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The relationship between Yennefer and Ciri is made much more clear if you read the in-game book The Poisoned Source ( can be found in Yen's room on Skellige). All mages who studied at Aretuza were made sterile and Ciri is the closest Yen gets to having a daughter.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:00
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They weren't actually sterilized. That was just Tissaia's opinion on the matter and recommendation to the Council and Conclave. The practice was never put into place. Yennefer is sterile for the same reason most sorceresses are sterile. Magic fucks up your gametes usually, for some reason. Geralt's mother is likely not a whole lot older than Yennefer, and she's fertile.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:04
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Swedish Horror posted:The relationship between Yennefer and Ciri is made much more clear if you read the in-game book The Poisoned Source ( can be found in Yen's room on Skellige). All mages who studied at Aretuza were made sterile and Ciri is the closest Yen gets to having a daughter. Also, at one point, Yen even alludes to planning to do something drastic and crazy for a chance at her fertility back. She's mad baby crazy early on in the short stories (maybe book too. Don't remember, I read all of them that have been translated to English super quickly in the last week). Edit: I fuckin adore this universe and the game, so glad I picked it up on a whim. Praise Comte and CDPR
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Aug 27, 2015 23:10
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The whole thing with the dragon and its hoard was about her fertility. And she was probably getting scammed by a quack with a useless and possibly dangerous procedure, on top of that. Which is hard to pull off with Yennefer. She was just obsessed with having a child. You can also infer the initial thing with the Djinn in the short story Last Wish was probably her intending to use it to make herself fertile again, in hindsight. Ciri seems to fulfill that need for her mostly in the books after that, enough to preclude that kind of drastic action; or at the very least she's too busy to go crazy about it again.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:13
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I really hope the popularity of this game convinces someone to get the rights make a better Witcher TV series, the Witcher universe really is amazing. Also The Sharmat your knowledge of the books is very helpful. I think it was one of your posts in this thread that alerted me to their existence.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:22
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The Sharmat posted:I didn't read any of them because I already knew all the backstory poo poo. Oh well that explains the lovely  ness of your reply then.quote:Also, it's worth mentioning that (at least as far as I've gotten in Baptism of Fire) Geralt and Yen never actually play house and coparent Ciri. Geralt finds her, finds her again, then she becomes his ward and they do poo poo together. How does a witcher just find an emperor's daughter and just keep her and do stuff with her? How does she become a ward when her father is not dead? I suppose I'll have to read books and play the other two games to make sense of it. Otherwise it seems like Ciri has been missing for *years* when Geralt sees Emyr, but in reality she's just been paling around with Geralt at the Wolf school all this time? Protons fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 23:33
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I only hope that if a Ciri game ever sees light of the day (whatever the gameplay would be) they actually don't go into the direction of jumping between worlds that are sci-fi/alien/different etc. and it stays in the atmosphere of a medieval fantasy setting. That desert bug world sequence was already a stretch imo. Having a meaty, psychologically fleshed out and very particularly written (at least in Polish) fantasy book series that merely used the genre to tell quite deep and realistic stories evolve into something of a world-jumping star trek spin-off (because aren't random planets awesome) would be to me everything that Sapkowski consciously avoided as a writer. More Blood Baron and less Avallac'h for me please.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:41
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Swedish Horror posted:Also The Sharmat your knowledge of the books is very helpful. I think it was one of your posts in this thread that alerted me to their existence. Thank god for that because the publishers for translations of these books could've made so much more money if they weren't stupidly incompetent. Just think with the proper distribution so many more people would be checking out this game because of the books. Or vice versa even. Such a missed opportunity.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:45
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Protons posted:How does a witcher just find an emperor's daughter and just keep her and do stuff with her? How does she become a ward when her father is not dead? I suppose I'll have to read books and play the other two games to make sense of it. Otherwise it seems like Ciri has been missing for *years* when Geralt sees Emyr, but in reality she's just been paling around with Geralt at the Wolf school all this time? It's an extremely long and complicated story but I'll try to sum it up tremendously here without going on forever: Emhyr was exiled from Nilfgaard and in hiding in the North when he impregnated Ciri's mother, Pavetta. At the time, he was operating under a disfiguring curse meant to prevent him from returning and inheriting. Geralt lifted said curse, and did the traditional "I want what you already have and do not expect" thing as payment. This is when Emhyr found out his fiance was pregnant. Geralt is now bound by tradition to come back in 10-12 years to take the child. A few years later (when Ciri is a toddler) Emhyr attempts to fake his death with a magically simulated shipwreck and return to Nilfgaard with his family. However Pavetta is suspicious of his motives, deliberately leaves Ciri behind. They quarrel. Pavetta is killed. Emhyr is teleported back to