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SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:

 Argive wrote:
my GF struggled to keep up with the change in plot lines/time and it seems to have been made a lot harder to follow and awkeward than it needs to be for reasons..

I got it but it wore thin very quick. I get sort of why they did it but dont think they achieved any more than just flowing chronologicaly.

That being said it personally didint bother me all that much.
What did bother me is the annoying garbage tier attempt at novel comic relief in the form of yaskir. His poor writing and pointless babbling was very immersion breaking.

It seems all ther CG budget went into the monster at the begining of the series for trailers reasons I gueess?

As someone who has neither played the games or read the books as a stand alone product Id give it a solid 7/10 overall.

And I am eyeing up the games. Might get a box set on steam.
Or at leats the first 2 and get the 3rd one for PS4.

I would recommend jumping into the 3rd one straight away. The games got better with each new release. and don’t forget to get Blood and Wine, and more importantly, Hearts of stone - probably the best part of all games, imho

Witcher 3 GotY Edition currently 70% off on Steam.

 Baragash wrote:

SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:

 Argive wrote:
my GF struggled to keep up with the change in plot lines/time and it seems to have been made a lot harder to follow and awkeward than it needs to be for reasons..

I got it but it wore thin very quick. I get sort of why they did it but dont think they achieved any more than just flowing chronologicaly.

That being said it personally didint bother me all that much.
What did bother me is the annoying garbage tier attempt at novel comic relief in the form of yaskir. His poor writing and pointless babbling was very immersion breaking.

It seems all ther CG budget went into the monster at the begining of the series for trailers reasons I gueess?

As someone who has neither played the games or read the books as a stand alone product Id give it a solid 7/10 overall.

And I am eyeing up the games. Might get a box set on steam.
Or at leats the first 2 and get the 3rd one for PS4.

I would recommend jumping into the 3rd one straight away. The games got better with each new release. and don’t forget to get Blood and Wine, and more importantly, Hearts of stone - probably the best part of all games, imho

Witcher 3 GotY Edition currently 70% off on Steam.

Hearts of Stone was a good part of the game. My second play through, I appreciated it much more then the first. Blood and Wine though, was without a doubt the creme of the crop. The story was great, but what sealed it for me was the color. After how dark and dreary everything was in Velen, Touissant was just so beautifully vibrant.

I am trying to avoid judging the series till I am through with it but it is difficult.

Regarding the games, I personally was not able to get into the 1st or the 2nd. The third however was what got me into the entire series; I started the game, really liked the setting then read all of the books before getting too far into the game.

Thus I highly recommend Witcher 3 and the books; I would say the books are not 100% required for the game but they do help get immersed in the setting and to better know the character history.

blood and whine and hearts of stone I don't like to call DLC you say "DLC" and folks think horse armor. etc. I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

Yeah I'm gong to have to go to the roots so starting with 1 and 2 then probably picking up the 3rd one on console.

The series did finally get me to go bother and get Wild Hunt. For my Switch. Cause I like my switch and want games to play on it XD

 LordofHats wrote:
The series did finally get me to go bother and get Wild Hunt. For my Switch. Cause I like my switch and want games to play on it XD

problem with the switch edition is it's not as nice looking at the oither versions I hear, but the games so good it could be early 90s pixal graphics and still be amazing

I've found myself appreciating the consoles portability far more than I expected. I can take it anywhere and play full blown games (albeit on a very tiny screen). I've never cared much about graphics. They're not what makes a game.

I wanted to buy one this year but right now it's actually MORE expensive then a PS4 and XB1.

BrianDavion wrote:
I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

You're right that's what they are. Blood and Whine is an incredible expansion. The world is huge.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

You're right that's what they are. Blood and Whine is an incredible expansion. The world is huge.

yeah, I literally just finished it again yesterday (I started a witcher 3 play through again In late October, and am just finishing up now.... damnit I love this game!) and yeah Toussant is basicly equal in size to one of the three core regions.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

You're right that's what they are. Blood and Whine is an incredible expansion. The world is huge.

A little bit of a Freudian slip there?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

You're right that's what they are. Blood and Whine is an incredible expansion. The world is huge.

A little bit of a Freudian slip there?

p[roably not as there's really nothing to whine about in witcher 3, I mean there are some issues with it (easy to get hung up on a fence in combat for example) but it's damn near close to a perfect RPG

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I prefer to call em what they are. old school "expansion packs"

You're right that's what they are. Blood and Whine is an incredible expansion. The world is huge.

