The Witcher - Announcement of a New Game

I am happy to play a new game doing the further adventures of Geralt, but on the other hand, it would be great to have a more blank slate character, either as a new Witcher, or one we build of our own making.

I'm not someone who cares all that much of fitting the lore of the books when it comes to Witcher games. (never read the books)

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
I can't really imagine a Witcher game without playing Geralt, he is THE Witcher, I think they should just let it rest after 3.

He is quite literally not THE witcher, he is A witcher. We meet like a dozen or so in the games.

I do think they should continue to have a specific protagonist, whether that's Ciri or someone else.

Geralt's story should be over. He earned his ending. I could see doing a prequel, though.

There was a teaser image with a cat not wolf medallion this time.



So my guess is it will be a prequel or past age for the new saga. Though the snow might tie it to Witcher III with the prophecy as well. Just my speculation of course.

Had to say that for a certain member.

Ciri wears a cat school witcher medallion, in Witcher 3 it hangs from her waist: https://i.redd.it/04i5wa5ueun41.png
In the books, she got it off the corpse of someone she killed.

I guess that's why people are thinking Ciri will be the main char?

Originally Posted by Stingray
Ciri wears a cat school witcher medallion, in Witcher 3 it hangs from her waist: https://i.redd.it/y2a51oy3ejm31.jpg
In the books, she got it off the corpse of someone she killed.

I guess that's why people are thinking Ciri will be the main char?

That and it just makes sense. At the end of W3, one of the endings is her picking up learning the trade from Geralt. If they don't do the blank slate, player created character thing, it makes more sense imo to have a protagonist we have history with.

For those concerned that she's too powerful to be the protagonist, I wouldn't worry about that. Games have been powering down characters for sequels for a long, long time, including Geralt himself in the second and then third games.

The cat school witcher medallion does look quite a bit different than the one in that Ciri artwork though. I think we might need to wait a bit for some more teasers.

I like the name of the main character being fixed as cinematics/spoken lines often need a name to refer to. Mass Effect did it reasonably well with having a male/female version of Shepard. But I would like the Witcher to be more customisable though. Geralt was f'ing awesome but i'd like something new this time around.

Sorry minor correction I should have said School of the Lynx instead of cat. Which shuts down the School of the Cat theories I had by first impression of the image.

Global community director Marcin Momot of developer CD Projekt Red confirmed on Twitter that the medallion belongs to the School of the Lynx. There was never any doubt that the medal wasn't from the School of the Wolf, and its half-buried catlike features were just vague enough to implicate the School of the Cat and Ciri with it, but this medallion actually belongs to the Witchers of a very specific feline faction.

The School of the Lynx has a more tenuous presence in the Witcher universe on account of it being largely rooted in footnotes and fan-fiction. The fact that it's seemingly at the heart of the "new saga" that the next Witcher game is planning implies that Geralt has indeed left center stage, but with the School of the Cat largely out of the theorycrafting picture, there's now less to suggest that Ciri will take his place as the lead in the story, and less still about what her challenges and motivations might be. So we're not quite back to square one, but we're pretty close to it, and we likely won't get more story details for some time.

Personally I don't think Ciri will be the pro-tag either.

Originally Posted by bjon045
The cat school witcher medallion does look quite a bit different than the one in that Ciri artwork though. I think we might need to wait a bit for some more teasers.

A CDPR guy on Twitter apparently hinted the thing in the pic is lynx not cat.

Originally Posted by Stingray
A CDPR guy on Twitter apparently hinted the thing in the pic is lynx not cat.

Except for one small problem. A Lynx is a cat…

Is it a subschool or something I wonder?

A lynx isn't a cat. They are just of the same family (felinae)

I don't care whether it's a sequel or a prequel. Either one can be just as good as long as it's written well.

Just please no Ciri or Dandelion or any of the other major NPCs from the trilogy. I'd much rather play an entirely new character or at least someone we're not very familiar with already.

And I hope it's not right before or after the events we already took part in. Make it a good number of years earlier or later.

Originally Posted by vanedor
A lynx isn't a cat. They are just of the same family (felinae)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae

Felidae (/ˈfɛlɪdi�/) is a family of mammals in the order Carnivora, colloquially referred to as cats

As someone who has two children with a lifetime membership to the local zoo and who visits the Zoo every second week and has spent countless hours listening to Zookeepers prattle on about cats I think your usage does not align with the general usage in most Zoo's.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Just please no Ciri or Dandelion or any of the other major NPCs from the trilogy. I'd much rather play an entirely new character or at least someone we're not very familiar with already.

