Slavic themes. Which Witcher is best? Netflix vs. CD Projekt RED

And here, again, the first episode – this time showing a village. Like one from Gothic 3.

A kind of bonus and the icing on the cake. No, we do not claim that Witcher adaptations must necessarily have Slavic character – but we decided to include it here nonetheless. So how is it? I'll spoil it for you: the game wins. The Witcher 3 has Slavic rural landscapes in Velen, Slavic features of peasant culture, Slavic origins of proper names. Remember the Pellar's quests? Or the quest on the Fyke Isle (the tower, whose owner was eaten by mice?) – both very Slav.

These additions made The Wild Hunt expressive and unique. The same cannot unfortunately be said about the universe shown in the series. Here, Netflix shows generic fantasy land, which tries to imitate the gloominess of Westeros from GoT so hard that it forgets to create its own identity. In fact, this depiction feels like it can't even fully decide whether it belongs to low or high fantasy – on the one hand, we have poor villages where worldly life takes place, on the other hand, there are places like Aretuza.

I appreciate the fact that original names (such as Jaskier) were preserved, though! This is indeed a nice decision from Hissrich. You can feel a kind of perverse pleasure listening to Jodhi Mai (Calanthe) cripple her tongue trying to spell the name Chociebuz, and Henry Cavill combats alien consonants every time he addresses Jaskier (rather than Dandelion!). A trifle, but pleasant.

Which was more Slavic?