So I played through the prologue of the game and they started talking about Yennefer and other things that happened in the past with Geralt. I plan on reading the books but will the Witcher 2 spoil what all happens? Or should I just play the game seeing as it will be a while yet before the books are all translated?

It does look like a direct continuation of the books (I never saw any official say in this), but in my opinion it doesn't spoil anything. You can correct me if I missed anything. The intro and trailer to Witcher 1 describes the first chapter of book The last wish, so it *is* kind of a spoiler, and an important one at that. Want to work around it? Read the first chapter of The last wish before playing Witcher 1. :) Later in Witcher 1 there's an interaction with the king and princess from chapter one, which is more or less a spoiler for the same chapter, but at that point you already had the spoiler in the intro and trailer.

From then on, both in Witcher 1 and 2, many of the major characters from the books are the same from the video games, but that's fine. No plots from the books are revealed, except stuff you generally would know by reading the back cover of one of the books (safe example: elves and dwarves wage war against humans at some point before Witcher 1, so in the game they live in slums). Knowing characters from the game actually helped me read the books because now they have a face of their own in my mind. There's no mystery around them on the books, characters tend to be presented very straight-forwardly, with rare exceptions. Witcher 2 looks much less like the books, so I'd say it's even farther from spoiling them.

Actually, The Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition (i.e. the version sold here on GOG) comes with this short story included. So you can simply read it before playing the game, which I highly recommend doing. After reading the story and liking it, I booted up The Witcher and saw the intro cinematic, and I realized how serious the developers were in capturing the feel of the original story. Got me really excited for the game itself, and it didn't disappoint.

To clarify, The Last Wish is actually just a collection of short stories about Geralt, the first of which is the one included with the game and on which the game's intro cinematic is based. Sapkowski later wrote novels in the Witcher universe, the first of which has been translated into English. Unfortunately, there was also a second collection of short stories that hasn't yet been translated to English, so those who want to read the novels in English will only be able to read half of the short stories first. And, of course, only the first of several novels has been translated.

Apparently there are fan translations to be found that are considered to be pretty good, if you don't want to wait for official translations. But I've still only read that first short story that came with The Witcher 1... I haven't got to the rest of them yet.

There is a common misconception that The last wish is just short stories disconnected. The stories stand alone, but further within the book they actually become somewhat connected and the book does have an "ending". I don't know if you're referring to this, but after The last wish, Blood of elves was also translated to english. That is the first of five in the so-called "Witcher saga". I read it, it is not stand-alone and I can't tell if the games spoil anything from the rest of the Witcher saga (because I can't read polish), but it doesn't appear so.

I didn't know that, thanks for clarifying! Yeah, I was referring to Blood of the Elves, I just wasn't very clear. My understanding is that after The Last Wish, there is another collection of short stories called Sword of Destiny that has NOT been translated to English.

So people who want to read the books in English can currently only read half of the short stories before they move on to the first novel, Blood of the Elves. They would miss out on the untranslated stories from Sword of Destiny.

Just to make it extra confusing, The Last Wish was actually published after Sword of Destiny, but The Last Wish is still the first book because it collected all of the stories from an earlier, obsolete book... so the stories all take place before those in Sword of Destiny.

I was pretty sure The last wish included all canon stories published before Blood of elves, but after a little googling I can't be sure now. You might be right.

Now on to looking for the fan translations you previously spoke of... ;)

I was going off of the Wikipedia page mostly. But maybe I read it wrong.

EDIT: No, looks like I was right:

http://el.witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sword_of_Destiny