...But not about to like, play three video games and read seven novels to find out what's going on with all of that.
I have finally assembled the list of videos that were recommended to me to watch for the video games stories! I made a tumblr post and then realized, hey, Dreamwidth folks might also be curious, so! Here they are!
These are all, afaik, "game movies" in that they're edited together from cut scenes & recorded gameplay, but do not include any voiceover/commentary from the person playing, so no fear of getting That Dude dumping his opinions all over the place. For instance. Not that I ventured alone into YouTube and immediately had that happen or anything. O_____O
Anyway! Witcher videos!
The Price of Neutrality, 45 minutes (which is probably in Witcher Extended Edition somewhere–it’s a side quest available with the first game, set before any of the main action of the games, and explains how Geralt's witcher bff Eskel got his facial scars–you spend the whole quest at and around Kaer Morhen, so you get to meet the other witchers who show up in the rest of the games. Also idk what version of these events happen in other playthroughs, but this one is the least-bad ending.)
http://youtu.be/Pj1ffdyn-6A
Witcher 1 in 3 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHwa-7LBfV4
Witcher Extended Edition, 21 hours in two parts:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLXCEGthdRE
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzL5AKlpgTQ
Witcher 2, siding with Roche (the ending that Witcher 3 seems to presume you went with), 6.5 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSvYe28_hdY&t=3s
Witcher 2, siding with Iorveth (he’s the leader of an elven guerilla resistance; I watched a recap video where the guy described him as a Black Lives Matter activist and then was bewildered to realize that the guy doing the recap considered that a negative character description), 6 hours in two parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULlas6__w4Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsYQ4XN7Mc
Witcher 3, the long version, 20 hours in four parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMG8Sm4YGfM
Witcher 3, cued up to the part where Geralt gets shaved and bathed and dressed up to meet Emhyr (about 15 minutes for the grooming + imperial audience bits):
https://youtu.be/XMG8Sm4YGfM?t=4056
Blood and Wine, the Witcher 3 sidequest (or post-quest? timelines are… fuzzy) in which Geralt hangs out with his old friend Regis and gets a nice retirement villa and stuff, 6 hours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylpp9PXTE0
I haven’t actually watched the majority of these, but they’re the ones recommended to me for ficcing purposes! :D If you watch The Price of Neutrality and/or Witcher 1 + Witcher 3 cued up to the part where Geralt gets shaved and bathed and dressed up to meet Emhyr you will be be at least introduced to the characters I’m mostly writing about!
Speaking of--weirdly the biggest pairing for fic is Geralt/Yennefer which I guess is not weird from any perspective other than "I'm here because I started reading slash about Geralt" because they're kind of the OTP of the books & games, but also Yen suffers a bad case of being a Complicated Woman Written By A Straight Dude i.e. she's kind of awful to Geralt a lot of the time. For reasons! But also: kinda awful. Also their entire relationship is founded on a non-con soulbond that Geralt inflicted on her, not clear how much Geralt understood of what was going to happen, but they had never managed to make this work as a functional relationship for any extended period of time in the twenty or so years they'd been dealing with it before they sort of both died and then Geralt got resurrected with amnesia after sacrificing himself to save Yen, so, uh, yeah. There's that.
ANYWAY. For slash pairings I think Geralt/Regis is actually the most common, then Geralt/Emhyr, and Geralt/Iorveth and Geralt/Roche also exist. Geralt/Eskel has 21 fics on AO3 but I'm working on it.
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