gets 2 - 3% of the profits of the games from now on.

If you sell your rights for $1000, and the people who bought them make $250 million off of you, yeah you ****ed up bad but you do also deserve decent remuneration. In the US you wouldn't get it, but having a legal system that can compromise is objectively correct. It's the fair thing.
 
I've watched the first three episodes.

Cavill is great as the Witcher - he really pulls it off.

Seems like they adapted a lot of the short stories, which I think is good because some of them feature Ciri heavily. Ciri is older than I pictured her being - I pictured closer to something like 8 years old in the books.

Some of the cuts that they made to the short stories in order to adapt them to the screen butcher them a little in my opinion. Like, Foltest has already been mentioned - he wasn't such an ass in the books.

The other thing I wasn't fond of is the Devil. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but basically not only did they kinda ruin the Devil as a character by taking out a lot of his sassy dialogue, they also sort of butchered what comes next - the true reason for why he is there, and the dialogue between the Witcher and the third party.

Specifically, the whole thing was about the elves refusal to learn agriculture or advance, which is omitted in the series, and to me would make the entire thing make no sense if I hadn't read the books. It is the elves refusal to change and adapt, to learn agriculture, which lands them in a mess. I don't feel that this really landed in the series.

Yennefer's back story.... its okay. Her mentor is interesting as a character, but the actress who plays Yennefer is nothing like I pictured her. Gone are the ringlets which she is said to have, and I thought she was smaller in stature.

Overall it is decent though.
 
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