supervoid
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2014
- Messages
- 1,076
Because your futile discussion makes me sad.
Some history and stuff:
Everything started in 1986 when Andrzej Sapkowski's "Witcher" won third place in Fantastyka magazine’s short story competiton. Story about Witcher trying to remove a curse from princess striga was followed by short stories published in three books: The Witcher (1990), The Swort of Destiny (1992) and The Last Wish (1993). Some of the stories are based on twisted fairy-tales. There is for example story about Snow White who enjoy impaling her enemies. Other short stories explain the origin of Geralt's relationship with sorceress Yennefer and his bond with Ciri. Setting is mix of generic fantasy with arthurian and slavic myths. Another characteristic of Witcher's world are ironical humour, gray morality of characters and anachromisms like modern medical and scientific terminology used by sorcerers.
Next comes series of novels. Plot focus on Geralt and Ciri adventures during the war with Nilfgaard. Less killing monsters, more spying and politics stuff. Sapkowski described world in novels as quasi-medevial allotopy. Novels are: Blood of Elves (1994), Time of Contempt (1995), Baptism of Fire (1996), The Swallow's Tower (1997), and Lady of the Lake (1999). Story end with Geralt and Yennefer gravely wounded in battle, while Ciri is trying to save them. Finally they are waking up in unknow place and Ciri travells to Camelot with Galahad.
There is also prequel Season of Stroms (2013).
In 1993-1995 series of comic books adaptations based on short stories was published. Comics was made by Poloch (art) and Parowski (writing). Dialogues are copied from books. IMO quite good, although character design is weird for example Dandellion is based on real life dude and not really matches description from books. "Betrayal" is based on Sapkowski never published idea for story about Geralt training and origin of his white hairs. If somebody is interested there is Polish version:
Road without Return
Geralt
Lesser Evil
The Last Wish
Boundary of Possibilities
Betrayal
In 2011 was published another comic book- Reason of State written by Gałek and illustrated by Klimek. You are getting it with The Witcher game.
Latest Witcher comicbook is House of Glass (or just The Witcher in KWA) published by Black Horse. New story by Tobin and Querio, probably inspired by The Grain of Truth.
There was also movie/TV series of questionable quality (2002).
This year Bagiński and Platige Image declared that they are making The Witcher movie. They are ones responsible for cinematics in CDPred Games.
Games:
In 1997 there was this cancelled Witcher game by Chmielarz and Metropolis Studio. Chmielarz was one who named Wiedźmin- Witcher. If not him, you will play now The Hexer or Spellmaker.
In 2001 P&P RPG The Witcher: Game of Imagination was published. I never seen it but it seems to have simple mechanics and heavy emphasis on story.
There is also some stuff inspired by CDProjekt's game like:
Witcher Card Game
Witcher: Crismon Path for moblie phones,
Online flash fighting game -The Witcher:Versus, probably suspended forever,
The Witcher Adventure Game,
MOBA thingie- The Witcher Battle Arena
But we are going to talk about The Witcher game.
The Witcher was debut of CDP-Red. Lead designer-Michał Madej was working only on some not really good games (he's in Ubisoft now). Stępień, who wrote dialogues had no experience with game design (later he was main writer of Witcher 2 and now he works on Cyberpunk 2077). Game had small budget (~$6,5 milion) and big ambitions. Many potatoes were crying that it's commercialization, searching for smallest deviations from novels canon and telling that it's blasphemy. The Witcher had bigger marketing campaign than any game in Poland before. One big thing was that Tomasz Bagiński, nominated for Academy Award in 2003 made an intro movie for game. In the end Witcher was big success and most popular Polish game series.
Released in 2007, action RPG takes place 5 years after end of novels. We are playing as Gerald, who lost memories what was a way to introduce new fan to Witcher's lore and give old fans some fun. Game is using modified Aurora Engine. World is close to the novels, dark fantasy with cool monsters from folk stories. Characters have personalities, dialogues are good (in Polish, english version suck compared to original), moral choices are gray like in books. Great art direction, good slavic inspired music. Combat mechanic suck, but doesn't prevent player from enjoying other elements of game.
#24 on RPGCodex top PC RPG list.
