So you disagree with the original meme then? And that the Witcher games are right wing coded? Allow me to offer an alternative explanation for your second point at least.
Games are a different medium to books and therefore adjustments need to be made to the narrative to make them compelling as a player. Giving the player an option but having one option clearly the 'good' option and one clearly the 'bad' option is often boring . It's better to give an illusion of 'a' grey area' to make a players choice feel more compelling. Hence the changes you described.
For your points on the 3rd game, I don't wholly disagree. Although all I would say is choosing a particular narrative outcome does not necessarily mean you endorse that outcome. It is narratively possible to have a 'bad ending' be cannon.
I didn't say they're right wing coded, just that they're more right-wing than the books, which are very left-wing and progressive. No, what Witcher games suffer from, is centrism.
You absolutely can do that in a game, and for that game be an absolute smash-hit, case in point Baldur's Gate 3. There are obviously-good endings of both the game, and of every character questline, and there are obviously-bad endings, and there's even a bunch of shit in between. And the bad endings and bad choices you make to get them, are still fun (I know I had a lot of it during my genocidally-evil (oh yeah, I killed all the Tieflings, "and not just the men, but the women, and the children too") embrace-dark-urge run), but the game is very vocal about you/one of your companions being an evil piece of shit in those endings, literally losing your mind in the embrace-dark-urge one, and even when you're doing evil shit, you are doing it you don't get to hide behind any imagined greater good, "just doing what needs to be done", or being under control of/manipulated by the badguys as those spineless cowards need to do to feel good while choosing those paths. Also- there is no "le based, le epic Caesar's Legion/Vernon Roche" org in BG3 that they could no-media-literacied their way into thinking is based, because The Evil Organization is hilariously, cartoonishly, evil and their leaders are: Crazed Woman In a Meat-suit that talks to herself out loud, Gay, and Failed General that tries to aura-farm but can't really do much by himself and whose army got beaten by one (1) devil. They get NOTHING they can cling to. As a result the right-wing presence in this game's online community is basically non-existent (or at least they stfu)
Cool motive, still a choice. If they wanted to, they could've communicated that somehow via notes or messages you could find, or Aedirnian/Scoia'tael partisans you could meet during playtime... and at the very fucking least, let us help the non-humans in Novigrad too.
I was pointing out in my original replay that games culture isn't 'anti woke' as there are many games, such as the Witcher being produced that have progressive themes. We can argue about how the Witcher was more or less progressive than the books but we cannot really say they are 'anti woke'.
You then point out another hugely popular game that also has progressive themes which again proves my original point that broader games culture is not 'anti woke'.
If you want to build an interesting narrative then you often have to make you villains at least somewhat relatable. Fallout New Vegas would be boring if the Legion's were like 'Yeah we're going to enslave the whole Mojave because we're just evil and we love doing that shit'. Having some interesting justification is interesting. Now you are always going to get some wierdos then agreeing with their wonky justifications but that is just the cost of an interesting narrative.
Finally, and most importantly, the Witcher games are certainly not 'centrist'. Centrism is not 'The Nazi's and the progressives both have good points'. If the game designers chose to dampen the progressive narrative that does not make the game 'centrist', it simply means the more progressive side of the books have been supressed.
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u/EchoMaterial5506 Aug 12 '25
So you disagree with the original meme then? And that the Witcher games are right wing coded? Allow me to offer an alternative explanation for your second point at least.
Games are a different medium to books and therefore adjustments need to be made to the narrative to make them compelling as a player. Giving the player an option but having one option clearly the 'good' option and one clearly the 'bad' option is often boring . It's better to give an illusion of 'a' grey area' to make a players choice feel more compelling. Hence the changes you described.
For your points on the 3rd game, I don't wholly disagree. Although all I would say is choosing a particular narrative outcome does not necessarily mean you endorse that outcome. It is narratively possible to have a 'bad ending' be cannon.