Witcher Goals

This one is pretty self-evident, n'est ce pas?

I have never played the Witcher 3.

I know.

I tried to play the first game way back when, and after playing for maybe an hour and getting hopelessly lost in the opening area, and not being used to the controls on the computer, getting log jammed by the combat system, and having a pretty piss-poor gaming pc in general, I just ended up quitting in frustration and mild relief in the recognition that this game really wasn't all it was cranked up to be, which meant that I didn't need to give it any more of my time.

Fast forward to rave-reviews of the Witcher 3 and glimpses of some stunning graphics with an incomparably immersive open world and gameplay involving swords and monsters and I figured that maybe, yeah, I should get this one. Oh, it's based on a series of books, you say?

Well I'll read those before I get to the game then.

 Fast forward some time again, with now the Game Of The Year Edition of the Witcher 3 out, so I end up buying it on an off day.

But still it languishes on the ps4 to-be-played shelf because I still haven't read the books and there's no real incentive is there? It's probably very good but so are other books and games.

Fast forward to... The Witcher is getting an honest to god television series... Meaning it's going to hit the mainstream, and meaning, for compulsive reasons, I won't be able to view it before I've at least read the books... Aaaaaand so here we are. It's the hipster gene, once again.

I've already begun reading book 1: the Last Wish, which seems to be a collection of stories within some sort of framing device that isn't quite clear yet.

It's easy to read and rather engrossing. I've forgotten how much fun reading a novel with a bad-ass male protagonist is. You'd think it would be logical, don't you, but as a dude I like reading about dudes. And the more capable, no-nonsense, and bad-ass the protagonist is, the better.

So, it's first this one then the other. Both are (somewhat) short story collections.

Then come the 5 'main' novels, the saga if you will, all about Geralt and Ciri. Don't know much about this yet and I aim to keep it such until I read them.

After that come these three.

Which will be, either read during or before I'm playing the game somewhere.

There's also the Seasons of Storms novel which should be out in english somewhere around now, and taking place somewhere in between the stories of the Last Wish, but as the Bookdepository is coy about which is which, and I definitely want the Orbit version so it neatly aligns with the rest of my trades, I'm holding of on that one and just diving in without regard or that particular one.

Could be it's the one that releases on the 6th of november, in which case; yay! A birthday present!

A gratuitous amount of pictures, you say? 

You're right, I respond, and here's another!

The only question is really how much time I'll be giving this here in the blog.

I've picked these to read mainly because of the compulsion thing, but I confess that I'd like to not worry about writing about a book when I'm reading a book, for a change.

I mean, at this point I'm about 5 months behind on Time and the Gods... 

There's certainly going to be a post or two when I finally hit the gaming side of things, but I'm an ideas guy rather than a plot and character one. I'll just have to see if something special comes up.