they actually said that the decision for the protagonist to be Ciri was made 10 years ago and honestly I am inclined to believe that. I am not saying they never even entertained the idea of a character creator but they didn't choose it in the end and I honestly believe it wasn't an idea that they seriously thought of going with at all. The Witcher was always about storytelling and character writing, and it worked like magic exactly because Geralt was an established character. A blank slate type character or even an unknown new protagonist would destroy that aspect of the Witcher which is literally its bread and butter, and why it's beloved. The character writing.
I thought it was pretty obvious after the Witcher 3 that Ciri would take over the series. I don't think it should be a shock to anyone. I'm very happy they didn't go the route of creating your own character. Story games always lose narrative quality when the playable character is an "anybody" rather than a specifically crafted character. Also love that Geralt will still be there. I hope he plays a decent roll as Ciri's father figure.
Except that they said it's not going to be called Witcher 4 because they're done with the trilogy, and it's going to be something else. Then, we started seeing signs that it was going to have a character creator because they were hiring people to build a character creator. There have even been leaks saying it's going to be something else entirely. Not to mention, there's an ending in Witcher 3 where Ciri dies. That... will be awkward for the people who got that. Then there's the fact that the trial of grass sah only been mentioned in a context where "it's an almost lost knowledge, barbaric thing that Witchers don't even want to do anymore" and there's barely any witchers left, women can rarely survive it, the people of Tuissant hunt monsters without Witchers (and it's how 3 ends) etc... one by one, these don't mean much, and on the surface, it would make sense for Ciri to be the protagonist, sure. But when you put all these things together, it really does start to feel doubtful. I, for one, think they botched the communications, and the trailer. They shouldn't have revealed that her eye is now a Witcher's eye and that she can drink potions. Or the process of her becoming a Witcher should've been heavily hinted by the trailer. PS: her walking the path is also a fairly uncommon ending. It's the best, but rare that someone got it first run. And.... she could end up being the emperor.... so most endings suggest something else.
@ yeah I personally don’t like the thought of ciri becoming a full on Witcher. And if they did, I would’ve rather that have taken place during this game. Not between them. But yeah, it’s tricky when games have multiple endings. The writers choosing which one is canon can leave people upset. But I prefer to know which is the canon ending even if it isn’t mine. This just feels like the natural progression of the series to me. I’m so glad it’s not a character creator game. Ciri seems like a great fit to ease players onto a new protagonist. But yeah I wish she wasn’t actually a Witcher yet. It would’ve been cool to see the process first hand through Ciri if that’s what they wanted her to do.
@@zardify_ So you are butthurt bec game is called Witcher 4 and that you imagined in your head that they told us it will be created hero ? Ciri dying ? That is not canon, if u dont see a body you cant just say she dies like you do
Im upset that no one talks about Queen Meve from Witcher Thronebreaker. She's genuinely one of the greatest written female protagonist in videogame. I'm very hopeful CDPR will deliver another banger.
As a book nerd, being able to play a full game as Ciri as a full-fledged witcher is super cool and I can't wait. Ciri was the true protagonist of the books and a driving force behind the first three games, so for me, it feels like a no-brainer CDPR decided to go with her.
I agree that is super cool to play with her, but for me Geralt is the real protagonist.. how he interects with the world, mosnters and people he mets.. ciri is a very important part of the books and games, but geralt is the heart of the witcher.. his moral and internal fights and how he sees in ciri a reason to fight and someone to defend.. its always about him and how a witcher deal with that grim world..
@@MagoRulesCabrones99 It was about him in The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Season of Storms, but in the main novels it's about the trio of Ciri, Yen and Geralt, with the greatest emphasis being on Ciri and her journey. The story is predominantly told through Geralt's perspective (though it frequently shifts to other characters), but that doesn't mean he's the protagonist. I get what you mean though. I do agree Geralt is in some ways the "heart" of the series, but to me the heart is ultimately in all three of them.
@@4589dudeI just want to correct the usage of the term protagonist here; the protagonist is typically the perspective or focus on a character or characters, in this context, Geralt is no less a protagonist as Ciri and Yenn are, as the group is the center of the story. Think of how Scooby Doo doesn't have 1 single character stand above the others in their importance or focus, the group is the focus of the story.
@@dragonheart967 The protagonist drives the plot forward with their actions and is the person undergoing a journey/struggle against some force they must overcome to achieve their character goals. Yes the protagonists are the ensemble of Geralt, Yen and Ciri. I merely mean to say Geralt is not the sole protagonist, and that sometimes Geralt and Yen play more of a mentor role for Ciri as the protagonist. It's not always clear cut.
@4589dude I'm not disagreeing with your statement, just correcting the use of the terminology, typically people mean something else when they say protagonist, and it's gotten to the point where a lot of people are using the term in wildly incorrect ways. At this point, I'm just clarifying these kinds of issues to do my part for the run away train situation.
I don't mind Ciri as the MC (I actually liked that ending in W3). For those arguing lore RE the trial of the grasses or whatever, the game makers might have a counterpoint about her elder blood protecting her or something (I dont know, I'm not super well-versed in the lore). I just don't want them to turn her into an arrogant and irritating "modern" protagonist, and please Christ no marvel humour. Also hoping CDPR give the game enough love and polish unlike what happened with Cyberpunk. Those are my only two caveats.
Book lore doesn't say female witchers are impossible and Ciri is basically a mortal god but I would think she loses her power or is seriously nerfed (for gameplay reasons). Alot of writers/designers from TW3/Cyberpunk are still at the studio and Phantom Liberty showed us they can create very strong and nuanced scenes. I just hope the world is an actual world and we can play after the credits.
It's not just that the trial of grasses is too dangerous, it's that the success rate is so low for women, they just stopped doing it outright, so it's a little odd that they would even risk it with her. And that's not even touching on her using magic, something that was explained that as many times as they tried to teach her, the Elder Blood gave her access to such raw magical power that spells and witcher signs couldn't work due to its potent nature. Her only magic is the power that the EB can utilize, such as ripping between spheres.
@@dragonheart967 Thanks for that reply, again I'm just a filthy casual who knows embarrassingly little about the full lore. Will have to wait and see what happens with this one I guess 🤷♂
Ciri needed to be the protagonist, that was set up, and that's gonna work fine story and gameplaywise. But her having undergone the trial of the grasses is a huge lore-break of CDPRs own in-game canon. A huge change that didn't even need to happen, as at the end of W3 Ciri was content to be a magically adept non-witcher following the Witcher's path
I think everyone kinda knew Ciri would be the next protagonist. I think the real issue is how she got her Witcher powers. Truthfully, we can’t have a fully informed opinion until the game actually comes out and we have an in-depth explanation.
Well she learned from Yen how to use magical power from water veins ( like we see in the trailer ), so why shoudn't she be able to learn witcher signs? I mean those aren't like "witcher only magic"! Every sorceress could use those signs. She probably, could have learned them even in front of undergoing the trail of grasses.