Nilfgaard by himself. Years pass, he manages to retake the throne of Nilfgaard. No one but he and a select few others know the details of his alternate identity and his time in the North. Finally, when all is prepared, he invades Cintra, Ciri's country, with the goal of capturing her so he can marry her and make sure her super-baby heir is the Emperor of Nilfgaard. This is botched by one of his subordinates, Emhyr goes apeshit and orders his troops to slaughter everyone when Ciri escapes with a bunch of refugees. Geralt (after having consciously avoided Ciri once before because he didn't actually want to have to do any of this with her) finds her after she's led Cintra, takes her to Kaer Morhen. Starts training her as a witcher roughly from the age of 10 to 12, because...well, he doesn't know what else to do. Yennefer gets involved later, when Ciri's Elder Blood bullshit powers start acting up and the Witchers are totally unqualified to deal with them. Yennefer has her for a further 1.5-2 years, between the ages of 12 and 14. The events in the books afterwards are mostly centered around various factions trying to get a hold of Ciri for various political and magical purposes. Palpek posted:I only hope that if a Ciri game ever sees light of the day (whatever the gameplay would be) they actually don't go into the direction of jumping between worlds that are sci-fi/alien/different etc. and it stays in the atmosphere of a medieval fantasy setting. That desert bug world sequence was already a stretch imo. Having a meaty, psychologically fleshed out and very particularly written (at least in Polish) fantasy book series that merely used the genre to tell quite deep and realistic stories evolve into something of a world-jumping star trek spin-off (because aren't random planets awesome) would be to me everything that Sapkowski consciously avoided as a writer. I agree. Some of that should be there, but not a lot. It would be much less special if it was a regular event. The Sharmat fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 23:49
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FauxGateau posted:Thank god for that because the publishers for translations of these books could've made so much more money if they weren't stupidly incompetent. Just think with the proper distribution so many more people would be checking out this game because of the books. Or vice versa even. Such a missed opportunity. With the exception of Black Library, the publishing arm of Games Workshop, more often than not the IP is published and written about by entities that have no relation to the parent company. Just think of all the Halo and WoW books. Lots of them out there taking the IP to far and away places that the parent video game has little to nothing to do with. The Sharmat posted:It's an extremely long and complicated story but I'll try to sum it up tremendously here without going on forever: Wow that's convoluted as poo poo. It's probably best the book series and the video game stay completely separate, and have only names in common. But since I'm an idiot dumb enough to read genre fiction (Black Library  ) what is the first book I should read?
Protons fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 23:49
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Protons posted:Wow that's convoluted as poo poo. It's probably best the book series and the video game stay completely separate, and have only names in common. But since I'm an idiot dumb enough to read genre fiction (Black Library They don't actually. It ties together pretty well for the most part. It's testament to CDPR's abilities that the games aren't way more confusing than they already are if you're just hopping in with the third one. EDIT: The games are based on the books, not the other way around. Sapkowski started writing this poo poo in the 80's. The reading order is The Last Wish, followed by Sword of Destiny, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, Tower of the Swallow, then finally Lady of the Lake. The last two are not yet officially translated into English, and the fan translations are uneven at absolute best. Also the UK publisher is kind of stupid so the order you're meant read them in is not the order they were translated in. Which has the weird effect of Book 2 being the most recently published one in English, and having a higher quality translation than Book 3. The Sharmat fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Aug 27, 2015 |
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Aug 27, 2015 23:54
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So I'm watching Jesse Cox play through the game right now (I've already beaten the game) and he's just starting Novigrad. He's doing the thing where you follow the thief around the city, and it never occurred to me but you basically go through or walk past a bunch of major important places in Novigrad you visit during the story. Like you pass right through the little area with the stage and the actors, and you fall down into the little area with the two dwarves where the one dwarf is killed. The two dwarves are even there working on one of those statues! This game 
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Aug 28, 2015 00:10
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Yeah, the second playthrough is really interesting because of that. The game is so long that even when there is some forshadowing you really forget those small events because they happened 40 hours of side-quests ago or something AND during a pretty big chunk of the game you don't really feel it but you're overwhelmed with learning the systems, reading item descriptions, figuring out which elixirs to create, looking for ingredients, reading skill descriptions and all that stuff really makes you not notice things and events even when you think you were paying attention. Now in the second playthrough you know how the game works and there's the whole time in the world to just take in those little details that suddenly have a meaning because you already know what they're leading to. It's like a second wave of enjoyment you can get from this game. I found myself noticing tons of situations, vignettes and conversations that I don't remember because I was probably figuring out how to get somewhere while looking through the map in the middle of a village and when I was finished I jumped on the horse and rode off instead of looking around me.
