Sapphire Dreams
Member
Not every adaptation is necessarily faithful, they adapted the universe not the polt.
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Witcher author sounds off on the games' canon status
- Thread starter RedSwirl
- Start date
Not every adaptation is necessarily faithful, they adapted the universe not the polt.
Castor Krieg
Banned
Then it is not the adaptation. You cannot say SW books are 'adaptation' of SW movies. Universe and the actual plot are completely different things.
Witcher games are set in the same universe as the books, but with different plot. They are not an adaptation of the books.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
"Stop it with the politics, Geralt"
"Geralt, let's not talk politics"
"We don't have time for politics, Geralt"
"Politics"
"Politics"
"Politics"
Is it like this in the books as well?
"Geralt, let's not talk politics"
"We don't have time for politics, Geralt"
"Politics"
"Politics"
"Politics"
Is it like this in the books as well?
Hero_of_the_Day
Member
The games are sequels to the books. Not adaptations.
Politics and intrigue play an important part in the books but there's enough non politics stuff to balance it out.
I think he meant to type plot instead of polt, and from the angle of "adaption of the universe" you could argue it still holds. Games take place after the books, but it's the developer's take on the world as a video game setting.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
It's not an adaptation.
Adaptation: the plot is sifted through a new medium or otherwise upgraded.
Empty Space
Member
I don't know how they are going to approach Witcher 3, but CDProjekt Red largely ignored the player's choices in the first game and picked their own cannon.
Good enough. Just release the rest of the novels in English already.
This. Times of Contempt has been delayed repeatedly.
Depends on if the choices carry over to the sequel or not, at least to a significant degree. Like pointed out they did decide on how the Witcher 1 unfolded for 2.
So you know nothing about Poland, are just assuming and came to that conclusion? Why?
You won't feel offended if someone would say: "Hey, you're from THAT country, isn't it kind of stupid living there? you don't even have cars right? Correct me if I'm wrong."
The poland movie industry is strifing in quality and quantity. Mostly neglected by the western european countries (which I'm a part of) who fear there is no audience for movies not made by hollywood.
it's the case for all languages unfortunately. May be it's the reason why I never liked his writing.
Not really a big deal when talking about Geralt.
Castor Krieg
Banned
That is not true at all. As every country in the world Poland has rich tradition when it comes to literature and cinema. A few of our authors got a Nobel Prize in literature, I remember Polish director Andrzej Wajda got an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement a few years back.
As far as sci-fi books go Stanislaw Lem is very well-known. Solaris anyone?
Also, the Witcher is late 90s. The games might be new but the last book came out in 1999.
Krzysztof Kieslowski is another famous polish director who is considered classic. Some people might know him by his Three Colours thrilogy. His early death is a tragedy.
American culture offers more POP-culture and The Witcher definitely belongs to pop-culture and that is the only POP-culture thing from Poland I can think about.
American culture offers more POP-culture and The Witcher definitely belongs to pop-culture and that is the only POP-culture thing from Poland I can think about.
Castor Krieg
Banned
To add to that - Witcher might be pop-culture, but it really has a distinct feel to it, part of the reason the books are so popular in Poland. Whereas most of Western fantasy can be considered high-fantasy e.g. Tolkien, the Witcher saga showed a very distinct low-fantasy world - with uneducated farmers, superstition, racism, etc. Sure, nowadays it's all in a regular feature, but Sapkowski wrote first Witcher story in 1986.
Sapkowski said already when Witcher 1 had premiere that game (witcher) stories are non-canon and all stories from game are non canon.
He just helped them with world not with story. For example nowhere in books there is map of kindoms like Witcher 2 had. Their position in books are very vague and most of time just called north and by the name of different region like Aerdin, Pontar and more instead of precise location.
As of games story. I can easly tell that they did fantastic job continuing after books. Story is more high fantasy thought rather than low fantasy like in books.
He just helped them with world not with story. For example nowhere in books there is map of kindoms like Witcher 2 had. Their position in books are very vague and most of time just called north and by the name of different region like Aerdin, Pontar and more instead of precise location.
