Big News in Witcher World!

Last night I logged onto the ol' socials to do some scrolling and got a pleasant surprise--one of the first things that popped up was the brand new trailer for the upcoming Witcher title!  As someone who is a huge Witcher fan, this is something I wasn't anticipating for quite awhile.  The next game in the series will be titled The Witcher IV (kind of uninspired, but continues the progression) and it seems that Ciri is the protagonist.  If you haven't had the chance to take a gander at it yet, here it is in all it's sparkly glory:

I'm sure in the coming days we'll get a bajillion analysis videos of people trying to pick apart every tiny detail.  It's inevitable, so why not simply join the fray?

I completely expect there to be an entire discourse about Ciri being a witcher for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, Ciri never underwent the full mutations to become a witcher.  Geralt and company didn't want to put her through that torture.  This doesn't mean that she's not capable of fighting off monsters, after all she trained with witchers AND she is gifted with extremely powerful magical abilities.  Curiously, her powerful abilities do not feature at all in this trailer.  Anyone who played The Witcher 3 knows that one of her best abilities is blinking as a form of dodging.  As the Lady of Time and Space, Ciri might not need those witcher mutations to be a top notch monster slayer.  I'm betting that people will also call out the fact that Ciri gulps down a witcher potion in the trailer--something that she likely shouldn't be able to do per the lore of the game.

(Spoilers below about The Witcher 3 endings!)

The second discourse will likely be about the the fact that choices that led to certain endings in The Witcher 3 seem not to matter--Ciri becomes a witcher appears to be the canon ending.  There will probably be some sad panda folks griping about the fact that their choices don't matter...blah, blah.  Honestly, Ciri becoming a witcher is my favorite ending and was the one that made the most sense for a potential sequel.

(ADDENDUM: The Game Director has addressed the questions about Ciri not being a full witcher and revealed that in the fourth game she is a full witcher--she took the trial of the grasses in the time between the third and fourth game.  It makes sense given the fact that she has gone the route of being a witcher--I am curious if it will be something detailed in story.  It's also bound to stir up some controversy because the Kaer Mohren witchers stated that they didn't want to ever have to do it again [during the scene where they administer the trial to Uma/Avallach].  Ciri becoming a full witcher tracks with me--there's a moment in the "becomes a witcher" ending where Geralt implies that she'll never be as fast or as good as a real witcher since she hasn't had the mutations.  I could totally see her making the big decisions to go through with it.  We'll just have to wait and see how it ties into the story.) *My sourcing for this isn't great--it was posted on a fan page with no source listed.  It seems plausible to me though.

There are a few other details that I've seen some discussion around.  The very beginning of the trailer mentions that it's rendered with a "unreleased NVIDIA GPU," so I think folks can expect the 50 series cards to be dropping in the near future (*the folks who want to spend $2k on a GPU).  The trailer does look amazing though.

Personally, I enjoyed the fact that the same core Witcher vibes are present in this video.  You've got the scared villagers bowing to actually needing a witcher while simultaneously disliking them; you've got the whole "who's the real monster?" message hanging over the scenario--it's one of the best parts of the series.  I'm hoping that the new game keeps that core in place.

One thing that stood out to me is that Ciri is plainly older (*people will also probably complain that her VA seems to be different) and more seasoned.  Maybe part of the story will address the endings and the time between the end of The Witcher 3 and this new game?  Maybe Ciri's been honing her skills with Geralt (who, in my game, is living the good life in Corvo Bianco in Toussaint)?  Maybe she's been conquering the world with Nilfgaard (not my favorite ending)?  I'm curious about how this will be addressed.

I found the 2025 release date to be a bit surprising--it seems like next year has the potential to be a big year in gaming with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI and now The Witcher IV.  I've been thinking about building a new PC (it's getting to be that time) and maybe it's finally time.  In reality, CD Projekt games are usually delayed (*with the exception of the absolute fiasco that was the CyberPunk 2077 release--and I don't expect them to make that mistake twice) and they seem like they want to avoid a bad release.  We'll see what happens.

Overall, I'm pretty pumped about this trailer.  Lots of fans were hoping that they'd get a game with Ciri as protagonist.  I'm very interested to see where they take the lore since there aren't any more books.