@@TotallyNotJoe_ Well she is not an ordinary woman! The elder blood could have given her an advantage or the procedure was improved. Somehow palpatine retu.... I meant somehow people start loosing their fantasy and the ability to imagine things. The school of cat had also a different mutagen that didn't opress their emotions anymore. So you can change at a certain level. I could imagine lots of things how it was possible. At the end we will have to wait!
Whatever they have planned for the story it could have been done with a new character similar to V in Cyberpunk. There is no need to undo Ciri's character development. We don't want a Walmart Gerald.
People are discussing absolutely wrong problem in my opinion. It doesn’t matter that she’s a female, in the first place Ciri wasn’t given enough agency during Wild Hunt to simply jump and make her protagonist of Witcher’s next chapter. Ciri is indeed complex character, but only in the books, which weren’t read by absolute majority of Wild Hunt fans - you can see it by the amount toxicity A. Sapkowski gets for “badly written” books. But the elephant in the room is absolute and total destruction of Witcher lore. They’ve done it already with Ciri beating White Frost in Wild Hunt, which is impossible because books specifically have characters living 100 years after Geralt and world continues to freeze. But now she’s a full-blown witcher, while Vesemir was the last person who knew how to perform Trial of Grasses end to end, also Ciri needs a mage who would control the process and neither Yennefer nor Triss would EVER agree to do something like that, since chances of survival in this trial is 1 out of 10 (info from latest book). Using any other mage is not an option either since you literally trust your life to them. Also Ciri kept her magic, it was specifically said by game director in trailer breakdown. He literally said that “Ciri is a powerful Source”. And in Witcher’s world magic is way, way, way more powerful than Witcher reflexes. Main antagonist of the books - Vilgefortz - simultaneously fought Yennefer, Regis and Geralt, while being handicapped (he lost an eye in an explosion before), and managed to vaporize higher vampire and pretty much defeat Geralt. He lost only because Geralt had a trinket which produced illusion. Moral of the story: Ciri with her insane magical potential doesn’t need to be a Witcher physically, just master her magic. Also Wild Hunt is no more, so no reason to hold back.
I agree with you in everything except one. The problem that you described is the main complain. It`s just bad actors that want to reduce to ther secondary elements. And I would had loved to play as Ciri, with her powers! Not a female witcher.
Eh the games have always just ignored the books and lore when needed. Remember the books take place before the games and the books end with Geralt and Yennifer dying. In order for this game series to even exist they had to ignore canon and just do their own thing so it's fine. As long as they stick to rules they've established for themselves I'm good.
There are a lot of copium addicts who won't read past your first paragraph and would attack you for being a bigot (somehow). It's really hard to actually have a honest talk on social media since there is so much descent into strawmen and bad faith actors polluting the dialogue with provocations.
That one comment about female protagonists being "immersion breaking"... What? IRL, women are 51% of the population. Why would it be odd for a character to be a woman? What a weird take.
putting his concern in context, the target audience are majority men, now that's not reason in itself that making a woman protagonist is bad far from it, it just means that the majority of the players may not relate to some of the choices and experiences that a woman character goes through and makes. I love Ciri as a character and she's definitely the best candidate for the mantle of this next game, but i understand the concern some men players have when they think they have to assume the role of a woman in a world and gameplay design that was previously centered around a masculine male protagonist.
I thought it was establish and obvious the next game was going to follow Ciri. How was this a surprise? The different endings in the Witcher 3 made it pretty clear Geralt was done with that life. One ending literally had Ciri taking up the mantle as a Witcher
I definitely don’t think it was obvious because for one there’s three separate endings. For two personally, I think it would’ve been much better if they place the focus on a new character and set the game hundreds of years in the past maybe do a series on the prime time of the Witcher so it feels different. Also then you’re sort of leaving the prime characters alone
I think most Witcher fans would love to play Ciri. She was fun to play in W3. I felt a bond with her, like I was protecting my own daughter. Problem most people have is like most female characters in todays era, they stripped her beauty. Also, according to lore, females cannot be witchers and Ciri has the sacred elven blood and was supposed to be so much more.
Here is how I suspect the story will go. Ciri lost her special abilities when she defeated the White Frost which was her main purpose and destiny so those powers were no longer needed and too dangerous to be allowed to be kept afterwards. You can make that work with all three Witcher 3 endings. I think that Geralt will get killed off fairly early and now Ciri desperate to get some kind of powers that would allow her to avenge Geralt against a much more powerful enemy leads her to seek out a way to make the Witcher mutations work on her, perhaps even something to do with work Geralt did during his "retirement" with the technology from Professor Moreau from the Blood and Wine DLC quest "Turn and Face the Strange". That would open up all sorts of possibilities for the story going forward, it would give Geralt's story full closure and the "Avenging your family" story never really gets old. Something like that would work in forwarding the story without breaking the mythical "canon" .... Mythical because hardly anyone said boo about romancing Triss instead of Yen which broke canon is a big way yet everyone was OK with that. Funny how that works .......
I personally don't mind Ciri as protagonist, its something that i always thought felt natural to go with after the events of Witcher 3 and i think her model in that trailer, while clearly older, still looks pretty good. Can't say i wouldn't mind my own character either though like in Cyberpunk
My favorite ending to 3 is the one where she has followed in his footsteps so I'm interested. But I also had heard that the next game was maybe going to be a prequel with Vesimir which sounded like a cool idea too.
Tbh if they ever want to do a character creator that door is still open, but had they done it now the opportunity to make Ciri the protagonist would have probably been lost. Or it would have been more difficult anyway. And if this game is a succsess (commercially most importantly but also critically) they can build on this a lot more and easier than with the other option. Also, and this is subjective but most would probably agree, the heart of the witcher stories (books, games and even the show as bad as it is) has always been the characters and their relationship with each other. Especially Ciri and Geralt. It´s character driven more than plot/story driven, and making a character creator would have been cool, but we would have lost our strongest connection to the franchise.
I see one problem with the government grant things (outside the fact that they are a problem in themselves); CDPR is in Poland. So it doesn't apply to them. I guess it does work as a generalized argument though.
Having Ciri as the protagonist isn't bad but I was hoping to get the opportunity to create my own Witcher. That being said, the devs said she becomes the Witcher and that sounds to me like she isn't at the beginning of the game likely because of the lore we already know about women not being able to become Witchers and the lost archives of the trial of the Grasses from the sack of Kaer Morhen. I think if they can explain how Ciri either is able to find a new way to create the mutagens either with the help of the mages or through her Elder Blood somehow and complete the trials she may be the catalyst for not only a new school/generation of Witchers but also adding the dynamic of finding the solution that escaped the Witchers of old from allowing women to join their ranks in the past.
I don't think they could win in this situation. If there was a customizable witcher, people would be complaining that they spurned Ciri. I saw the criticisms before I watched the trailer and I was inclined to believe them, but then I watched the trailer and it looked fine. I am a little nervous about Ciri being a full fledge witcher, but if they explain it in the story without retconning anything, I'd be ok with it.
