Thanks for pointing some of that stuff out. I'm sure there are lots of nods and references to Polish culture that most people would miss or not think about. Like the architecture and similar aesthetic designs.
People can argue about how good of a job they did, but they certainly put the effort into trying to get that stuff right as well. They went to many historical sites to get inspiration as to how to adapt a "Slavic" setting to their game. Not recreate it per se, but to give it their own spin within The Witcher lore.
Examiner: - Game On: How did the team design the villages of The Witcher 3? Were there any particular inspirations?
Michał Krzemiński: Weve studied a lot of materials and got a ton of references from old Slavic tales. But its not only that, our team visited a lot of museums and places with some history to get inspiration. We havent recreated anything in particular, because that was never the point, but we created our own take on things.
Well, beyond the fact that Poland and our continents don't exist in that world, all of those characters hail from different kingdoms and follow naming conventions suggesting different non-Slavic origins.
So, even if some place in that world were to be officially defined as Fantasy Poland, it just doesn't add up.
I don't think you can just pinpoint it down to names. It's more what the world looks and feels like. Temria and Redenia ceraintly look polish. And just because Geralt does have a Germanic name doesn't mean he or his friends can't behave polish. The writer sees a lot of resemblance to Poland, and what I can say as someone who isn't that close to polish culture is that there's a distinct eastern European vibe to the world. So his sentiment makes sense to me.
People can argue about how good of a job they did, but they certainly put the effort into trying to get that stuff right as well. They went to many historical sites to get inspiration as to how to adapt a "Slavic" setting to their game. Not recreate it per se, but to give it their own spin within The Witcher lore.
You really can see the effort put in. I'm Belgian and I can even relate with a lot of the folklore and architecture put in the game. I guess it's different when you actually live in Europe and grow up around that stuff. Our cities have books full of folklore with statues still representing many of those tales trough out them. I heard many of those stories as a kid. Many gruesome and dark.
And the architecture is really close. Even the clothing eventhough they somewhat restyled it. For instance this is one of our open air museums.
Sorry but the game is not just another game made by "White people" for "white people".
"Poland's history is tied up mostly in wars between its huge neighbors," he says. "That is reflected in The Witcher, because it was reflected in the creation of Sapkowski. But I think where we went really deep, ... [was with] the visual representation. ... Yesterday we had a meeting session outside of Warsaw on a lakeside. We're driving back through forests. The managing director, Guillaume he's French he says, 'Wow, it looks like The Witcher.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's The Witcher."
"All that surrounds us the castles, the forests, the countryside that's The Witcher. It's very Slavic. ... For me, this is where I'm coming from. I hope that for foreign players, the majority of players, this is something interesting, but at the same time, it's real. Because it is real."
TLDR people from Poland can view the same subject differently. This guy loves his own culture being represented because he never felt represented before properly in mass media. Melting Pots dull message and make things indistinct, without real flavor.
He's dismissing aspects of culture that he claims he identifies with, which may be or not be true, in a hyperbolic fashion (this is admitted in a post-release annotation), while jumping through some logical hoops. For example, the whole "Slavic mythology is not really a thing" part could be rephrased in a way that would stay completely true to the facts, but would be fairly less supportive of author's thesis; TVTropes carries similar statements regarding Norse mythology, which was presented as a "real" one by author.
What is in my humble opinion interesting is that this, as well as "diversity in Ancient Poland" thing, is an auxiliary part of argument anyway. There are other primary fallacies that fuel it instead, but they aren't as visible because author takes them more or less for granted. One: "add a fantastical element to a fictional world, anything real is not comparable anymore".
But, once again, the world of Witcher 3 is not historical Poland. You dont really even need a plausible explanation.
Like, seriously, I've seen that used before, but not to such an extent. This is axiomatically wrong. It's not exactly historical Poland (i.e. names are pronounceable by Americans, and there are monsters), so it can't be based on it? I guess, since Assassin's Creed (I don't know which really, sorry spoiler avoiders) has a
alien god sun artifact whatever
conspiracy which is completely against current consensus on world status, and also genetic memory, this means all attempts at historical accuracy in that franchise are null and void? No, they're not, if you disagree on that point, I think it's your turn to elaborate why. Witcher does that mostly relying on general atmosphere of the game instead of basing entire plot around the actual events, but this doesn't really change too much.
