The Witcher 3

Well, Witcher games DO have fans so they aren't bad I guess Just bit over the top dark

You know else had fans?

Was that supposed to be "what else" and have link to Twilight?

Yes. And Nazis, Pol Pott, the Armenian Genocide, the Eragon movie, The Westbro Baptist Church, Australia Day, police violence, moon landing conspiracies, and people who call you up on the telephone and try to sell things.

Hey, last one of those definitely doesn't have fans! Nobody is that horrible!

edited 11th Jun '13 3:47:06 AM by SpookyMask

What's your point? That The Witcher doesn't deserve all this praise as a video game series?

Good grief, Nicknacks, a bit over the top here, aren't we?

edited 11th Jun '13 4:12:47 PM by MarkVonLewis

Unless it's, like, the most obvious joke post in the universe. Oh god, please be a joke post.

Looking forward to this, but the self-aggrandizing in that trailer waaaaaas pretty hilarious.

edited 11th Jun '13 4:13:20 PM by JotunofBoredom

My bad, it's been a long day.

I-am-a-human. I-like-blue-jeans-and-irony.

I'm being funny. I'm not a fan of the series (though will probably be picking up a copy since I find some of its choices to be interesting and because I'm stupid with my money). I find that despite the positive structural qualities of the earlier instalments their political content has been alienating.

So I just finished reading the novels (with the help of fan translations. Sadly, English is the only language I'm fluent in). Figured I might as well post my thoughts here:

• The sex scenes in the games are pure Fanservice. Geralt is fairly promiscuous in the books, but he seems to average 1 or 2 lovers per book and during the periods where he and Yennefer are together, he's loyal to her. And his cheating on her with Fringilla Vigo is treated as being very bad, even though Geralt and Yennefer haven't seen one another in quite a while.

• The hanse members were rather flat except for Geralt and Dandelion. I'm open to the possibility that characterization was lost in translation though.

• Ciri is so cliched that it's not even funny. I wouldn't go so far as to say Canon Sue, but that's only because the term Mary Sue has decayed so much that it's lost much of its meaning. Also, she didn't score too high when I put her through a Mary Sue Litmus Test.

• The villains save for Emhyr were all pretty one dimensional. Unlike the hanse, I very much doubt that their characterization was lost in translation. Hell, Vilgefortz even admits to being a walking cliche at one point.

• There was a rather stupid trend of characters seeing homosexuality as a "phase" and Phillipa / Fillipa is treated as being immature because she hasn't "grown out of it." Since all of those observations come from the characters and not the narration, I'm not sure whether this is Deliberate Values Dissonance or just plain Values Dissonance.

• Geralt and Yennefer were killed off (not really a spoiler since these games revolve around that fact) seemingly just as a Sudden Downer Ending. Kind of annoying.

I did enjoy the novels overall though. The characterization for the main characters was pretty good, there were some exciting fight scenes, the world building was top notch and the political intrigue was intriguing. I wouldn't go so far as to call the novels masterpieces though.

edited 15th Jun '13 11:04:25 AM by lrrose

I saw the trailer for the latest instalment of this franchise, and it looks great. I just have a question: will I need to play the first two to get this one?

Political content?

Their gender politics, cultural politics, race politics, LGBT politics...

But how was it alienating? Was it the political message of the games themselves or the politics in-universe?

Both? I found it difficult to separate the two from each other, and while I didn't feel like the game was necessarily condoning the actions of its protagonists/characters/world I also couldn't find anything it did to suggest alternative discourses.

The way the game treated queer characters, female characters, characters of colour was kind of uncomfortable for me. I didn't enjoy that the only character of colour was a villain. I disliked that so many of the female characters suffered the indignity of rape. That female same-sexuality was often played for titillation and that male same-sexuality played for disgust saddened me, and that Dethmold was so brutally killed reminded me of various hate crimes committed against same-sex attracted men.

The games broadcast themselves as intelligent, mature and transgressive, but from where I'm sitting they seem to lack the singular awareness and empathy needed to tactfully deport their narratives. They're just sensational and politically regressive narratives where their sole non-white is Othered, female characters exploited, and same-sex attraction neutered or neutralised. What's intelligent, mature or transgressive about any of that?

(other than in the way that to be really fucking awful is to be transgressive)

Yeah, what happened with Dethmold was stupid. A menancing villain who just happened to be gay gets turned into a Camp Gay wimp just so Roche killing him can be more "awesome". It's especially jarring since Dethmold chooses to Face Death with Dignity on Iorveth's path.

As for Phillipa and Cynthia, I think that most of the humor in that was from catching of the most powerful characters in the setting in the act.

Despite all of that, I do think that CD Projekt is appealing to the homophobia and Girl on Girl Is Hot beliefs that they suspect most of their consumer base of having.

I didn't really see anything suggesting that rape is okay in the setting. While there are plenty of rapists and many of them are in positions of power, this does not mean that CD Projekt is saying that rape is acceptable.

edited 16th Jun '13 2:16:31 PM by lrrose

Nah, but it happens all the time. It gets to the point where I'm just "make it stop, make it stop", and not in the "I want to kill you because you raped some girl I liked into the fridge" kind of way. Every single significant female character (who isn't a villain) is raped or sexually assaulted in the second game.

It's also alienating, I'd venture, to a female audience.

And, incidentally, Roche and Good King whatever-his-name-was were both pro-Rape during the second game's opening.

(paraphrased)

edited 16th Jun '13 2:47:37 PM by Nicknacks

For many commanders in the Mediaeval period, being pro-rape was seen as being fair or indulgent towards one's troops. War is hard, went the reasoning, therefore a good officer should let his men "let off steam" (for want of a better term) whenever possible. Commanders who prohibited rape were viewed as harsh, and the only real no-no was raping nuns. To display historical atrocities in the name of setting is not necessarily condoning them.

However, I've not played the game, so I'll reserve judgement on whether or not it does enough to distance itself from the brutality it displays in the name of accuracy or whatever.

Will I need to play the first two in order to understand the third?

edited 16th Jun '13 3:02:23 PM by Achaemenid

Roche and Foltest are horrible people. It's just that almost everyone else is worse.

Probably the second, but no doubt there's going to be sort of in game recap.

Sure, but The Witcher games aren't set in Medieval Europe, they're set in far flung science-fiction/fantasy future. The cultural verisimilitude's spotty.

And even if they were historicals, why aren't they offering alternative discourses concerning marginalised representation? They're not being made for a Medieval audience, surely? It's the equivalent of creating a positive genocide simulator*

Sure, but my discomfort is justified even though the game is uninterested in the ethics of what it means to act in the way the characters do. Especially because it's so disinterested.

edited 16th Jun '13 3:12:21 PM by Nicknacks

Like I said, you've played it, I haven't. But I disagree that showing atrocities is condoning them - there's nothing inherently wrong with a dark setting, one in which war crimes are commonplace. Where that breaks down is where the player, or reader, or whatever, is assigned the POV of the criminals without any kind of countervailing and obvious moral alternative. You feel the Witcher fails to provide that, and I'll defer to that opinion until I play/Let's Play it.

New trailer.

The Witcher 3 will not release with any DRM whatsoever. This is different from the previous games, which both had DRM in their first week or so before they were patched out shortly thereafter.

Probably not. I've only played the second game, but the story managed to be pretty well self-contained. The important events from the previous game were explained shortly (Geralt saved king from assassin, now works for king) and does a good job of introducing a player to characters they may be unfamiliar with while also showing how the player character is already familiar with them.

The only big fact that will carry over to 3 is the Nilfgaardian presence plus a handful of characters.

New info from IGN.