The Witcher 3

It's like they offered him a lottery ticket in exchange for the rights, but he didn't think it was a winning ticket so he turned it down—but still gave them the rights.

It's just such a bizarre choice that I feel like I have to be missing something. It makes no sense otherwise.

@1148. I'll give you worldwide, but, you have no idea how popular, definitive and impactful Witcher was in the post Soviet space. And still is. It is no accident it was made into a game series. And from what I've heard, it was creeping into to the English speaking fantasy lovers bookshelves anyway.

Andrzej Sapkowski is an old man that doesn't understand video games. Nothing more to it.

edited 20th Apr '17 1:44:17 PM by googlebot

He was probably offered a choice between upfront money OR royalties. I think it's a fairly frequent offer in the game business.

I have the grand total of zero point zero zero f'n zero sympathy with the man. For reasons I've explained earlier.

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Wait, Tam, I thought you were the one always yelling about how the Witcher games are stealing from Sapkowski both literally and figuratively. I mean, I didn't exactly read the rants in depth, but I could have sworn that was you.

No. What I was mad about was both the games' publisher and the author ripping off Michael Moorcock's pretty much everything that he ever wrote about Elric of Melniboné, and both of those entities hiding behind the Polish government's "No plagiarism here!" stance when it's complete and utter bullshit.

That the games' publisher seems to be ripping off the author is just the sweet cherry on the top.

Do try to keep up, old bean. I mean, if you want to take the piss out of someone it's best to be informed about your target.

Care to elaborate?

Razorfist does a pretty good summary of the Elric series. And I can understand the reaction against the Witcher on those grounds, except the end product is actually of a decent quality and not a knock off - it has become its own thing and, arguably, eclipsed both its originator (Andre) and the (potential) source material of Elric.

Ultimately, I would find it tricky to fault CDPR - the Author ripped off the imagery (allegedly) and then they adapted his work, expanding on it enough to make it stand on its own merits.

Sapirwowsky sounds upset and a bit resentful, but ultimately he made a bad business call because he didn't understand the market he was throwing his idea into. And there had been an earlier Witcher game that went no-where so he likely thought the same thing'd happen.

This is the issue with rights and art - if someone takes an idea and makes it work in a different environment, then how much can you take issue with it? The Tolkien estate tend to have similar attitudes to derivative works but we still love the output (And Tolkien is a reinvention of the old bardic traditions and legends...)

The hell is a razorfist?

This dude.

edited 25th Apr '17 7:21:21 AM by theLibrarian

Some YouTuber.

Honestly, after googling for a bit, so far the only similarities between Geralt and Elric seem to be superficial at best - white-haired, pale dude with a sword? That sounds like the most generic description of a fantasy character ever.

Not to mention they don't even have the same kind of origin (Razörfist is claiming they do).

Is both of them being called "The White Wolf" curious? Yes, but that's still a generic-as-heck nickname.

Furthermore, Michael Moorcock apparently filed a lawsuit for plagiarism at one point despite never even having read any of the Witcher novels, basing the claim purely on hearsay.

So excuse me if I'm a tad mistrustful of the plagiarism claim in this case.

edited 25th Apr '17 7:30:47 AM by DrunkenNordmann

True - you may as well claim Dr'zzt is a ripoff as well. But Salvatore is probably harder to sue...

Elric is cursed by an evil sword. Geralt is made by mutations in a medieval setting. So yes, the similarities are superficial at best.

Anyway, point still stands - Witcher has grown into its own pop culture thing and Andre has been more or less eclipsed by CDPR for good or ill. Considering he was on the verge of disowning the Witcher at one point I think it's good CDPR kept a lot of it going.

a bit Rageaholic's, I dunno, guy.

Anyway, here's the videos and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ExIZd2vN0U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVe-CeThGug

http://the-rageaholic.tumblr.com/post/136531542346/so-what-im-getting-from-all-the-game-of-the-year

are the attacks on Witcher's plagiarising author/game publisher. And yeah, I'm pretty much going to be continuing to refer to them as such.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P80UTMrpFIY on the character of Elric of Melniboné himself.

Watch and read at your own risk. There's plenty of websites out there taking the piss out of the guy, that's their prerogative.

edited 25th Apr '17 7:44:39 AM by TamH70

Yeah, not buying it. The guy seems to take a very... liberal approach when it comes to research - not to mention the "obviously everyone who criticises me is a Witcher fanboy" stance he seems to take on criticism.

edited 25th Apr '17 8:55:53 AM by DrunkenNordmann

Razorfist is an interesting commentator - I enjoy his controversial opinions and his whole hearted support of the Deus Ex world.

However, accusing CDPR of ripping of DX with Cyberpunk, which is a tabletop game being adapted and was one of the influences Warren Spector cited when he was designing Deus Ex made me smile a little.

He starts with a few emotional premises in that blog post - notably a few No True Scotsman attitudes towards what an RPG actually is. And if you look at how CDPR engaged Bioware there was an element of "joshing" I would argue.

Maybe Americans really don't get the European attitude of "ribbing" each other? Or maybe I'm viewing it through my own bias - they have taken potshots at a few games via the Witcher, as well as genre tropes. Hell even Fable took potshots at Bethesda, but in a teasing way.

