{"id":120479,"date":"2025-05-21T18:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T18:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/120479\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T18:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T18:33:12","slug":"celebrate-ten-years-of-the-witcher-3-by-finally-reading-the-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/120479\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate ten years of The Witcher 3 by finally reading the books"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt celebrated ten years of monster slaying on May 19, and publisher CD Projekt honored the milestone<\/a> with an anniversary stream starring Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle, a stunning new trailer, and The Witcher 3 price drops across platforms for those who aren\u2019t one of the 50 million who\u2019ve already purchased it<\/a>. Yet, while you may want to celebrate by booting up The Witcher 3 for one more hunt, consider instead diving into the books that provided the foundation for CD Projekt Red to build the games upon.<\/p>\n

I bought The Witcher 3 five years ago, but to avoid another Game of Thrones situation (where silly me watched the show before reading the books), I committed to reading the entire book series before installing the game. And I\u2019m so glad I did! Andrzej Sapkowski\u2019s two short story collections and six novels all tell an amazing story, as well as provide so much context and depth for the events of The Witcher 3.<\/p>\n

If you start The Witcher 3 without the knowledge of the books, you\u2019ll be unknowingly hindering the emotional impact of so many characters and quests in The Witcher 3. Take Geralt and Yen, for example. Their fates are literally tied together due to the events of the short story \u201cThe Last Wish,\u201d and Geralt\u2019s wish ensures they never stray from the other\u2019s orbit for long. Yet The Witcher 3\u2019s quest of the same name explores the wish\u2019s impact from Yen\u2019s point of view; it\u2019s left her with an uneasy feeling regarding what the two truly mean to one another, leading to one of the best quests in the entire game \u2014 one that I don\u2019t think can emotionally resonate with the same impact if you hadn\u2019t read about these two from their from first meeting onward. They\u2019ve both loved and hurt each other over the years, but are meant to be together, djinn or no djinn.<\/p>\n

Reading the short story collections and novels will also introduce you to some of the best supporting characters found in Witcher canon. The later books mostly concern Geralt\u2019s pursuit of a missing and fleeing Ciri, and along the way he\u2019s joined by his Hansa, a Fellowship of The Ring-like group of excellent supporting characters. While you certainly know Dandelion from the games, the Hansa also includes the heroic Nilfgaardian soldier Cahir and my personal favorite Milva, human ally to the majority-elven guerilla fighters Scoia\u2019tael. Each member of Geralt\u2019s Hansa has a captivating arc, and the books are perhaps worth reading for them alone.<\/p>\n

With The Witcher 4 too many years away<\/a>, now is the perfect time to dive into Sapkowski\u2019s eight-book series (with a ninth on the way!<\/a>). Not only will the books enrich your experience playing The Witcher 3, but they\u2019ll also provide context on why this saga was Ciri\u2019s story all along. Yes, the books are told mostly from Geralt\u2019s perspective and you embody him in the games, but his role in the novels is in part to advance Ciri\u2019s plot, to save her from falling in the machinations of evil men like Emhyr and Vilgefortz who want to use her and her Elder Blood gene to advance their own schemes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt celebrated ten years of monster slaying on May 19, and publisher CD Projekt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,2699,1583,128,391,546,342,53771,16,15,289],"class_list":{"0":"post-120479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fantasy","11":"tag-gaming","12":"tag-nintendo","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-pc","15":"tag-playstation","16":"tag-the-witcher","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-xbox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114547261817440293","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}