Witcher Saga [Part 2] Thronebreaker

[@tomjones8859]

This is personally my favourite Witcher game in it's narrative, writing and acting. I really consider it the one where (if you care more for plot than gameplay) it's the Witcher game you should start with. I really hope they do more of these set in parts of the world we haven't seen such as one set in Nilfgaard during the early stages of conquest or following how Emhyr/the Usurper became Emperor or even one that has you play as a general that builds up to the Slaughter of Cintra on the Nilfgaardian side. This could also be a cool way of seeing places beyond the boarder like Ofir and Zerrikania with Pretty Kitties invasion of the desert nation and just generally being more risk taking away from the mainline series. Anyway, onto my notes.
A general thing I did was try to cut out a lot of inclusion of monsters where possible. This means outside of Mahakam and Angren the only monsters encountered are a couple of Ghouls and a Manticore (I think) as the first encounter with Ghouls in Lyria is cut and encounter with the Gravehag and Leshy were also removed to keep this. I did this because in the books it's mentioned that monsters are becoming incredibly rare and often aren't much of a problem anymore. Thronebreaker is clearly set over a long time and even short distance travelled in gameplay amount to days of travel in universe but I still wanted them to be very infrequent and I carry this into all of the future parts.
In the books Queen Meve is described as having greyish white hair but a young face for her age, and light green eyes. Her eye appear more blue or grey in the game and obviously she is given a more youthful appearance most of the time. Personally I would have preferred her hair was greying a bit in a similar way to Reynard as I believe they are roughly the same age but it's more of a small nit-pick. For her personality she appears to be quite violent and aggressive at times but sympathetic and caring at others. I generally tried to use the phrase "she ruled with an iron hand, not fist" as my point of reference. Sympathetic towards non-humans and cares deeply for her subjects and people, hates traitors, will sacrifice others to get what she wants. A few of her more brutal moments like leaving a crashed wagon of her men in Mahakam and hanging a cowardly traitor got cut for time and pacing but it does make her a little more kind hearted and caring with few moments of brutality. However between the Northern rulers she is considered the most wise and cunning of them so I tried to keep her smart and understanding.
[Spoilers]
When Black Rayla leaves around 02:47:22 I was struck with a question as to where this falls in the timeline for her. Rayla is captured in Aedirn by Elves who cut off her hand, mutilated her face, and due to the stress her hair turned white and she became White Rayla. However she can stay with you all the way until the wars end. I can only assume she is supposed to get captured after leaving Meve's army in Mahakam as is captured as she goes back into Aedirn on her way to a pass by the Pontar River towards Redania. Then again, in Witcher 1, despite going by the name White Rayla and being described as scared in the journal she appears as she does in Thronebreaker. This is because her model was made when the game was supposed to be a prequal not sequel however perhaps the plan on retconning her scars into never existing or maybe this was just a slight oversight on the structure of Thronebreaker. Also her line at 02:45:18 about non-humans staying in their lands is either a writing error or an in-character error as non-humans only have Mahakahm with Dol Blathana likely not established yet or only just established as Nilfgaard just took Aedirn. Only the Dwarves and Werebbubs primarily live in Mahakam while the rest live in mountains that are part of human lands. They don't really have any lands for them to live in. As I said, could be a writing error or logical error that Rayla chooses not to consider.
In Angren I played around with the order of some side quests before confronting Caldwell to try and start having the tone become more and more grim before getting into Ysgith helping to bring that grim tone that it was going for translate in the video as I think while it's nailed in the game, the cutscenes alone don't manage to bring in as much of that tone for some reason.
At 07:34:55 I switched the Scoia'tael encounter and the encounter where the Rivian's slaughter the Nilfgaardian prisoners so that the line "for the queen had grown weary of choosing between two evils" to fit with the fact that you don't make any more actual choices after that point. In the games order you get the line that she is done choosing and then have to choose again. Kinda thematic but I think would have worked better if she still had to choose in the sicario the line was brought up in.
I move the epilogues on all the characters to before the reveal that it's Borch (the Golden Dragon) telling the story as that felt more like the proper ending moments and the epilogues on each felt a little tacked on in my opinion.
The choice to end with the Witcher 2 flashback is basically so there is a little more lead into the "what the next part" kinda feel. Show the story isn't over and a new one is just beginning. Another reason is because the opening of Witcher 1 feels strange when it has a 5 minute backstory to it only to transition into an opening narration briefly explaining the last few years of the world. If you watched them back to back you'd still experience it but I assume most people would watch more in segments.
Anyway, those are my notes. I hope you enjoyed the video.

[@gridlock501_7]

He has returned