The Witcher: Blood Origin completely retcons the Witchers’ origin story
![Fjall (Laurence O’Fuarain) walking with an ax in a still from The Witcher: Blood Origin](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CqOv9C4bW2rA0yYVa1CtvzaGZZo=/0x0:3552x1998/640x360/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71793694/LARK_104_Unit_00312_RT.0.jpg)
And the actual origins are… disappointing and confusing
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And the actual origins are… disappointing and confusing
Netflix’s Christmas release of Witcher: Blood Origin will see the creation of the very first Witcher. And while characters like Geralt will eventually become beings melding magic and humanity, the first Witcher looked a bit different.
Warning: The following interview has some spoilers for the finale of Witcher: Blood Origin.
Actor Laurence O’Fuarain’s character Fjall is a mighty warrior, who ends up taking on that role of the very first Witcher during the final episodes of the season. However, he had to wear a large prosthetic suit for that transformation. It was tough,” O’Fuarain told GameSpot. “And when you have to go into prosthetics for a couple of hours in a chair, it’s never easy, but I mean, you know, part of the parcel. What would happen was I’d get collected from the apartments that I was staying in at about 2 AM, 2:15. And then I’d literally be dropped back at about 10 PM because once you get it on, you have to shoot all day, and then you have to take everything off. And like my makeup artist, Valentin, he had to be there before I was there, so I can’t complain. He had it the roughest. That was just part of the job.”
With all these upcoming retellings like The Witcher Remake, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space and more, developers have a chance to take a leaf out of Square Enix’s book on Final Fantasy 7 and just get weird with it. And they should – nostalgia be damned.
We live in an age in which media exploits our nostalgia, making us point at our screens and go ‘I know that thing’ before even showing us anything of value. That’s not to say all remakes are bad, exactly, but nostalgia is by definition limiting. Retrospective. Almost anti-creative. The FF7 Remake proves that, if developers are bold enough, they can find new and valuable treasures when revisiting the past.
MORE FROM PCGAMESN: The Witcher is still hugely atmospheric, The making of The Witcher
CD Projekt RED have pushed out another hotfix for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s ever-so-slightly borked next-gen update that was released last week. You can expect some extra stability compared to the previous version of the update, something that’ll always be welcome on my PC. Along with Roach’s early Christmas present of some stabilisers, the hotfix also tackles the annoying bug that caused toxicity to be stuck at max level, along with some minor tweaks to photo mode, and unexplained improvements for The Witcher 3’s performance on Steam Deck.
This Christmas, the Witcher world returns to Netflix with Blood Origin, a four-part series telling the origin of the very first Witcher. One of the biggest surprises is the inclusion of Minnie Driver in the series.
Driver plays Seanchaí, the narrative voice for the series. An accomplished actor in her own right with a storied career, Driver’s inclusion in Blood Origin is a different move for her, as Driver is entering a world of high-fantasy, not something she’s known for. So what drew her to this role?
“I like origin stories,” Driver told GameSpot. “I like well-done origin stories. And I think that we’re kind of honing now that the prequel has become not such a dirty word in moviemaking. It’s really cool that they get the attention they deserve. And I really like this one. I like the idea of the inception of The Witcher like this character that we’ve sort of come to love in this universe that was that he heralded. I love going back to see the beginning of that. And like, you know, being the person that kind of guides you through that. That’s such a huge honor, it’s cool.”