And I hope it's not right before or after the events we already took part in. Make it a good number of years earlier or later.

100% agree. I find that writers often get hamstrung when they get forced to work in cameos from previous games/books. A clean slate often produces the best results i.e. often the first book in a series will be the best - with some notable exceptions of course.

Originally Posted by bjon045
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae

Felidae (/ˈfɛlɪdi�/) is a family of mammals in the order Carnivora, colloquially referred to as cats

As someone who has two children with a lifetime membership to the local zoo and who visits the Zoo every second week and has spent countless hours listening to Zookeepers prattle on about cats I think your usage does not align with the general usage in most Zoo's.

It sounds ridiculous to call a Tiger a cat imo. But I guess that's a language thing. In french, the equivalent wikipedia article keeps "chats" and "félins" quite apart. And I suppose that's what the CDPR person meant.

I've thought about it some more, and I actually think I would've loved it if they created a new IP. I like the world of the witcher well enough. But the similarities to a song of ice and fire, and other fantasy settings are evident, and I would have loved something original.

But I can imagine how hard it is to setup a whole new setting, and all the work involved if you want to do it properly and have it grow into something with a lot of potential. Plus, the whole risk of it not catching on with the public.

As far as when they can set their new witcher game, I believe their agreement with Sapkowski was that he retains all rights up to when the first game starts.


So, it seems to me they're kind of pushed into making a sequel? Or maybe set it in a different land than we're accustomed, but during the events of the current Witcher games? That kind of sounds interesting, being somewhere off and hearing about your exploits in the previous witcher games, and the consequences of those actions. And then maybe tie these new decisions into those original ones?

Otherwise, if they want to set it very much farther into the future, that could also work. Maybe 1000 years into the future or something like that. That could be interesting also. But yeah, I also second the idea of not using any of the current main characters and us playing as one of them. That would be very cheap and unimaginative.

If it was hundreds/thousands of years in the future, would it be possible for there to be another conjuction of the spheres? Bringing back the monsters/witchers back into the limelight?

Originally Posted by bjon045
If it was hundreds/thousands of years in the future, would it be possible for there to be another conjuction of the spheres?

It's fiction, so everything is possible.
The question is if the writers can make it believable.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Where has it been said that Ciri is the protagonist?

well the amulet in the teaser is from the cat, one which ciri often uses…. thats the reason for the speculation made by the german mag gamestar….. dunno how valid this is….


https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/the-…l,3378914.html

I could see a game where the roles from the Witcher 3 have been switched around.
So Siri would be the protagonist, and Geralt would take the role of Vesemir, so he would hang out at Kaer Morhen, that wineyard from Blood and Wine or some other base of operation. From there he would give Ciri some quests, research into whatever the villain will be in the next game, and deliver the occasional dad-joke.

Regarding nerfing Ciri to be a novice level 1 character. And I am not a lore expert here, but it could be that she finally underwent the trail of Grass and became a fully fledged Witcher, but this dampened her other magical powers, which she can somewhat unlock as she progress through the game. Or, they can they come up with another reason. The nerf won't be an emerging issue I guess. Seeing that at the end of both the 1st and 2nd game, Geralt had amassed a fortune, leveled up dozens of times, and accrued a treasure trove of epic weaponry, armours and items, only to somehow having lost it all at the start of the next game…

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
I've thought about it some more, and I actually think I would've loved it if they created a new IP. I like the world of the witcher well enough. But the similarities to a song of ice and fire, and other fantasy settings are evident, and I would have loved something original.

What do you mean original? You mean because it was based on an existing book series? Every game is going to share some tropes of the genre no matter how original it is. That said, I thought The Witcher was one of the more original fantasy games I've played.

Originally Posted by MAHak
I could see a game where the roles from the Witcher 3 have been switched around.
So Siri would be the protagonist, and Geralt would take the role of Vesemir, so he would hang out at Kaer Morhen, that wineyard from Blood and Wine or some other base of operation. From there he would give Ciri some quests, research into whatever the villain will be in the next game, and deliver the occasional dad-joke.

No

To me it doesn't matter, in the end, the game will have good graphics, will be quite polished and probably will be extremely fun to play. We hate those here.

I remember the olden days when games were about a red circle and a green triangle and it was all left to the imagination, with clunky controls and unplayable design that's when games were good.

I hope the game has the protagonist I don't want it to have, and with luck some technical issues at launch, else I don't know what I'm gonna whine about. Just disgusting.