Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #20 on: June 14, 2015, 08:47:57 PM »
$70 dollerydoos for the Witcher trilogy. I love Mass Erect and Bioware RPGs in general. Should I buy it?

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Offline rooster

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #21 on: June 14, 2015, 08:52:26 PM »
$70 dollerydoos for the Witcher trilogy. I love Mass Erect and Bioware RPGs in general. Should I buy it?
In that case, yes. I usually recommend this game to people who love Bioware/Bethesda games. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 (don't hate) used to be my favorite games, but this trilogy beats them.

Saddam Hussein

Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #22 on: June 15, 2015, 05:49:28 AM »
Keep in mind, this whole story takes place in the Northern Kingdoms. And aside from that, racism is rampant throughout the series - it just involves humans and non-humans. So from a realistic stand point, there aren't going to be blacks in Northern Europe Medieval land and from an in-universe standpoint, they just have different races.

Oh, come on, it wouldn't have been hard for them to come up with a reason for some non-white people to be around.  There could be some travelers from a foreign land, maybe as part of a trade expedition, or even as refugees.  Also, the fact that the game is opposed to imaginary fantastic racism is not a defense to the charge of actual racism.  Anyone can make up a race that's completely unanalogous to real life and say, "The moral is, don't be racist, kids."  That's easy.  All you have to do is not imitate these inimitable jackasses and you're all set.  It's not so easy to write something that questions the assumptions that real people make, or the behaviors that real people perform.  Something that would, in other words, examine actual racism.  This silly comic gets it:

« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 05:22:17 AM by Saddam Hussein »

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Offline rooster

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2015, 10:40:57 AM »
You're right, they should have replaced the Scoia'tael with the Black Panthers so they could really examine racism. It just isn't the same if the people aren't actually black.

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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #24 on: June 15, 2015, 12:07:28 PM »
I thought video games were supposed to be fun.
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Offline Rushy

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #25 on: June 15, 2015, 02:05:30 PM »
Saddam brings up race so often I have a hard time believing he isn't an actual racist.

Offline Blanko

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #26 on: June 15, 2015, 02:42:48 PM »
Jesus, does every game have to explore racial conflict? Not everything has to be about race.

Rama Set

Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #27 on: June 15, 2015, 04:20:09 PM »
Jesus, does every game have to explore racial conflict? Not everything has to be about race.

Stop white-washing the plight of ethnic minority gamers.

Offline Blanko

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #28 on: June 15, 2015, 04:39:54 PM »
Jesus, does every game have to explore racial conflict? Not everything has to be about race.

Stop white-washing the plight of ethnic minority gamers.

I can't tell whether this post is ironic.

Regardless, it's frankly pretty egotistical and insulting for Americans to expect the rest of the world to share their burden (and I'm using that term in the loosest sense possible). They likely have no idea what Poland has had to go through in their history at all, yet they still expect them to care about America's issues? The world does not revolve around you.

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Offline Particle Person

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #29 on: June 15, 2015, 04:44:34 PM »
Jesus, does every game have to explore racial conflict? Not everything has to be about race.

Stop white-washing the plight of ethnic minority gamers.

I can't tell whether this post is ironic.

Would you like a hint?
Your mom is when your mom and you arent your mom.

Offline Blanko

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #30 on: June 15, 2015, 04:46:56 PM »
Jesus, does every game have to explore racial conflict? Not everything has to be about race.

Stop white-washing the plight of ethnic minority gamers.

I can't tell whether this post is ironic.

Would you like a hint?

Yes please.

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #31 on: June 15, 2015, 04:49:01 PM »
The post was ironic.
Your mom is when your mom and you arent your mom.

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Offline rooster

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #32 on: June 15, 2015, 04:52:36 PM »
But Saddam is the thought police.

Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #33 on: June 15, 2015, 06:27:48 PM »
So from a realistic stand point, there aren't going to be blacks in Northern Europe Medieval land and from an in-universe standpoint, they just have different races.

Just to clarify, I definitely don't think that it's weird for a game not to deal with race issues.  I only think it's odd for a game not to depict people of color (to the extent that people are represented at all in the game), and I think it's odd that so many games make that choice.  Depicting or representing as much of your potential customer base as possible has many benefits and virtually no opportunity cost.

