Letho isn't evil though, he's pretty much working for Nilfgaard for reasons similar to why Geralt is involved in politics in the Northern Kingdoms.

Calling him evil and killing him would just be hypocrisy

I have to disagree with that ... or otherwise we don'thave the same vision of good and evil ...

- First he kills innocent humans for money which is against Witcher code

- Second , when he's about to kill Foltest and sees that the one who once saved his life and healed his wounds is here (Geralt ) , he still slays Foltest ( his precious Emperor ) , ignores what you did for him , then does nothing to make you look innocent ... very kind and grateful indeed

- Third , he kidnapps Triss and you don't know (exactly ) what he did to her (Triss tells you what happened more or less , but you don't know the details . ) ... and humiliates you in the fight in the elven bathroom ( while you saved his life and were supposedly his "friend" ) even if you did not want to fight him before the fight

- Fourth , he treats the two other witchers with him , like expandables , doesn't care one bit about whether they survive or not and send them into a kamikaze suicidal mission in the Kaadweni camp , doesn't have any bit of regret for them when you get to talk to him at the end of the game

- Fifth , he lied and deceived everybody including you , if that is your defintion of a good man , then i must digress :) plus he's a racist , look at the way he addresses to Elves for instance

- Not to mention , the brutal torture/death he gives to Sile de Tansarville , the betrayal of Elves and Iorveth who gave him support and shelter ... the betrayal of the Mages who gave him money and protection , the only person he did not betray is the (evil) Emperor , which he refers as " more than a human "

About the only thing "kind" he does is not killing Triss and protect her against a few soldiers (and by the way i'm pretty sure he did this out of pure calculations , thinking that with Triss alive , he had more chances to lure you , and get to talk with you in order to make sure you give up being involved in politics and helping the north ) . We're talking of a guy who had no problem killing Foltest in front of his kids after all ...


Also when you speak about hypocrisy , IMHO you probably go too far , as not every player or man should have the same interpretations and vision of the characters we got to know in the game 's story ;)

Yeah, why'd he have to humiliate Geralt by letting him live and showing mercy? What a dick move!

:)

Evil? Thinking in absolutes will be the end of you in this game. Nothing is good or evil. It's more a story of clashing egos, all justified in some regards and unjustified in others.

Killed.

It's the same choice as with Adam Pangratt. He's a loose cannon who you could end up facing again. He's a hired mercenary, and he would do it again for the right pouch of gold (or promise of re-building a witcher school). He has no moral conviction or personal conduct code, unlike Geralt, and he makes no real apologies for his actions, nor any real promise not to do something like that again.

Plus, I actually beat him in the bathroom, except the game decided it wasn't time for him to die at that point. He (or CDPR) cheated me out of my kill early in the game, and it was time to do it for real.

According to the books the Witcher code does not actually exist. Geralt just invented one for himself to have easier time turning down unwanted offers.

Cause he needed you to put even more shambles in the northern kingdoms , and to pay back his debt since you saved his life a few years before (and also because as member of the school of the viper , he thought he'd need you against the wild hunt ) .

By the way before fighting him in Act 1 , you can choose " I don't want to fight " option , but he still fights you : Letho is actually eager " to get even " with Geralt , and the game forces us to lose that fight (even though i won it everytime in my game except in insane )

He didn't spare your life out of compassion or good heartedness , but only because you can be useful to him and because he was desperate to get even ( both Egotistical reasons ) from my point of view

As for good and evil , look at how Shilard 's face is shown in the pictures (when the narrative explains us what happens after the Prologue ) , definetely a crooked person , and for me the Emperor is defintely evil since we get to know that he outlawed magic , persecuted mages , people have less freedom , betrayed the Elves and only dreams of crushing the north , whereas the only thing the north wants is peace with Nilfgaard basically

But ok you are probably right that they are only a few evil persons in the lore and that most are actually "grey " , however i did not read the books , and in the game , the borders between good and evil are defintely showned in my humble opinion , i mean nothing lures us to think Nillfgaard are good guys , or that Letho is a forgiving gentleman with chivalrous manners


Maybe you can argue some are not as evil as i make it sound , but IMHO it's dificult to argue Letho is a good guy really

Evilmystic , thanks for infos , i didn't know that , i thought a code for Witchers existed for all witchers , my bad :)

Oh, yeah, that's right. I completely forgot about that particular plot point for some reason haha.

