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@Ravix I previewed the Crossroads of Ravens new full-cast audiobook and I really didn't like what I heard :/ the preview didn't even include Geralt's voice so it was not the best clip they could have picked, either. Someone read out the excerpt texts that Sapkowski uses to frame chapters (badly read, in my opinion, not just because it wasn't Peter Kenny 🥺

• Sorry I missed your reply, my notifications went over three-hundred again.

Yikes I didn't preview it, they really need to get the voice right, I can't see that being all that hard. Cokle said he used Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry tone in his original audition for Geralt, it worked and he was hired so they should have just done the same thing. It's very easy for a man to lower their voice, for me it's the 'I know I'm in trouble now' voice, but they all can do it, you too most likely. Or like Tom Waits smoke and drink heavily to perfect that wonderful gravelly tone.

I'm still hopeful for The Last Wish, and it is part of the re-translated editions by David French. But, yeah... No desire to listen to Crossroads of Ravens again in this format.

• That's the problem, translation. It's easy to hope that they get right but like Metro/Roadside Picnic and many other Eastern European novels the translation can never be perfect. I use English on this forum and still trip over words, phrases and meanings. I do feel and see various stumbles, it happens when reading novels too. And then there are the politics and subtle nuances of the novel too. There's also regional dialects, it happens with Russian too and my People have their own subtle ways with words too, in English slang might be the word I'm not sure. But it's specific to us and no one else would understand it, a kind of language within a language and very old.

I'll never fully grasp English, there are so many subtle nuances there, dialects, and kind of social lore to your world that I don't understand. An example, the Witcher's monsters/spirits/etc they are lore and they needed to be translated. The way you live/your world is a kind of lore to me, you never lived in Geralt's world and I never lived in yours, things then are lost in translation because there's that disconnect. You can try to explain your world/it's mechanics, I won't fully grasp it. With language and lore it's the same, to translate Eastern European lore and mythology is extremely difficult especially with regional dialects and multiple names/meanings for the lore. The best example I can think of that would be closer to home is the banshee, you would know them as just a banshee. However if I wander into my library and have a look (checks)

This book says each region of Eireland has a different name for her, each region has a dialect, each region has their own added lore too. So what did the author do? All they could do. And that was to spend years cataloguing every region/dialect/meaning/story and present it as such. Also yes I have a lot of books about poltergiests, perhaps two-hundred. It's an area of the field where science and the supernatural frequently merge, folklore merges with man too, usually that folklore is portrayed as a fairytale or as a reference book. The Witcher is a novel and thus there are limits, the effort of translation then becomes focused on the character/their development, the world itself while serviceable loses some meaning. Like how I said to you before that The Witcher to me feels like home, the landscape/etc and to you in England felt foreign. And how we treat monsters differently in Eastern Europe, it's more about respect than fear, that too has to be carefully translated, the same for how someone recently told me they see Dracula as having victims, I said I saw him as fighting for identity, for his homeland and for expansion of his kind. So much of the Witcher's world has to be carefully re-translated and it would mean going into everything from dialect, to slang, politics, social attitudes, and of course folklore. I'm not sure if they could, it would take experts in so many areas.

Has anyone else had a listen to it yet? Does it improve? Is there hope for the rest of the releases? 😅 if not, the Peter Kenny editions will remain the way to listen to the series.

• I actually don't know, I get movies early, music early but I don't have any contacts in any audiobook publishing houses, at least I don't think I do. I just know by the time the new DLC launches I'll have gotten through each audiobook, probably with Peter Kenny.

I accidentally thought the DLC was tomorrow, even gotten excited, then I realized it's just the update. I think my plan now is to just wait for the DLC and then go for that fourth playthrough. Is that your plan too? or is the lure of new content/adjustments too great? Instead I'll focus on Spooky season, I have now on my list Alan Wake, Dredge, Still Wakes The Deep and perhaps Bramble. I'm really enjoying the story missions on Crimson Desert too, the characters are brilliant and the choreography is really well done, I'm not sure what they added since you last played, definitely more story. It seems very fleshed out, those abyss puzzles are never-ending though.