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So this is a meta question. Should they have continued the series by calling it "witcher 4" or should they have given it a new name? Because Ciri isn't a witcher.
I'm not against a game with ciri as the protag, but I remember what happened when it wasn't solid snake in metal gear solid 2, and its kind of like having a "tomb raider" game where laura croft is not the main character.
I know its not the sort of thing that changes whether the game is good or fun or not, but you also know what I mean?
Like it would be like playing a game called assassin's creed but you're playing as one of the knights templar instead of as an assassin. They didn't do this have they?
Like if this was a japanese game it would have made sense to call this "witcher gaiden: ciri's tale"

Witcher as a brand is powerful and much more likely to turn sales. Plus they are being 100% up front that its Ciri as the focus right from the absolute very start of marketing.

Also we don't know that Ciri isn't a Witcher - she's certainly doing witchery stuff in the trailer - spells, drinks, two swords, hunting monsters of human and bestial variety and eyes are doing funky things (though I notice they half hide the full detail of her eyes).

I think it's pretty obvious that they went with the Ciri becomes a Witcher ending and based on her eyes in the trailer, she's clearly gone through some sort of trial.
Beyond that, we don't know anything.

 Overread wrote:
Witcher as a brand is powerful and much more likely to turn sales. Plus they are being 100% up front that its Ciri as the focus right from the absolute very start of marketing.

Also we don't know that Ciri isn't a Witcher - she's certainly doing witchery stuff in the trailer - spells, drinks, two swords, hunting monsters of human and bestial variety and eyes are doing funky things (though I notice they half hide the full detail of her eyes).

She did get some training to fight and whatnot from Geralt and other witchers at their castle. And she has innate ability to cast spells that she learned to harness from Yennifer and... was it Tris I think? She didn't know how to do the witcher signs, but had full sorceress magic ability, it did get lost at one point but it might have come back? plus she had this strange power thing because of her bloodline. But she never underwent the witcher mutation in the books, and I didn't really know that it was one of the possible endings of witcher 3, and yeah I know the games are only based on the books and diverge a lot. I'm just sayin she's not a witcher. So the thing that made the least sense was her drinking a potion since its supposed to be too toxic for non witchers to drink, and after everything that idd happen in witcher 3 I wouldn't think anyone would be left to even do the witcher mutation process.

It will be a mystery for us to discover in the game

What might be a very interesting angle is that Witcher 1-3 and the books have this "world is changing Witchers are going" angle. That its the end of the Age of Witchers kind of deal. Perhaps the games are diverging and going for a "Return of the Witchers" angle with Ciri

Maybe her unique heritage and training let her discover ways to change the Witcher formulas and approach that are safer for non-witchers. Or found potions that were similar but not exactly the same etc... Witchers might well not have had pressure to change for generations; esp considering how long lived they are there's ample scope for them to have "settled into their ways" and not advanced outside of a narrow band of thinking.

Ciri is fresh eyes, fresh blood and could indeed have developed new things.

Considering how the last generation of Wolf Witchers talks about the trials and the entire witchermaking process, they are probably happy it is a thing of the past, never to happen again. I think they would never let Ciri undergo these, let alone participate.

Perhaps, but at the same time there are still monsters that need hunting

And as much as the old witchers hate what they had to do and go through, we can't overlook that for Ciri, Witchers were her upbringing.

So....

I had this idea that there could have been a new sorcerer or 2 who were trying to form a new school of witchers along with some surviving witchers after the events of the last game. The new conjunction summoned a ton of new monsters to the world which is what caused the need for witchers to begin with. Clearly not what they are doing.

Ciri being the main character kind of makes sense. But also, as pointed out, she is not a witcher. Which makes me question how the hell she is drinking their potions and not dying.

That gak is supposed to be incredibly toxic. Straight up lethal poison to people who lack the witchers genetic/magical modifications to be able to withstand the toxicity.

Drinking the cats eye elixer should be killing her.

 Overread wrote:
I still rank the "Bloody Barron" storyline as one of the absolute best bits of story writing in a game ever.

My wife and me, we have just finished The Hearts of Stone for the second time, and this quest easily meets the high standard of the Bloody Baron quest in my opinion. Also, I love some gothic horror in TT RPG fantasy adventures I write myself, so it's just right up my alley I remember how both DLCs were praised for how much quality content they offered, and all these opinions were 100% true. You do not see such DLCs often in gaming.

But I also love how smaller quests in W3 have their own background and stories, which make even the repetitive loop of "talk to people - follow tracks - slay monster" into exciting adventures dripping with atmosphere. A particular little favourite of mine is the quest in which we take a commission to slay a forest spirit but when we arrive at the village it turns out another witcher had taken it ...but there was a disagreement between him and the villagers concerning payment. Such a short little quest but packed with evocative moments due to excellent worldbuilding, dialogue and storytelling. Very inspiring for me, as a GM.


Anyway, with the next-gen upgrade to W3 it's really worth checking out for the first time or replaying now. We are playing on PS5 and the game looks gorgeous, you can forget it's a decade old.

One thing I think a lot of RPG games fail on is that they get stuck in the thinking that Sidequests and Main Quests are different things to the point where Sidequests are relegated to "It's just there to money/exp/item farm for the main quest.

This can make them design sidequests very differently and many do end up feeling dull, boring, disconnected from the world and story setting and more.


Another game that I think did fantastic work in not having a line between the two is Horizon Zero Dawn. There are simple sidequests, but there's a good many that have as much content, features and world input as the main quests to the point where you don't feel that you're on a sidequest at all. The first time I did a cauldron I was amazed that this "Side quest" had so much amazing content put into it.

Another was one where you have to help someone escape their country - it felt 100% like a main game quest.

Funny that you mention Horizon, because Forbidden West is usually my second example for how to design quests well, even the small ones And it's not even that much of an actual RPG! But the ingredients are there - dialogue, environment and worldbuilding all work together to create a compelling, engaging story even out of a relatively simple (gameplay-wise) quest.



And the new Witcher book has been waiting for me on the shelf since Christmas, when I got it as a gift Good timing, because I had no idea it's going to be released when we decided to revisit The Wild Hunt and now it's going to coincide with our playthrough.

I love Zero Dawn and the only reason I've hesitated on getting Forbidden West on PC is that I kind of want to step up from a 2060 to a better graphics card so that I can really enjoy the game running at high spec.

I upgraded my processor and motherboard only semi-recently so my graphics card is very much my bottleneck right now and those new cheap end 5K Nvidia cards are looking interesting (and I don't mind if its not "as good as a 4070 on everything it just has to be better than a 2060 which should be super easy!)



Also whilst we are on the subject - Baldur's Gate 2 also did sidequests really well. In fact after the tutorial intro area you get dropped into the middle of a city and you honestly don't have a clue what's a side or main quest for a while as you muddle your way along finding your way. I deduct points only because a few of their quests at that region kind of work better if you do "half" the quest and then go do another half of another quest and then come back to the first with more experience/gear etc.. So it loses points a little in what I feel is a timing aspect of the setting. Sometimes being locked-into a quest and unable to leave does at least preserve the adventure story.