It just seems like they were afraid of making Ciri diverge too far from Geralt's gameplay. I saw Ciri being a new protag from years away but I don't like the way CDPR is going about it.
I could care less about Ciri being the new MC or her looking different. As long as Witcher 4 isn’t like cyberpunk on launch, I’ll be happy with the finished product I’m sure
There cant be regular female witcher within witcher lore. Ciri is special, thanks to her elder blood. It would be extremly hard to justify character created custom female witcher, so Ciri is just the best choice.
Almost no one is saying they won’t play as Ciri, they’re saying the character model being changed is indicative of a much bigger problem in the production.
@@elck3 almost every cinematic trailer of the witcher games has a different face model from ingame even for witcher 3. U dont remember the cinematic scene at the beginning of witcher 3 Yennefers face was completely different compared to the ingame model. Stop trying to hate when they already did the same shitt for Witcher 3 lmao
@@Sokmo. Yeah its a different engine. People just want to hate nowadays it seems. If CDPR has a great reputation. I feel people need to relax everyone just wants to whine about things being woke its so tiresome. I personally preferred Ciris look in the witcher 4 trailer than the witcher 3. I thought it was more detailed and she looked more rugged and tough. Geralts appearance also changed a lot from the different titles. Not sure why its a negative if they change the character model its been like 10 years. And thats if it changed in game which we still dont know.
@@Jimpanect yh the cinematic trailer is just about showing of the tone of the game based on the directors quotes on gamesradar. It gives of a dark tone and perhaps showing off player consequences.
@@dr_diddy That makes sense. Yeah I think the theme itself is pretty similar to the witcher 3. Pretty much the exact mission would fit into a witcher 3 side quest. Only youd likely get to chose to tell the child to wait outside the cave risking them to the monster but also saving them from the towns folk. Im guessing since TW3 was so popular the formula will be pretty similar just with various improvements.
Roll your own character games usually tend to have a much more generic story that's about as deep as a mud puddle. Compare the main story in Witcher 3 to say the main story in Skyrim. Even a choice between two protagonists especially a male or a female one tends to muddy the waters as far as good storytelling.
Most men want to play as male protagonists but not all and women I assume prefer females. The writing and characters will make or break this game, and we have no idea of what that will really be. BTW: Ciri being a Witcher like monster hunter was only one of the ending choices for her in The Wild Hunt and the Devs in this new game has chosen that one like it or not. . It would be wise to let it be out for a while and see what the game play and writing will be before spending hard earned money for it and ignore the shills. IMO.
Ciri was pretty plainly going to be the next main character in W3. I'm perfectly fine with it. Though I would have loved to make my own if they could pull it off and still make the story make sense.
@@thefallenvalley4340 Vote with your wallet, don't buy the game. If nobody buys "woke" games nobody will produce them. Or make your own games that represent your ideology. Even better would be if you just became more normal. Believe me, being excited about stuff is far more fun than always being disappointed that nothing panders to your worldview
@@esesel7831 You don’t understand. There is nobody else who makes the X game (they legally cant so im stuck), and i want that game to be the same as it always was. Why do i have to completely change my game franchises just because they’re trying to push their agendas there? Do you realize how stupid you sound telling someone to just abandon a franchise they like because the new guys took over and wanna ruin everything?
@@thefallenvalley4340 that's just capitalism for you... Also nobody is being forced to make "woke" games. Stellar blade came out and nobody really cared because it wasn't very good. I would say the Kingdom Come Deliverance games are slightly right leaning and everyone celebrates them because they are good games. The only reason not more non woke games are being made is that most devs are "woke" . I get your frustration. But Id love for you to just play a game you think is woke without preconceptions. Don't watch a review beforehand just play it. You can even pirate it so the woke devs don't get any money from you. Do you worry that playing a game with an "agenda" will make you agree with that agenda? You know you don't have to agree with any opinion uttered In Media.
I think people who are upset or confused about this decision don't know the Witcher universe beyond a surface level lol. It's fine to feel disappointed if you were really hoping for a different character to take the spotlight or for a custom create-your-own witcher protagonist because those are totally valid and promising directions to take the franchise, but I can't imagine you'd hate Ciri being the choice.
If the trailer is any indication of the look, feel and gameplay.. Im totally on board. Played f.e. the female Versions of the character in the last AC games, which was fine, looked good. Even thou both male and female versions were the same from a writing perspective. So there is a lot more potential if you have one specific character that you can write your stuff around.
This game will be good i bet. Ciri has always been the main character even if not a pov character. The director of this was a director on blood and wine and he also says most of thr dlc writers are still on staff so the game will most likely be just fine. So all the woke police and culture war idiots are calling foul already when they know zero about it. But based on all the stuff I’ve found online and on polish sites it’s going to be JUST fine. Quit complaining about things just to complain about them.
I wish all these "lore experts" were more creative than saying CDPR IS DOING A RETCON AND IT BREAKS THE LORE. Think for longer than five minutes and you might think of a way that it could work
CDPR has been breaking lore since Witcher 1. Geralt, Yen and Regis shouldn't even be alive. If you were a lore purist, you shouldn't even play the games at all.
Personally the girl that ended up dying was way more attractive than ciri. So the game is woke when the main character isn't as....attractive "or whatever you think is attractive"? Gotta agree with you on this Luke. I think this is just trolling/noise/clickbait.
CDPR has earned the benefit of the doubt. Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty were made during the DEI era and while both were certainly diverse, it didn't affect them in a negative way at all. The story and characters were great.
That is because diversity is already a major lore part in the CP literature universe where you can exchange every part of your body to whatever you like or simply exchange the whole thing or not die and be "born" again right after they inject the hard copy of your consciousness on a stick in a completely new frame if you have the money. Together with the whole anti-capitalist setting, this was DEI galore without needing to bang for it. This is how excellent coherent writing works and it was definitely not the game's problem, quite the contrary tbh. And then you take all these hilarious experiments we have seen in 2024, being self-proclaimed anti-racist, inclusive and what not and at the same time pushing every stereotype button so hard with non-existing character writing that people don't even know it they will actually ever play enjoyable new games from their most beloved franchises.
Dude, did we live in diferent realities. It took years between the time that CDPR took our money, at least the money of sucker like me that preorderd the game, and the real deliver of the game. CDPR should not have the benefit of doubt. Between the preorder and Phanton Lybert took 5 years. Really, I don`t understand that way of thinking.
@@marducms seeing the last "highly regarded" release of CDPR, I totally agree and this is in fact what scares me most. But money or us getting a half-assed product (which is quite likely ) is not the question here. The question is more if they dare to add injury to insult and give us the whole lecture in contemporary politics... It would mean their doom.