I guess my whole thought on it is that perfect fidelity to either the history or mythology of the people living in early Medieval Poland is neither possible nor desirable, and I don't really understand what the opportunity cost is.  As in, I don't see what difference it would make to break from reality in that way.1  Fantasy stories already lose complete fidelity with history (there aren't going to be any elves, dwarves, dragons, or witchers in Slavic Medieval Europe), and Witcher as a series already doesn't maintain much fidelity with either Slavic history or Slavic mythology.

1It's unlikely that there were no people of color in Medieval Slavic Europe.  The Slavic states were trading as far away as modern-day Serbia as far back as 5000 BC (link), and by the tenth century there was a robust trade network between the Slavs and the Islamic world (link).  This network included both Islamic and Slavic slaves, and Islamic slave ships would sail as far as the Baltic Sea to acquire Slavic slaves.  Muslims, Mongols, North Africans, and Spanish probably weren't uncommon inhabitants of Medieval Europe.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2015, 06:29:19 PM by garygreen »
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Saddam Hussein

Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #34 on: June 15, 2015, 07:06:34 PM »
The Slavic mythology point in particular doesn't really hold up.  They throw in a few Polish terms and names, but overall the lore of the series is largely the same Tolkien/D&D ripoff that almost every modern fantasy franchise relies on.  This Polish guy agrees with me, so naturally I am going to take his word as gospel:

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2015/06/04/witcher-3-and-diversity/

To clarify, though, I don't personally have a problem with the lack of non-white people.  I just think that a lot of the excuses that some of the more dedicated fans have come up with to explain why it was very important that there be no non-white people are pretty silly.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 12:34:49 AM by Saddam Hussein »

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Offline rooster

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #35 on: June 15, 2015, 08:13:04 PM »
The black people in LotR were antagonists. There just aren't that many black people in high fantasy. So even going based on that, the "excuses" really aren't that silly. Just change Slavic mythology to generic high fantasy and you get the same argument.

Which, by the way, a lot of high fantasy comes from various mythologies anyway.

Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #36 on: June 15, 2015, 08:17:46 PM »
The Slavic mythology point in particular doesn't really hold up.  They throw in a few Polish terms and names, but overall the lore of the series is largely the same Tolkien/D&D ripoff that almost every modern fantasy franchise relies on.  This Polish guy agrees with me, so naturally I am going to take his word as gospel:

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2015/06/04/witcher-3-and-diversity/

To clarify, though, I don't personally have a problem with the lack of white people.  I just think that a lot of the excuses that some of the more dedicated fans have come up with to explain why it was very important that there be no non-white people are pretty silly.

Well, this other Polish guy wrote a counter argument to that article.

https://medium.com/@adrianchm/on-the-witcher-3-and-racial-quotas-in-art-e6a9f594439

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #37 on: June 15, 2015, 08:36:32 PM »
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the Redguards were all killed off sometime shortly before the start of the next Elder Scrolls game, and we'd only have the glorious white skinned humans left because fuck diversity? lol.
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Offline Pete Svarrior

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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #38 on: June 15, 2015, 10:03:54 PM »
The Slavic mythology point in particular doesn't really hold up.  They throw in a few Polish terms and names, but overall the lore of the series is largely the same Tolkien/D&D ripoff that almost every modern fantasy franchise relies on.
It's funny, 'cause you've got this completely backwards. Fantasy is derived from folklore and myth. Now, European folklore has its similarities from place to place, mostly due to trade, some fluidity of borders (where/when the concept of "borders" even applies) and thousands of years of semi-common heritage. I imagine that's where the confusion comes from, what with you having been primarily exposed to American history education. In any case, saying that the Witcher reproduces Tolkien is just about as idiotic as to say that The Passion of the Christ reproduces elements from Disney's Hercules.

To clarify, though, I don't personally have a problem with the lack of white people.
I'll assume that by "white" you mean "black". If that's the case, congratulations. Why are you getting your jimmies so rustled about it, then?
« Last Edit: June 15, 2015, 10:06:19 PM by SexWarrior »
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Re: The Witcher Series
« Reply #39 on: June 15, 2015, 10:20:38 PM »
I think it's just Saddam rather than an education problem. I want to say that I've told him in IRC before that almost everything in fantasy can be traced back to some mythology but maybe he wasn't there.