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Aug 28, 2015 00:25
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Snak posted:It sounds like he wants the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance of the Witcher series...
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Aug 28, 2015 00:31
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Palpek posted:I only hope that if a Ciri game ever sees light of the day (whatever the gameplay would be) they actually don't go into the direction of jumping between worlds that are sci-fi/alien/different etc. and it stays in the atmosphere of a medieval fantasy setting. That desert bug world sequence was already a stretch imo. Having a meaty, psychologically fleshed out and very particularly written (at least in Polish) fantasy book series that merely used the genre to tell quite deep and realistic stories evolve into something of a world-jumping star trek spin-off (because aren't random planets awesome) would be to me everything that Sapkowski consciously avoided as a writer.  e: I have not read the books lmao. But this game has made me want to
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Aug 28, 2015 00:36
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The Sharmat posted:It's an extremely long and complicated story but I'll try to sum it up tremendously here without going on forever: Thank you for this. I love The Witcher, but I find the books are a little confusing, partially due to the slow pace of translation. I just finished the latest one (Baptism of Fire), and this puts a lot of Emhyr and Ciri's relationship in perspective. As a follow up, in Baptsim of Fire, when the Lodge of Sorceresses is first convened, it's hinted that Ciri's Elder Blood genealogy was somewhat influenced by the mages - that is to say they somehow orchestrated her having the gene. Can you explain that? Also, not that it makes a huge difference, but when here time with the Rats is described, Ciri seems to have a connection with a particular female member, though I never read it as anything sexual. I felt like the whole sauna scene in The Witcher 3 in Skellige coupled with some possible dialogue choices when talking with Skjall hint that Ciri might prefer girls. But again, without the remaining English translations the context isn't there. What's going on with the tattoo and Ciri's sexuality?
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Aug 28, 2015 01:12
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l33t b4c0n posted:Thank you for this. I love The Witcher, but I find the books are a little confusing, partially due to the slow pace of translation. I just finished the latest one (Baptism of Fire), and this puts a lot of Emhyr and Ciri's relationship in perspective. As a follow up, in Baptsim of Fire, when the Lodge of Sorceresses is first convened, it's hinted that Ciri's Elder Blood genealogy was somewhat influenced by the mages - that is to say they somehow orchestrated her having the gene. Can you explain that? l33t b4c0n posted:Also, not that it makes a huge difference, but when here time with the Rats is described, Ciri seems to have a connection with a particular female member, though I never read it as anything sexual. I felt like the whole sauna scene in The Witcher 3 in Skellige coupled with some possible dialogue choices when talking with Skjall hint that Ciri might prefer girls. But again, without the remaining English translations the context isn't there. What's going on with the tattoo and Ciri's sexuality? Time of Contempt+ spoilers ( I should start using these) Mistle raped Ciri. Ciri developed some degree of Stockholm syndrome. Her sexuality is open for interpretation in the books. She regularly has sex with Mistle but she herself says she doesn't actually enjoy it. She's just essentially kind of exchanging sexual intimacy for safety and companion ship due to fear of abandonment after losing everything twice. Men seemed to get her going more than women, otherwise, as far as I could tell. But there's arguments to be made and she doesn't have a whole lot of onscreen, consensual sexual encounters. Ciri is more or less bisexual. Maybe. Though CDPR gave you some wiggle room to define that here. It was a very hosed up episode in her life all around. Ciri does not get to enjoy herself in the books.
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Aug 28, 2015 01:19
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I really want the translations of the last two books to hurry up, because the last you see of Ciri (spoilers for Baptism of Fire) The emperor gets betrayed and instead of sending someone to rescue/kidnap Ciri, one of his guys sends a bounty hunter to murder her. Also Geralt is kind of a whiny bitch in BoF.
Swedish Horror fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Aug 28, 2015 01:32
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Palpek posted:I only hope that if a Ciri game ever sees light of the day (whatever the gameplay would be) they actually don't go into the direction of jumping between worlds that are sci-fi/alien/different etc. and it stays in the atmosphere of a medieval fantasy setting. That desert bug world sequence was already a stretch imo. Having a meaty, psychologically fleshed out and very particularly written (at least in Polish) fantasy book series that merely used the genre to tell quite deep and realistic stories evolve into something of a world-jumping star trek spin-off (because aren't random planets awesome) would be to me everything that Sapkowski consciously avoided as a writer. The world-hopping segment is exactly what makes me super excited for Cyberpunk/any other sci-fi stuff that CDPR does.