@@mrpostaldude8289 Yes, and this is another concern. But I would only consider to touch is this new game only after the launch of the first expansion. The same time where Cyberpunk 2077 where really ready to be played. And this decision I had taken even before the trailer. CDPR is not ot be trusted. DEI or not DEi. Woke or not woke. It doesn`t matter to me, they already treated me as a sucker once. I`m not gonna do the same twice.
@@marducmsNo I agree with him. Yes Cyberpunks launch was awful there's no denying that however from what I understand the CDPR devs didn't want to release the game in the state they did, that entire fiasco came down to the management and marketing teams, not the devs actually making it. At one point these people started making promises about the game to the press without telling THE DEVELOPERS ABOUT IT!
Diversity hire for actors is okay for me. But the diversity hire should be carefully done for writers and programmers - or just stop it - because the low quality ones will mess the game up bad.
If the devs make this a “woke game” it won’t simply be because of making Ciri the protagonist, but it is a red flag because it goes against lore and paves the way for a Mary sue girl boss that nobody likes. As much as I like CDPR I will not give them or any company the benefit of the doubt, I’ll hold off buying until reviews are out and I refuse to buy any woke game because talking with our wallets is working and the woke have lost the culture war, some of them are holding on against hope but it’s over for them.
Surprised to see so many comments ok with female protagonists. Every guy I know IRL won’t play games with fem protags, and vice versa for the girl gamers I know. Everybody prefers to play as their own sex.
I think they showed a lot of female leads because of Lucia from gta 6 i like female leads and I was thinking maybe since the next gta game well feature a female lead it might had inspired them to show theirs also I am interested in picking up the Witcher 4 I seen season 1 of the series but I haven’t played any of the games can’t wait to see Ciri Story for the first time great video
While Ciri is ok.Making our own character would have tamped down on controversy and made things a lot easier for the developers at CDPR. I think they have made things unnecessarily difficult for themselves in the current climate, I loved Ciri.I loved female V.I loved femshep. But there are male players who won't play as females.They just refuse to do so.
K, well, they're missing out on a ton of games then, for a stupid reason. If it sucks, if it's not fun or not your genre, then yeah. Don't play. But there's not enough games in my favorite genres to avoid a really good one just because character isn't the same gender as me.
I always choose a female protagonist if it’s an option. I think she looks great. HOWEVER, I don’t believe amateurish activist hacks hired as “narrative consultants” should be called “developers”. They are a cancer on the games industry.
I actually don’t mind if they have her as the main character but they better not apply the woke trash narrative to this series. It didn’t work with the show and it won’t work with the game. It doesn’t work with ANYTHING
I think it’s so dumb people thinking playing as a woman is immersion breaking. How sexist is that? What about the millions of women who play games and they have to play as a dude?
It's actually what all the Proto-Chuds want: a strong attractive female lead that does not mess around for long. The OG Lara Croft type requests are actually obsessive sometimes, from one creator in particular. Then you give it to them and they call treason again because the PC is not 100% up to the holy book... I should stop with the Melonie references
I can understand if you are a die-hard fan of the original books, this must be dirt thrown in your face seeing the sacred texts (reference intended) being cut apart and reglued to something you do not recognize anymore. I for sure still remember why I stopped watching GoT after season 4 or 5 back in the day. Anyhow, for someone like me who plays only the games, this will be fine. I have too much RL stuff going on to bother about diving into every nerdy territory. This will be a decent game guys - if CDPR does not blow it like last time (that's the scary part)
The games have had their own canon since the original game 🤷♂ Most people who've read the book or into the lore would/should know that tbf, the books are very vague so no one should really fault CDPR for expanding on canon.
Ciri is more the protagonist of the WItcher story than Geralt is. She is the centre piece of that univese. Everything that happens revolves around her and her actions. Anyonewho has more than 2 brain cells can undesrtand why CDPR made this choice even if you wanted a game where you customize a character alá Cyberpunk.
They could have let Ciri have her own face, there would be 1000 times less controversy. Though making her The Witcher instead of Geralt is stupid too. And also there is certain connection between DEI practices and games quality, like Obsidian's "Outer Worlds" was not good, Remedy's "Control" was meh, and now we know what these studios have in common.
If the new game was called "Elder Blood" and it was Ciri NOT as a Witcher, I think more fans would be on board. I think if Geralt was the main protagonist, pretty much ALL fans would be on board. I think if it was game set in the future and we were making our own character, most fans would be on board. Making her a Witcher though.. divides fans. Doesn't seem like a good idea to me. In the books they never directly say that women can't be Witchers. They say 3 out of 10 BOYS survive the trials. The pronouns used are male pronouns. And the Polish.. I'm not Polish so I am only going off what I have read online, but the polish name for Witcher is also a masculine conjugation. So it is clear that Witchers are meant to be male. (Sure.. could be a cultural thing too.. Knights are male in our real world history for example, but either way.. up until now Witchers are male) Now Ciri is so powerful she shouldn't even need the "power" of a Witcher because she is already so much more. So it is just odd. With the trend of replacing masculine figures with (masculine) female figures I think it is fair that some fans are concerned. Geralt is special among Witchers. Now though, taking a god tier character like Ciri and making her a Witcher we now in a way lessening Geralt. Also I'm a fan of The Witcher because of Geralt. Take all the logic above and put it aside.. I'm a fan BECAUSE of Geralt. So now replacing him isn't going to be a positive in my book either way. Throw all the concerns on top of this.. and yeah.. it just leaves me with a bad feeling. And then there is the fact that as a man, I don't really see myself role playing as a woman. I know some guys do, but I don't game just to game, the few games I do play (Mass Effect and Witcher.. recently BG3) I use male characters because I like to lose myself in the story. I find it weird that people have a problem with that too. It isn't really that deep.
Yeah I feel like they should keep "The Witcher" title but not add a 4. Like The Witcher: Inheritance or something. And I would assume she has not done the trial of the grasses since pretty much everyone in universe seems to agree that's a cruel practice. Geralt wouldn't do that to her even if it would work on her. I'm guessing she'll have her own abilities, paired with some monster hunting skills that Geralt has passed down to her.
Book lore also states Geralt and Yen died at the end, among other things that the games deviate from. You can't just cherry pick the parts of the lore you want relevant to justify something that's lore breaking as is.
relax, it's just the cinematic trailer, in game ciri is most likely gonna look more like she did in the witcher 3. just look at geralts model from the trailers and compare it to his in game model
ugh, i hate these debates so much, i'm 90% most actual witcher fans dont care its ciri, she was a badass in the previous games. My issue is the 1. She was very much uglier in the trailer, super masculine, while in witcher 3 she was an absolute 9/10 2.They nerfed her power just to be a witcher from the looks of it, in 3 she was zooming all over the place makeing geralt look weak sometimes 3. Direction of the trailer had very strong "the message" vibes where in the end the real villains turned out to be men. Its all flags to me pointing towards a certain direction, nothing is definitive, but we should keep an eye on that stuff.
