Summary
Geralt got his happily ever after at the end ofThe Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt’s Blood and Wine DLC. A vineyard estate in possibly the most beautiful part of the continent, Yennefer moving in with him, and his daughter Ciri dropping by to visit often enough. So, why would we want to pull him out of this and send him back on the road forThe Witcher 4?
It’s perhaps this thought that led to Ciri becoming the protagonist of the next game. If it wasn’t evident by the end of the base game, the good ending on the DLC definitely made it so. It turns out thatCD Projekt Reddecided upon this while the DLC was in development, over a decade ago. So, any misconceptions you’ve had about this being a new-gen decision are false.
In an interview withPC Gamer, one of the lead developers revealed that the plan was in motion since they were working on the Blood and Wine DLC for The Witcher 3 (thanks,GamesRadar). “It was pretty early on we realised that [Blood & Wine] is where it ends, and also pretty early on, we knew that we wanted to work with Ciri later on…even like 2014, it was already an idea floating around the studio that she’s next.
“In Witcher 3, Geralt is just helping out…he is there for her. So it was pretty clear we want her as the next main person, main character.”
Even the good ending of the base game itself established that Ciri would become a Witcher, withGeralt passing on the mantle to hervia her own silver sword. So, any justification for complaints about Ciri as the protagonist are absolutely baseless, because it was always the plane.
In fact, even Geralt actorDoug Cockle got annoyed with people calling the decision ‘woke’. “I celebrate Ciri, I celebrate her being the protagonist,” he said. “So all you people who think it’s woke… if you read the books, then you understand why CD Projekt went down this avenue. There’s a whole rich world of stuff to explore with Ciri, that they didn’t do when they put her into Witcher 3, because the story was about Geralt. If you think it’s woke, read the damn books…”