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Aug 28, 2015 02:53
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Swedish Horror posted:I really want the translations of the last two books to hurry up, because the last you see of Ciri (spoilers for Baptism of Fire) The emperor gets betrayed and instead of sending someone to rescue/kidnap Ciri, one of his guys sends a bounty hunter to murder her. Also Geralt is kind of a whiny bitch in BoF. He is, but he lost everything he ever cared about almost as soon as he got it. And he's always tended towards brooding and whining.
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Aug 28, 2015 02:59
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I'm quite late to the party, but wanted to share this wonderful conversation. This game might have a cruel setting and a monotone protagonist, but sometimes it can whip out some gems.
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Aug 28, 2015 04:20
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Mizuti posted:I'm quite late to the party, but wanted to share this wonderful conversation. This game might have a cruel setting and a monotone protagonist, but sometimes it can whip out some gems.
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Aug 28, 2015 06:53
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It's the trailer vampire, and located somewhere in Novigrad sewers behind Aard-able wall. I looked up the rough directions there at some point but never actually remembered to hit the sewers 
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Aug 28, 2015 07:29
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Swedish Horror posted:I really want the translations of the last two books to hurry up, because the last you see of Ciri (spoilers for Baptism of Fire) The emperor gets betrayed and instead of sending someone to rescue/kidnap Ciri, one of his guys sends a bounty hunter to murder her. Also Geralt is kind of a whiny bitch in BoF. Geralt is a whiny bitch for pretty much the entire run of the novels, but he does get better. I think Geralt is a much better character in the games on the whole. You can find English fan translations of the last books.
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Aug 28, 2015 13:35
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Palpek posted:Haha, what quest is that, I haven't seen this! You can get to it in the sewers that you find Duke in at the end of Zoltan's quest, there's an Aardable wall there.
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Aug 28, 2015 13:42
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I've been told to get the german version of the books, and it wasn't a mistake. The writing is good and gets even better in the last books. Downsides: you need guesswork what monsters they're talking of most of the time, Dandelion is called Rittersporn and a Witcher is called Hexer.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:14
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I don't understand how people can't wrap around their heads that Ciri doesn't have to be death goddess in a game made about her. In the Witcher games Geralt is a monster hunter who has been hunting legendary monsters and demons for decades and can be killed by wolves and nekkers pretty easily at the beginning of every game and no one seems to have a problem with it.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:19
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I don't understand how people can't wrap around their heads that Ciri doesn't have to be death goddess in a game made about her. In the Witcher games Geralt is a monster hunter who has been hunting legendary monsters and demons for decades and can be killed by wolves and nekkers pretty easily at the beginning of every game and no one seems to have a problem with it. Yeah it's weird as hell. Besides which, if you cared about realism so much you should be wondering why you aren't cutting poo poo in half all of the time instead of just in finishers. It's not like your sword is only sharp during those. Hell, you can drop literal meteors from space onto things in other games and have them survive so I really don't see what the problem is.
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Aug 28, 2015 15:22
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Samus loses all her upgrades: Good game Samus keeps all her upgrades: She becomes a codependent waif disturbingly attached to a hitherto undeveloped male CO that controls every aspect of her progression through a mediocre game Think about it
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Aug 28, 2015 15:27
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I don't understand how people can't wrap around their heads that Ciri doesn't have to be death goddess in a game made about her. In the Witcher games Geralt is a monster hunter who has been hunting legendary monsters and demons for decades and can be killed by wolves and nekkers pretty easily at the beginning of every game and no one seems to have a problem with it. The specific point of Ciri's flashback sequences are to illustrate her growing control over her power via gameplay. This of course reaches a crescendo at the end of the game. But it serves as a difference between her and Geralt's gameplay styles. When the whole point of the gameplay is to illustrate this fundamental difference it kind of seems cheap to suddenly take away her powers not to mention makes Ciri less special. Especially when the whole point of Ciri's character is that she wants to be normal not special. So if she's depowered it makes her less special and undercuts her character, because at that point why not just be normal and boring because it's what she wants. She's special because she has the powers and her character is formed with that in mind. So you can't have her not be a teleporting god in the next game. Because uhhhh reasons. Also for nerds you guys don't care about power levels. At least my animes understood the importance of raising the scales rather than taking the scales away!
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Aug 28, 2015 16:11
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JaucheCharly posted:I've been told to get the german version of the books, and it wasn't a mistake. The writing is good and gets even better in the last books. Downsides: you need guesswork what monsters they're talking of most of the time, Dandelion is called Rittersporn and a Witcher is called Hexer. I'm reading the Finnish versions because they're getting translated faster than the English ones!
