Why "The Witcher" Series Misses the Point — and why CDPR’s Games Don't

Yes, “The Witcher” is cool — but have you ever thought that it’s just a fictionalized narrative of Polish/Easter Europe realpolitik of the past 100 years? An expression of the struggle to cope with a permanently changing world while senselessly admiring an illusory past, dragged into an economic, political, and cultural clash of civilizations that can only end with the eradication of the meek?

Of course not; you just played the games it for the action, for sport, for the sex and gore and D&D antics. For being just some updated Skyrim — with a touch of bitter irony towards Assassin’s Creed and other gaming franchises that quickly fell behind their times (and available tech).

And just the same, you watched the Netflix series, an amalgam of narrative and lore from both the novels (too many to thoroughly read) and the third and final game (who cares about the first two anyway?!) that gets almost nothing about the characters and the world they live in but gives the viewer one damn sexy Geralt (no that skinny freak from the books, and somewhat better than the Batman/Wolverine hybrid from the games). After all, it’s Henry freakin’ Cavill we’re talking about, the actor with looks of the 1950s poster boy and the acting skill of an ironing board. After all, who needs talent when all you have to do is play with swords under the supervision of Vlad Furdik (the man just as well responsible for creating the myth that Kit Harrington is a competent actor) and grunt like that balding middle-aged dude who provided the voice for Geralt in the games…?

I will not go further in criticizing the cast — after all, diversity matters so much more than acting skill, a coherent narrative and, why not, competent world building. And why make a fuss about significantly diverging from the plot of the books — who has read them, anyway? And amongst the ones who actually did read them, who cares?

“The Witcher 3 — The Wild Hunt” is considered to be one of the best video games ever; as an Eastern European myself, the feel of the game was sometimes too good to be true. Making a functional world out of Sapkowki’s books was quite an effort — but worth it all the same. Everywhere you look, any direction you turn, anywhere you make Geralt fast travel, everything around you doesn’t just come to life — it is alive. The marshes of Velen give you chills; you can almost smell the gutters of Novigrad or Oxenfurt; in the isles, you’d rather enter a tavern and enjoy some vodka or ale with the Skellige warriors; and Toussaint’s sun makes you wanna take it easy for the rest of the day.

The Netflix series, on the other hand, just like the Star Wars prequels, is fake from one end to the other. Everything is chroma key, green screen, motion capture and the incidental walk on parts added in post. The actors don’t belong to the world they inhabit, because it was never there in the first place. Just like in the Marvel movies, it’s all digital props and unconvincing interaction between tired, flustered, amateurs. It’s like the actors from the Game of Thrones stage show of later seasons have been cast in the major parts of the series— with the same parodic approach. Bland, empty, performances, lacking as much in conviction as they do in acting talent.

So I’m not quite looking forward to season 2; and as I have exhausted all the game’s nooks and crannies, I think I’ll just re-read the novels, in an acceptable translation. After all, someone has to troll the basic Netflix fans with unpleasant spoilers… (Geralt and Yennefer die at the end, by the way).