Letho decision: where do you stand?

[KnightofPhoenix]

Except that monsters are dying out, and normal humans are getting better and better at dealing with them without help.

Precisely why the Witchers need a restructuring and a new purpose, before the very people they were designed to protect wipe them all out. They already massacred them in Kaer Mohren and treat them like pariahs.

Letho understood that the New Order (stronger states) will no longer need the old Witchers. FOr them to survive, they need to adapt.

Letho didn't endanger the North, war was inevitable and would have happened with or without him. It was axiomatic. What Letho did was try to exploit the inevitable and carve up a place for himself and his brethren in the new world.

I see the WItchers as having tremendous potential and limiting them to monster slaying for a few orens is, to me, a gigantic waste. That's something Letho and Emhyr seemed to understand. That's why I find Letho's acts justifiable and even agreeable.


I of course do not kill Letho in my canon run.
My Geralt may not have agreed with him in principle at the time (he might change his mind in TW3), but he understood where he came from and sympathized, despite him almost being his polar opposite.

Also because he saw no point in killing him, what's done is done and killing Letho wouldn't change anything. He applied the same mentality when saving Sile. He also doesn't like to judge people and kill on principle.

Finally, because despite the fact that Letho made Geralt's life hell, he couldn't help but respect him and even regain some of their friendship. Letho did so much for Geralt, that he couldn't kill him when he didn't need to.

From a metagaming pov, Letho was so damn competent and intelligent, that he deserves to get out of it alive. He was such an awesome character and antagonist (my favorite antagonist of all time), that I couldn't possibly kill him in my canon run (killed him in my Iorveth run).

 

[Seboist]

My canon Geralt killed him because he was a Foltest/Temeria supporter and my non-canon one killed him out of loyalty for the Scoia'tael/Iorveth.

Now,If there's a pro-Nilfgaard path in TW3 then I'll do a run where my Neutral Geralt(who killed Adda,Siegfried,Yaevinn and Vincent) spares him.

 

[GuyNwah]

First two times through, I killed Letho: first time, because I thought him a menace who might have more dirty work to do for Nilfgaard, second time to see if I could take him on hard difficulty.

Since then, I've settled on not killing him. First, because he used to be a friend, and he repaid that friendship by caring for Yen (and rescuing Triss, if Geralt was too busy playing hero to do so); then also, because Geralt has no call to kill an honorable man or a fellow witcher. (Self-defense against a witcher who means to kill you is, of course, a different matter.)

 

[pomor]

Let him go. The damage is already done, and killing Letho will be pointless and won't change anything since his role is already finished.

Still, (most of) his victims deserved to be avenged.

 

[wichat]

I have no preference in that, so I alternate my runs: once I let him go and I kill him in the next.

 

[agasha]

I killed him. Given the amount of damage he managed to in this episode, I decided to mitigate the risk of him furthering things along the downward spiral. Also by reducing the supply of available witchers, I improve my rates

 

[Guest 3593423]

Letho wasn't following the Witcher's Code (which may or may not exist, according to Dandelion).

Spoiler

A witcher isn't a thug for hire, as Geralt testified at Blaviken. If Letho had been choosing the 'lesser of two evils', even that would have been acceptable. But according to what he says (correct me if I'm wrong), Letho was simply hired by the Nilfgardian Emperor to kill the kings of the North.

In accepting this, he broke the Witcher's code.

 

[CostinRaz]

There is no witcher code. Geralt himself says this in the short stories.

 

[jeannyd]

I released him. After all, he has shared his vodka with my Geralt.

Now seriously, I don't care about his kingslayer business. Geralt's name is now safe and sound, and I see no reason to kill Letho. He's quite cool character too.

 

[GamaH]

I spared him on all playthroughs except for one just to see what the ending would be like.

In W1, Geralt said that there's a rule against Witchers fighting each other or something. Sure, sometimes it may be necessary, especially if the other Witcher is a renegade, but from my perspective, there's no way Geralt was going to be the one to obliterate the Viper school.

Personally, if Geralt killed Berengar in W1, then he'd kill Letho here too. But in my case, I spared Berengar on all playthroughs, so I'm not killing Letho.

Foltest is dead, and frankly Geralt never owed Foltest any debts (even though he's my favorite Northern King); if he did, he already paid it back more than once when he saved Foltest's daughter, he saved Foltest after W1, he saved Foltest from Saskia, and whatnot.

Geralt does not owe Foltest anything. He wasn't sworn to Foltest's service.

 

[chlong7]

I kill him for killing Cedric, putting Triss at risk of being eaten by trolls, and generally being a terrible nuisance. He's welcome to his views and his choices, but he gets to face the consequences when they come calling.

