Qualitative research study about Witcher 3

[Alessandra.H.]

Hello everyone!
I am conducting a qualitative research study for a school paper looking at the differences of cultural experience of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt among players from different cultural and linguistic background (for the purpose of narrowing down the study I am currently looking only at players who played Witcher in either English, Polish, or Russian). Would you mind answering these interview questions? It would be a great help, thank you!

1. What languages do you speak?
2. What cultural background are you coming from?
3. What language did you select when playing Witcher 3: Wild Hunt?
4. If you played in more than one language, did you notice any change in cultural aura of the game between the different translations?
5. How present was the Slavik folklore in the game in your opinion?

Feel free to expand on anything if there is something you would like to share that I didn't cover in my questions!

 

[Draconifors]

(Moved this to its own thread so it won't get buried in the huge welcome thread.)

 

[SPicyBadaSS]

1. English, Some German, Learning Others
2. German, General European Caucasian,
3. English checked out others but didn't play much, indeed tho from noticing aura changes in other things based on language and context, many other things I have watched or researched have different vibes be it shows, movies, anime, or games. With this I haven't explored much with the topic in the Witcher 3 but I am sure it follows suit from my past experiences.
4. A lot actually, there is quite a few references to deity figures, runes, relative armor sets and weapons, charms, even lot's of the monsters were created from stories, ancient depictions and myths. Many other parts of the game originate in Slavik folklore I would presume, the researchers from CDPR I guarantee payed attention to many intricate details related to the lore that's what makes it seem ever more realistic in the story aspect.

 

[Garrison72]

1. Murican
2. Murica
3. Murican
4. I only play TW1 in Polish and yes, there's a big tonal change from English.
5. Very present. It's what sets the series apart.

 

[zecenker]

1. Turkish, English, Some Italian, very basic German.
2. I am Turkish, have lived in Turkey for all my life except for a short period when I was in Italy.
3. English.
4. Not applicable.
5. I thought it was in the heart of the stories and the overall tone of the game. I thought it was especialy present in Skellige Isles.

 

[Alessandra.H.]

(Moved this to its own thread so it won't get buried in the huge welcome thread.)

Thank you so much! I don't think I had access to do that as a new user yet

 

[bioshock1998]

1. English, arabic
2. American born Arab
3. Japanese w/ english subtitles (trying to learn the language)
4. I started it with english but went to japanese around the red baron quest. The japanese is sometimes over expressive kind of like in anime.
4. I dont know much about slavic folklore but the Music made the game feel like a Slavic epic.

 

[Kazuliski]

1. English & Polish
2. English & Polish
3. First game: English 2nd game: Polish
4. That's a difficult one, given the difference in my linguistic abilities between the two languages. It would also have been influenced by my prior experience with the Witcher. For example, I enjoyed the Wiedźmin TV series starring Michał Żebrowski, and read Andrzej Sapkowski's novels in Polish before playing CD Projekt Red games, so from a cultural perspective for me Polish dub fits it perfectly. However, I struggle to appreciate the quality of narrative, subtle nuances and dialogue in Polish, as I do in English. There's a difference between speaking a language fluently, and being able to speak and write fluently and idiomatically that one associates with a 100% native speaker who has been educated to tertiary level.
5. It was heavily influenced by Slavic folklore, but I suspect unless you were to do specific research or talk with someone involved in making the game, many of the references might not be apparent to a casual gamer. Even today, I will find things that I did not know about or I can talk with a friend at CDPR and they will show me something new.

Good luck Choomba

 

[Scryar]

1. German, Polish, English. A bit Italian
2. German & Polish
3. English
4. I didn't. I checked the german dubbing on youtube and it sounded heavily inferior to the english one so I never bothered to do a playthrough in german. I regret not doing a playthrough in polish and I do believe it would have changed my perception of the game.
5. My knowledge about slavic folklore is way too limited to really answer that question but a few examples like the crones (Baba Jaga) seemed pretty obvious. The land of thousand fables in blood&wine had a lot of fairytales, but not specifically slavic ones. The whole atmosphere was very slavic though. I was born in a small polish village and Velen reminded me a lot of Poland back when I was a child and visited my grandparets during holidays.