@@dr_diddy You have a good point. With the exception of the Witches. I don`t remember any other bad guy in the game that wasn`t male. I think that we had some females that had done bad things, but there was an explanation. It seems that CDPR was always the same. And this certain direction was already clear in Hearts of Stone, lots of thinks that could be seen as current day.
"Ciri fought against Whoreson Jr. and his men. She was mowing them down like it's nothing. Clearly part of "ThE MeSsAgE" to portray men as weak and evil that should be cut down mercilessly" - You guys, 2024, had Witcher 3 came in 2024, not 2015
life is strange girls there many Games wit leading Girls Portal 2 , The Walking Dead ., Assassin's Creed Syndicate . Resident Evil 3 , Half-Life: Alyx . Bright Memory . Mirror's Edge: Catalyst .Silent Hill 3 . Assassin's Creed Odyssey . Tomb Raider . Celeste . Uncharted: The Lost Legacy , Bayonetta . Alien: Isolation , Hell blade: Senua’s Sacrifice , Horizon: Zero Dawn
I'm fully OK with Ciri being the main character. I think they made her look worse but I'm sure we will have mods to make her 'hot' shortly after launch. I don't think she looks horrible but I simply do not understand why people act like making characters gorgeous is an issue. Note this isn't just for female characters and while the look is different the standard is their for men. Do you think most men look look at Geralt or Thor etc?
It’s incredible that that these publicly traded companies know replacing the male lead with a woman will undoubtably cost them money and they still do it.
lmao you wanted to play witcher 4 retirement simulator? no male lead is being replaced, the average game dev just has a more normal outlook on life than you. If you continue going down that path you will quickly find yourself enjoying nothing anymore. stop watching those slop anti woke youtubers and touch some grass. for your own sake
@ Lmao the vast majority of the comments agree with me on virtually every version of this trailer on TH-cam. And there’s literally a million ways they could have gone without resorting to appeasing the social justice warrior crowd with a chick protagonist. No matter how much they try and ram it down everyone’s throat, shit like the Witcher and other media are male dominated fan bases, and the strong woman lead is always going to fail. There’s countless examples.
@@boxnews171 ok good vote with your wallet and don't buy the game. According to your logic witcher 4 will fail that way and all will be fine in the world.
@ lol I plan to not buy the game, the game will fail, and maybe studios will come back to sanity. Ask Disney how the woke bullshit crusade is going or Ubisoft.
@@boxnews171 I wish you the best and hope one day you will come back down to reality. This is not good for you but I guess you already know that. Reach out to other people. Find or reconnect with friends, it would help you. Don't want to sound condescending btw I think was in a similar spot than you in the past.
The game is titled The Witcher IV, but if Geralt isn't the main protagonist and there isn't a compelling narrative reason for the title, it should be called something else or at least have a sub-title, e.g., "The Witcher IV: The Chronicle of Ciri," or whatever. To me, it feels like a bait-and-switch, a tactic often deployed as part of the Neo-Marxist playbook when it comes to modern entertainment. They're removing a popular male protagonist, and replacing him with a female protagonist while using the male protagonist's popularity to sell the product. I realise using Ciri as Neo-Marxist propaganda is a debatable assumption given her overall importance to the series because it's feasible she will make for a suitable lead. However, seemingly breaking with lore to turn her into a witcher screams, "Here's our improved female version of the thing you like". CDPR are skilled storytellers in the videogame space, so there may be reasonable explanations for these decisions. Nonetheless, given what we've seen more broadly in modern entertainment, The Witcher IV appears to have a few red flags.
How is it a red flag. Throughout witcher 3 the game pretty much revolves around ciri. The game literally set up that you would be ciri in the next game. I'm excited to play ciri. There is so much more story and possibly reunions with people she meet in witcher 3. I hope there is a quest where she can meet the bloody baron again.
@@rrhill1 The Witcher franchise is named after Geralt because he is The Witcher and the main protagonist. If CDPR calls the game The Witcher IV it implies that Geralt will be the main protagonist, which is false advertising at best and a bait and switch at worst. You and I might follow the gaming news, so we know about the switch, but the franchise appeals to millions of customers and many of them don't follow the gaming news, so misleading customers comes across as a bit of a red flag, whether it's to push Neo-Marxist propaganda or not. After all, It wouldn't be the first time that CDPR has misled customers. I actually disagree that CDPR used the previous game to set up the franchise to continue with Ciri as the main protagonist. There were multiple endings of which one had that outcome, but the most common ending was Ciri becoming Empress. To get Witcher Ciri the player had to make several very specific dialogue choices throughout the game, which means most players didn't get that ending. For the record, while I would prefer to play as Geralt, I don't mind playing as Ciri provided the game is advertised correctly and there are compelling story reasons as to why this is the case and why she is now a full witcher. However, if it appears we're playing as Ciri because CDPR has decided to push this peculiar Neo-Marxist corporatism we've seen in so many franchises, including this one (The Netflix shows), I also consider that a red flag. CDPR are master storytellers though and my concerns might be for naught, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be concerned in the first place because the zeitgeist and history suggest they're reasonable.
they actually said that the decision for the protagonist to be Ciri was made 10 years ago and honestly I am inclined to believe that. I am not saying they never even entertained the idea of a character creator but they didn't choose it in the end and I honestly believe it wasn't an idea that they seriously thought of going with at all. The Witcher was always about storytelling and character writing, and it worked like magic exactly because Geralt was an established character. A blank slate type character or even an unknown new protagonist would destroy that aspect of the Witcher which is literally its bread and butter, and why it's beloved. The character writing.
That is also why BGS games feel so extremely "personal" in their narrative 🤣🤣🤣
How so? They had an interview where both woke leads told that they couldn't decide it.
@@mrpostaldude8289 LMAO true BGS the master storytellers 🤣🤣
I mean, it is pretty obvious with how they finished the last game. At least in my opinion.
I thought it was pretty obvious after the Witcher 3 that Ciri would take over the series. I don't think it should be a shock to anyone.
I'm very happy they didn't go the route of creating your own character. Story games always lose narrative quality when the playable character is an "anybody" rather than a specifically crafted character.
Also love that Geralt will still be there. I hope he plays a decent roll as Ciri's father figure.
Except that they said it's not going to be called Witcher 4 because they're done with the trilogy, and it's going to be something else. Then, we started seeing signs that it was going to have a character creator because they were hiring people to build a character creator. There have even been leaks saying it's going to be something else entirely. Not to mention, there's an ending in Witcher 3 where Ciri dies. That... will be awkward for the people who got that. Then there's the fact that the trial of grass sah only been mentioned in a context where "it's an almost lost knowledge, barbaric thing that Witchers don't even want to do anymore" and there's barely any witchers left, women can rarely survive it, the people of Tuissant hunt monsters without Witchers (and it's how 3 ends) etc... one by one, these don't mean much, and on the surface, it would make sense for Ciri to be the protagonist, sure. But when you put all these things together, it really does start to feel doubtful. I, for one, think they botched the communications, and the trailer. They shouldn't have revealed that her eye is now a Witcher's eye and that she can drink potions. Or the process of her becoming a Witcher should've been heavily hinted by the trailer.