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Aug 28, 2015 16:13
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Her growing control over her powers doesn't have to be carried over in that specific way though. It's pretty normal to be a death god in a video game by the end then less powerful in the sequel. The point still stands even if it's fudged a bit for gameplay purposes, just like with Geralt's games. Also Ciri wants to be a witcher. Her wistfulness about a "normal" life in that one quest is not her actual chief ambition, and probably has more to do with the fact that she's already planning to do the thing with the White Frost and may think that her life will soon come to an end. And yeah I don't give a gently caress about power levels and I hope CDPR doesn't either. Geralt was killed by a dude with a pitchfork.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:14
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You don't have to take her powers away to make her fun or interesting to play as, and that wouldn't automatically make her overpowered if the game were designed around it.  I really don't understand why people find this hard to grasp.Also Ciri wants to be a Witcher, not be a farmer or whatever it is you're implying with your "normal and boring" comment. Even if she somehow lost her abilities, she'd still be able to stab things, and even in this game you hunt down and kill a werewolf before you she can do anything but use her sword. She was a proficient swordsman long before her ability to do whatever that thing was in act 2 sprouted into existence (she couldn't do that in the books). There is literally nothing about what she can do in either the books or this game that suggest she could not make for a good player character. In fact, everything about what she can do makes her seem like a way better and more dynamic character than Geralt. Hell, you could have her relearn how to do actual magic like she could do in the books. There's a lot of options and none of them are bad from a gameplay standpoint. She could still track, the game could still be open world, and hell you'd even have a legitimate excuse for a fast travel system.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:25
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Manatee Cannon posted:You don't have to take her powers away to make her fun or interesting to play as, and that wouldn't automatically make her overpowered if the game were designed around it. How could she track? She doesn't have enhanced senses.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:38
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She literally does track the werewolf in the first section you play as her. You could still give her the vision poo poo but change what you're following (no following scent because she probably can't do that, but she could still follow tracks and the like just fine). It's not like Batman has some special sense in his games that give him the ability to use the detective vision; it's not like the assassins in Assassin's Creed have special powers to allow them to use their vision.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:42
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Geralt tracked in the first two games before Witcher senses became a game mechanic. Ciri tracks in this game without them. People in the rest of the setting, and in real life, track without super human senses. They help, but they're not necessary. She also has some weirdo inherent direction sense as part of her whole Lady of Time and Space schtick but it only comes up indirectly in the games in a single optional dialogue line with Gretka. "Are you lost?" "No. I never am." Though said sense isn't very specific and she can't directly control what it's pointed at.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:46
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Manatee Cannon posted:You don't have to take her powers away to make her fun or interesting to play as, and that wouldn't automatically make her overpowered if the game were designed around it. I'm sorry I'm probably not explaining it as well as I could, but Ciri is special. Literally that's her whole deal. She's special so people want to use her cause she's so special. If you take away what makes Ciri special it would diminish the weight of her character because her conflict is her powers. I'm simply arguing that taking away her powers isn't good considering it's the crux of her character. It's like if Geralt wasn't a horrible mutant freak anymore. Well Geralt go be a cobbler or gwent champion or something. That being said you could design a game around her I'm just saying that it would have to keep her powers since it's essentially a progression of her character.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:49
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I think we all agree that a Ciri game where she doesn't teleport in fights would be an outrage.
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Aug 28, 2015 16:56
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The Sharmat posted:I think we all agree that a Ciri game where she doesn't teleport in fights would be an outrage. Yeah I can dig that. Edit: What the gently caress happened to the Digg button? Manatee Cannon posted:That's fair. Though there's only really one group left with a stake in her at this point: the Lodge. Which would be nice because you could finally have Phillipa be the villain. gently caress yeah (Act 3 Spoilers?)I'm still shocked that we never kill Phillipa in this game. TexMexFoodbaby fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Aug 28, 2015 17:00
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FauxGateau posted:I'm sorry I'm probably not explaining it as well as I could, but Ciri is special. Literally that's her whole deal. She's special so people want to use her cause she's so special. If you take away what makes Ciri special it would diminish the weight of her character because her conflict is her powers. I'm simply arguing that taking away her powers isn't good considering it's the crux of her character. It's like if Geralt wasn't a horrible mutant freak anymore. Well Geralt go be a cobbler or gwent champion or something. That being said you could design a game around her I'm just saying that it would have to keep her powers since it's essentially a progression of her character. That's fair. Though there's only really one group left with a stake in her at this point: the Lodge. Which would be nice because you could finally have Phillipa be the villain. The final quest could be called Kill Phil.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:02
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