Yeah, I'm a huge fan of video games and Andrzej Sapkowski's books since late 90's, but I'm more on critics side, lol.
I think the 69% (74.5% actually) as the middle ground between critics and audience is more close to the truth.
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Seems normal. Critics and audience often don‘t agree. I usually find both perspectives interesting, but in the end I prefer to see for myself...
However, I rarely trust the overall audience scores.
The score above shows how many critics and fans (dis)liked it. It says nothing of the actual rating. In theory, every fan could like it with a score of 6 (out of 10) and every critic could dislike it with a score of 5 (out of 10).
Anyhow, personally speaking, the show is far from perfect, but I still like it. Let's hope for an even better second season.
I tend to not trust either scores. However, with such big gaps, I always take extra care to see what has caused it. In the end, when I know I want to see something, I avoid (review) scores and judge it myself. So it was the case with The Witcher.
Another interesting recent discrepancy in reverse roles:
I usually take that as a good sign. A lot of critics just go the way it seems cool to go. Some of them have rated the show after watching literraly 2x 30 min of different episodes.
Anyway, I've read the books, played the games, and am almost through the series and I, for my part, really like it. There are deviations of course but you find back a lot of the short stories that made the first books and introduced the characters and places, while still launching the main story arc of the following books with NG invasion and Ciri. It took me a bit to get used to the different timelines but on one hand, only Ciri's timeline is in the present and the other ones are almost chronologically given until they reach present, and on the other hand, it doesn't even really matter as it is more a way of introducing witchers, mages, kingdoms and characters.
I really enjoy it. It is well played (at least I find myself wrong about my initial opinion about Cavil's cast, he really do the job. I like Yen too) and the action is really well made. I was surprised by the choice of Triss and Vilgefortz's actors but let's see.
PS: I know both are heroic fantasy, but I don't really get the constant comparison with GoT. It's really two opposite ways to approach heroic fantasy, GoT with little magic and a lot of political plots and multiple points of view, witcher centered on a couple of characters and really rooted into fantasy. It's kinda like comparing Gladiator and Monty python and the holy grail or, to exaggerate less, something like Gravity and Interstellar
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That's why rotten tomato is terrible to get an idea of how good is a movie/series. Doesn't mean anything.
Any rating system is inherently flawed. However, Rotten Tomatoes is actually one of the better ones, IF you take into account BOTH score systems. That is, the primary one, which shows whether the show is rotten or not and the secondary one, which shows the average score. Between the two, there can be a deviation, usually indicative of a love/hate relationship. Regardless, both scores still give the best impression you can get for a numeric system and, at the very least, it's a lot better than Metacritic.
I find the critic and audience score comparison to match my own preferences, as follows. High on both = I usually like it. High on critic low on audience = I've never liked it. Low on critic high on audience = I usually like it a lot. Low on both = anywhere on the spectrum, but fun to give it a whirl late on a Friday night.
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I'd be surprised to see another Witcher game from CDPR, since they seem to be locked in on developing and expanding the new cyberpunk IP. If they ever do return to the Witcher universe, I absolutely don't want to play another witcher, with one exception. Geralt is The Witcher. Any other substitute character of the same order will be inferior. I do think that it'd be fun to play as a sorcerer / witch, or something like that. The one exception to playing another witcher: Ciri. I'd love to play Ciri the Witcher. She's Geralt level badass and then some.
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I stopped taking critics seriously a long time ago. I checked a few random critic reviews for this particular show and they did nothing to change my views there. For the most part critics don't offer anything useful. And that is saying it politely .
What's wrong with spears and crossbows?
. I was more upset with them using spears and crossbows than their Zerrikanian/Ofirian skin tone.
What's wrong with spears and crossbows?
IMDB has it rated up at 8.7/10, out of 100k+ ratings. That's a great sign. I hope they continue, as many of us here already know the themes that had to be introduced, so series 2 will be less constrained. Plus now it's Ciri's Trial, ascension to Witcher, more monsters, war, Radovid and his extremism, and involvement of a world of other interesting characters. Really interesting to see if they can pull in another heavyweight for Emyhr.
I enjoyed the series a lot. Henry Cavill did fantastic as Geralt, same for Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan as Yen and Ciri. I'm cool with Triss also (suck it, Triss fanboys and -girls, she doesn't have fiery red hair in the books either and isn't all that important).
Pacing was a bit weird in places, like that bit of Geralt backstory way in the final episode - what was it doing there at that particular time? Also the battle of Sodden stinks in comparison to the books. It should have been a flaming inferno throughout, not a few completely useless fireballs. Likely this is another limitation of the budget, which was clearly visible in some places.