This is taken to the recursive level (instead of Like (selected) Reality Unless Noted, this time it's against Like Original Unless Noted) when the author mentions that the games are already different in some aspects from the books, so introducing a bunch of black characters shouldn't be a problem. I'm sorry, what? I mean, of course, you technically can do that, but if the reason is "just because", then you better have an explanation ready why is it an adaptation and not an original IP. This also heavily complicates the already complex behavior of all the minor characters for more or less obvious reasons. So... what's the point?
Well the point runs to my biggest gripe with the ideas of the author, but to explain it properly, I need to introduce you to a little more recent history of Poland and other Soviet block countries, specifically something called socrealism. Socrealism is a twofold thing. One, it's a style of art that was propagated there, with things such as "fiction should be about regular workers"; but that's not the scary part. The scary part is that at one point it was a state-enforced default state for any sort of art. Your detective story happens to involve members of nobility one hundred years ago? You COULD just write a detective story that is about modern-day accountants instead, so why don't you?
We have a try at the same thing happen here, just peer-enforced instead. The story just happens to take place in an environment that does happen to contain mostly white people and this fact happens to be well explained by the lore, but it COULD involve non-white people instead. The author of the text, who has been born in Poland but apparently currently functions in a different environment, finds this embarrassing that it doesn't decide to fit his idea of a "valuable game". I guess that the reason is that a valuable game should closely conform to a checklist of things that are valuable in his mind. This is exactly what socrealism was about, barring differences in content of the checklist.
To accept this POV, you have to also accept that your checklist is infallible, and in fact you are infallible to some level, since anything that challenges the checklist is automatically not valuable, and changing it to fit the checklist would automatically improve it. And this is in fact what happens with this game. It has praised portrayals of fantastic racism, as well as something heavily neglected in international mainstream, non-race based ethnic differences, but it doesn't hit the author's checklist which says "THE ENVIRONMENT SHOULD CONTAIN PEOPLE OF VARIOUS SKIN COLORS" on the top, and that's what counts.
This is a quasi-socrealist replacement of art with propaganda. Under actual Polish socrealism the Witcher stories would probably have to settle for a mouse inspector inspecting halls of friendly, all-setting fitting farmers in state-owned collective farms, but if author can use hyperboles, so can I.
Thanks. I actually didn't see this one and he makes some excellent points:
Well, yes. Of course everyone in The Witcher is White. It's a Polish game, made by Polish people, based heavily on Polish history and Slavic mythology. And so everyone in the game - whether Human, Dwarf, or Elf - tends to look.....surprise surprise......Polish.
Poles, like most Northern Europeans, almost all happen to be White - this paleness helps our skin get more vitamin D from the scarce sun. The largest non-White ethnic minority in Poland are the Vietnamese, who comprise less than 0.1% of the population. Not surprisingly, there were even fewer Vietnamese people in medieval Poland, and fewer still in ancient Slavic mythology.
For me, the saddest thing about this whole thing is that people like Moosa have clearly missed the cultural uniqueness of The Witcher 3. Some Polish critics praised the game's Polish elements, yet optimistically predicted that the game might be even more interesting for outsiders than for Poles, since it would contain elements that were exotic for them. But for people like Moosa, the opposite seems to have occurred: all he saw was just another Western game.
It's not just another Western game. It's the first ever AAA game that portrays Polish people and Polish culture. This is our game. The Polishness of this game is special to us, because it's the only one we've got!
A lot of the stuff are small nods. As an example, check the names of your runestones. Run the names through Google and you'll discover the Slavic gods. Some of the other stuff is a bit more obvious such as a quest revolving around Forefather's Eve (Dziady). I know in past games there were Striga, which were inspired on the Strzyga and Koshchey inspired by Koschei. There's certainly stuff there, it just has to be noticed and you can't assume that "oh this is just another medieval trope."
Most of those things aren't really inspired by their respective myths. They simply apply known names to their 100% original character designs and loot. It's the Final Fantasy school of mythological references.