A little bit of a Freudian slip there?

Heh. I do that with some words. I always write "attacked" when I try to write "attached".

Blood and whine story was a bit inferior to that of Hearts of stone, imho. And the colors are a bit tooooo vibrant for my liking, haha. Also the mission about two rival wineries was the most tedious mission in the whole game..
Plus, Hearts of stone has a chapter with a wedding in it. Which is officially the best thing in the world. It has a certificate and everything.

I finished the series. It's a solid B- effort for me, maybe 6.5 or 7 out of 10. Not awful by any stretch, but enough "what the feth?" moments per episode to keep me out of the immersion.

Enjoyed Cavill though, so that's a pretty key thing.

Haven't read the books or played the games, but I just finished watching the show. I was pretty entertained, but Caville hardcarried the everloving crap out of this series, without him, a lot of the it could easily have been right of those 5-digit budget straight to DVD fantasy movies of the late '00s or a skit from The Guild

That said, Yennefer's early story was particularly great, as was Tissaia's role.

Definitely. Caville is to the Witcher as Ewen McGreggor is to the Prequel Trilogy. Their backs must hurt something fierce from carrying everything, lol.

One thing I didn't quite understand...

That series was bloody outstanding. Don't get the whinging about timelines etc, people who say that must have bloody hated Westworld and other shows that play around with time because it was pretty straightforward. If this gets ruined by the critics whinging about not knowing what's happening.... Ugh. One of the most faithful adaptations to date

I just finished binging the series and I must say it's very meh. It pretty much makes all the mistakes of the adult fantasy genre.

non-chronological story telling; romances are conjured and thrown at the main character's face more surely than fire balls; uneven pacing; one of the three main character is basically nothing more than a walking plot device; uneven world building where things like the role of magic or religion are vastly ignored or poorly explained even though they are critical to the plot; gratious nudity and violence to try and hook the viewer in the first episode.

The acting and special effect was pretty uneven too. The very first monster and the Strigia were very well done, but the dragons and faun were pathetic (this show wins my award for worst dragon in movies and series so far). For the acting, Cavill certainly tried his best and managed to give a character, who otherwise would be about as flat as a board, some dignity and presence, but the actress who played Yennifer was only good back when she was playing her in her youth and terrible when she played her in adulthood the fact that her story arc in part 2 was terrible certainly didn't help.



The sets and costumes were bland with most of the wolrd looking really empty and in shades of grey and sad green and the costumes your generic medieval fantasy armors and clothes with not much to spice them up a little bit, but the cinematography was very good with excellent shots and competant editing. The stunt work was fairly good even though it only truly showed in the first episode.

Westworld used the non-linear storytelling entirely differently than Witcher. In WW you had no idea they were doing until the very end of the first season. You had two storylines that went pretty well a single timeline each, were left to assume they were happening at the same time, and only got a twist reveal at the end that one was actually a backstory to the other.

Witcher has three storylines. They inform you very early on they’re not happening at the same time. Two of those storylines time skip forward at various paces and various times over two (?) decades.

 motyak wrote:
Don't get the whinging about timelines

Because it's bloody boring and useless. If you don't tell a story chronologically it's for a reason. It's to create tension or segway into some background explanation, but in the case of that show it was done to basically follow the adventures of three characters at the same time up until they all reach the same point. None of the actions of the characters influence each other much until they actually meet one another and join the same timeline. There is no "butterfly effect" payoff or setup. One story doesn't feed us background explanation and information that can be used in a story later in the timeline either. Geralt story doesn't inform us about Ciri's story beside how their parents got married and that she got her powers from her mother which is, frankly, a useless detail. Yennifer story doesn't affect Ciri's story at all nor does it affect Geralt story until they meet each other. By constantly cutting from one timeline to the next, you are basically diluting your adventure and any sense of tension possibly imaginable which is essential for Ciri's story to have any entertainment value. It makes each individual story more boring. The fact that Geralt spends basically the entire season in "episode of the week mode" while Yennifer passes through a story of her own in the past and a Ciri is trapped in the actual current plot is very poor story telling. It's not "confusing" it's kinda stupid and boring in my opinion.

