Not many adaptations can stay true to their source materials; they’re also done more easily for movies than video games. Still, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt manages to amaze both the fans and newcomers alike with how well it recreated the lore for the video game format. The essence of Andrej Sapkowski’s books remained pretty much intact.

Of course, the developers still took some liberties– way too many, enough for some fans to brush off the games as just fan fiction and not worthy as a canon follow-up. Just how much of the lore did the games adapt? Here are five notable things in the games that stayed true to the books and another five that strayed off too far from the original vision.

10 TRUE: CONJUNCTION OF SPHERES AND THE MONSTERS

At the very least, the sole cosmic event that led to the creation of witchers and other magical entities in the unnamed world of The Witcher is referenced a lot in the games. It’s called the Conjunction of Spheres, basically a merging of different planes of reality.

This introduced monsters and magic to the world of The Witcher. The Witcher 3 did a good job of establishing this background for worldbuilding and in the opening cinematic nonetheless. It’s also present in the books and the Netflix show didn’t fail to mention it.

9 NOT: ALL MONSTERS REQUIRING SILVER

As unique the monsters are in The Witcher games, they’re not really much different than humans when it comes to dying. The majority of them have similar organic matter to humans, meaning Geralt typically doesn’t need to use his silver swords on them in the books.

In fact, the silver sword is only necessary for rarer regenerative threats such as vampires or specters/ghosts where the steel sword is useless. That’s certainly not the case in the games as it limits which swords can be used for what.

8 TRUE: THE GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION

When it’s not about monsters, The Witcher saga is about warring kingdoms and feudal feuds. It’s a dark fantasy setting with political clashes to rival that of Game of Thrones.’ Thankfully, the games didn’t ignore this aspect of worldbuilding.

The map in The Witcher 3 shows does a good job of portraying the tension between kingdoms and kings. They also continue the motivations and goals of the kings from the books, particularly when it comes to Emhyr var Emreis.

7 NOT: GERALT’S FINANCIAL STATUS

This one can be chalked up to Geralt maturing considerably or probably character development, but his game version is no pauper compared to book Geralt. The latter was rather destitute and starving; witchering simply doesn’t pay well anymore.

Additionally, Geralt hated his job and often sulked or was broody about it. He even frequently requires friends like Dandelion to cheer him up and explains why he’s still a sucker for Yennefer. The game version of Geralt takes a big developmental leap– being relatively more heroic and cheerful.

6 TRUE: YENNEFER

One simply cannot have Geralt exist in a Witcher adaptation without Yennefer. The developers tried that in the first game and it went poorly. Thankfully, they brought her back in all her snarky raven-haired glory.

Yennefer in the games was a satisfactory representation of the one in the books. Moreover, the third game kept the lore of the binding love magic between the two which was an important part of their relationship.

5 NOT: TRISS MOSTLY

Triss is that one character in The Witcher 3 whom the developers took the most liberties with. Everything from her appearance to her behavior and even her actions and goals changed dramatically compared to her book version.

As a result, she disrupted the lore significantly. Triss tried to replace Yennefer in the first game, became instrumental in the second game, and became a champion of the oppressed in the third game. She never had this much spotlight in the books.

4 TRUE: HUMAN-ELF CONFLICT

One interesting subject matter that The Witcher mythos tackled which other games tend to avoid is racism. The franchise did this with flying colors, often portraying rampant racially-charged brutalities and violence against dwarfs, elves, and other nonhumans.

All three Witcher games kept this important point of the lore. Not much has really changed since the pogrom in Rivia that cost Geralt his life. Graphic lynching and massacre of nonhumans in Novigrad happened ubiquitously in the third game.

3 NOT: DESTINY TAKING A BACKSEAT

If there was one recurring (and even exhaustive) theme in The Witcher books, it would be destiny. Almost each and every book like to shove it down to Geralt’s throat, much to his chagrin. It’s present everywhere from Ciri to Yennefer no matter how he tries to outrun it.

Sadly, the games didn’t really capture this facet of the books. Geralt’s destiny is nonexistent here and the main story is mostly about Ciri’s struggle, really. Besides, in an open-world RPG that prides itself on giving players freedom, destiny might as well shackles.

2 TRUE: WILD HUNT

Based on the Northern European folklore, the Wild Hunt are specters in the night sky that signify wars, plagues, or other fun stuff. Their either souls of the dead, fairies, Valkyries, or elves. The book went with the last description and made the Wild Hunt Aen Elle elves.

The Witcher 3 followed suit with not much deviation apart from jacking up the members of the Hunt and making their armor more menacing in plate mail instead of chainmail. They’re also after Ciri most of the time.

1 NOT: THE WHITE FROST

The White Frost was only one of Ciri’s many destinies. In the books, it was supposedly an inevitable Ice Age caused by axial tilting, presumably planetary. Ciri’s job was likely only to save everyone from it by ushering them to a safer place.

The games made out the White Frost to be a roving multidimensional magical swirl of frigid apocalypse that consumes anything in its path. How Ciri “defeated” it is still questionable to this day. In any case, it doesn’t detract from a great story and good fun The Witcher 3 had to offer.

NEXT: The Witcher 3: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Imps