ooodrin;n9306921 said:
No, I'm not insinuating CDPR was concerned in balancing waifu wars on internet. I'm stating something that should be pretty obvious - you won't get many praises as RPG developer if you predominantly offer trivial white/black, good/evil, right/wrong choices in your game.
In other words, you do insinuate the essence of what I wrote. That claim is basically accusing CDPR of being dishonest to their audience by deliberately hiding information from them to manipulate their choices in the game, the exact reason is less important. It just proves my point, and is not very flattering towards the developers, nor towards other players who (possibly having read and played it all anyway) happen to prefer those choices.
Nevertheless, game writers do have the right to change characters as they see fit, they could even have turned Geralt into a female elf if they wanted to. Sapkowski gave them the license to do anything, he does not care, the catch is that nothing in the games will ever be canon to the books, so it is fair that way. So, in case they really did this on purpose to change players' perception of the character, then in my opinion the books can be considered non-canon to the games in this aspect, the information you are not told has been retconned not to exist in the games' context. That is also a valid interpretation, and means that the book content in question can be rightfully ignored when playing the games if it was deliberately ignored by the game writers as well as a creative decision. Game (W3) Triss is better than book Triss anyway, CDPR improved the character, so it is not like erasing the latter is a big loss.
The same applies to Emhyr, Nilfgaard, Avallac'h and whatever else, by the way.
Look at the portrayal of Nilfgaard or Emhyr himself in TW3. Are they whitewashed by accident? Did everyone doing the writing for TW3 just conveniently forgot to mention the way Nilfgaard waged the war against the North? Massacres, pillaging, destruction and "scorched Earth" policy? That they were not saving Nordlings from their own economic backwardness and religious zealotry like they do in TW3?
From what I remember, I have seen massacres, pillaging and destruction in White Orchard and Velen in the first chapters of the game, so the Nilfgaardians are not exactly portrayed as entirely benevolent. Additionally, there is already an entire game devoted to them assassinating the kings of the North (with the Lodge of Sorceresses framed for the murders, leading to the witch hunts) and preparing an invasion.
Was the fact that Emhyr married False Ciri after he tried to capture, marry and impregnate the real one irrelevant for the story of the game where he is participating once again in the search for her?
Yes, it is irrelevant because he is not trying to do any of those in the time frame of the games. I find it perfectly understandable that CDPR did not add 50 hours of "previously on Witcher" recaps and cutscenes just to retell everything that happened long before their part of the story, lest proponents of some choice in the game be offended by the alleged white washing. In the end, those who want to learn about everything that happened in the past can always just read the books and/or play the previous games, there is no substitute for that. Do Sapkowski's books reiterate things that happened in their prequels a lot, or do they just assume that you have already read them?
Or they wanted to strike a balance and give enough worth to "Nilfgaardian victory" and "Empress" endings by omitting some important bits and details that would make majority of playerbase unsympathetic towards Nilfgaard and their Emperor.
There is nothing that proves that accusation (but see also the first paragraph), and it is not like Radovid does not look bad enough on his own merits. I also get the impression that the "preferred" order of Ciri endings, both in terms of portrayal by the game and by players, is witcher > empress > dead, making Emhyr less sympathetic would probably not make enough difference for people to begin to prefer even the "dead" ending.
The same goes for Triss - it's hard to expect most people will have serious dilemma about the waifu choice if they'd revealed absolutely everything about what she did in the past.
There are plenty of people who read the books and choose Triss, from what I have seen, it was between 25-30% even among those who read the books first, and nearly half of those who read them after playing the games. Do not generalize your own opinion to everyone else. Also, if the game really wanted to reveal everything about the past, which should include both the good and the bad, it would take up an unreasonable amount of content. And it would ultimately not make much difference, because one can learn enough about the character in the games themselves, they do not tell what happened in the books, but instead they show her relevant traits (both positive and negative) as a character throughout their own trilogy. Now of course if what is wanted is for CDPR to selectively include only the worst bits from the books (the condescending tone and constantly calling her "waifu" give that impression), that is another matter, but are they really the ones who are biased in that case? Saying nothing can be better than giving a partial picture, another one of the games' basic principles - if we cannot do something justice, we'd rather not do it at all.
In any case, all the debate over what Triss did or did not do in the past is ultimately a red herring for those who understand the game's concept of role playing as a pre-written character. It does not matter because it is not what would decide
Geralt's choices, he has already been pre-written to view her as an overall positive character. Therefore, not being told about what would not matter to his decisions is perfectly OK. Of course, he can prefer Yennefer, but that is because of their long history together, something that the game, by some strange coincidence, puts a great effort into showing to you.
And it is not like the developers of Witcher 3 were overly concerned with balancing choices, ever wondered what percentage of people does
not choose Cerys as the ruler of Skellige?
I think we've been over this enough already.
Where? If the argument boils down to something along the lines of "characters cannot ever change, no matter the circumstances", then I disagree, but let's leave it at that.
Games are at natural disadvantage when it comes to storytelling, but have advantages in some other areas.
It is not necessarily a disadvantage, I have seen people saying that the games have better storytelling than the books, while the latter are better at creating background lore and characters. Although "storytelling" is not a term that everyone defines exactly the same way.
Zyvik;n9307021 said:
And I'm not sure how being independent is conected with her stopping calling Yennefer "mother" considering that she still calls Vesemir "uncle" despite not being particularly close with him in the first place.
She only calls Vesemir "uncle" a couple of times, but more importantly, her emotional reaction to his death is important in the game, so it needed to be established somehow that she cares about Vesemir. Yennefer does not die, her role as adoptive mother is shown already in the prologue, players do not need to be constantly reminded of it, it is not like they can influence the Ciri-Yennefer relationship anyway. It is shown in important moments like the reunion in Kaer Morhen after Ciri is found.
though the lack of Yennefer's presence in the Empress ending is criminal.
Given that Ciri does not want her to be involved in Nilfgaardian politics, it is not that surprising.
Every Ciri's relationship from the books was either kept as it was or made stronger, Except for the one she has with Yennefer.
That is not quite correct as far as I can tell, she interacts very little with most characters in game when she is an NPC, Geralt is of course an obvious exception because of being the protagonist, but other than that, when any particular effort is put into showing Ciri's relationship with someone, that is because it serves some purpose in the main story. Like in the case of Vesemir and Avallac'h.