The Witcher - A Netflix Series

I mean, they also have a lot in common with the Roman Empire. Down to sun worship, even.

Oh, wait. I'm getting my lore confused. Nilfgaard is the empire that is trying to conquer everyone. I was thinking of Redania (and the Church in Novigrad) during the third game, which is leading the inquisition against mages and nonhumans.

I don't have any exposure to the novels, nor did I play the first two games, but I picked up a Roman Empire impression from the portrayal of Nilfgaard in TW3, and while they do have some elements of racism, it's mainly about subjugating the smelly barbarians, not race per se. Also, they are fine with mages, unlike Radovid. I don't recall their stance on nonhumans; it's been a while since I played. I do remember turning Radovid over to Philippa for execution, which she does in a suitably brutal manner.

The most memorable scene that I can recall is the villagers in the starting town being racist towards a dwarf blacksmith; you can catch the culprit and turn him over to the Nilfgaardian soldiers for execution, which they are happy to do. I don't remember them having any particular beef with the dwarf.

I feel like I'm stepping into a minefield here, thinking it's a family picnic spot.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:57:00 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The games did a pretty thorough job on whitewashing Nilfgaard, sadly. In the books, the Empire was unquestionably the worst faction, with cultural genocide, scorched Earth tactics and more.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

Probably because one of the endings has Ciri in charge. They didn't want her to be in charge of Nazis.

I don't know ... it's pretty clear in the game that Nilfgaard is using some brutal tactics, with their Black Soldiers walking around everywhere enforcing law by the sword. Some of its leaders care about the citizens of the lands they conquer and some don't, but all are adamant that the Empire is going to rule things.

Meanwhile, some parts of the lands they're conquering are quite the hellholes themselves, such as Velen. Remember that, before Nilfgaard invaded, Redania had already conquered Temeria. The whole place is a shitshow of ruthless conquest. The humans are dicks, the nonhumans are dicks, the ancient powers are dicks, the Lodge of Sorceresses are dicks (except for the ones Geralt gets to sleep with, natch)... I can't think of any side I'd prefer out of context, honestly.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 2:15:31 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Right, that's the point. In the games, Nilfgaard is just a different type of dick compared to all the other dicks. They also have plenty of good points, such as not being racist against non-humans (that thing with the dwarf early in 3 stands out). In the books, they are by far the worst. Maybe they aren't racist, but it doesn't matter because they're expansionistic and genocidal. They won't kill non-humans just for being non-human, but they will kill them all, because they're in the way.

So what exactly is Ciri's relationship to all this? She's the Emperor's daughter, right? So if show!Nilfgaard isn't overtly racist with respect to skin color, then she could be of mixed race, or the Emperor could also be non-white. There are still plenty of ways to be genocidal maniacs in this 'verse.

And there's no particular reason why the show would need to adhere to that particular ending of TW3. The one in which Ciri becomes a Witcher seems more apt, honestly. I could have happily chosen it had I known to try for it; I was deliberately playing blind.

Game aside: I really like how TW3 doesn't make it obvious how exactly your choices determine the ending until after the fact. It's so refreshing to see that kind of narrative, rather than one that's telegraphed a million miles away and so blatant you'd need to have self-lobotomized to miss it.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 3:04:08 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The problem with Ciri is that she isn't just the Emperor's daughter, she's the product of a centuries-long breeding program. We know who quite a few of her ancestors are, and most of them are royals in the Witcher version of Europe. It's hardly impossible to change her race, but it's more complicated than just "Okay, the Emperor had a baby with some random black royal from a distant country." They'd basically have to change the race for at least one entire country—which, again, not impossible, but it has its own problems because that would likely be the villainous country. So there's a lot of mines that they'd have to address.

As for which ending of Wild Hunt they choose, I do suspect they'll go with the Witcher ending, but it's also possible that the series will never reach that point. The Ciri in the show is apparently going to be a teenager, and she was in her mid-twenties in the third game. They could move the timeline up, but I suspect they might be planning to end the series right before the first game, with Geralt and Yennifer kidnapped by the Wild Hunt.

Game dialogue: I did kind of like that, but for me it was overshadowed by the fact that the dialogue options weren't obvious even in the short term. Basically, every important option with Ciri is either "push her towards her destiny" or "be a good father." But the dialogue is like "[comfort Ciri]" or "[smash things]." How are you, the player, supposed to know that Geralt will do a bad job of comforting Ciri? And Ciri's not the only one with this problem; a lot of people ended up having to fight Kiera Metz because one of the options seems innocuous, but turns out to be much more aggressive.

True, there are plenty of ways to handle it. Let's just hope they don't go down The Last Airbender route, at least.

Edited by Corvidae on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:31:37 PM

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.

TW3 didn't really cover that too well, so it's interesting to know. Still, it doesn't mean she can't be mixed race, just that "mixed race" would be a trait of the various noble houses rather than pure ethnic lineage. Not exactly a common property for such dynasties historically, but who knows.

Edited to add: Isn't it also kind of weird that Emhyr var Emreis is on his genocidal conquest path if he knows that it's all going to end in endless winter if Ciri doesn't save everyone?