PS: her walking the path is also a fairly uncommon ending. It's the best, but rare that someone got it first run. And.... she could end up being the emperor.... so most endings suggest something else.
@ yeah I personally don’t like the thought of ciri becoming a full on Witcher. And if they did, I would’ve rather that have taken place during this game. Not between them.
But yeah, it’s tricky when games have multiple endings. The writers choosing which one is canon can leave people upset. But I prefer to know which is the canon ending even if it isn’t mine.
This just feels like the natural progression of the series to me. I’m so glad it’s not a character creator game. Ciri seems like a great fit to ease players onto a new protagonist. But yeah I wish she wasn’t actually a Witcher yet. It would’ve been cool to see the process first hand through Ciri if that’s what they wanted her to do.
@@zardify_ So you are butthurt bec game is called Witcher 4 and that you imagined in your head that they told us it will be created hero ? Ciri dying ? That is not canon, if u dont see a body you cant just say she dies like you do
Hope he plays gwent
Cyberpunk didn't lose quality but I agree overall with the point
Im upset that no one talks about Queen Meve from Witcher Thronebreaker. She's genuinely one of the greatest written female protagonist in videogame. I'm very hopeful CDPR will deliver another banger.
Just started playing that game a few days ago; it was only $2.80 on Xbox!
Probably because not many people even know that game exists, which is a shame.
As a book nerd, being able to play a full game as Ciri as a full-fledged witcher is super cool and I can't wait. Ciri was the true protagonist of the books and a driving force behind the first three games, so for me, it feels like a no-brainer CDPR decided to go with her.
I agree that is super cool to play with her, but for me Geralt is the real protagonist.. how he interects with the world, mosnters and people he mets.. ciri is a very important part of the books and games, but geralt is the heart of the witcher.. his moral and internal fights and how he sees in ciri a reason to fight and someone to defend.. its always about him and how a witcher deal with that grim world..
@@MagoRulesCabrones99 It was about him in The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Season of Storms, but in the main novels it's about the trio of Ciri, Yen and Geralt, with the greatest emphasis being on Ciri and her journey. The story is predominantly told through Geralt's perspective (though it frequently shifts to other characters), but that doesn't mean he's the protagonist. I get what you mean though. I do agree Geralt is in some ways the "heart" of the series, but to me the heart is ultimately in all three of them.
@@4589dudeI just want to correct the usage of the term protagonist here; the protagonist is typically the perspective or focus on a character or characters, in this context, Geralt is no less a protagonist as Ciri and Yenn are, as the group is the center of the story.
Think of how Scooby Doo doesn't have 1 single character stand above the others in their importance or focus, the group is the focus of the story.
@@dragonheart967 The protagonist drives the plot forward with their actions and is the person undergoing a journey/struggle against some force they must overcome to achieve their character goals. Yes the protagonists are the ensemble of Geralt, Yen and Ciri. I merely mean to say Geralt is not the sole protagonist, and that sometimes Geralt and Yen play more of a mentor role for Ciri as the protagonist. It's not always clear cut.
@4589dude I'm not disagreeing with your statement, just correcting the use of the terminology, typically people mean something else when they say protagonist, and it's gotten to the point where a lot of people are using the term in wildly incorrect ways.
At this point, I'm just clarifying these kinds of issues to do my part for the run away train situation.
I don't mind Ciri as the MC (I actually liked that ending in W3). For those arguing lore RE the trial of the grasses or whatever, the game makers might have a counterpoint about her elder blood protecting her or something (I dont know, I'm not super well-versed in the lore).
I just don't want them to turn her into an arrogant and irritating "modern" protagonist, and please Christ no marvel humour. Also hoping CDPR give the game enough love and polish unlike what happened with Cyberpunk. Those are my only two caveats.
Book lore doesn't say female witchers are impossible and Ciri is basically a mortal god but I would think she loses her power or is seriously nerfed (for gameplay reasons).
Alot of writers/designers from TW3/Cyberpunk are still at the studio and Phantom Liberty showed us they can create very strong and nuanced scenes.
I just hope the world is an actual world and we can play after the credits.
It's not just that the trial of grasses is too dangerous, it's that the success rate is so low for women, they just stopped doing it outright, so it's a little odd that they would even risk it with her.
And that's not even touching on her using magic, something that was explained that as many times as they tried to teach her, the Elder Blood gave her access to such raw magical power that spells and witcher signs couldn't work due to its potent nature.
Her only magic is the power that the EB can utilize, such as ripping between spheres.
@@dragonheart967 Thanks for that reply, again I'm just a filthy casual who knows embarrassingly little about the full lore.
Will have to wait and see what happens with this one I guess 🤷♂
Ciri needed to be the protagonist, that was set up, and that's gonna work fine story and gameplaywise. But her having undergone the trial of the grasses is a huge lore-break of CDPRs own in-game canon. A huge change that didn't even need to happen, as at the end of W3 Ciri was content to be a magically adept non-witcher following the Witcher's path
I think everyone kinda knew Ciri would be the next protagonist. I think the real issue is how she got her Witcher powers. Truthfully, we can’t have a fully informed opinion until the game actually comes out and we have an in-depth explanation.
Well she learned from Yen how to use magical power from water veins ( like we see in the trailer ), so why shoudn't she be able to learn witcher signs? I mean those aren't like "witcher only magic"! Every sorceress could use those signs. She probably, could have learned them even in front of undergoing the trail of grasses.
@ I was not referring to the signs. She has very clearly, somehow, undergone the mutations without dying.
@@TotallyNotJoe_ Well she is not an ordinary woman! The elder blood could have given her an advantage or the procedure was improved. Somehow palpatine retu.... I meant somehow people start loosing their fantasy and the ability to imagine things. The school of cat had also a different mutagen that didn't opress their emotions anymore. So you can change at a certain level. I could imagine lots of things how it was possible. At the end we will have to wait!
@@Hasselroeder You’re pretty much just repeating what I said earlier lolol
@@TotallyNotJoe_ Well then at least we agree with each other! ^^
Whatever they have planned for the story it could have been done with a new character similar to V in Cyberpunk. There is no need to undo Ciri's character development. We don't want a Walmart Gerald.
Geralt retired in Blood and Wine. It was not a joke when he said "retire".
People are discussing absolutely wrong problem in my opinion. It doesn’t matter that she’s a female, in the first place Ciri wasn’t given enough agency during Wild Hunt to simply jump and make her protagonist of Witcher’s next chapter. Ciri is indeed complex character, but only in the books, which weren’t read by absolute majority of Wild Hunt fans - you can see it by the amount toxicity A. Sapkowski gets for “badly written” books.