Not that they had much choice, since most Slavic creatures (as we know them) are painfully boring, or at least not usable as video game bosses. Which is how a creepy old man became a spider and how tiny generic devils became huge deer/ram ogre... things.
It's all good fun, but they're not some impressively detailed or "respectful" adaptations of Slavic myths.
Like I said earlier, actually my largest criticism of the game is that it didn't go Slavic and Polish enough. They should have dialed it up another 100%.
I don't think you can just pinpoint it down to names. It's more what the world looks and feels like. Temria and Redenia ceraintly look polish. And just because Geralt does have a Germanic name doesn't mean he or his friends can't behave polish. The writer sees a lot of resemblance to Poland, and what I can say as someone who isn't that close to polish culture is that there's a distinct eastern European vibe to the world. So his sentiment makes sense to me.
Yeah, you could assume that Geralt is "Polish", but then you have to make a pretty big logical leap to assume that multiple other kingdoms with clear cultural and historical differences are also Polands.
I think a lot of the people calling for diversity really are looking at this through the lens of America's issues with race and the studios over here that have a history of not representing other groups enough. I can imagine many a cdpr dev just scratching their heads over this hubub and not really getting it through their predominately white culture. Poland ain't no meltin pot yo. Neither does it obligate them to include diversity in their games to appease another region that has those issues. It's not their responsibility to engage in this issue when it doesn't have much of a bearing on their own culture and political climate.
I think a lot of the people calling for diversity really are looking at this through the lens of America's issues with race and the studios over here that have a history of not representing other groups enough. I can imagine many a cdpr dev just scratching their heads over this hubub and not really getting it through their predominately white culture. Poland ain't no meltin pot yo. Neither does it obligate them to include diversity in their games to appease another region that has those issues. It's not their responsibility to engage in this issue when it doesn't have much of a bearing on their own culture and political climate.
Yeah. It's especially hypocritical of Americans to claim that our way of dealing with race is somehow superior to everyone else's when the reason we've had to put so much time and thought into figuring out race relations is because our country has historically been one of the most noxiously racist in the history of the world.
I think a lot of the people calling for diversity really are looking at this through the lens of America's issues with race and the studios over here that have a history of not representing other groups enough. I can imagine many a cdpr dev just scratching their heads over this hubub and not really getting it through their predominately white culture. Poland ain't no meltin pot yo. Neither does it obligate them to include diversity in their games to appease another region that has those issues. It's not their responsibility to engage in this issue when it doesn't have much of a bearing on their own culture and political climate.
Most of those things aren't really inspired by their respective myths. They simply apply known names to their 100% original character designs and loot. It's the Final Fantasy school of mythological references.
Not that they had much choice, since most Slavic creatures (as we know them) are painfully boring, or at least not usable as video game bosses. Which is how a creepy old man became a spider and how tiny generic devils became huge deer/ram ogre... things.
It's all good fun, but they're not some impressively detailed or "respectful" adaptations of Slavic myths.
You're creating a narrative of game design of your own choice. Namely that they made things up and then found old Slavic names to apply to them, when its pretty clear that they took old Slavic stuff and then gave them their own spin.
Lol. Painfully boring. Alright. Whatever. They're not. But ok.
Maybe all the black people are sorceresses/ers and cast a spell to make themselves white so they would be more appealing to those in the world around them.
God this kinda shit is becoming a joke. Why do some people try to find issues in anything, whether it's race, or sexism.
Who gives a shit if a game has all white people.
Would those that are offended feel better if the people were all purple? I assume people that are offended at witcher had issues with Franklin in GTA being portrayed as a stereotypical Black person too huh?
Do you get worked up about TV shows that only have white people in them?
There are TV shows that only have black people in them, and some that only have white people, some that only have Asian people. Why should people give a shit, if something is good.
I'm mixed race so I guess I can be happy whether a show is all white, or all black yeah lol (although to many people I could never be classed as "white" just black - but don't give a shit what people think) Seriously some people just like to get offended and look for negative in anything.
