The Witcher 4

[Max Peck]

The Witcher "series" is really about Ciri.

Heh, when I tell people that, they always assume I'm joking or indulging in headcanon.

[El Guapo]

Apparently those that were angry about the Netflix's show going to focus on Ciri also are angry that the Witcher 4 is going to be about Ciri.

It's really remarkable how much anti-woman hate there is out there.

[Isgrimnur]

If you aren’t served up a golden crown for being born a white male, what even is the point of the universe?

[Rumpy]

Apparently those that were angry about the Netflix's show going to focus on Ciri also are angry that the Witcher 4 is going to be about Ciri.

It's really remarkable how much anti-woman hate there is out there.

Yeah, it really is, and I feel sad for people who can't just enjoy things anymore. Everything has to be politically motivated. For those who are getting so bent out of shape over things like this must have bad blood pressure.

[Blackhawk]

If you aren’t served up a golden crown for being born a white male, what even is the point of the universe?

It's supposed to be fantasy. Why would anyone want it to be exactly like the real world?

[Smoove_B]

Daehawk, are you making mods now?

[Max Peck]

Funny how the actual game image looks more like a real person. Although I suppose the fan-made version does look a lot like some sort of Instagram filter, I suppose.

[Rumpy]

Hell no. Looks far better on the left. The one on the right looks like an instagram model.

[Scraper]

Hell no. Looks far better on the left. The one on the right looks like an instagram model.

Yeah I'm pretty sure all they did was take the real image and put it through an instagram filter

[El Guapo]

The one on the left is so obviously better that it makes me wonder whether the post is sarcastic.

[TheMix]

The one on the left is so obviously better that it makes me wonder whether the post is sarcastic.

Oh. Hmmm... maybe. If you read it as "Hire fans? Yeah, right. lol", then it completely changes the meaning.

[gilraen]

Yeah, it's supposed to be sarcasm/satire/parody of a past meme...apparently the whole "hire fans lol" phrase means something to people who were following the Sony debacle (and no, I'm not one of those people, I have no idea about anything but this just popped up on my Reddit feed).

[Max Peck]

Huh, I thought it was just a deliberately controversial post intended to farm clicks, but I guess it's actually kind of funny given context.

[naednek]

Looks like Melania

[Rumpy]

The one on the left is so obviously better that it makes me wonder whether the post is sarcastic.

I kind of doubt it. There are people who really do think that way.

Edit: Whoops, I didn't see the posts below. My bad... The ones on the right I'd call Barbie Mode. Game characters if they were made into Barbie.

[Smoove_B]

Looks like Melania

Ciri (and many of the characters in the video game) all look like they belong in a fantasy version of Eastern Bloc countries. That's one of the things I love about the video games - they don't look like traditional European fantasy. Everything from the villager huts, the clothing and even the people all look like they're ethnically Slavs or Romani.

[Rumpy]

And true enough, lots of what comes from The Witcher is derived from Slavic folklore (which Sapowski has admitted to doing) in drawing for his monsters.

[Alefroth]

Apparently those that were angry about the Netflix's show going to focus on Ciri also are angry that the Witcher 4 is going to be about Ciri.

It's really remarkable how much anti-woman hate there is out there.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/resea ... ting%20it.

Researchers have documented a stunning rise in misogynistic rhetoric and attacks after the election. Laura Barrón-López discussed what’s behind that surge, and how experts are combating it, with Cynthia Miller Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab.

[Smoove_B]

Follow up interview with some additional questions answered:

Ciri, as we can infer from the trailer, has passed the Trial of the Grasses to become a witcher, and she uses some magical powers that are beyond the signs of standard witchers like Geralt. And that, more or less, is about the sum of what we know for sure about The Witcher 4 so far, aside from some added pieces of context that can be pulled together from our previous CD Projekt Red interviews, about the studio's continuing technical ambition and rough launch timeframes.

The ending of W3:

So the first thing for me is: is there a single, canon ending to The Witcher 3 that you're working from now? Obviously, there's quite dramatically different endings available for Ciri in particular there…

Philipp Weber: So we can't say yet how exactly we're going to handle it. This is something that we want to reveal later. What I can say is that we really want to respect everything that came before, that being the books by Andrzej Sapkowski and all three Witcher games, and that of course, should also include some of the most important choices the player made there. But exactly how we, you know, reveal how we handle all of these things, this will be part of the story that we tell in Polaris so I think that we have to talk about how we do it a little bit later.

He also comments this game picks up "a few years" after W3 ends.

Regarding Ciri becoming an actual Witcher:

Does he 'approve' of Ciri being a fully fledged witcher? I ask as it's a bit of a discussion point with fans at the moment, about whether she is or she isn't officially a witcher, whether she goes through the Trial of the Grasses [CDPR has confirmed that she does, in the time before The Witcher 4]. Has he explicitly said, say, 'yes, that's absolutely fine'?

Weber: I mean, I can actually give you a very good answer, because it's the answer that Andrzej Sapkowski usually gives: the answer is in the books. And in the books, Andrzej Sapkowski called Ciri a witcher multiple times, and Geralt called Ciri a witcher in the books too. So I think that basically says what Andrzej Sapkowski thinks about the topic.

Regarding Geralt:

You mentioned Geralt. Obviously, we know he's alive and in the game, in some form. Will he be playable at any point, like Ciri was in The Witcher 3?

Kalemba: Well, actually, currently, he's having the best time of his life Touissant in Henrietta's mansion [laughs]. And, you know, playing with some wine, and dealing with vineyards. This is where we left him last time. But obviously we can promise that Geralt will appear, but we cannot tell you if it's going to be playable or not right now. But yeah, he will appear. He's going to be present in The Witcher 4.

Back to how powerful Ciri is (was?):

One interesting part of featuring Ciri here is that there's now maybe some concern, or more like speculation, that you might need to kind of 'nerf' her in some way, right? That she has to go back to 'power level one' at the beginning of an RPG - and obviously she finished The Witcher 3 as pretty powerful, right? Like she's one of the more powerful entities in the world at that time. How are you trying to handle that? Can we expect a low power Ciri at the start of this?

Kalemba: No, we cannot tell you exactly how. But we can tell you just, like, believe us: that was one of the things, or first things, that we were solving, to make sure - the way we develop here, we do not leave anything without a clear answer. And the answer we'll provide for sure, as soon as we let you experience the game

There's a bunch more, but I am confident they're going to deliver an awesome game. W3 is still my #1 game of the last decade so I trust them completely.