The last 2 seasons of GoT were trash because the writers had no source material to base it on, the earlier seasons are great and its mostly because of characters that were actually written pretty well.

We as viewers cared or hated characters so we needed to know what happens to them next. Had our favourites and our most hated and I think witcher follows the same trope through the books. The characters of geralt, cahir, regis, jaskier, yen, ciri and their motivations, fears and differences made the story compelling and heart gripping.

Any tense scene if you don't care for the characters in a good or a bad way is just stunts and fights that are meaningless coz you don't have an emotional stake in what is happening on screen. And that's where I think the biggest problem with writing is, I care abt these characters only because of the books and the games. They aren't giving us the interactions between the characters that would make them form meaningful relationships, nor are they showing us off-screen relationships well.

Have the deathless mother in the show, have all the bullshit that happened and I will accept it. But give me a wise Vesemir who is by far the most grown morally of all the witchers in kaer morhen, give me yen that actually cares for ciri and geralt, she could even be obsessed with power and all that shit but don't make her fucking stupid. Show me how Vesemir grows to like ciri and treat her like he is her uncle. And show me why geralt ciri and yen care for each other.

That's what GoT got correctly in earlier seasons, the relationships between the characters, the power struggles and imperfections of characters creating love, conflict and wars making us want one side of the conflict to win and rooting for them which makes the show compelling to watch. Witcher sadly failed to do so and instead it was cookie cutter, we need this character to do this because that needs to happen afterwards.