 

[Garrison72]

I killed him because he broke the faith of witcher neutrality. Killing kings and helping plunge the northern kingdoms into war for Nilfgard's needs.

This is the most convincing reason to kill him imo. He's doing the emperor's bidding. Although I guess it can be argued that Nilffgard taking over might not be a bad thing depending on one's philosophical stance on rulership.

 

[username_3652648]

I let him go. He spared Geralt and helped Yennefer. Yeah, he also killed Foltest, but revenge doesn't change anything. My Geralt hasn't any reason to kill him.

 

[prometeus]

I doubted a lot, like when I had to choose between saving Philippa or Triss. More or less I was 50% about killing Letho or sparing him, but I chosed the later.

Reasons to kill him

- Chaos in the north helps nilfgaard to invade those kingdoms, and you know what happens when one army invades another country (you can see it at the end of the credits, and see something similar at the end of the Act 3)

- It also pushes people to kill mages, innocent or not. Although I hate the lodge of sorceresses, the collateral damage is unacceptable.

- He killed Foltest. The least bad of the kings. Although he has caused a lot of damage to innocents when he invaded the castle of La Valette for a lovers' quarrel as Geralt said.

Reasons to spare him

- He took care of Yennefer in your absence

- He saves Triss if you save Philipa to remove the enchantment on Saskia

- He could be useful to fight the Wild Hunt later. His order has tons of books about them and he thinks that his order might have been created to fight the wild hunt specifically.

- I don't like the emperor of Nilfgaard, but I don't like the kings of the north, specially Radovid after what he has done to Philippa (if you also take into account that I saved Sheala from being blown up, you will realize that I hate suffering or terrible deaths, I'm more in favor of a swift death for the guilty)


It was a difficult choice because of all the damage he has done. But I want to see if he can be useful for Geralt again in TW3

 

[DukeAlmighty]

I kill him, because he is directly responsible for creating turmoil in North and Geralt cares about north, he have many friends who are in danger because of his actions. He contradicts himself, he says he is no longer a wicher, why does he care about Viper school. He cannot be trusted, only reason I would let him live is - is to see if he appears in W3, but that is higly unlikely since he goes South and promises that we will never see him again.

 

[wright1978]

Planned all along to kill him. However once i got to him i ended up letting him go. Despite the fact my Geralt isn't in love with Yennefer anymore he does appreciate that the witcher's from the Viper school were allies & did look after Yennefer. Also i could understand how the promise of the rebuilding of the school of Witchers could motivate him in his actions. Also in regard to the regicides it is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

 

[vulcanfury]

In my first game, I killed him. Not for any story reasons, as I can clearly see where he comes from, but to test my skill as well. I remember getting pwned by him the most in our first duel. Now I didn't even break a sweat. So it's either one of two things:

1. I got better as a player (I now have a deeper grasp of the in-game mechanics); or
2. I just got buffed up with gear and talents to outclass him in all fields.

 

[agrippadarippa]

First playthrough I killed him just for the experience of fighting the "optional final boss after the final boss," but for my import in W3 I spared him without question.
Since this is an RPG where we're role-playing Geralt, there's literally zero reason for a "canon" Geralt to kill Letho: aside from the circumstance with Foltest and Temeria, their goals align in every single possible way -they're both trying to uncover the mysteries of the Wild Hunt. They were also friends before Geralt's amnesia, and even though their degree of friendship wasn't really clear, it was still clearly deep enough for him to risk both his and his comrades' (S & A) lives taking care of GERALT'S FREAKIN WOMAN for a period of SEVERAL YEARS while she was constantly stirring shit up for them, which would ultimately lead to the Viper Witchers being recruited by the Emperor for his assassinations.

Moral of the story - Geralt really brought it on himself when he bro'd out with Letho so hard in their past that in order to reciprocate, the latter took it upon himself to take care of Geralt's girl for years until he eventually got captured by Nilfgaard and persuaded into being a kingslayer. Summary of W2 ladies and gentlemen

 

[apollozen]

He blatantly went against everything a Witcher stands for, countless innocent lives were directly on his hands and his motivations were personal influence for his Witcher school to return? Put Triss in danger as well...too many sins.

Even though he helped Yennefer. I can't be sure what he'll do if I release him. Renegade Witcher too dangerous.

Kill.

 

[Nucta.397]

I always talked to him and said goodbye.
There is no point in killing him. Letho is the only link to Geralt's past.
I'm sure killing/sparing him will have some impact on the plot of W3, and I want to see him in the next game.