This is a really nice touch to the character, IMO. Makes a lot of Geralt's responses hilarious.

To be perfectly honest mate,i am far from an expert on Witcher Lore. Most of my knowledge comes from reading the english version of Blood of Elves since that was the only one translated at the time i bought it and from perusing the wikia and forums such as these. Plus the games themselves of course.

What i wrote was just my own personal interpretation of Letho in conjunction with my own understanding of the Lore as it stands right now.

Sure it is possible that mages could help rebuild the ranks of the Witcher schools. But since that idea has not been proposed in any serious way within the story right now,i think its safe to say that Witchers are considered a truly dieing breed that are on the verge of extinction. Im not "pro-Letho"..im pro-Witcher lol. =)

You say that i take everything that Letho says for granted and i dont disagree. We cant actually see all the angles and Letho could indeed be decieving Geralt right to the very end. It all comes down to personal interpretations at the end of the day and i respect yours.

The only thing i really disagree with is the way that you single out Letho as this thoroughly evil villain who deserves nothing but death. This makes no sense to me.

Throughout the entirety of the Witcher 1 and 2 Geralt is surrounded by a constant stream of raping,murdering,power mad savages who will stoop to any low to achieve their goals. Ranging from the poorest peasents to the most powerful monarchs. This simple fact makes judging any character from a simple good v evil standpoint non-sensical. Letho is just another fish in the pond.

Your opinion is that he is basically an unforivable monster who should be killed. Mine is that he is another Witcher who i would rather spare then kill =)

Good post Seren , it was interesting to read your answer , to be honest you almost convinced me that my vision of Letho probably exagerates his bad sides :)

It's not intentional though , i suspect it is because the story is made in such a fashion , that when i finished the game in both paths , i no longer knew who to trust really , and since Letho has been the most skilled at deceiving everybody , i tend to point him as a source of intrigues and bad troubles coming ahead :)

Also the game does a good job in slowly but surely drawing the player to despise Nilfgaard :)

Much of this confusion could be helped if there were more lore books in the game, and you actually understood more of the world you are in. That's one thing that Bethesda did so well with the Elder Scrolls series. The books have been there and the lore has been built from the beginning of the series. It's like Tolkien and the LotR series. The whole world, culture, languages, creatures and all were fleshed out before the books were written.

I haven't read these books, though I plan to, but I think CDPR could give us a little more lore to deal with. Lore is essential to true Role Playing.

Is it really a negative character trait for the Emperor, persecuting Mages? They sure caused a lot of trouble in the Northern Kingdoms during the course of the game...and Dethmold just freaks me out completely, so I'm inclined to agree with the Emperior - it isnt evil persecuting them, just savvy and a trait of a ruthless leader, not evil!

But back onto Letho, Geralt kills just as many people as him, you can just as easily kill Henselt (well let Roche do it) and pretty much become a Kingslayer yourself.

At the beginning of TW1, Geralt and the other Witchers went on a quest to recover their mutagens, leading to a bloody swathe through the world, destroying Salamandra and getting involved in Wars and politics. I see that as exactly the same as what Letho has done to save the School of the Viper....you've just ended up on different sides really, same ideals and goals, just different ways of achieving it.

Letho was clever enough not to fight Geralt, unlike most people in the game, so he deserved to be spared. And as I've said before, the Wild Hunt is coming...Letho is needed.

I think you're wrong there. When Letho agreed to kill for the emperor, Geralt had been taken by the Wild Hunt so therefore he had nothing to do with it.

Agree about having more lore. I felt that all the books only offered titbits of information, bare necessities. They really should flesh out the books in my opinion, even if it is filled with "useless" information it makes the world seem more alive.
An example: There was a book called something like "Three years with Endregas". They chould write that from a first person narrative, so it feels like a real person wrote that, but when you check out the monster entry, then you get the titbits; strength, weakness et.c.
I'ts extra work that might go over lot of peoples heads but I say it would be worth it.