Pacing was a bit weird in places, like that bit of Geralt backstory way in the final episode - what was it doing there at that particular time? Also the battle of Sodden stinks in comparison to the books. It should have been a flaming inferno throughout, not a few completely useless fireballs. Likely this is another limitation of the budget, which was clearly visible in some places.
I think that it's pretty obvious that close quarter / mid range (that require lots of strenght to throw) and slow yet advanced engineered weapons is not what our stealthy green Amazon ladies would craft and use hiding on trees in thick ancient forest. And Sapkowski with CDPR are aware of that as well, unlike Netflix employees.What's wrong with spears and crossbows?
Bow is the way.
Spoiler warning, if you didn't watch the show or read the books, don't read my message (unless you don't mind being spoiled, obviously).
Edited in Spoiler Tag - Rawls
I watched the show despite saying otherwise and I was disappointed, just like I feared.
It's not bad but it's completely different to the novels, a lot of characters have nothing to do with their book's counter part (Fringilla Vigo, Toruviel, Fillavandrel, Eithne ,Eist, Calanthe ect).
I guess that was to be expected, nobody can respect the book to the last detail but I think it was easy to do better, some character/situation being completely the opposite to the original story.
Also weird that they've been much softer on the different character's personality and point of view. Like Yen goes so much easier on Geralt and is, generally speaking, so much "nicer".
I mean, Yennefer is a b***ch in the novels, plain and simple and that's what I love with her. The characters in the Witcher feel realistic because they feel human, with their bright and dark sides, which is very different to...Well...Pretty much everything else.
The same can be said about Geralt (when he kinda asked for the child of surprise by "accident" or as if it was a joke...I was like "are you kidding me?"). Gerald asked for the child of surprise because he needed it and because it's how Witchers recruit. Think it's horrible? Well, that's kind of the point and what make the character authentic, even though Geralt is a good person, he has his flaws and can do very questionable things.
That being said, Geralt is one of the best characters in the show and the actor is pretty solid, it's just this part that kinda made me roll my eyes.
Don't get me wrong, everything's not bad. There were some cool things too and overall, it's not aweful but let's say that the game managed to be much closer to the original story and by a long shot (even though it's not perfect, some characters like Yen or Shani are shown much prettier than they should, for example...And it's easier since it's a sequel, which gave CDPR significantly more room for creation).
It's not bad but it's completely different to the novels, a lot of characters have nothing to do with their book's counter part (Fringilla Vigo, Toruviel, Fillavandrel, Eithne ,Eist, Calanthe ect).
I guess that was to be expected, nobody can respect the book to the last detail but I think it was easy to do better, some character/situation being completely the opposite to the original story.
Also weird that they've been much softer on the different character's personality and point of view. Like Yen goes so much easier on Geralt and is, generally speaking, so much "nicer".
I mean, Yennefer is a b***ch in the novels, plain and simple and that's what I love with her. The characters in the Witcher feel realistic because they feel human, with their bright and dark sides, which is very different to...Well...Pretty much everything else.
The same can be said about Geralt (when he kinda asked for the child of surprise by "accident" or as if it was a joke...I was like "are you kidding me?"). Gerald asked for the child of surprise because he needed it and because it's how Witchers recruit. Think it's horrible? Well, that's kind of the point and what make the character authentic, even though Geralt is a good person, he has his flaws and can do very questionable things.
That being said, Geralt is one of the best characters in the show and the actor is pretty solid, it's just this part that kinda made me roll my eyes.
Don't get me wrong, everything's not bad. There were some cool things too and overall, it's not aweful but let's say that the game managed to be much closer to the original story and by a long shot (even though it's not perfect, some characters like Yen or Shani are shown much prettier than they should, for example...And it's easier since it's a sequel, which gave CDPR significantly more room for creation).
Edited in Spoiler Tag - Rawls
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I have read witcher books quite a long time ago, but was battle of Sodden hill actually depicted in there? All I remember it was only mentioned by some characters and vaguely depicted with some important points, e.g. Vilgefortz led them to victory, Triss died, 22 mages and sorceresses surprisingly arrived, etc... Honestly, I am just curious. If yes, I should reread books since I am really interested in this one battle.
Ha. I'm also not sure how detailed the description really was.. but Triss tells us a few details, how her hair had burned away and how Coral died next to her, a charred screaming torso, and that Triss herself was counted among the dead because of all the blackened bodies and her having lost her signature hair. So I don't recall exactly how much info we have on the battle, but I'd say it's quite strongly implied that freaking loads of fireballs were involved
I mean, things are blowing up
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Not just for Andrzej, but also for CDPR. The Witcher games have had their biggest sales boost ever, since the last expansion, because of the TV series. Very impressive for a game this old. Furthermore, The Witcher 3 has broken the record for longest best selling single player game, that is, sales based on the age of the game. No other game has remained this popular after such a long time, with the exception of Skyrim (thanks to mods).