 

[Rawls]

English
American
English
N/A
Very present

 

[BabalKabak]

1. French, English, Spanish, Chinese, a bit of others.
2. I'm French but I'm quite close to the internet culture, which mean lots of English spoken content.
3. I played in... OMG I don't even remember ; I think I swapped languages throughout the game. Japanese was hilariously fun, it sounded like an anime, hahaha. But I always kept the text in French. (I only select the English text in my games when the translation is pityful).
4. I haven't seen any cultural change since I was mostly reading the French text. I'd says that sometimes the tone of the action is more badass with one language than another, perhaps it can affect the perception of the culture in one way?
5. Oh yes I've seen the Slavic influence in The Witcher games, the lovely OST first, and then the creatures, and it seems that the way people use to think and act was unlike in many classic fantasy stories, there is a certain "exotic" thing to it but I can't really define what. Maybe it's just the result of a good character design after all, but I think I saw the same cultural behaviours in the book, that's why I'm pointing that out here. That's something to do with how people react and think according to their culture, the way they speak.

 

[CyberBrett]

1 English
2 Australia
3 English
4 No
5 The whole game is Slavic folklore IMO .

 

[Suhiira]

What languages do you speak?

English and a little Spanish and German

What cultural background are you coming from?

American rural (farmer) and now lower-middle class

What language did you select when playing Witcher 3: Wild Hunt?

English

If you played in more than one language, did you notice any change in cultural aura of the game between the different translations?

Not applicable

How present was the Slavik folklore in the game in your opinion?

I'm more familiar with Western European and Russian folklore then Slavic (i.e. Central European) but it seemed to be fairly well presented.

 

[Draconifors]

1. Finnish, English, German, Swedish, and some Polish.
2. Finnish.
3. English and Polish.
4. It certainly feels like a significantly different game with Polish audio, but I cannot say that I've noticed differences that are clearly cultural. Or at least I can't remember any such thing right now.
5. I'm not really familiar with Slavic folklore, but I can say that the game (and the Witcher universe in general) has taught me a lot about that subject, both directly and indirectly. And it definitely seems to be present a lot; much more than I'd ever have realised if I hadn't been informed by others, or dug around myself (mostly regarding names).

 

[Guest 3847602]

1. Serbian, English, tiny bit of Russian
2. Serbian
3. English most of the time, did a few playthroughs in Polish
4. No, not really, probably would have if I knew Polish
5. Very present in White Orchard, Velen and during HoS expansion, not particularly strong elsewhere, imo

 

[Sild]

1 - Romanian, English (fluently), French (casually), Italian (basic).
2 - Romanian - Traditionally, Romanian culture exhibits a tremendous amount of East European cultural influences - which is mostly constituent of Greek, Eastern Orthodox, Slavic, Byzantine and Ottoman influences -
3 - English
4 - N/A
5 - Predominantly slavic, with some distict areas such as West European Toussaint.

 

[empari]

1. Czech, English, a bit German and Russian
2. Czech. We're quite homogeneous
3. English. Czech translation was perfect but I just prefer to practice English in games.
4. Some names are different but I guess that comes from the English translation of the books. Other that that, I cannot really judge.
5. Being Slav myself, I felt like home. The Slavic atmosphere was very intense and very familiar to me thorough the gameplay. Except Toussaint ofcourse.

 

[OrniTheorynque]

1 Russian and English
2 Russian
3 i selected 3 times RUS and one time ENG
4 I felt like the ENG version have lack of words for such things like (hmurnica, pribojek,igosha - botchling),
slavic language not have so many variations of dialects or accents ssory like english,example peasants in the village often speaking on cockney, or in Tussant they clearly prononce R sound i like it, also in the skellige they really have norsk
accent so cool and atmospheric, but what concerns clearly slavic thematic it's better on Russian
5 in the whole pretty good, but only thing is where is PLATVA
if i ever would have the horse i will name it PLATVA or DRACHKA

 

[TheParavade]

1: English
2: English
3: English
4: N/A
5: Based on my surface level knowledge of Slavic folklore, I felt it was quite distinctivly present, and implemented very well. The Witcher's Slavic identity is one of the defining characteristics of the series, in my opinion.

 

[lelxrv]

1. Russian, English.
2. Mother Russia.
3. English.
4. Tried Polish and Russian versions. Change in aura is noticeable, but I still picked English in the end because I just liked voices and acting in that version the most.
5. Fleeting. Visually it seems to be inspired by fantasy and European culture of various eras in general and a few slavic names, log cabins, birches or creatures don't change much the general impression. I think slavic flavor is most noticible in text and music. Since I played with English subs and dub, some of that lost in translation. I know many slavs who were puzzled by names like "Johnny". Which is essentially of the same Greek origin as super-slavic name like "Ivan".