Quite honestly I don't care what colour people are in a game, they could be black, brown, white, green, pink, yellow, blue...I think the real issue here is the people seeing "colour" instead of people. When I walk into a room I just see people, not their race, ethnicity etc
You're creating a narrative of game design of your own choice. Namely that they made things up and then found old Slavic names to apply to them, when its pretty clear that they took old Slavic stuff and then gave them their own spin.
Lol. Painfully boring. Alright. Whatever. They're not. But ok.
Yeah, but their spin on things often has nothing in common with the myths they're adapting.
Slavic creatures (as we know them) ARE boring, that's why they had to completely redesign them.
If they had adapted them faithfully, you wouldn't be fighting these imaginative beats, you'd be beating up creepy old men.
The Witcher's spider crab monster? A creepy old dude who lives in a castle.
The Witcher's other spider monster? A creepy old woman who hides in your cellar.
The Witcher 3's anthropomorphic tree monster? A creepy old dude who lives in the woods.
The Witcher 3's most iconic animal hybrids, the kind that makes its bestiary feel unique and different from "western fantasy"? Oh... it's these dudes:
Im black and I don't give a shit...
(only reason I say this is because I feel more offended that writer believes he has the right to speak for all ppl of color)
If you really want to raise awareness shaming developers, calling them ignorant, and referring to them as "part of the problem" is not the way to do it. Thats just disrespectful. I wish one these ppl had the balls to actually speak directly with the devs or artists before writing a whole article based on speculation
This is absurdist hyperbole. Greek myth has been done and portrayed a billion times over, the Polish rendition shown in the Witcher 3 certainly uses artistic license to some degree, but it is largely focused on the cultural myths throughout their history.
Read the thread when it was 400 posts long and now up to date.
Funny how this thread turned into, somehow, people arguing that CDPR and the source material deliberately made every human character white skinned, and that it's a good thing.
Also, arguing that the game is somehow rooted in the history and culture of Poland, and that these people have been yearning for representation in games.
Taking offense when people question the exclusion of other races, somehow morphing that into a scenario where the ones who want inclusion are discriminating against people who live in Poland, disallowing their unique culture to be represented fully.
"As a middle class (white) male"
all the way to some sort of
"I'm the victim now" rhetoric
Discussion has lost its purpose to me so that's just my summary before I bow out.
The POV is that Polish people are victims and are a historically and currently discriminated against and oppressed people. Ergo, many of us can't really be bothered if they create a racially homogenous game, same as I couldn't be bothered if any other oppressed group made a racially homogenous game.
So yeah, they had opportunity. It would've been cool. Despite that, I understand if the combination of Polish author and Polish developer meant their heads were down working on the game and it didn't come up. Even American studios can miss opportunities for diversity, so devs from a country that's 97 percent Polish (read: almost all white)? I understand that. They made what reflected their thoughts on The Witcher book, movies, and TV shows. It's a choice the developer made, but in this case, I don't fault them for missing the depth of their options.
...
No, I would not levy the complaint of overwhelming whiteness at The Witcher III and CD Projekt Red though it's true in abstract. But when you expand outwards, to much of the fantasy RPG and adventure space, you see a problem. Not one from a moral standpoint in my mind, but one from a standpoint of sheer boredom. You can take your Orc homage, give it huge fangs and call it a Grahlok, but hey, we both know it's just an Orc. Do better. Dig deeper. Be more original. Stand out from your peers.
Read the thread when it was 400 posts long and now up to date.
Funny how this thread turned into, somehow, people arguing that CDPR and the source material deliberately made every human character white skinned, and that it's a good thing.
Also, arguing that the game is somehow rooted in the history and culture of Poland, and that these people have been yearning for representation in games.
Taking offense when people question the exclusion of other races, somehow morphing that into a scenario where the ones who want inclusion are discriminating against people who live in Poland, disallowing their unique culture to be represented fully.
"As a middle class (white) male"
all the way to some sort of
"I'm the victim now" rhetoric
Discussion has lost its purpose to me so that's just my summary before I bow out.
Because Poland is 99.9% white. Their history and culture is so. And also you saying "all white people are the same" and "all white culture is the same" as you are implying is racist. Are you calling Polish "middle class white males" now?