 AduroT wrote:
Westworld used the non-linear storytelling entirely differently than Witcher. In WW you had no idea they were doing until the very end of the first season. You had two storylines that went pretty well a single timeline each, were left to assume they were happening at the same time, and only got a twist reveal at the end that one was actually a backstory to the other.

See this sounds like a clever use of a gimmick to achieve a shocking reveal.

Witcher has three storylines. They inform you very early on they’re not happening at the same time. Two of those storylines time skip forward at various paces and various times over two (?) decades.

This sounds like the story could have been told chronologically and wasted a lot less of my time since the gimmick never went anywhere or informed us of anything. It just existed... cause...

AegisGrimm wrote:Definitely. Caville is to the Witcher as Ewen McGreggor is to the Prequel Trilogy. Their backs must hurt something fierce from carrying everything, lol.

It would certainly explain how he maintains that physique, anyone deadlifting that much is gonna be ripped

epronovost wrote: For the acting, Cavill certainly tried his best and managed to give a character, who otherwise would be about as flat as a board, some dignity and presence, but the actress who played Yennifer was only good back when she was playing her in her youth and terrible when she played her in adulthood the fact that her story arc in part 2 was terrible certainly didn't help.

Spoiler:

Seriously, who thought that "I want to have a baby" can be a good motivation for a major character in a TV show. That's basically only a good motivation for some psychotic killer in a B horror movie or a nearly irrelevent side character like the one that finds Ciri on the road. It's terrible because it can be solved incredibly easily by simply adopting a god damn orphan. It's not like they are rare anyway. Ironically that's precisely what the other "I want to have a baby" character did or at least tried to do.

Aye, Yennifer's first arc is awesome, and actually had me way more engaged than the rest of the show through that point. But then...



EDIT: With regard to the time thing, I was a little put off by it, as it didn't quite initially jive with me the first times it tried to hint at stuff and I just came off confused, but I was also highly inebriated at the time so I can't hold that against it too much. Beyond that, it was ok, I didn't hate it, I wasn't expecting cinematic gold from this.

I think its important for people to remember that Yennifer is NOT a good person. While her story shows a sympathetic WHY to her decisions (she is ultimately all about maintaining her freedom of choice) she will burn down pretty much anyone who gets in her way. Shes a gak person who doesnt care who gets hurt if its needed to get what she wants.

A decent enoug GoT comparison is Cersi. She will do anything to grab power for herself and place her children as next in line. Everyone else in the world can die to maintain that. Even her brother.

Yennifer never goes to Cersis extremes in part because Yennifers ambitions are not so broad and all encompassing. But if they were she would be the character that goes to those lengths.

My main issue with the shifting timelines in the season are simple; it wasn't adequately explained the first several times it happened. Unless I missed it being put up on the screen, there was zero indication. The characters did not appear younger or older, no one had differing hair styles or were CGI'ed to even look different, etc. There was no tonal change, the bad guys were the same, the characters more or less the same, etc. There wasn't an on-screen indicator (a shift in colour palette, etc.). It also essentially served no real purpose.

There was no reveal that the timeline shift made...we knew who "the girl in the woods" was almost immediately, etc. It came off as a kind of "try hard" artistic choice which wasn't really warranted.

I watched this season as someone who has not played The Witcher, and has not read the novels (though I'm obviously aware of the game, etc.).

There are things that bugged me more, but this is dakka, so I won't bother with them.

I think the bright side is that the time thing is probably done with. With the way the first season ended, I hope a second will be a lot less janky in terms of pacing and be more consistent.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think the bright side is that the time thing is probably done with. With the way the first season ended, I hope a second will be a lot less janky in terms of pacing and be more consistent.

That's mildly encouraging. The irony also makes it that if someone wanted to skip the first season and go straight in the second it would be very feasable with minimum efforts.

I didn't mind the time jumping thing at all, I think people are making way too big of a deal about it.

It's just following the storylines of 3 people who have chronologically very different start points, Geralt and Yen are probably about 80 to 90-ish years old (from memory) by the time they encounter Ciri. I was not expecting some big pay off for the storyline jumping, simply that I expected them to converge at some point.

It didn't throw me when time jumps occurred, even from the first episode it was pretty obvious that time was jumping around.

The only bit I found a bit jerky was Yen's jump from early times to current times, but I think that's more of a critique on character development than the actual time jumps, as folks have said the 2nd half of Yen's story is a bit weak.