But the elephant in the room is absolute and total destruction of Witcher lore. They’ve done it already with Ciri beating White Frost in Wild Hunt, which is impossible because books specifically have characters living 100 years after Geralt and world continues to freeze. But now she’s a full-blown witcher, while Vesemir was the last person who knew how to perform Trial of Grasses end to end, also Ciri needs a mage who would control the process and neither Yennefer nor Triss would EVER agree to do something like that, since chances of survival in this trial is 1 out of 10 (info from latest book). Using any other mage is not an option either since you literally trust your life to them.
Also Ciri kept her magic, it was specifically said by game director in trailer breakdown. He literally said that “Ciri is a powerful Source”. And in Witcher’s world magic is way, way, way more powerful than Witcher reflexes. Main antagonist of the books - Vilgefortz - simultaneously fought Yennefer, Regis and Geralt, while being handicapped (he lost an eye in an explosion before), and managed to vaporize higher vampire and pretty much defeat Geralt. He lost only because Geralt had a trinket which produced illusion. Moral of the story: Ciri with her insane magical potential doesn’t need to be a Witcher physically, just master her magic. Also Wild Hunt is no more, so no reason to hold back.
I agree with you in everything except one. The problem that you described is the main complain. It`s just bad actors that want to reduce to ther secondary elements.
And I would had loved to play as Ciri, with her powers! Not a female witcher.
Eh the games have always just ignored the books and lore when needed. Remember the books take place before the games and the books end with Geralt and Yennifer dying.
In order for this game series to even exist they had to ignore canon and just do their own thing so it's fine. As long as they stick to rules they've established for themselves I'm good.
There are a lot of copium addicts who won't read past your first paragraph and would attack you for being a bigot (somehow). It's really hard to actually have a honest talk on social media since there is so much descent into strawmen and bad faith actors polluting the dialogue with provocations.
That one comment about female protagonists being "immersion breaking"... What? IRL, women are 51% of the population. Why would it be odd for a character to be a woman? What a weird take.
It isn't. Stop pretending it is.
putting his concern in context, the target audience are majority men, now that's not reason in itself that making a woman protagonist is bad far from it, it just means that the majority of the players may not relate to some of the choices and experiences that a woman character goes through and makes.
I love Ciri as a character and she's definitely the best candidate for the mantle of this next game, but i understand the concern some men players have when they think they have to assume the role of a woman in a world and gameplay design that was previously centered around a masculine male protagonist.
@@hern7213 It absolutely is a weird take.
@@glasgowblackchigowski6117 I do get that but the rage goes far beyond this in many.
@@O.Hölder i agree, it's hard to distinguish between reasonable criticism and just misogynist grifters and rage baiters.
I thought it was establish and obvious the next game was going to follow Ciri. How was this a surprise?
The different endings in the Witcher 3 made it pretty clear Geralt was done with that life. One ending literally had Ciri taking up the mantle as a Witcher
I definitely don’t think it was obvious because for one there’s three separate endings.
For two personally, I think it would’ve been much better if they place the focus on a new character and set the game hundreds of years in the past maybe do a series on the prime time of the Witcher so it feels different.
Also then you’re sort of leaving the prime characters alone
Ciri travels through time, meets arthur of camelot and playing gwent would be game of the century material.
I would rather she travels through time and meets Arthur MORGAN!!
Picture the team up: Swords AND bullets vs bad guys 😆
@@NicCrane meet arthur and play gwent with him, stay with me now
I think most Witcher fans would love to play Ciri. She was fun to play in W3. I felt a bond with her, like I was protecting my own daughter. Problem most people have is like most female characters in todays era, they stripped her beauty. Also, according to lore, females cannot be witchers and Ciri has the sacred elven blood and was supposed to be so much more.
Here is how I suspect the story will go. Ciri lost her special abilities when she defeated the White Frost which was her main purpose and destiny so those powers were no longer needed and too dangerous to be allowed to be kept afterwards. You can make that work with all three Witcher 3 endings. I think that Geralt will get killed off fairly early and now Ciri desperate to get some kind of powers that would allow her to avenge Geralt against a much more powerful enemy leads her to seek out a way to make the Witcher mutations work on her, perhaps even something to do with work Geralt did during his "retirement" with the technology from Professor Moreau from the Blood and Wine DLC quest "Turn and Face the Strange". That would open up all sorts of possibilities for the story going forward, it would give Geralt's story full closure and the "Avenging your family" story never really gets old.
Something like that would work in forwarding the story without breaking the mythical "canon" .... Mythical because hardly anyone said boo about romancing Triss instead of Yen which broke canon is a big way yet everyone was OK with that. Funny how that works .......
Yes, it will be a stronger story when you play as Siri than if you made your own character. I am positive this game will be an amazing experience.
Imagine a week went by without another “controversy,” in the gaming world. How refreshing would it be?
I personally don't mind Ciri as protagonist, its something that i always thought felt natural to go with after the events of Witcher 3 and i think her model in that trailer, while clearly older, still looks pretty good. Can't say i wouldn't mind my own character either though like in Cyberpunk
My favorite ending to 3 is the one where she has followed in his footsteps so I'm interested. But I also had heard that the next game was maybe going to be a prequel with Vesimir which sounded like a cool idea too.
I dont mind Ciri, it makes sense but as a male gamer i prefer the male character Aesthetics. Im sorry but i am SELFISHLY disappointed.
Tbh if they ever want to do a character creator that door is still open, but had they done it now the opportunity to make Ciri the protagonist would have probably been lost. Or it would have been more difficult anyway. And if this game is a succsess (commercially most importantly but also critically) they can build on this a lot more and easier than with the other option. Also, and this is subjective but most would probably agree, the heart of the witcher stories (books, games and even the show as bad as it is) has always been the characters and their relationship with each other. Especially Ciri and Geralt. It´s character driven more than plot/story driven, and making a character creator would have been cool, but we would have lost our strongest connection to the franchise.
There is no controversy. Yust best choice for this Universum
No controversy for Star Wars Outlaws, either. Mega sales Goliath 🤣😂
I see one problem with the government grant things (outside the fact that they are a problem in themselves); CDPR is in Poland. So it doesn't apply to them. I guess it does work as a generalized argument though.
Poland is part of the EU. I'm sure they also offer grants for that.
Having Ciri as the protagonist isn't bad but I was hoping to get the opportunity to create my own Witcher. That being said, the devs said she becomes the Witcher and that sounds to me like she isn't at the beginning of the game likely because of the lore we already know about women not being able to become Witchers and the lost archives of the trial of the Grasses from the sack of Kaer Morhen. I think if they can explain how Ciri either is able to find a new way to create the mutagens either with the help of the mages or through her Elder Blood somehow and complete the trials she may be the catalyst for not only a new school/generation of Witchers but also adding the dynamic of finding the solution that escaped the Witchers of old from allowing women to join their ranks in the past.
I want Ciri to be old-ish like mid thirties. Make it look like years of pain have shaped her.
yeah give her a hunchback and give her a bald spot.
