211
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
211 points (99.5% liked)
Asklemmy
48021 readers
812 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Witcher 3 the game is a fine place to start. I'd say you can start in any of the games and Book 1 the Last Wish, Book 2 Sword of Destiny, or Book 3 Sword of Destiny. The games were in line with the books cannon but telling there own story. The popularity of the games made Sapkowski write more and they have now diverged somewhat. Here are some notes on all of them as far as a starting place.
Last Wish (book): Short stories based on classic stories. Good intro to the world and the writing style. No main plot so it can be skipped or read later without much problems. The Sleeping Beauty story is the opening cinematic of Game 1.
Sword of Destiny (Book): More short stories but we introduce a lot of the main characters in the rest of the books.
Blood of Elves (book): This is where the main story of the Witcher starts proper. After this you should read them in order.
Witcher 1 (game): Game play is ok but I think has the most interesting ideas and storytelling. It has the choose between two bad choices and find out later what the effect is. It doesn't spoon feed you the lore and there are lots of hints about what is going on you can catch if you are paying attention. For example echinops grow where terrible crimes were committed if the crime wasn't atoned for. Every place you find a echinops growing is a clue as to the nature of what happened there.
There is another great non obvious story element that I love. I think it's more fun to know this and see how it plays out in the game. I recommend reading the spoiler but it's up to you.
Main Villain
Alvin the boy who almost dies in the barghest attack in part 1 is also the main villain Jacques de Aldersberg. Towards the end of the game Alvin goes back in time and grows into the adult Jacques de Aldersberg. The various things you say to Alvin will change what Jacques says during the game. And when you kill Jacques at the end you use your silver blade. He looks so upset saying "That sword is for monsters."Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings (game): Improved gameplay with much more focus on combat and combat mechanics. Better graphics. Ok story but nothing compared to 1. The combat is very hard early and is required so that can be a drawback.
Witcher 3 Wild Hunt (game): The best game as far as gameplay. Fun lots different things to do and a solid story. It's a very Ciri focused story and thus can spoil some of the books somewhat. As far as a starting place you are going to have a lot of fun but it does throw a fair amount of characters at you and expect you to know them. Also the spoiler from 1 is specifically confirmed at one point so if you don't want that beware.