He's a fan of Elric but I sense an element of projection there - there are similarities but I can draw a whole host of differences between the way the two characters are written and view the world as well.

... Leaving all of the stuff I've said about how the games, and the books that inspired them, came about, which I stand by, I ended up having a shot at the game, which I bought quite a while ago because cheap in Steam sale, long before I was acquainted with the controversy surrounding it. Besides, I'm Scottish - I hate spending money not to get some use out of what I purchased, and it was waaaayy too late to get a refund.

Only to my horror to find out that it's second only to Skyrim in my modern RPG pantheon, just barely shading out the dual third place winners (Dragon Age: Inquisition and Fallout: New Vegas).

It's brilliant. Voice acting, script, plot, settings, the various odd wee story bits that made me grimace or smile. And it looks jaw-droppingly gorgeous turned up to full on all the graphical settings. I don't like the fact you have to pay someone to make your own bloody armor or weapons, which I enjoyed doing in Skyrim so it loses points for that.

If Bethesda can pull itself away from the tawdry mumorpeger it's currently having to schlep about thanks to their corporate bosses at Zenimax and do another, proper, single player by Akatosh, sword 'n' sorcery RPG, it would be best served by learning how CD Projekt Red did this game.

Controversy? That it's really good?

Finally finished this. Took me two years, but yeah. Strange, during my first two attempts to play, I couldn't really get into the game, but the third time (really a continuation of second attempt) I fell in love.

Geralt surprised me. I was expecting a gruff anti-hero character, a Joel figure at best . but Geralt seems to have a rather strong sense of morality and justice. Not sure how that is in the books, or how much of it is due to how I played him, but I really liked Geralt. He came across as cynical and cold, perhaps, but never particularly cruel.

edited 3rd Aug '17 11:35:20 PM by SilentColossus

I agree. He's got a lot of heart... or at least you can play him that way.

10 years anniversary, and a cool video from CD Project as a gift for the faithful fans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgqz8Je7P0s

JEEZ MAN STOP CUTTING ONIONS!

Yeah that got me in the feels. CANNON! IT'S CANNON NOW.

So any tips on what you should do after the castle visit? I am level 4 and even the most basic encounters are all level 9s and up. I don’t even have access to a shop that sells food any more.

Trying to do that one quest to guard guys from monsters to get a pass into a town but I don’t do enough damage to make sure they do not die.

edited 5th Jan '18 12:48:56 AM by Memers

"Castle visits"?

Make sure you clear the tutorial area. There's more than 4 levels worth of XP (and remember each sign shrine gives you 1 skill point). Then do quest in southern Velen/

edited 5th Jan '18 12:52:58 AM by Ghilz

Deleted

Edited by SeekerSS on Jun 24th 2022 at 9:04:56 AM

I've started playing again, along with a lot of other people. The new Netflix series has caused TW3 to undergo a resurgence, to the point where it's apparently had more concurrent users this month than it did at launch. Holy shit.

Anyway, I started a new game from scratch (not a NG+... dear lord that's a soul-crushing experience: think level 35 wild dogs that tear me to ribbons), used the console to skip the early game gold grind, and went on my usual path of helping everybody as much as I could.

I forgot about the "save them both" version of the Crones quest. I'll need to think about that next time. I also need to go back to Crow's Perch and see if there's a way to keep the bandits from taking over and making things worse (if that's even possible) for the people of Velen. Oh, well... I'm glad to be rid of that place.

The systems of this game really hold up a few years on, although I've been challenged by a few technical glitches. Once the game hard-locked my PC when I reloaded from a save. Twice it's entered a state where any attempt to bring up the menu causes the screen to flash/flicker but nothing to happen, and I have to force-quit from the Task Manager. I ran into the bug where you can't swim down (the 'C' key stops working) if you were attacked in shallow water, and another bug where a merchant won't open the merchant UI. Both were fixed with a quick save and reload.

Watching Roach glitch around can be entertaining, as he likes to clip into things and get stuck in certain animations (he ran on his forelegs for about half a mile at one point). I also encountered a Leshen (level 20, while I was about 10 and so he one-shotted me) that decided to stalk me around Velen, killing me in the middle of a dungeon and following me all over the place until I managed to get out of combat and fast travel.

It's continually interesting to observe which monsters I can fight when they are "deadly" status (more than 5 levels higher IIRC). For some, dodging their attack patterns is easy enough that Quen can save me from the one-shot kills and let me chip them away. For others, there are just too many ways to take damage that can't all be soaked or avoided.

Lastly, there's the continued frustration with Geralt's movement controls, where getting him to face a particular object in order to interact with it can feel like herding a cat.

The DLC has been on sale recently and I'm strongly considering getting it this time.

My response now is the same as it was then. I feel attachments to Geralt, Ciri, Triss, Yen, and the other main characters that allow me to celebrate their goals and, if I play right, do good things for them and the people around them. It's not perfect, and the choices aren't white and black, but once I got used to it back in the day, I loved it. It feels a lot more immersive, and it's spoiled me for other games that use cheap good and evil narratives.