Polish dev making a game on a Polish book that has a lot of Polish mytholygy. Hmm I wonder why there aren't any different looks of people. Anyone who complains about this is just being ridiculous.
The POV is that Polish people are victims and are a historically and currently discriminated against and oppressed people. Ergo, I can't really be bothered if they create a racially homogenous game, same as I couldn't be bothered if any other oppressed group made a racially homogenous game.
It's often important to accurately represent the diversity of a society in its art, entertainment, literature, etc, but the lack of diversity in itself isn't a bad thing (nor a good thing), it's just a thing. Screaming for more diversity just for the sake of it seems really odd to me, it seems to be coming from a place where if your environment lacks racial or ethnic diversity, it is automatically bad or not desirable.
This is absurdist hyperbole. Greek myth has been done and portrayed a billion times over, the Polish rendition shown in the Witcher 3 certainly uses artistic license to some degree, but it is largely focused on the cultural myths throughout their history.
Yeah, and the degree to which it uses artistic license means that they can and do completely disregard the original myths.
The game is full of more faithfully adapted creatures, but most of those come from Greek and other mythologies.
Considering his history with gamer gate, yes. At worst it's an attempt to rile up the masses, at best it's just lazy. I have no notion of the op authors history of Slavic mythology denial.
I think a lot of the people calling for diversity really are looking at this through the lens of America's issues with race and the studios over here that have a history of not representing other groups enough. I can imagine many a cdpr dev just scratching their heads over this hubub and not really getting it through their predominately white culture. Poland ain't no meltin pot yo. Neither does it obligate them to include diversity in their games to appease another region that has those issues. It's not their responsibility to engage in this issue when it doesn't have much of a bearing on their own culture and political climate.
Yeah, and the degree to which it uses artistic license means that they can and do completely disregard the original myths.
The game is full of more faithfully adapted creatures, but most of those come from Greek and other mythologies.
You're missing the point entirely - its their culture and myth to build onto and do with what they please. They're continuing and spreading this mythos through the Witcher 3 and giving the rest of the world a look into a piece of Slavic culture.
Afaik there's one who is a villain in TW2 and then there's a guy in a quest near the beginning of 3. That doesn't sound like a lot considering the massive number of heterosexuals in the games. Also, are there overt displays of homosexuality? (excl. sexual female on female action in order to be "sexy" or to preclude a sexual encounter involving a man because that is a whole other can of worms related to the exploitation/sexualisation and heterosexual male centric presentation of lesbians)
Geralt is the whitest man that ever existed (I mean really, did you look at how white he is? Wait, what? What was that? You said Geralt, the title character, the Witcher, Geralt's a Vedma--Vedma-what? Oh, a "Vedmak?" A male witch? A figure in Slavic mythology? Vidmak in Poland? What? Myths don't need sources? That's why they're myths? Naw, man, you makin' that shit up. That's nonsense.) equals racist game and Slavic folklore for a reason isn't mythology is what I'm gathering here. That all checks out fine.
There is a lot of US cultural imperialism in this thread. "Since Americans know about the game, it has to be just like America" I guess it's not only among right-wingers that you,have this kind of US imperialism.
The mindset is quite similar to "this is a too important question for Chileans to decide for themselves ", without the terrible consequences, of course.
I'm getting tired of this, really. You can't ask Sega to put more colored people in Yakuza, you can't ask From Software to put more colored people in their Souls games, you can't ask CDProjekt to put more colored people in The Witcher...just because. It won't fit the story settings, the geographical settings...Etc. Just enjoy the games for what they are, stop looking for controversies where there aren't.
Ps: I'm north african. No bigotry involved here. Just realism
TLDR people from Poland can view the same subject differently. This guy loves his own culture being represented because he never felt represented before properly in mass media. Melting Pots dull message and make things indistinct, without real flavor.
I'm Italian, but some years ago I've fallen in love with Eastern European games because... they feel so Eastern European. The Witcher series, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., series, Metro series and others would be not the same without their Polish, Ukrainian and Russian sensibility.
Aswell as I deeply love Shen-Mue, Forbidden Siren, Onimusha 2 and dozens of others for being so Japanese.