As of games story. I can easly tell that they did fantastic job continuing after books. Story is more high fantasy thought rather than low fantasy like in books.
Empty Space
Member
This is more the type of response I was looking for and I appreciate it. My original post wasn't meant to be spiteful or dismissive in anyway. It wasn't even all that serious to begin with. I think it just stemmed from the fact that when Obama went on his European tour he received as a gift a collectors edition of Witcher 2. I thought it was the most bizarre thing ever sure it was timely, but was there really nothing better they could give him to represent Poland in the modern world? I even looked to see if other stuff was given to him, but couldn't find any information about it. At the time I figured there wasn't anything else Poland wanted to say wow look how we've influenced pop-culture about, but clearly I'm wrong looking at these last couple of posts. It was a bad post I'm sorry.
Oh and feel free to shit on Venezuela's contributions to the world its where I'm from. I'll go on record saying that I feel outside of some athletes and some musicians it hasn't done a whole lot in very long time media wise.
Castor Krieg
Banned
I remember that story, I thought it was a great gift. Let's not kid ourselves, most of these gifts are lying somewhere in the White House gathering dust. You cannot really compare tribal spear from Zimbabwe to some traditional clothing from Nepal.
Giving him Witcher 2 was great - something unexpected, yet relevant to modern-age, that at least there is a possibility he or one of his aides would have some use for.
As for something more to represent Poland - we can't give him red laser from one of our universities, can we?
Yeah, I agree to an extent. These games do indeed have a great writing (well, the first two Fallouts and Planescape, I haven't played the Elder Scrolls games or the new Fallouts). But why are you implying that if the writers decided to create a series of books in these worlds instead of games, it would be worse? Well, different, yes. sure. But there's no limit of words that can be written, you could fill them with as many details and stories as you want.
I'd love to read a well written Fallout saga that consists of a couple of long books.
In my opinion, games are more limiting medium in terms of telling stories, because of a necessity of player input and interactivity. You control someone or something. Therefore, you must have a degree of freedom, but that degree is often too small; there's too few choices you can make in them for the story to feel believable.
Most of the time, I end up annoyed because I couldn't do something in a game, something that felt completely natural or justified to me, but the devs didn't think that way or the technology isn't advanced enough to allow it. It takes me off of whatever story they try to tell.
When you have a book, it's just the author's vision and your interpretation of it. You can't change it in any way, and because of that, it's better for telling stories than games. The author can focus on the plot, on what he/she wants to tell. There's no "what if", unless we count fanfiction
I hope I'm easy to understand (not a native English speaker here).
I think games are just different when it comes to telling stories and everyone just hasn't figured out how to utilize that fact yet. Movies also have their differences from books when it comes to telling stories, and books have to be adjusted and adapted when made into movies.
Hero_of_the_Day
Member
I just view every medium as it's own universe. I don't give a shit what developers say when they're making their games. There will never be a Ghostbusters, Aliens, or Star Wars film that acknowledges their supposed video game sequels. Calling it canon is just a marketing ploy to try and get fans excited. It doesn't mean anything.
All that matters is that they made the correct choice: Triss.
Haven't only a few books been translated to English though?
It's been translated into just about every other European language though and I think it sold pretty well.
And the books have been translated into English (last book was finished a few days ago), just not officially. The fan translations have been going on for years, but neither Sapkowski nor his publisher ever tried to stop them.
Pyrrhus
Member
I've read The Last Wish and Blood of the Elves. I think the stories are good but like others have said, very dry translations impede enjoyment. I learned about these books because of the computer game and probably wouldn't have read them otherwise.
I think Sapkowski's comments come off as needlessly rude and dismissive, at least as they're translated here. Yes, he created the universe but the games have had a huge hand in popularizing the series. And I'm never very impressed when somebody involved in old media like movies and books who is entirely ignorant of games as medium trashes games and says they by definition can't tell a good story.
I think Sapkowski's comments come off as needlessly rude and dismissive, at least as they're translated here. Yes, he created the universe but the games have had a huge hand in popularizing the series. And I'm never very impressed when somebody involved in old media like movies and books who is entirely ignorant of games as medium trashes games and says they by definition can't tell a good story.