When Adrzej Sapkowski created The Witcher in 1986, he had no idea it would one day become a best-selling video game franchise that would ultimately spawn spin-off anime shows, a live-action adaptation, and a supersized cult following that would span the world.
Fast forward to today, and Sapkowski is still penning Witcher novels, but his opinions regarding the games that have pulled so many eyes onto the franchise over the years are somewhat sour. In a recent AMA on Reddit, Sapkowski revealed that the games and shows will never top the original books he wrote, and that one core element of the games shouldn’t even exist.
Witcher Schools Don’t Exist and Shouldn’t Be a Thing
In The Witcher, players can explore a range of ‘Witcher Schools’, which are categories that witcher characters align themselves to, taking on various attributes and skills familiar to that school’s identity. For example, Geralt of Rivia belongs to the ‘School of the Wolf’, but there’s also Bear, Viper, Manticore, and more.
In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, players can explore the open world and collect armor items aligned to these schools, amongst other things.
However, the concept of the ‘Witcher School’ is null and void according to Andrzej Sapkowski, who has been writing original Witcher content since the mid-1980s and who created the persona of Geralt of Rivia.
In a recent AMA on Reddit, one user asked Sapkowski about the ‘extra Witcher schools’ added in the game series and asked if more would be added going forward. By way of a response, Sapkowski went deeper than any other answer provided:
The issue of “witcher schools” requires—I apologise—a longer explanation. A single sentence about some “school of the Wolf” mysteriously made its way into The Last Wish. I later deemed it unworthy of development and narratively incorrect, even detrimental to the plot. Therefore, later I never included or referenced any Witcher Gryffindors or Slytherins again. Never. However, that one sentence was enough. Adaptors, particularly video game people, have clung to the idea with remarkable tenacity and have wonderfully multiplied these “witcher schools.” Completely unnecessary.
I’m still uncertain about what to do with this situation. Perhaps, taking the path of least resistance, I’ll erase the sentence about the “school” from future editions of The Last Wish. Or maybe I’ll want to expand and clarify the matter somehow in subsequent books? Perhaps I’ll shed some light on the issue of Witcher medallions, their significance, and their connection to specific individuals? There are many possibilities, and the sky is the limit.
Sapkowski later bagged on the adaptations of his creations:
There’s the original and then there are adaptations. Regardless of the quality of these adaptations, there are no dependencies or points of convergence between the literary original and its adaptation. The original stands alone, and every adaptation stands alone; you can’t translate words into images without losing something, and there can’t be any connections here.
Moreover, adaptations are mostly visualisations, which means transforming written words into images, and there is no need to prove the superiority of the written word over images, it is obvious. The written word always and decidedly triumphs over images, and no picture – animated or otherwise – can match the power of the written word.
The Witcher schools don’t add too much to the series in terms of gravity and impact, but it has been pointed out how much The Witcher 4’s initial branding relied on Ciri’s medallion, which signifies the school that she belongs to. Fans were quick to make their guesses about Ciri’s school when the game was revealed earlier this year.
The latest Witcher novel, Crossroad of Ravens, is out now and available for purchase. If you want to get started at the beginning, you’ll need to scroll back to 1990 to pick up the first novel in the series.
Let me know what you think about Sapkowski’s comments on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that a GTA fan has been harassing staff at Rockstar North’s Edinburgh office
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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