1. Kaer Morhen
Potatoes counter (one potato for every Slavic/Polish element): 3
Everything started in 1986 when Andrzej Sapkowski's "Witcher" won third place in Fantastyka magazine’s short story competiton. Story about Witcher trying to remove a curse from princess striga was followed by short stories published in three books: The Witcher (1990), The Swort of Destiny (1992) and The Last Wish (1993). Some of the stories are based on twisted fairy-tales. There is for example story about Snow White who enjoy impaling her enemies. Other short stories explain the origin of Geralt's relationship with sorceress Yennefer and his bond with Ciri. Setting is mix of generic fantasy with arthurian and slavic myths. Another characteristic of Witcher's world are ironical humour, gray morality of characters and anachromisms like modern medical and scientific terminology used by sorcerers.
Next comes series of novels. Plot focus on Geralt and Ciri adventures during the war with Nilfgaard. Less killing monsters, more spying and politics stuff. Sapkowski described world in novels as quasi-medevial allotopy. Novels are: Blood of Elves (1994), Time of Contempt (1995), Baptism of Fire (1996), The Swallow's Tower (1997), and Lady of the Lake (1999). Story end with Geralt and Yennefer gravely wounded in battle, while Ciri is trying to save them. Finally they are waking up in unknow place and Ciri travells to Camelot with Galahad.
There is also prequel Season of Stroms (2013).
In 1993-1995 series of comic books adaptations based on short stories was published. Comics was made by Poloch (art) and Parowski (writing). Dialogues are copied from books. IMO quite good, although character design is weird for example Dandellion is based on real life dude and not really matches description from books. "Betrayal" is based on Sapkowski never published idea for story about Geralt training and origin of his white hairs. If somebody is interested there is Polish version:
Road without Return
Geralt
Lesser Evil
The Last Wish
Boundary of Possibilities
Betrayal
In 2011 was published another comic book- Reason of State written by Gałek and illustrated by Klimek. You are getting it with The Witcher game.
Latest Witcher comicbook is House of Glass (or just The Witcher in KWA) published by Black Horse. New story by Tobin and Querio, probably inspired by The Grain of Truth.
There was also movie/TV series of questionable quality (2002).
This year Bagiński and Platige Image declared that they are making The Witcher movie. They are ones responsible for cinematics in CDPred Games.
Games:
In 1997 there was this cancelled Witcher game by Chmielarz and Metropolis Studio. Chmielarz was one who named Wiedźmin- Witcher. If not him, you will play now The Hexer or Spellmaker.
In 2001 P&P RPG The Witcher: Game of Imagination was published. I never seen it but it seems to have simple mechanics and heavy emphasis on story.
There is also some stuff inspired by CDProjekt's game like:
Witcher Card Game
Witcher: Crismon Path for moblie phones,
Online flash fighting game -The Witcher:Versus, probably suspended forever,
The Witcher Adventure Game,
MOBA thingie- The Witcher Battle Arena
But we are going to talk about The Witcher game.
The Witcher was debut of CDP-Red. Lead designer-Michał Madej was working only on some not really good games (he's in Ubisoft now). Stępień, who wrote dialogues had no experience with game design (later he was main writer of Witcher 2 and now he works on Cyberpunk 2077). Game had small budget (~$6,5 milion) and big ambitions. Many potatoes were crying that it's commercialization, searching for smallest deviations from novels canon and telling that it's blasphemy. The Witcher had bigger marketing campaign than any game in Poland before. One big thing was that Tomasz Bagiński, nominated for Academy Award in 2003 made an intro movie for game. In the end Witcher was big success and most popular Polish game series.
Released in 2007, action RPG takes place 5 years after end of novels. We are playing as Gerald, who lost memories what was a way to introduce new fan to Witcher's lore and give old fans some fun. Game is using modified Aurora Engine. World is close to the novels, dark fantasy with cool monsters from folk stories. Characters have personalities, dialogues are good (in Polish, english version suck compared to original), moral choices are gray like in books. Great art direction, good slavic inspired music. Combat mechanic suck, but doesn't prevent player from enjoying other elements of game.
#24 on RPGCodex top PC RPG list.
1. Kaer Morhen
Potatoes counter (one potato for every Slavic/Polish element): 3
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