And by the way, I let him live. Just didn't feel like killing him.

I'm certainly not an expert, either. The two books that have been translated into English are "The Blood Of Elves" and "The Last Wish" I would LOVE the others to be translated (just in case the universe is listening to me today)

I miss having live breathing perspectives from people who have read the original Polish books and regret that it seems as if none of them have migrated over here, even for a visit. My only hope of some sort of recall of the events in the books is to use the Wayback internet archive and re-read the original forum discussions of the books. (yes, you can find a lot of info that way)

As for being a part of the kingslayer group, wasn't there some mention of the Lodge of Sorceresses and the Witchers getting together to start this mess? (back when Dermavend was the only target?) I think Letho went off on his own to expand the scope of the project with promises from the Nilfgaardians, but one of the major thoughts of this whole series is "choosing the lesser evil", so to me, letting him be alive, but keeping an eye on his activities, is better than (not by much, but some) removing him altogether. I will pay attention better and see where Geralt fits in, because I very easily could have misinterpreted what was said. It has happened before and probably will again. :)

My Gerald felt some degree of loyalty towards Foltest, kept his promise to Roche to get the king slayer and furthermore he found it unacceptable for anyone to lay a finger on his woman, let alone kidnap her... that sealed the fate of Letho...

In the end I saved Letho's life once and he spared mine once... so during the final fight all bets were off and all favours paid for... And I certainly did not wanted him out there alive and causing mayhem.

Given a different story (such as Letho saving Triss) I would have reconsidered the situation...

Both. Twice. And I'm still not sure which one is the best choice. One the one hand, there's no question that objectively he needs to die, for a number of reasons:

- He thinks nothing of murdering innocents if it helps him reach his goal, such as killing the monk physician to ensure that his cover isn't blown, or an entire squad of elves when Cedric refuses to join him.
- As Sile points out, he manipulates everybody that he can. Expertly. When he encounters someone that he can't manipulate (such as Iorveth), he tries to kill them instead. Perhaps his behavior at the end is just an elaborate attempt to manipulate Geralt into sparing him.
- He thinks nothing about accepting the mission to sow chaos in the North, nor of framing others (sorceresses, Geralt) for his deeds, assassinating people for money, or backstabbing his supposed comrades (Sile with the flawed diamond). He thinks so little of that last one, in fact, that he describes it as a "prank".
- He only "spares" you in the first fight if Geralt starts winning it. If you don't fight well enough he won't hesitate to kill you (perhaps this is an oversight on the part of the programmers, but after getting killed by him at least a dozen times before I finally "won" the fight I didn't feel much gratitude for his sudden generosity). Plus, he instigates the first fight even if you say that there is no need for violence.
- Though he says his intention is to disappear, there's nothing to hold him to his word, and no reason to think that he is being honest. Letho clearly does not have any hangups about lying when it suits him.
- Geralt mentions that "witchers on the Path should help each other", but Letho renounces the path in the first encounter, so he's not entitled to any special consideration for being a witcher.


On the other hand, killing him just feels wrong (or if not wrong then certainly empty). He and Geralt were friends once and share a history together, and there's something about the way that he reaches out to Geralt as he dies that just makes the victory feel entirely hollow. It's just kind of like "okay, he's dead now, but what did that really solve?".

I don't think Geralt gains anything personally from killing him, so that just leaves a mountain of evidence that says that yes, he should die, and the question of whether or not it's appropriate for Geralt to hand him that sentence. From what I can infer about Geralt's personality, I'm not convinced that it would be.

Although, Geralt's role in the world is, as he often likes to say, "to slay monsters", and a recurring theme through both games is that you judge a monster by what's on the inside. And Letho's cold indifference and his actions throughout the story make him probably the second most monstrous major character in it, by my measure. First place goes to the Lodge for their arrogant scheming, their corruption of Saskia, the inept way that they allowed themselves to be played by Letho, and their granting of permission to Ms. Glevissig to nuke an entire battlefield full of troops because she felt that her influence over Henselt was threatened.

So in that sense, perhaps Geralt has a professional obligation to slay Letho, even if the victory is hollow on a personal level?