Witcher III: Wild Hunt Review, Part 1 - Story

 I meant to finish this (this part, anyway) a lot earlier, but everything sort of ganged up on me and so I didn't go as quickly as I really wanted to in writing this. It's also... very disorganized, and I had envisioned doing much more with it--I mention later on in the essay that I had originally hoped to do this in even MOAR parts, with each major character getting full analysis, but let's be real here, there are so many characters in the game that doing that would take even longer and I'm stretched out as it is.

So here it is: the first part of my review of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. I don't think the next part will be out next weekend, but hopefully it won't take as long.

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PART I: STORY

My intention was to write a review for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt when I started it. But part of the problem with that is that it’s a massive game, so there’s quite a lot to talk about and it’s going to take a while to unpack.  I’m splitting this up into sections, and those sections might be split into subsections. Before we get started a couple of disclaimers:

First: I have read only three of the books in the Witcher saga, and I have played neither of the previous two games. So while I often say you shouldn’t have to read/watch/play supplementary material to understand plot points, the previous entries in a series don’t fall under that category. So I may complain about how something is handled or explained, but if it’s covered better in previous media then consider my criticism with a grain of salt.

Second: I tend to lean away from dark fantasy as a subgenre. It’s not my thing most of the time. I didn hear a lot of good things about this game and found it on sale, so that’s why I got it, but while I did enjoy myself greatly, this isn’t the type of story I usually go for.

So! Let’s start by talking about the Plot of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt! In a slightly condensed way:

The story picks up after the end of The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings, where Geralt gets his memory back and has been searching for his love interest from the books, Yennefer. He’s also been having dreams about his adopted daughter Ciri, and thinks she’s in danger. He does find Yennefer quickly enough, and they’re drafted by Ciri’s biological father--the emperor of Nilfgaard, the invading nation bent on world domination--to find Ciri, as she’s been seen in the area.

So it’s up to Geralt to track down Ciri in the last known locations she’s been seen: the war-torn no man’s land called Velen, the cosmopolitan and corrupt city of Novigrad, and the rugged islands of Skellige. Along the way he runs into a LOT of old acquaintances, and new ones, and finds out that Ciri’s being chased by the Wild Hunt, an army of extradimensional elves that hope to use Ciri’s incredible powers to take over the multiverse, which would also kill her in the process.

Geralt eventually does find Ciri, and tries to gather all of his allies to make a stand against the Wild Hunt at the witcher fortress of Kaer Morhen. But while they do survive and Ciri doesn’t get taken, Geralt’s mentor Vesemir bites it and the Wild Hunt escapes to fight another day. Geralt and company then form a plan to lure the Wild Hunt somewhere in which they can’t escape, and cut off all of their backup from their home dimension, leading to a climactic battle in which Geralt fights and kills Eredin, the King of the Wild Hunt.

And then Ciri destroys the White Frost, this extradimensional winter force that goes around destroying worlds or something.

THE END!

Unless you get the expansions. The first one, Hearts of Stone, has Geralt get involved with a disgraced Redanian nobleman named Olgierd von Everec, who turns out to be unkillable because he made a deal for wealth and power with an unsavory being calling himself Gaunter O’Dimm. Gaunter helps Geralt, so Geralt has to in turn help Gaunter fulfill Olgierd’s contract: grant three impossible wishes, and then Gaunter gets to take Olgierd’s soul, for which Gaunter will grant Geralt any wish he likes. However, Geralt can interfere and try to save Olgierd instead, and defeat Gaunter in a game of wits.

The second expansion, Blood and Wine sees Geralt traveling south to the duchy of Touissant. The duchy’s being terrorized by a monster killing high-ranking knights, and the duchess has hired Geralt to investigate and kill it. Turns out that the creature’s a Higher Vampire named Dettlaff, and then Geralt’s old previously-thought-dead vampire friend Regis turns out to be Dettlaff’s friend and encourages him to investigate further to find out why Dettlaff has gone on a killing spree. It turns out to be about more than it seems--Dettlaff’s being blackmailed into killing knights, and the blackmailer has more than just killing aristocrats in mind, shaking up the entire duchy with the ambition of overthrowing the established order.

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Alright, so let’s talk a bit more about the game’s Plot and how it works. After the introductory section in White Orchard, you have the three main regions (it’s kind of two, as you don’t need to go to a different part of the map to go between Velen and Novigrad, but let’s just stick with what the game tells us): Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige. The investigations in all three regions can be done in any order. I did them in the order they’re levelled at, and they’re listed in the story, but the player doesn’t have to.

This first part, which is helpfully labelled ‘Act I’ by the game’s wiki, is also the majority of the game’s Plot. Most of the game will be spent exploring these areas and dealing with the tangle of subplots there. And so when Geralt finally does find Ciri, the story feels a bit… rushed? And of course, yeah, things should pick up after that happens, but it feels a lot like most of the game is slow build, and then it’s one major battle after another. Maybe it’s just because I also do quite a lot of the side content, but going from hours upon hours of Plot interwoven with deep and complex character arcs to straight battles felt a little jarring to me. There’s a scene between Plot sequences which is where you can tell Ciri that the Emperor wants to see her, and it’s so awkwardly sandwiched in between important cutscenes that I thought I missed something, or that it would come up again more organically later.

Again, that’s not too much of a complaint, because naturally the story picks up after a certain point. But it’s weird that it all comes rushing together at once when the beginning of the game is much slower paced. Then again, I did get annoyed at the slow beginning at first, because it felt as if as much fun as I was having, the story was barely progressing. I’m kind of thankful that it picks up.

I was worried that I would be lost when playing the game. I have some basic knowledge of the setting and the Witcher stories, having watched the series, and read the first three books. But that wasn’t really a problem? I suppose it couldn’t have been--this game being as popular as it is, I don’t think everyone that played it and enjoyed it had gone through all of the material. And I’m glad. I don’t know if it was easy to make a game that was a conclusion to the Witcher saga and yet still accessible to noobs, but I very much appreciated it. 

Not everything is explained in a way that satisfied me--the White Frost for instance. It’s explained in-game, but it feels a bit hastily put in towards the end of the game, and if you didn’t read any of the in-game books it feels right the fudge out of nowhere. Pretty much everything about the Wild Hunt’s origins and backstory, including most information about the Aen Elle, felt as if it wasn’t given enough breathing room to be developed. The histories and relationships of countries that weren’t Redania or Nilfaard were all a bit hazy.  Yes, there’s an in-game glossary and database, and that helps, but that mostly just gives you the gist of things, and there’s clearly a lot more going on. Again, I suspect that if I read all of the books and played the previous games this would have worked better, but as it was I just kind of nodded and hoped it would become clearer and only some of it did. Most of it wasn’t necessary to understanding the Plot, or the game, so it wasn’t a huge stumbling block, but it is a problem I had.

THEMES

Human Nature & Morality

I got very frustrated with this game’s very dim view of humanity and morality, but to its credit, it makes for a very interesting and unexpected experience. Most of the people you meet in the Northern Kingdoms are selfish jerkfaces, happily calling Geralt a freak to his face until they need his help killing a monster. Several times you are given a quest where even if you make the “Good” choices, a ton of people get horribly screwed over in ways you never could have foreseen.

It is… irritating, to say the least. The Church of the Eternal Fire embodies this the most for me--they somehow have an iron grip on the city of Novigrad, happily burning mages and nonhumans, and the common folk are happy to let them because humans are sheep unless they’re named characters. Novigrad is explicitly under the control of crime lords who think very little of the Eternal Fire, but somehow they still hold institutional power because they’re sponsored by Radovid (who also doesn’t have institutional power in Novigrad, we’re told).

The Bloody Baron questline embodies this writing at its best. The story involves Geralt’s interactions with a local warlord called the Bloody Baron who is, quite frankly, a horrible person. He is looking for his missing wife and daughter, and when he hires Geralt to look for them, he conveniently leaves out that he would frequently get drunk and beat his wife. Also his men frequently commit war crimes. He is not without noble qualities--when he never harms children, and he helps Ciri when she’s in trouble. And he does show genuine remorse for what he’s done to his family.

Is that enough? Does that mean he gets a pass? That’s up to you, the player. The game doesn’t depict him as a good guy. It doesn’t portray him as a completely evil guy. But it doesn’t whitewash what the man has done, or what he’s still allowing to be done in his name. How you react to him depends entirely on how the player feels about him as a person. I don’t know if you can decide to let him off the hook completely--and I don’t think you should. But whether or not you give some measure of understanding when he tells his side of the story, or whether you decide that he’s still the Worst, that’s on the player, and that’s great.

It helps that there are two different endings to his storyline, neither of them particularly good for the Baron. One of them has more hope for him redeeming himself, true, but not in a simple or clear-cut way.

So yes, I do get frustrated with the way the game is so much of a downer, thematically. But it leads to some very complex and interesting human interactions and I appreciate that the game is brave enough to go there.

The DLC Blood and Wine is a bit more optimistic in its depiction of human nature (along with a more colorful world), but it still has a lot of stories that rely on people being absolutely terrible to each other. The ending can also very easily be made a mess of without even trying because of how terrible people (mostly Syanna) can be.

I think it’s executed pretty clumsily at times though. The treatment of Nilfgaard by the story comes to mind. Nilfgaard, a massive invading empire happy to commit war crimes and that’s never happy with enough land or territory, in a video game developed by a Polish game studio, based on a series by a Polish author, practically screams Soviet and Nazi parallels. And yet while the game doesn’t depict them as nice, it kind of lightens their depiction from what I remember in the books. They’re depicted as not a good, but a better alternative than Radovid’s madness and extremism.

When a game makes a villain a genocidal religious extremist maniac turned up to eleven, and dials down the canon fascist/authoritarian traits of another villain, I feel like we run into a problem. Because it seems like they’re saying, “Yeah, it’s a brutal authoritarian dictatorship, but at least they’re not racist zealots!” 

I don’t like that this dichotomy is even a question. And toning down the side of authoritarianism don’t sit right with me. 

War

Part of the reason that everyone’s so horrible to each other and to you, the player, is because there’s a war going on. It brings out the worst in people. Part of that is because of sheer desperation--many of the resources are being commandeered by soldiers and people are getting killed right and left. And part of it is because there are nations and ways of life falling apart because of the war, and obviously that’s going to put a lot of stress on the citizens of the Continent. 

War brings out the worst in people.

We don’t actually see any major battles in the war, but we see the aftermath. Velen is scattered about with ruined villages and battlefields littered with corpses and carrion-eaters feasting on what’s left. You’ll find bandits and deserters throughout that are picking through what’s left. Bodies are hanging from gibbets and trees of criminals and deserters. It’s a very bleak place and it adds to the atmosphere of a world that’s fallen so far from where it should be. It makes an oppressive atmosphere, one that’s suited for the story they’re trying to tell. Because this isn’t just high fantasy, it’s high fantasy with quite a lot of horror thrown in. And much of that horror isn’t monsters, or rather, it isn’t JUST monsters--it’s the conditions that allow monsters to thrive: the rampant death and destruction brought on by war. 

Still, I think the war storyline leads to some really stupid moments? There’s a questline you can pursue about assassinating Radovid, the king of Redania, because he’s crazypants. And it’s fine, but at the end of the storyline, it’s revealed that the conspirators made a pact with the Emperor of Nilfgaard to kill Radovid, and that in return their country, Temeria, becomes a self-governed province of the Empire. And then one of the conspirators decides he’s going to kill your friends so that he can rule Redania and defeat Nilfgaard in the war, because he doesn’t want his country to be sold out just so Temeria can exist. Which is a fair point, but killing Geralt’s friends isn’t a smart plan; it hinges on Geralt walking away, when the reason he joined this assassination plot in the first place was so that he could help his friends. I can’t imagine why any player would just walk away unless they really wanted to know what happened. War brings out the worst in people sometimes, yeah, but not that much stupid.

Public Opinion

Public opinion has a lot of sway on what people do and how they interact with each other. The most prominent example of this is when we learn that the invasion of the Northern Kingdoms isn’t actually all that popular back home in Nilfgaard, and that one of the Emperor’s worst fears is that he’s deposed by his people once he gets back home. If you end the story in such a way that he loses the war, that’s exactly what happens--he gets assassinated as soon as he gets back.

There are plenty of people who hate Geralt on sight because he’s a witcher, and nobody likes witchers that much. And that’s fair--they only kill monsters for a price, and in a war zone not everyone can pay that price. Furthermore they had a habit once upon a time of taking children as payment, hoping to train future witchers, and most kids don’t survive the process. And the reason they stopped taking them was not because it’s bad, but because the process to make more has been lost.

In short, getting good PR is essential. There aren’t a lot of people who thrive despite having bad reputations. Building and keeping a good reputation, even if you’re a complete bastard, is a large part of how those in power stay in power. And having a bad reputation even if you’re very noble can get you in trouble, or even killed.

One thing that did kind of bug me is Geralt’s fame. There are times when it seems as if plenty of people know who he is--after all, Dandelion is his PR guy, and that man’s the most famous bard and troubadour on the Continent. Other times Geralt introduces himself and no one has a clue who he is. And I get that before widespread media not everyone everywhere will have heard of him, but even with that in mind it’s pretty inconsistent how famous he is. It tends to be “Geralt is as famous as the Plot needs him to be for this particular story/quest to work.”

Still, it’s a cool concept to explore in a fantasy story. Not a brand new one, of course, but one that fits perfectly with the world as it’s built.

Relationships

You can play Geralt as the most ruthless, heartless, inhuman bastard imaginable, and he’s still humanized by his relationship with Ciri. You can’t change the fact that he cares about his adopted daughter and wants to help her out. Sure, you can be a terrible father, but it doesn’t mean that Geralt doesn’t care, just that he’s bad at it.

There’s a running idea throughout the story that yes, people can be utterly terrible, but what brings them back, or gives them a shot at bringing them back to the light, is the love they have for others. Maybe it’s parental love, like Geralt and Yennerfer for Ciri, or Strenger for Tamara; maybe it’s Syanna’s twisted love for her sister Annarietta (if you play the cards right). 

Heck, the Emperor of Nilfgaard is humanized (slightly) by the love for his daughter.

The characters who are irredeemable are the ones who aren’t connected to anyone; who can’t connect with anyone. Cyprian is a serial killer that gets his kicks murdering a different batch of prostitutes every night, and no one cries if he gets killed or if he’s a beggar in the street getting pelted with rocks by children. Caleb Menge is only interested in hurting people because he’s so paranoid of nonhumans and mages that he won’t connect with anyone. 

When these connections are lost are when we risk losing our humanity. When Geralt thinks Cyprian might have killed Ciri, he gets pretty scary. And in the ending in which Ciri dies, he becomes a much colder killing machine. When Syanna is convinced that her sister doesn’t love her, she becomes a power-hungry murderer. When Detlaff finds out that he was never loved in the first place, he becomes omnicidal. And of course Olgierd can’t--what makes him monstrous is that his deal with Gaunter turned his heart to stone. And even though he knows that he should care about people, he can’t, so he gives up and just tries chasing thrills to try to feel something, being an absolute bastard.

Humans need other humans to be… human.

CHARACTERS

Okay so in my head, I told myself I’d do an in-depth profile on every major character. And then I started listing characters distinct and important enough to do profiles on and HOLY FATHER FRANCIS this game has a ton of characters and if I’m hoping to get anywhere at all with this review, we are not doing that. 

I’ve talked a bit about how this game has complex characters and I like that, but also that the game sometimes goes into dark or morally complex places when it doesn’t need to in order to make it grimdarker (??) for the heck of it. For instance, Djikstra comes to mind--he’s an incredibly intelligent, if ruthless, former spymaster-turned-crime lord that decides to kill Radovid for turning the country to garbage. And he immediately turns on his allies the first opportunity he gets, not counting on Geralt interfering because… we need the Conflict Ball here, I guess. It makes his character arc in the game feel less than fulfilling.

For the most part though, even if I don’t like all the character writing decisions, I get that I’m not supposed to--and I can choose to make Geralt react in a way that somewhat reflects my own reactions. I very much enjoy that Geralt’s character arc is heavily determined by player choices. Geralt can be a hero of the downtrodden, and I think the game subtly steers you in this direction with the way that the story goes. But you don’t have to go that way at all. You can make Geralt the biggest jerkwad in the history of the Continent, ignoring when people are in trouble, or demanding more money from people who are offering their last pennies to you to kill a monster.

Yennefer is… alright let’s get straight to it: she’s kind of terrible. She’s aloof at first, and I get that because she’s concerned with finding Ciri and doesn’t have time to sit and reminisce with Geralt about old times, especially considering she’s still a bit upset about Geralt having a romance with Triss while she’s been out. And I think, after playing this game, I get what the romance between Geralt and Yennefer is supposed to be: these two very flawed individuals who nonetheless are trying to make a relationship work despite their own flaws, and making it work through all of the difficulties. Thing is that Yennefer has some incredibly unsympathetic moments of dickishness or pettiness that made me think, “Wow, you’re not someone I really want to be around.” Mind you, I still steered Geralt towards her because I’m a stickler for canon, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing.

The third point of this love triangle is Triss, who the game very much paints as a nice, sweet girl who just wants to help the downtrodden whenever she can and also happens to be an incredibly powerful sorceress and also is madly in love with Geralt even though they broke up a little while back. Which okay, makes her a very distinct option from Yennefer. But what this overlooks is that (from what I understand) Triss took advantage of Geralt while he had amnesia and couldn’t remember Yennefer. This is glossed over in a quick bit of dialogue and Geralt doesn’t hold it against her, but it’s still a thing that happened, and while complex characters are fine, it’s frustrating to ignore that complexity in order to make the love triangle a more conventional one to the audience.

Ciri is a good character, but like I said, it seems the game doesn’t develop her enough on its own. As a character she stands out, but she’s not in most of the story, and her powers are so vaguely-defined it sometimes feels like she’s exactly as powerful as the Plot needs her to be. The ending involves her fighting the White Frost by herself and destroying it, but I have no idea what that entails, why she’s the one to do it, and how she does it. This might be another one of those ‘I should have read all the books’ thing, but it seems like something that should have been given more details.

Given that she’s essentially Geralt’s daughter, and she’s the one the entire Plot of the saga hinges on, I figured she should have more. It’s not too egregious considering she’s given playable sequences, and once she’s physically in the story she takes up a large part of it. And the times when she’s not there are almost entirely about trying to find her. I just wish I had a better handle on her relevance to the setting. Mind you, her role as a character is very well defined--I was never at a loss as to what she meant to Geralt, Yen, or Triss. And I think it’s commendable that the writers managed to get that across even for people who aren’t superfans of the novels.

Eredin is… not a fantastic villain. Maybe he works better for book fans, but for me, most of his motivations and backstory are only referred to and not very well explained. So he’s just some generic bad guy that’s trying to get Ciri so he can take over the multiverse. I think? From what I can tell he’s also the de facto king of elves from his home dimension, which doesn’t sound right to me, but we’re only given one other elven politician there, Ge’els, and he seems more like a steward or chancellor than a king.

Baron Strenger is one of the best characters in the game. Not in that he’s necessarily fun to watch, or that he’s a cool guy (because he’s not), but he’s one of the most complex characters I’ve seen in a video game and the freedom with which the player gets to judge him is really interesting. It’s not pleasant, but I think his storyline is the best in the game? Yeah, he’s a garbage man, let’s not diminish that. But in the end he realizes that. 

I wanted the other witchers to get more screen time than they did. They’re really cool characters! Even if Lambert’s a douchebag. They did get a fair amount, but once the siege of Kaer Morhen is over, they’re gone too. And that’s a shame because I would have liked to have seen Geralt interact with them more, or see a few other witchers. The idea presented in the early books that witchers don’t have emotions is clearly simply not there in this game because there isn’t really an attempt to have them be emotionless. Which is fine--most writers are very bad at writing supposedly emotionless characters.

I also desperately wished to see Geralt and Letho hang out more, though I don’t really think there’s any good reason for them to do so. Really, once I read up on this guy’s story I wondered why Geralt would even talk to him.

The Skellige characters are all right. I felt like they were a bit disconnected from the main story, and I’m still very unclear how they’re related to everything? I know that they know Ciri, but I don’t quite know how or why, even though I know she spent some time there when she was young. Why did she go to them? Why are they all cool with Geralt? I dunno. If it is explained in-game, I don’t remember it now. They’re all cool, interesting characters, and in some ways a more thoughtful look at the ‘viking warrior’ type of character and why that isn’t always great. 

I thought about dedicating a different section to the DLC characters, but I’ve already dipped into a bit here. So I’ll talk about some of those characters; however, I should note that the villains in the expansions carry so much more depth than the main villains of the main game’s Plot. Which is impressive, considering that the expansions’ runtime is shorter.

Olgierd is an interesting case of a man who sold his soul, because he has no emotions, but he remembers what they felt like, so he keeps trying to feel them again. There’s the lovely bit of dialogue between the dog and cat:

“At least he loved his wife.”

“He didn’t. He only remembered that he should.”

Which is a thing I feel like a lot of writers don’t think about when they write characters who have lost emotions.

Gaunter O’Dim is a terrifying character that works (for me) precisely because most of what characterizes him is implied rather than outright said. It’s quite plain to the player that he’s the Devil, but it takes quite a while for Geralt to get there. He’s a fantastic villain, even if he doesn’t have anything against Geralt personally, because you know that you can’t trust him from the start and he’s so unimaginably powerful that he doesn’t have to actually use any of his offensive powers to be scary. But when he does use his powers, he’s one of the most horrific monsters I’ve ever seen in fiction.

Annarietta, Duchess of Toussaint, is a nice contrast to the nobles of Velen and Redania, as she’s someone that is actually apparently good for her country, and despite the fancy trappings of nobility isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty in the pursuit of her nation’s good. But her pride still sometimes gets the best of her, and the fact is that her nation puts her up on way too high of a pedestal. Which she sort of buys into sometimes? Like yes, it gets annoying, but it’s supposed to, and I don’t think it’s bad writing.

Regis is… another book character I don’t know. But I liked him. He’s a bit too apologetic on Detlaff’s part, but it’s clear theirs is a friendship that Geralt isn’t a part of and so of course from the outside it doesn’t make as much sense. He’s a likable enough vampire character, and one that thankfully isn’t an angsty douchebag. It’s way too common to see that kind of character, even in fiction that’s meant to be subversive.

Detlaff is a great villain because as his story goes on you find out that he’s not really that bad of a guy at the start. Yeah, he’s temperamental, and lashes out at people, and in a Higher Vampire that’s dangerous. By the end of the story he’s become a rabid animal that has to be put down--but you can find yourself hoping that there’s another way.

Syanna is a bit of a difficult character for me because she’s kind of a garbage person? And yes, as you interact with her throughout Blood & Wine you see why she’s a garbage person, but it seems very much like the “good” ending is letting her get away with a lot less punishment than you’d expect, and that’s… a bit frustrating. Not that I wanted Syanna to die horribly, but she caused quite a lot of suffering and I get that many players probably don’t think she deserves just being imprisoned for it, but that’s the only way for you to have a “good” ending for that storyline.

CONCLUSION

This is a game that I think would have been more rewarding in its story if I had a lot more familiarity with the source material--both in that I would have better ideas behind events and character motivations, and the themes might feel more familiar to me. 

[Hearts of Stone didn’t really have that much of a problem in that regard, because it’s clear that the story of that mostly goes into new territory for Geralt as well.]

It is, however, extremely impressive how much of the story doesn’t feel confusing though. We’re about nine installments into the story, and I, someone who has only read three of those installments, didn’t feel completely lost in the world or the story. And clearly plenty of people agreed with me, because this game won tons of awards, acclaim, and sales. It makes me reflect on plenty of other long-running serieses, both in games and other mediums, that cut back on continuity and story in order to appeal to newer players at the expense of telling stories that make sense (coughAssassin’sCreedcough).

The story has some noticeable pitfalls, especially once you start digging into the details. I can chalk most of these up to the constraints of time and technology when building a video game. There’s clearly a lot that didn’t make it into the final game, but what is there is pretty astounding. Writing a game this complex, with this many outcomes and choices, is an amazing achievement and I think even if there were aspects that I didn’t like, overall it’s one of the greatest games, in terms of writing, that I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

Next part will talk about gameplay. 

Telling Stories from the Villain's Perspective

 I sent a guy to Hel in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla; in my defense he absolutely deserved it after deciding to Blood Eagle a dude for kicks and backstabbed a friend of mine. I’m still mad at him, and this happened last Sunday.

Anyhow, I got my first covid vaccine, which is a thing to be thankful for. 

I had thoughts on Zack Snyder again, about how he sees his protagonists as mythological heroes rather than superheroes, and thus he takes his characters in a direction that most superhero filmmakers are afraid to go to, but that’s not necessarily a good thing and he doesn’t seem to get that not everyone is onboard for his Hot Take.

Last night I dreamed I was still in grad school but I was skipping classes. And also I was New Game+ing the Witcher 3? Fighting off rotfiends? Except it was life, I think? [shrugs]

Also I think I’ve written something like this before but we’re doing it anyway because that’s what is on my mind and I couldn’t think of anything else. There was going to be a bit on Testament of Loki I think, but I wasn’t sure how to put it in.

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Telling the Story from the Villain’s Perspective

Very often, there come trends of telling stories from the perspective of the villain. The problem with this is that very often these retreads is that they often try to make it so that the villain is actually the hero. This is… not a great way to do these stories.

The main example that leaps to mind here is Maleficent. I said this in my review of Maleficent back after I saw it in theaters, but the main issue with the movie is that it doesn’t want Maleficent to be the villain. The movie turns Maleficent from a villain to a straightforward hero (if one with bad publicity) and doesn’t have her do anything too villainous, lest you decide you don’t like her. Her curse towards Aurora is switched from death to eternal sleep.

Also she doesn’t turn into a dragon which is LAME.

The whole point of telling the villain’s story isn’t to rewrite it so that the villain is actually the hero. It’s to tell the villain’s story--it’s to give us a perspective on the story we already know that we didn’t consider before, adding circumstances and characterization that gives much more context. In an age when stories are much more character-driven, many people don’t like the idea of a villain that’s evil just for the sake of it, a character who acts a certain why because “that’s just the way this person is.”

But Maleficent rearranges the entire story so that not only is Maleficent sympathetic, but she was never really wrong to begin with. She hardly did anything wrong. And the people who don’t like her are mostly jerks anyway, so it’s alright. Her casting a murder curse on a child is wiped from the story, as is her calling on the powers of Hell and having an evil army at her side.

You know what did a great job of telling the villain’s story? Once Upon a Time’s first season.

Look, after season one, Once Upon a Time was… not good, but I still maintain that it’s first season was brilliant and very well done. Everything I’m about to talk about relates to that first season and any complaints from afterward don’t apply here.

[Side note: even after I had publicly given up on this show, and I hated how critics seemed to love it, I never minded its fanbase? Because this show was bonkers, and the fans all knew it, so I couldn’t hold that against them.]

Regina is a terrible person, and the show doesn’t pull back from showing us that. And yet there is an entire episode dedicated to showing how she got there--her abusive mother, how she blames Snow for something bad that happens, and how it all spirals from there. The show doesn’t justify her malice, but it gives that character context that makes you understand why she got the way she did.

Now granted, this is a show and not a movie, and thus has a lot more time to develop characters, but the reveal of why Regina hates Snow so much is in one episode near the end of a season--an episode that’s shorter than a movie’s run time. And given that Sleeping Beauty already exists, I think Maleficent easily could have done a better job.

Telling the villain’s story should give us much more, but it shouldn’t make the villain into a hero (unless it was already a story with moral ambiguity, which is another thing entirely, I think).

I’m thinking about this in part because I recently reread Boxers & Saints which actually starts with the villain perspective, and although Little Bao (a fictional leading character in the Boxer Rebellion) begins the story sympathetic it devolves until he and his followers are essentially a nationalist terrorist movement slaughtering men, women, and children across the Chinese countryside. The author has talked about how he’s writing a protagonist that’s all but said in-story to be a terrorist (and this book came out in the early 2000’s I think??). The story isn’t making him out to be a good guy. Just… a guy with good motives that does some terrible things to try to make it happen.

Very rarely do I like the ‘Villain was actually the hero’ kind of story. There’s Twisted from Team Starkid, but that’s deliberately a parody of Wicked, Aladdin, and also the relationship between Disney and Pixar.

I am very wary of the upcoming Disney Cruella movie, because I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was another movie doing this exactly the wrong way as outlined above. That, and as is pointed out in Twisted, it’s very difficult to do a sympathetic take on a villain whose stated goal is to skin a bunch of puppies to make clothing out of.

Complex characters are fine. But just switching the villains into being the heroes isn’t the same as having complex characters. It’s just switching the labels and hoping that’s enough to make a new and compelling story. Which it generally isn’t.

Also you know just tell more original stories.

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Age of Unreason Discussion

 Storm on Thursday was kind of a dud, which is good. Also in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla the Ostara Festival event is going on!

I have some Thoughts that are circulating around my head about Zack Snyder and all, but as I have no intention of watching the Snyder Cut (I have no HBO Max so I have no legal way to do it right now anyway), and I don’t think I have enough material for a full Note on that, we’re going to talk about this book series I just finished instead.

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The Age of Unreason Discussion

Some spoilers ahead. I don’t think anyone cares, but thought I’d put that out there.

The Age of Unreason by J. Gregory Keyes is a quartet that runs on this premise: instead of the late 1600’s leading to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, Sir Isaac Newton’s forays into alchemy bear fruit and blossoms into an explosion of alchemical science that takes the world by storm. Through alchemy, people are able to send messages across the world, create more efficient firearms, build flying ships, and in the case of Louis XIV, extend one’s natural lifespan. However, the use of aetheric science has grabbed the attention of otherworldly spiritual beings, and most of them don’t seem to like humanity very much! Realizing that the best way to destroy humanity is to get us to do it ourselves, they quickly find ways to turn nations against each other wielding weapons unlike anything seen in the real world.

It’s pretty hardcore sometimes? 

It is one of the weirdest alternate histories I’ve heard of. I picked it up after trying Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson and getting disappointed, because I really like the idea of a story about alchemy in the Enlightenment, and that one was just really boring. This one, on the other hand, dispenses with realism pretty quickly and just throws a bunch of historical figures in as characters. From the get-go, one of the protagonists is a young Benjamin Franklin, who naturally becomes an adept at alchemy and journeys to England to escape an evil warlock.

Also I really like alchemy. Not enough to go too deeply into it, but enough to draw alchemical symbols all over my notebooks.

I imagine that this series would be even more rewarding if I were more of a scholar of the time period, in the same way that Here, There Be Dragons is incredibly delightful to readers well-versed in classical fantasy and science-fiction. Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, Charles XII, Peter the Great, James Oglethorpe, Voltaire, Tomochichi, and Louis XIV all appear sooner or later. The second book has Cotton Mather team up with Blackbeard of all people. The author’s clearly having fun throwing these characters together and seeing what happens.

Perhaps one of the interesting things about this series is it’s portrayal of colonialism. Obviously I wouldn’t go so far as to say it doesn’t happen anymore, because it definitely does even in this alternate history. But as the story goes on, and the conflict grows bigger and more unavoidable, the barriers of race and nationality start to break down. With resistance, but by the end of the series they’ve reached a point in which all men are more or less viewed as equal (still sexism though!). I thought this was maybe more optimistic than maybe history merited, but then again, maybe it’s not optimism--it takes the coming of the END OF THE WORLD for the people of this time period to realize that slavery and genocide is bad…. Well, that’s a ‘Better Late Than Never’ sticker if I ever saw one.

Mind you, while a couple of Native American characters take center stage, I don’t think any of the leads are black, even when freedmen make up a large portion of the forces fighting against the villains. So points off there.

I very much enjoyed that the nature of the spirit beings in the story is kept kind of vague. There are some answers, and characters do get some progress in classifying them--Isaac Newton decides to start calling them ‘malakim’ after Biblical angels and Adrienne and her students start working from there. But their nature, their relationship to God, if there even is a relationship to God, is all left muddled with theories, half-truths, and confusion. One of the malakim admits she doesn’t remember their origin for sure. Leaving it up in the air for this kind of story was the smart move, on Keyes’s part.

I did think that the story also has some things I really didn’t like. Adrienne, one of the main characters, basically has everything constantly dumped on her all the time, and it’s kind of tiring and exhausting. Which is part of the point, I think, that as a woman scholar in this time period who is suddenly thrust into the spotlight she keeps getting what she actually wants taken from her, but really? She gets raped by the King of France, falls in love with a guard who then dies shortly after they sleep together, and then falls in love with a married man who (predictably) dies before the story’s over. There had to be a way to convey her story other than making the character go through all of that, I think. She is a strong character, and I like where her arc ends, but I’m not sure that it was necessary to go through all of what she did to get there.

The series also ends with all of the alchemical science no longer working. Which is a bummer, I think, because all of that stuff was cool. I didn’t mind too much however, because we see that Ben Franklin and a few others are interested in pursuing what is probably real-world science, and the geo-political landscape of the world has changed so much from our own timeline that the world as presented in the books still feels like a fantastical one. I would be interested to know what happens afterward, though in broad strokes rather than another novel or series; after all, without the magic, I don’t know that there’d be much point to the story.

I liked these books. They were mostly fun, though they weren’t perfect. The author took his premise and ran with it, and had as much fun with it as he could while it lasted. And I think that’s something more authors need to try. Yeah, Peter the Great invading Venice with a fleet of airships is ridiculous, but it’s also one of the coolest things I’ve had the pleasure of typing, and that’s only one of the insanely awesome things that happens in this series. The series begins with the French plotting to nuke London, and it only goes weirder from there.

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Robin Hood Adaptations

 So I’ve begun the next sporking chapter but I can’t promise that there will be any quick progress. There’s also someone’s story I’m supposed to be proofreading some more, and Camp NaNoWriMo is next month (EEK). So we’re in for a fun time, I think. Also, I should do my taxes, shouldn’t I?

I’m not sure how I landed on this as a topic, other than I’ve been seeing video updates on the upcoming heist game Hood: Outlaws and Legends and I figured that I don’t think I’ve written a Note on Robin Hood. And if I have, it’s deep in the archive somewhere and I only know of a couple people who want to go digging through that, and I’m not sure that I’m one of them.

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On Robin Hood Adaptations

Alright boys and girls, let’s talk about Robin Hood.

Robin Hood adaptations have had a rough time of it lately. The last movie, starring Taron Edgerton was… not great, and apparently Edgerton himself wasn’t happy filming the movie, as he felt like it was a completely different thing than what he signed up for. It uses some very interesting design choices to not-so-subtly give you modern overtones about the story, and they got Lars Anderson to be the archery consultant for the movie.

Lars Anderson, the “I’ve only just discovered this method of historical archery that no one else has ever noticed and I’m the only one doing it right” guy. Yeah, him.

There was a Tumblr post that postulated that the problem with Robin Hood film adaptations is that they’re all trying to make the Robin Hood story into a social commentary on modern day, into this massive clash against The System, in which Robin leads the underdogs into a battle against the status quo. And it doesn’t work because that’s not what the story is. We know that’s not how the story goes, because most adaptations set the story at a specific point in history and if you have a grasp of English history, you know that oppressive monarchy wasn’t overthrown around the time of the Third Crusade.

He’s not even really the right build for it, is he? He’s not leading armies, he’s leading a group of guerilla fighters. The movies that really, for me anyway, sold a big battle at the end were the ones like Adventures of Robin Hood where he’s giving backup to King Richard, not just going in to save the country by himself. He’s less Superman and more like Batman (or Green Arrow, but that is an intentional parallel on DC’s part)--he deals with crises, but he’s not exactly battling to save the world. Or the country. He has his one cause he cares about (admittedly a big one with all its various facets) and that’s what he takes care of.

[Side note: look up essays on Robin Hood and its influence on Arrow.]

And it’s never as if Robin is even that much of a revolutionary. Yeah, he’s fighting for the people, but not to like, end the system. It’s to end the rule of Prince John, at most, and that’s so Richard can come back and take his rightful place. It’s not about overthrowing the monarchy or feudalism or anything of the sort. Not that it has to be, but it’s hard to argue for a revolutionary hero when the only actual change he advocates is who is wearing the crown.

Which reminds me, by the way: all of this “King Richard vs Prince John” business isn’t even necessary to the story? Look, most of what we know about the “legend” of Robin Hood and its popular depictions are heavily influenced by the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. The Third Crusade setting, the Saxon vs Norman conflict, the loyalty to King Richard, the association with the word ‘Locksley’--while I don’t know if Scott introduced these elements, he’s the one that codified them, and the interpretation we see today comes heavily from the novel Ivanhoe. A lot of the older stories don’t mention these elements. They’re either set in a non-specified point in history, or mention King Edward.

There’s no reason that Robin Hood adaptions need to have the usual setup of the Crusades. It got popular in the last twenty years because the parallels to a certain war in the Middle East was too much for some writers to pass up. And to be clear, I don’t necessarily mind--the 2006 BBC series brought up Robin’s time in and disillusionment with the Crusades a lot, and while it was very heavy-handed and built on pop cultural ideas of the conflict rather than any deep dive into history, I think it’s good for there to be a mainstream character who says hating Muslims for being Muslim is Bad. This was a much bigger deal when that series came out.

But when done badly it’s just awkward. The 2018 film tried way too hard to draw those parallels by making the ballista fire and sound like machine gun turrets, and the Crusaders’ armor look suspiciously like modern combat gear. There’s even a character calling in an airstrike, except it’s catapults.

Also the Saracens have a deal with the English Church to keep the war going for Reasons I’m sorry this movie was mostly really dumb and I’m just saying you don’t even need to do any of this. Stephen Lawhead’s King Raven is Robin Hood as a Welshman in post-Conquest England, and it works while adapting many of the elements to that setting. I would very much like to see more screen adaptations do something like this. Most of them do the usual story for the sake of it. The past couple try to be origin stories for sequels that no one wants.

Before Ridley Scott picked up his Robin Hood movie, the script in development was apparently called “Nottingham” and was centered on a sympathetic take on the Sheriff solving medieval murder mysteries that Robin Hood had been framed for. That didn’t happen because the production crew didn’t think it would sell--and to be fair, I don’t know that they’re wrong. 

Still, you can make this a smaller movie. You don’t need a Robin Hood movie to be an epic battle about the fate of England. This is where I think a television approach generally works better--although, as we see with the 2006 Robin Hood on BBC, it can also go very wrong if the writers care more about dramatic twists than telling a good story. But movie or show, I think a Robin Hood movie would be better if it was more episodic, more interested in telling smaller stories about how the Merry Men met and various missions.

I don’t need a battle for the heart and soul of England. Those are okay, but I don’t think they’re what Robin Hood really needed. He certainly doesn’t need a movie to be a prequel/origin story. If he did, we have plenty of those anyway. I want more movies of Robin Hood as the scrappy guerilla fighter. I want to see him have adventures in the woods. I want to see him pulling off medieval heists. I want to see plenty of ridiculous but completely possible trick shots. It doesn’t even need to be a light-hearted story (although I would like that I think), but I think these stories would be better if they just tightened their focus to something smaller.

Anyway that’s my two cents.

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Plot Over Character

 Good day! I probably have the song “Hunger” by Florence + the Machine stuck in my head because that’s a thing that’s been happening recently. Also I keep seeing headlines about cancel culture and what it means and this is weird because we started this conversation on Tumblr at least half a decade ago and now it’s entering mainstream--not for the first time, but on a much 

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about the Obsidian Trilogy. Which is pretty darn good, despite the fact that I’m going to be somewhat critical of it today.

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Plot Over Character

If you’ve taken a writing class, or read writing advice books, or just picked up someone’s rant on the Internet, you’ll notice that today, there’s a tendency to prize good character writing above all else. We have to understand the characters we read and watch or else we won’t care about their adventures. This isn’t actually the approach every author has taken to writing a story throughout the history of literature and art.

To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s okay for writers to forget to give their characters distinct personalities. But character development is a secondary to the Plot, or that character motivations aren’t what drive the Plot forward. And that’s fine.

The really big example is something like the film Excalibur, a retelling of Arthurian legend that’s not very concerned with character arcs. Oh, they’re there, but they’re not the focus of the story. The movie’s less concerned with getting into any of the characters’ heads and more into portraying the King Arthur story as cinematically as possible. And because of that, it’s able to cover, however briefly, a lot more material than most Arthurian adaptations. There are a few movies that cover the beginning, or the ending, of Arthur’s reign. There are a butt-ton of these movies that are laser-focused on the love triangle (and to be clear, Excalibur tells that part too). But Excalibur goes from Uther’s reign to the end of Arthur’s.

Likewise, right now I’m reading the Obsidian Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. Character is not the series’s strongpoint. Which again, isn’t to say that it has terrible characters. It has some pretty great and memorable ones, actually (SHALKAN!). But it isn’t a character-driven piece, and the story isn’t too interested in developing those characters in a way that feels as if it’s driving the story.

For instance, our hero Kellen finds out that he’s a Knight Mage towards the end of the first book, and at the beginning of the second book he’s admitted to the Elven battle school so that he can learn how to use tactics and strategy along with his newfound combat prowess. We don’t actually see a lot of this training, because the Plot kicks in, but it does happen. But it feels a bit jarring that he rapidly becomes a very prominent officer in the Elven army, one with a pretty solid grasp on strategic maneuvers. In part because of his powers, I guess. But mostly because Plot said so, so we can’t bother stopping and asking too much about how his knowledge of these things develop, we’re busy fighting the Endarkened.

Again, this is in part explained by his powers, and in part because he’s had some training off-screen, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s been developed. It feels as if the character’s development has taken a backseat to making him do what needs to be done for the Plot. And it’s a good Plot, but I’d like to have seen how he gets this good, rather than him just being this good.

Likewise, we have Vestakia, a character who looks like a demon but has a human soul, and grew up in isolation because her mother and aunt wanted her to not be killed by demons, but also because everyone’s going to look at Vestakia and think she’s a demon. Despite this, after the initial prejudice is overcome by most of the people who meet her, she doesn’t really have any issues about this? And when she finds out that Kellen’s avoiding her because he finds her attractive, and he’s in the middle of a one-year-long vow of chastity/celibacy, she just finds it amusing. I found this a bit weird, as I figured someone who grew up alone from society and being called a monster by most everyone who looked at her would have more of a reaction to finding out that there was a guy who thought she was hot.

Also considering she’s Kellen’s love interest, for most of the second book, there is surprisingly little in the way of building their relationship? After that bit at the beginning they hang out together just fine without any awkwardness or really that much between them. And this is a bit weird, considering they end the trilogy deeply in love, and also this entire main story takes place within a year. This should be developed here!

And so I think that this is a good fantasy trilogy, it’s a bit lacking in the department of character writing. There are novels that work very well without being very character-driven too. American Gods (the novel, not the television adaptation) is also very Plot-driven, and while Shadow’s got character, a huge chunk of the novel is just him passively observing the weird stuff around him. A lot more happens to him than he actually does to the characters or world around him. He notes that after finding out his wife died while cheating on him, everything else is a bit less of a surprise. The television series deliberately changed his characterization to make him a less reactive protagonist.

American Gods is more of a showcase of American culture, a roadtrip through Americana. A story like Excalibur is a film that’s retelling a legendary story that’s been told a bajillion times over again and is covering tons of material. It’s more noticeable in Obsidian Trilogy because A) I’m rereading it years later and also B) because it’s framed as a character-driven story in its setup and style, but it’s really not. Being more Plot-driven is fine, but the story has to be geared that way, with a Plot. It has the time to have more character development, as they’re novels, but they just… don’t.

Learn what works and what doesn’t. Learn which stories are better suited to being Plot-driven, and which are better character-driven. And remember that being the former doesn’t give you the excuse to not have strong or interesting characters.

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