Aswell as I deeply love games that are generic globalized piece of entertainment.
Claim that creativity must align to standards is dumb, ignorant and dangerous,
There is a lot of US cultural imperialism in this thread. "Since Americans know about the game, it has to be just like America" I guess it's not only among right-wingers that you,have this kind of US imperialism.
The mindset is quite similar to "this is a too important question for Chileans to decide for themselves ", without the terrible consequences, of course.
You're missing the point entirely - its their culture and myth to build onto and do with what they please. They're continuing and spreading this mythos through the Witcher 3 and giving the rest of the world a look into a piece of Slavic culture.
It's a look into a fictional piece of a fictional fantasy culture. The game, nor the novels, won't tell you anything about the Slavic culture unless you choose to experience it with an encyclopedia of actual Slavic folklore in hand, in order to figure out how much of it existed before The Witcher.
That's like trying to learn about Norse culture from Too Human. You'll learn some names, but you'll leave with a very poor understanding of the source material.
The series was never meant to explore the Slavic culture, it was always a hodgepodge of different cultures, mythologies and much more modern fairy tales and fantasy tropes.
Geralt is the whitest man that ever existed (I mean really, did you look at how white he is? Wait, what? What was that? You said Geralt, the title character, the Witcher, Geralt's a Vedma--Vedma-what? Oh, a "Vedmak?" A male witch? A figure in Slavic mythology? Vidmak in Poland? What? Myths don't need sources? That's why they're myths? Naw, man, you makin' that shit up. That's nonsense.) equals racist game and Slavic folklore for a reason isn't mythology is what I'm gathering here. That all checks out fine.
Oh boy. Not only are you misreading a wikipedia entry, I'm pretty sure that whoever edited it didn't quite know what they were talking about.
Secondly, being derived from a word for male witch (which should already be apparent when you see the title in any language) does not turn them into figures in Slavic mythology. They're entirely fictional.
The series was never meant to explore the Slavic culture, it was always a hodgepodge of different cultures, mythologies and much more modern fairy tales and fantasy tropes.
Stop contributing to the erasure of a human culture because you're too lazy to spend 30 seconds on google verifying the claims you're making. The Witcher series is a reconstruction of the foundational myths of Polish society. The Nilfgaard wars and the Rise of the Order of the Flaming Rose are directly connected to the Northern Crusades of Polish history. A great deal of the Murky Waters is lifted from Polish folk tales. Noonwraiths are a Slavic invention.
While CDProjektRed and the original author have diverted in certain ways and borrowed from other myths for one reason or another, its core is very, very Slavic and to erase this or insult it by comparing it to God of War or Too Human is a pathetic indictment with no intellectual vigor behind it.
Yeah, you could assume that Geralt is "Polish", but then you have to make a pretty big logical leap to assume that multiple other kingdoms with clear cultural and historical differences are also Polands.
What are the cultural differences between Temeria and Redania? The people from Kaedwen didn't seem all that different either. I don't really get why fantasy Poland would have to be singled out as one individual kingdom in the game.
Well, generally it's good to critize all kinds of media for bigger issues or implications. Sometimes it's important to stand up even for issues that seem petty.
However Witcher 3 is a really bad target to critize for diversity.
Yeah, you could assume that Geralt is "Polish", but then you have to make a pretty big logical leap to assume that multiple other kingdoms with clear cultural and historical differences are also Polands.
not really that big actually..medieval italy for example was an assemble of little indipendent kingdoms and city states with no difference in race,but big ones in culture,history and principles
What are the cultural differences between Temeria and Redania? The people from Kaedwen didn't seem all that different either. I don't really get why fantasy Poland would have to be singled out as one individual kingdom in the game.
I always thought that different kingdoms in The Witcher series represented different aspects of Poland and its neighbors, same as Elves and Dwarves are there to reflect various facets of discrimination that the Jews (and sometimes the Romani) faced.
