My only exposure to The Witcher is from the advertisement crossover quest in Monster Hunter World. The quest was cracking me up the whole time because Geralt was so stereotypical “cool grizzled guy” in his dialogue and voice acting that I half expected him to say “Psssh… Nothin Personnel… Kid…”
Is he this much of a weenie in The Witcher 3 or did Monster Hunter do him dirty?
he’s actually secretly a softie who loves his friends and is everyone’s grouchy dad but it takes a bit to figure this out and at a glance he can feel like shadow the hedgehog levels of edgycool
Word. Idk how well it works in the game, but a lot of his aloof badass persona is Geralt coping with being an outsider in a violent, bigoted world. His long life, education, outsider status as a mutant, and regular contact with all kinds of people from different cultures gives him perspective that most normal folks don’t have.
He’s a smart, farily compassionate dude with superpowers in a world where trying to use his superpowers to help the oppressed and change things would very quickly get him and the people he loves killed. He’s snarky and superficially cynical to try to protect himself from the weight of that.
But even in the first short story collection he shows that he does care for people deeply, is deeply wounded by bigotry and injustice, and has seen enough weird shit that he judges “monsters” only by who they’ve hurt and why.
It is an extremely macho series in many ways, but Geralt is the gruff badass with a heart of gold character rather than just edgelord badass. But he deliberately plays up the edgelord badass thing both to protect his own psyche and to create a legendary impression among the normal humans he interacts with that somewhat protects him from their bigotry and violence.
Also, it’s been a while, but I think a large part of the reason all the cool ladies want to bang him is that he’s genuinely a smart, respectful dude who takes women seriously. Being a gorgeous muscleboy who can’t get sick, hence can’t give you the clap, and can’t make you pregnant doesn’t hurt either.
I think Witcher 2 does a pretty cool job of fleshing this out, Witcher 3 relies more on the “omg cool swords and bewbz” that it’s harder to see the characterization
Yeah, I never played 3, and didn’t finish 2, but I remember being really impressed with the characterization and some of the storylines in two. It was ages though so I don’t remember specifics.
You’re better off, i think. If I remember correctly, 2 ends with some “genociders and resistance just as bad” lib-ass take. It doesn’t detract from the characters, but it’s just a dumb plot.
The whole universe reeks with liberalism
It’s unavoidable, really. The whole thing was written by a middle-aged, cranky Polish man.
He is a bit of a dork, but it’s written like that on purpose. He is like a Sonic OC level of fantasy cool guy, but in a world that does not tolerate that kind of fantasy fulfillment, often leading to him being the butt of the joke.
In that case, that sounds awesome.
Reminds me a bit of how Cloud Strife tries to be cool and everyone just kind of humours him lol.
Wind is howling
He is canonically shadow the hedgehog
Has amnesia 👍
Edgelord 👍
Iblis trigger 👍
John Witcher 👍
Conclusion: weenie
People comparing him to Shadow The Hedgehog as means of insult do not deserve the great character that is Shadow The Hedgehog.
hes fantasy batman crossed with forest gump, a mary sue ‘the best ever at fighting’ character and master detective who ‘tries to stay out of politics’ but ends up being involved in every important thing that ever happens anywhere, and gets the opportunity to fuck every woman mage in the land. every person in the setting that isn’t also a witcher or a mage rightfully sees him as an inhuman monster, it does the x-men thing where it portrays the superhuman monster-people as ‘oppressed minorities’, meanwhile accidentally justifying their oppression by making them actually materially physically very dangerous to those around them. early in the 3rd game these 3 human guys will team up on the witcher for making a politically controversial statement, expecting a bit of a scuffle or fist fight brawl, and he decapitates them all with his superhuman sword skills. they were unarmed.
‘the best ever at fighting’
he gets crippled by a mage with a stick. he gets killed by a peasant with a pitchfork. he is repeatedly put on the back foot by regular ass dudes.
every person in the setting that isn’t also a witcher or a mage rightfully sees him as an inhuman monster
he’s literally just a human, the myth that witchers are some kind of monster comes from the fact that many of them turned to banditry in order to survive because they had already hunted all the monsters (there are a finite number of monsters in the world since they are extradimensional beings that don’t breed). geralt is constantly starving because he doesn’t have any money because he’s above banditry.
Geralt is the reason I have never been able to get into the Witcher series. By all accounts the Witcher 3 is one of the greatest RPGs of all time with an insane amount of depth but I just can’t get over the fact that I have no choice to play a character that reads like a 15 year olds checklist of hyper cool masculinity. I get that the character has been around for a while and it wasn’t so much a cliche when he was first written but sheesh…I just have a hard time taking him seriously.
Honestly l was worried about that but actually came away fairly pleasantly surprised by his characterization when I played through the game. Although it’s definitely undercut by the epic bewbz shit they like to put in these kinds of games
Don’t be mean, he’s just autistic (fairly certain this isn’t true, but he is easy to read as an allegory for neurodivergence)
The character tastes like cardboard, I never played W1, havent finished W2 nor W3 and am stuck at Blood of the Elves novel.
The novels suck ass.
The novels are good and Geralt is actually a fantastic character with quite a bit of depth.
It definitely helps in the first novel if you go in knowing they’re all twisted tales versions of famous fairy tales.
Yeah, I’ve told people it has more in common with Shrek than Game of Thrones lol
The two genders
I gotta keep reading then
Well I like them a lot, but if you’ve made it to Blood of Elves in release order (meaning you’ve read two entire books already) and you still don’t like it, you’re probably not going to. Sapkowski can be a pretty dry writer and if you’re reading the English translation that problem is significantly increased because Sapkowski’s prose in Polish is a selling point.
If you’re stuck at the beginning of Blood of Elves and just don’t like that part specifically but you did like the first two books, then maybe do keep reading, because Blood of Elves marks the point at which Sapkowski shifted from short stories to a real Epic Quest™ and Blood of Elves does take a while to get around to actually setting it up.
If you started with Blood of Elves then no wonder you think the novels suck, start at the beginning lol
The two first books of short stories were for moments fine and for moments sucked immensely and the timeline was all fucked and weird but eh want to know the lore
Blood of Elves seemed very nice at first cuz the dude finally dropped the short story format
Ooh and the Dol Blatana short story, that shit was so fucking awful. And Blood of Elves seems like in yhe same vein so that’s why I dropped, right after Triss got diarrhea
W1 is wildly misogynistic, even for mid 2000s
standards, not to mention it’s pretty shit in every way except maybe the story. It’s really not worth playing.I liked W2 mostly because of the characters and an engaging gameplay that was simple but not boring.
I never could get into W3. It’s a beautiful looking world, but it’s so immature and wish fulfill-y that I dropped it.
Watch these and you can decide:
