The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition Editorial
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The Witcher novels are apparently heavily grounded in Slavic mythology, but nothing I saw in The Witcher 2 felt at all distinctly Slavic, other than the low-hanging fruit of a Russian-accented, vodka-drinking troll. Then again, I played The Witcher 2 for only six hours; it's possible that by hour 10 you find yourself in the middle of a Baba Yaga boss fight. Some Witcher 2 fans will undoubtedly claim that six hours are not enough to give the game its full due. To that I say: If you've suffered through six hours of an experience and remain unhappy, you're either (1) playing a video game, or (2) in prison.
I'd like to make some friendly recommendations to the world's fantasy video-game developers. For one thing, there's no such place as England in fantasy worlds, much less an accent-determining English class system. Weirdly, Geralt, The Witcher 2's hero, doesn't have an English accent; neither does his mage girlfriend, Triss,2 or his bumbling narrator friend, Dandelion. So why does everyone else? As Admiral Ackbar so memorably said: "It's a trap!" Yes, this Englishization of fantasy worlds is one big trap, if only because it unavoidably locks you into a certain high-fantasy Englishness. Developers and casting agencies could show a lot more daring, audacity, and imagination in sonically populating their worlds, especially when the fantasy world in question has Polish provenance, all of which makes the slovenly guards that sound like Ringo Starr and the dwarves with tongue-spraining Scottish brogues that much more frustrating.
Speaking of dwarves: no more dwarves or elves, please, ever again. I realize both are mentioned in Sapkowski's books; that's actually part of the problem. Tolkienified speciation is getting near nine decades old, and Tolkien himself must be, with Earl Scruggs, the most imitated artist in history. Let's all just forget Tolkien happened, shall we? Tolkien is wonderful, yes so wonderful that his world should be allowed to rest in conceptual peace already. We are sorely in need of some new fantasy tropes, especially in a year during which Skyrim, Kingdom of Amalur, and The Witcher 2 all appeared back-to-back-to-back. We've got elves coming out of our pointy ears. Peter Molyneux's Fable games have their problems, certainly, but his decision to set a fantasy game within an industrial-revolutionary period and give characters firearms as well as swords looks more and more like the most interesting conceptual makeover that fantasy video games have been given in recent years. You see? It's not that hard.
Special thanks to RipTen's Dave Oshry for tweeting about it.