Northern kings were sometimes wise, sometimes deeply stupid and short-sighted, sometimes good politicians while also being horrible human beings (and vice versa) - just like Polish rulers of yesteryear. Poland's history is very complicated and rarely straightforwardly black and white. Sapkowski wrote a series as a critique of xenophobic post-communist nation, but never denied its tragic background. This is why it resonates so deeply with the inhabitant of the region - it's not afraid to point-out flaws while never losing the sympathy for the peoples of this world.
People of Color weren't Polish problem, not when the series was written and nor now. As harsh as it may sound for Americans, there're simply too few of them to matter in the national scale. We have much more pressing ethnic issues. What with the Jews and their still-present, unresolved issues, residual after years of co-existence, than holocaust, than communism? What about Romani, marginalized and looked down upon in the same way as it was years ago? Not to mention the Germans, the Russians, The Ukrainians and Lithuanians? The class issues? Sapkowski wrote about all - or most - of that and it will be lost on those who don't know Polish history. The universal themes are easy to grasp, especially if the series borrows quite generously from Western and Northern mythologies too - but those little, region-specific nods are more elusive.
So some Americans (and Western-Europeans) will look for racist themes they understand, like colonialism and slavery, and try to mold the narrative to their experiences. They see all white cast and wonder - where are all the Blacks and Asians? They won't comprehend that these groups of POC are mostly irrelevant to the story Sapkowski and CD Projekt Red wanted to tell. Could they be included? Sure, why not. But their stories wouldn't be explored as the series are not about them this time. Not all racism is about Black people. There was no systematic oppression of them, but it occurred for other ethnicities, those who would be classified as "white" by American society.
Let's imagine what a POC's experience would be in The Witcher, the series that explores racism and it roots (in Eastern European flavor). What a hypothetical Zerricanian merchant would say about his life in Novigrad? Not much probably. He would complain how strange people dress, what silly customs they have and how annoyed he is by those looks he gets every time he walks the streets. Some hostility, but mostly curiosity and ignorance, as the Northerners have no ill history with Zerrikania, no old resentments. Even if some jerks and racists would pick on him, it would be only because they generally hate everything that is different. It wouldn't have complicated backstory that Humans and Non-humans share in this universe. Such portrayal would reflect on what people with different skin-color are perceived in Poland, modern or medieval.
It would be perfectly fine to have a Zerrikanian merchant like this in the game, or a warrior-woman, or even the traveler or scholar. But i disagree with the opinion that omitting this somehow made the game inherently racist. One token character would do nothing to make the game as a whole less white.
I came to the conclusion that many Americans are pretty ignorent when it comes to European history it seems. Europe isn't just a collective of white people. It's a mix of different cultures and ethnicities that formed over thousands of years. Americans want to compare it with their differences between states. But there are more cultural differences inside of many single European countries and their provinces that differ more than any two states in the US.
But I guess that's because of the relative age of the US. Any other part of the world with a long history behind it will understand the European situation better. Asia for instance, where the populations have had the same kind of history behind them.
Edit:
For instance a Dutch kid in school when I was a kid got just as much or even more flak for being Dutch than a Muslim would get.
While he is just as white and speaks the same language.
AFAIK this is a total none issue. This is mostly internet folks getting outraged for the sake of getting outraged. Poland in the middle ages was nearly all white, therefore it does make sense for a game with medieval European settings to feature mostly white characters - even if it's only fantasy. In addition to this games are art, you must respect the artists choices to envision their worlds the way they imagined.
I came to the conclusion that many Americans are pretty ignorent when it comes to European history it seems. Europe isn't just a collective of white people. It's a mix of different cultures and ethnicities that formed over thousands of years. Americans want to compare it with their differences between states. But there are more cultural differences inside of many single European countries and their provinces that differ more than any two states in the US.
Utter BS. It doesn't matter what the race the characters are - they could be non human for all I care. I can enjoy the Witcher even though the characters are all white. It's a non issue. What matters most is that it's an excellently crafted and designed game.
Critical analysis of art/literature doesn't involve interfering with artists' vision or commercial decisioning. The work is out now and people are discussing its representation of non-white people the same way people discuss anti-semitism in The Merchant of Venice. Nobody is asking for Shakespeare to be re-written or suggesting that you should just not buy Shakespeare. These are the types of discussions that generally happen around works of art.
