The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is wonderfully obsessed with monsters, despite focussing on a protagonist who’s main calling is the extermination of such hideous beasts. It raids various mythology, theology, folklore nature, and literature, with a keen eye for the weird and hideous; it steals from all of them and blends them together, producing a rich and unusual bestiary.
One of the first encounters comes in the game’s prologue, and it’s with a particularly angry Griffin. For us, the half-lion, half-eagle chimera is a well-known remnant of Greek literature, but for Geralt, it’s a terrifying creature and a pest, whose origin can possibly be traced back to the Conjunction, a cataclysmic event in which such unnatural creations where trapped in his reality. Some dispute this, believing Griffins to be indigenous creatures, but I think this idea of the Conjunction in the fiction of The Witcher is such a brilliant one. There’s a book in the original game which contains a description of this event:
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One of the first encounters comes in the game’s prologue, and it’s with a particularly angry Griffin. For us, the half-lion, half-eagle chimera is a well-known remnant of Greek literature, but for Geralt, it’s a terrifying creature and a pest, whose origin can possibly be traced back to the Conjunction, a cataclysmic event in which such unnatural creations where trapped in his reality. Some dispute this, believing Griffins to be indigenous creatures, but I think this idea of the Conjunction in the fiction of The Witcher is such a brilliant one. There’s a book in the original game which contains a description of this event:
Continue reading…
Continue reading...