He does actually, just not strapped to his back. The two swords on the back thing is purely from the game. To my understanding he is never described in the books( which the series is trying to follow )as wearing two swords at once. He just has two swords and the silver one is handled separately. If you watch closely you’ll catch a couple of glimpses at him at campsites wearing a sword and carrying a second bulky sword-size package, which looks like a protective case. Which considering how much more fragile a silver or even silvered steel sword would be makes sense.
Beyond that, well…even a single sword carried ready to use on the back is almost 100% a fantasy trope. Very occasionally massive late period( think Renaissance ) two-handers were carried that way to and from the battlefield with a strap because they were too big and unwieldy to be carried conventionally. Those were really used more like pole-arms than conventional swords.
But normal medieval one-handed or hand-and-a-half swords? Never. It simply doesn’t work well in combat situations as they’re really hard to draw that way. Really hard - far too inefficient for actual combat situations. They’ve proliferated in fantasy scenarios because it looks cool. But like horns on Viking helmets it’s a fantasy visual, not a real thing.
I think there are a couple of scenes where he does fight with two swords. More annoying for me was that he frequently dropped his sword, after the second time I was rolling my eyes at the guy struggling to hold off some monster while straining to reach his sword. It’s just not something that an experienced swordsman should let happen, constantly.
I liked the mixed timelines but wished I’d had some subtle cues - when 90% of the cast doesn’t age, you sort of feel cheated, unlike the twist at the end about Geralt’s imprisonment.
Perhaps. Probably, yes. That’s why I used the term “familiar”. Acquainted would also be apt. But let’s not ignore that the only reason there is a Witcher TV series is because of the massive success of the Witcher 3 for the PC (IMO). One of the best RPGs ever made BTW.
I was being facetious calling it garbage. The silver/steel sword duality is just a cool mechanic that was completely omitted in the TV show.
Not very well, in my case. I didn’t realize until episode 4 that any time jumping was going on at all. The fact that 2 of the main 3 characters don’t age exacerbates this.
When I got to episode 4, I was like, WTF? Geralt met this Bard guy a couple days ago and now they go to the ball where all the characters died in episode 1?? And Yennefer is in a carriage and just casually says 30 years have passed? (It wasn’t clear to me she was immortal before that). Seriously? Nothing noteworthy happened to this character in 30 years?? I thought she was lying to make herself seem more experienced than she was.
I ended up watching a YouTube video explaining the timeline after episode 4 because I’ve never been more confused by a TV show in my life.
I think more just very long-lived and they keep their looks intact literally until the day they die. Sort of like aging very, very slowly on the inside and not at all on the outside. The oldest known human mage apparently died of a heart attack at about 500 years old.
Witchers also apparently have pretty extended lifespans, but not as long as sorcerers and they do age slowly externally. Difference between a one-time radical mutation and constant magical touch-ups perhaps.
Not familiar with either the game or books. The jumping timeline seemed clear to me. What really got me interested was the tone of the first episode, where Geralt had to choose between a vengeful princess and a creepy wizard. He made his decision, but then the wizard basically told him ‘you’ll never know if you picked the right side’. I was kinda hoping for more of that ambiguity; the ep with the striga kind of edged up to that, but ended up focused on saving the striga rather than the beefs of the miners or the do-nothingness of the king.
I thought that the time jumps were setting up Yennifer as the power behind the rise of Nilfgaard, based on her being so deeply traumatized as a child. Nilfgaard comes off as more a boogeyman bad guy, despite some attempts to point out that everybody gets fed, etc. It could have been cool to delve into the banality of evil - at least the trains run on time - or get a better sense of why the White Flame is so captivating that it even turns some of the mages to the Nilfgaard side, suicidally.
In the end it was better than I expected for a sword-and-sorcery show but didn’t live up to the promise of the first episode.
The show does talk about using silver for monsters, steel for humans and he does have two swords so it is there. They just don’t hit you over the head with it.
“Natural” witcher lifespans are unknown, since apparently none have died of old age. Comes from having an insanely dangerous occupation.
I never noticed Gerald carrying an extra sword on his horse. If so he certainly never uses or mentions it. There is at least one scene that doesn’t involve Gerald where silver weapons play a role, so I agree it is there in that sense.
I finished watching and it was OK. I had much higher expectations. Some things I didn’t like and others still went over my head but I don’t think it is appropriate to discuss it in this thread because of spoilers.
I finished watching the series over Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it. At some point I will need to rewatch it with the knowledge of how the shifting timelines all align; I didn’t really realize that there was any time jumping at all until episode 3 or 4. I’ll echo what others have said in that the whole shifting timeline dynamic is not helped by the fact that 2/3 of the protagonists are essentially ageless.
I own The Witcher 3 but never played it (as is my tendency with a lot of video games, unfortunately), so I had no prior knowledge of the source material. I agree that the show relies too much on viewers having prior awareness of The Witcher mythos, and that is a knock against the series for sure. I will admit to having watched a few explainers online to try to catch up.
My biggest issue with the series has frankly been that so many of the characters either mumble their lines or speak in such a heavy accented drawl that I frequently could not understand what was actually being said. I was really paying attention and yet I still had to constantly rewind what I was watching just so I wouldn’t miss anything.
FWIW, the one scene that really stuck out for me throughout the entire season was that bit at the end of episode 2 with the eels. Seriously, WTF was up with that?! Why did that happen and why did it cause the castle to illuminate?
Also, could somebody here please articulate what exactly “the Conjunction” was? It was mentioned a few times on the show and it still confuses me.
One of the comments made was that “sometimes the best gift if giving ones life for others” - another (later in the series at the eel pond where they show LOTS of eels) is “unbridled chaos” - in training Yennifer - they talk about controlling chaos - so “chaos == magical energy” - converting the 3 to eels and throwing them in the pit == “battery power”.
Yup, they were not good enough to be full witches but had enough power to be worth keeping around to use as batteries. Pretty shitty and it certainly does not paint the council or the rectoress in a positive light.
Anybody not familiar with the source material know the second they saw her that yennefer was going to be transformed? Very obvious a hot lady was under that prosthetics.
You know she’s terrible from lesson one, where she teaches the kids how to levitate a rock, but doesn’t mention the flowers until one student withers her hand.
In the very first episode when he’s making a camp near the river (just before Renfri approaches him) Geralt pulls a long, narrow case off his horse. That’s the sword case.
In the scene where Jaskier first meets him, in a tavern where Geralt is having a beer/ale, the sword case is leaning against the wall of the tavern to the left (Geralt’s right) and very clearly shows two swords in it.
Obviously, you can miss these. As I said, they don’t beat you over the head with it.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/18273720/65e52d9c74708e7e2f54af46d1852d39.jpg){kind=link}