It didn't come across that way to me. Rather, I read the dialogue options as "make Ciri stay serious and focused" versus "let her have some fun for catharsis". I picked the latter because it felt more emotionally satisfying, and I'll be damned if the game didn't agree with me. Her destiny is inevitable; the question is the mindset with which she approaches it.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 4:15:29 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

As I recall, it was about encouraging Ciri to be less reliant on Geralt and more independent.

Yeah, but not letting her have her fun is what gives you the bad ending. So you can be a stern parent figure telling her to do her chores and her homework, or a permissive parent figure telling her to go play in the yard, and the game is saying that the latter is how she has enough emotional resilience to survive. If I had to interpret it, I'd say that what you're doing in the "good" path is helping her to see that she has a future outside of her destiny: that she is a part of the world rather than just a tool to save it.

...

Do the books take this particular approach, I wonder? It's difficult to see how you could have both misanthrope Geralt and teddy bear Geralt in the same narrative, as that seems to be the main theme of the choices the game lets you make.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 5:05:11 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

My problem wasn't the effect of your dialogue choices. That's great writing all around. Like when you're in the lab, the bad choice is to give her her ancestor's amulet and assure her she is strong enough to continue if she just calms down. The good option is to blow off some steam by smashing up the lab. That's great. My problem is that the actual text of the options on the dialogue wheel were completely obtuse. I'm having trouble looking up the exact wording, but the bad option was something like "Calm down" and the good option "smash something." Unless I check a guide or reload a save, how am I supposed to know that the second option is just Geralt encouraging her to have fun?

Oh, right. That’s just bad interface design. I’ve see it in a few other games too, like Fallout 4. It’s so annoying that people made mods to show you what you will actually say.

It’s far from the only awful interface design in the game, too, but this is getting decidedly off topic.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2018 at 5:15:38 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

As for Nilfgaard being not racist: I would challenge that point, actually. In the books, while they weren't as openly racist as many people in the Northern Kingdom, they still had absolutely no qualms about using non-humans as cannon fodder during their battles, and after the war was lost for them, they immidiately handed them over as scapegoats to be executed for their war crimes, as they had ceased being useful.

Edited by Forenperser on Sep 12th 2018 at 11:41:44 AM

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

My experience with the property begins and ends with the beginner map in the third game. They could cast just about anybody for any given role, and I wouldn't know the difference. I'm interested in the property, so I'll give it a go.

Netflix adapting a Polish authors book series made me think of casting from a different angle. Should they go out of their way to cast Eastern European talent? EEs usually get lumped into white category without acknowledging them having cultures and ethnicities.

“You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and embarrassment to others.” -Mark Manson.

Maybe they should but I doubt they will.

Besides the world of the Witcher is a hodge podge. The Skellige islands take inspiration from Scandanavian and Gaelic cultures but there aren't a lot of Norse-Gael actors that I'm aware of.

Actors in general should be able to play different cultures than their own (Patrick Stewart's not Scottish but he makes a damn fine Macbeth).

Even more so when those cultures are fictional.

Spoilers for books and games:

It's not just the fact that Nilfgaard will have to be majority, if not all, non-white as a result, it's that that trait - Ciri being non-white - will extremely narrow down her heritage, which has a knock on effect of how people should react to her, and furthermore Ciri's supposed to be a dead ringer for some elf queen that she's descended from and that's why the Wild Hunt are after her; so you need to have the evil faction of elves in the series be non-white as well. And this is ignoring the minor plot point that she's supposed to vaguely be able to pass as Geralt and Yen's kid.

However you slice it, they picked one of the few characters whose appearance is actually incredibly important to the backstory of loads of factions instead of the other side characters. And while there probably is some actual racism involved in the controversy, there's also a pretty valid point as well to be made against this casting decision and dismissing it will only end up fuelling the fires of the controversy.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Well it looks like the whole thing really was just a rumour anyway.

Just because they want to pick a non-white actor doesn't mean she'll be so non-white that she'll stand out to that degree.

Oh, was it now? /sigh

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 13th 2018 at 12:36:13 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I like to consider myself as more egalitarian, but I do draw a line at diversity where it either doesn't match the story or that's simply just for diversity's sake. Fant4stic making Johnny Storm and Mr Storm black and Susan Storm white just made it look really awkward, and the "They're adopted" story really doesn't explain it well.

Oh, it was an actual rumor? Okay then.

Edited by theLibrarian on Sep 14th 2018 at 3:32:24 AM

Yeah, I said it earlier that someone has been baiting these type of rumors for the lulz. On a different note, a more credible rumor has it that they were looking to cast a white girl with Polish/Eastern Europe feature for young Ciri.

Please.

I have never understood what was so confusing about Johnny and Sue being adoptive siblings. This never seems to be an issue when it comes to adoptive siblings who are of the same race.

The PR people continually waffled on what the deal was, refusing to be specific until right before the movie came out. It was confusing because it sounded like they were specifically not saying they were adoptive siblings.

Not Three Laws compliant.