BW Media Spotlight

The last time I did this, and with the same commentary host as last time, someone in the comments was annoyed that I was posting a video about a franchise I knew nothing about and didn’t add enough commentary. True, I never played an Elder Scrolls game or Death Stranding but I don’t think you need to in order to understand what the host was discussing, how doing a magic system wrong can break the lore of the game and ruin the immersive story you’re attempting to draw the player into. The system might have been fun to play with but swords made of magic and the power of alchemical transmuation being as easy as making toast brings up questions that makes the fictional world less real. I thought the message got across pretty well without knowledge of the games since I don’t have knowledge of the games and I got it. Even if you’re telling a story in a different media form the takeaway can only benefit you in the future.

So here we go again with The Closer Look, a franchise I have no interest or connection to, and yet makes it’s case in a way that you can follow along with it and gives you something to think about in my and your future story projects. I thought The Witcher was just a video game franchise but apparently it’s based on a popular series of fantasy novels. Recently Netflix decided to adapt the first book in the franchise, a series of short stories that became the foundation for longer novels to come. However, pressed for time the showrunners made some major errors that according to the host led to important events happening but without the emotion or thought put into how those events worked in the book and the end result loses a bit of the…if you’ll pardon the term…magic of the original. Adaptation from one media to another isn’t easy but this might not have been the best approach.

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