I don't think they could win in this situation. If there was a customizable witcher, people would be complaining that they spurned Ciri. I saw the criticisms before I watched the trailer and I was inclined to believe them, but then I watched the trailer and it looked fine. I am a little nervous about Ciri being a full fledge witcher, but if they explain it in the story without retconning anything, I'd be ok with it.
It just seems like they were afraid of making Ciri diverge too far from Geralt's gameplay. I saw Ciri being a new protag from years away but I don't like the way CDPR is going about it.
I could care less about Ciri being the new MC or her looking different. As long as Witcher 4 isn’t like cyberpunk on launch, I’ll be happy with the finished product I’m sure
There cant be regular female witcher within witcher lore. Ciri is special, thanks to her elder blood. It would be extremly hard to justify character created custom female witcher, so Ciri is just the best choice.
Screw the haters. I'm glad I'm playing as my girl Ciri.
Almost no one is saying they won’t play as Ciri, they’re saying the character model being changed is indicative of a much bigger problem in the production.
@@elck3 almost every cinematic trailer of the witcher games has a different face model from ingame even for witcher 3. U dont remember the cinematic scene at the beginning of witcher 3 Yennefers face was completely different compared to the ingame model. Stop trying to hate when they already did the same shitt for Witcher 3 lmao
@@Sokmo. Yeah its a different engine. People just want to hate nowadays it seems. If CDPR has a great reputation. I feel people need to relax everyone just wants to whine about things being woke its so tiresome.
I personally preferred Ciris look in the witcher 4 trailer than the witcher 3. I thought it was more detailed and she looked more rugged and tough. Geralts appearance also changed a lot from the different titles. Not sure why its a negative if they change the character model its been like 10 years. And thats if it changed in game which we still dont know.
@@Jimpanect yh the cinematic trailer is just about showing of the tone of the game based on the directors quotes on gamesradar.
It gives of a dark tone and perhaps showing off player consequences.
@@dr_diddy That makes sense. Yeah I think the theme itself is pretty similar to the witcher 3. Pretty much the exact mission would fit into a witcher 3 side quest. Only youd likely get to chose to tell the child to wait outside the cave risking them to the monster but also saving them from the towns folk.
Im guessing since TW3 was so popular the formula will be pretty similar just with various improvements.
I hope we get to see more of Letho in quests or something. That dude is badass
Bro is milking this
almost as if bro is a content creator
Yeah it's pretty bad.
well their projects are self funded and they already said they choose her 10 years ago
Roll your own character games usually tend to have a much more generic story that's about as deep as a mud puddle. Compare the main story in Witcher 3 to say the main story in Skyrim. Even a choice between two protagonists especially a male or a female one tends to muddy the waters as far as good storytelling.
Most men want to play as male protagonists but not all and women I assume prefer females. The writing and characters will make or break this game, and we have no idea of what that will really be. BTW: Ciri being a Witcher like monster hunter was only one of the ending choices for her in The Wild Hunt and the Devs in this new game has chosen that one like it or not. . It would be wise to let it be out for a while and see what the game play and writing will be before spending hard earned money for it and ignore the shills. IMO.
The game should've been called The Witcher Sagas Part 1 or something.
Ciri was pretty plainly going to be the next main character in W3. I'm perfectly fine with it. Though I would have loved to make my own if they could pull it off and still make the story make sense.
Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon is an AWESOME take for the Witcher series, especially if you read the books and played the games!
I am sure it will be a good game, i just don’t want agendas being pushed and all, let a game be a game
you dont have to play it lol
@ So you come take control of my favorite game franchises i grew up with, fill it with agenda, and i just…don’t have to play it? Silly logic
@@thefallenvalley4340 Vote with your wallet, don't buy the game. If nobody buys "woke" games nobody will produce them. Or make your own games that represent your ideology. Even better would be if you just became more normal. Believe me, being excited about stuff is far more fun than always being disappointed that nothing panders to your worldview
@@esesel7831 You don’t understand. There is nobody else who makes the X game (they legally cant so im stuck), and i want that game to be the same as it always was. Why do i have to completely change my game franchises just because they’re trying to push their agendas there? Do you realize how stupid you sound telling someone to just abandon a franchise they like because the new guys took over and wanna ruin everything?
@@thefallenvalley4340 that's just capitalism for you... Also nobody is being forced to make "woke" games. Stellar blade came out and nobody really cared because it wasn't very good. I would say the Kingdom Come Deliverance games are slightly right leaning and everyone celebrates them because they are good games. The only reason not more non woke games are being made is that most devs are "woke" . I get your frustration. But Id love for you to just play a game you think is woke without preconceptions. Don't watch a review beforehand just play it. You can even pirate it so the woke devs don't get any money from you. Do you worry that playing a game with an "agenda" will make you agree with that agenda? You know you don't have to agree with any opinion uttered In Media.
I think people who are upset or confused about this decision don't know the Witcher universe beyond a surface level lol. It's fine to feel disappointed if you were really hoping for a different character to take the spotlight or for a custom create-your-own witcher protagonist because those are totally valid and promising directions to take the franchise, but I can't imagine you'd hate Ciri being the choice.
If the trailer is any indication of the look, feel and gameplay.. Im totally on board.
Played f.e. the female Versions of the character in the last AC games, which was fine, looked good. Even thou both male and female versions were the same from a writing perspective.
So there is a lot more potential if you have one specific character that you can write your stuff around.
This game will be good i bet. Ciri has always been the main character even if not a pov character. The director of this was a director on blood and wine and he also says most of thr dlc writers are still on staff so the game will most likely be just fine. So all the woke police and culture war idiots are calling foul already when they know zero about it. But based on all the stuff I’ve found online and on polish sites it’s going to be JUST fine. Quit complaining about things just to complain about them.
People are upset that Ciri is the mc this time? Fr??
I wish all these "lore experts" were more creative than saying CDPR IS DOING A RETCON AND IT BREAKS THE LORE. Think for longer than five minutes and you might think of a way that it could work
CDPR has been breaking lore since Witcher 1. Geralt, Yen and Regis shouldn't even be alive. If you were a lore purist, you shouldn't even play the games at all.
@@khaledassaf6356 Good thing I'm not a lore purist
@@exhaustpipes Not thinking means less stress, but not everyone is blessed with an empty head.
Personally the girl that ended up dying was way more attractive than ciri. So the game is woke when the main character isn't as....attractive "or whatever you think is attractive"? Gotta agree with you on this Luke. I think this is just trolling/noise/clickbait.
It’s not “business savvy” no games that have gone for DEI gov $ have succeeded with customers.
CDPR has earned the benefit of the doubt. Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty were made during the DEI era and while both were certainly diverse, it didn't affect them in a negative way at all. The story and characters were great.
That is because diversity is already a major lore part in the CP literature universe where you can exchange every part of your body to whatever you like or simply exchange the whole thing or not die and be "born" again right after they inject the hard copy of your consciousness on a stick in a completely new frame if you have the money. Together with the whole anti-capitalist setting, this was DEI galore without needing to bang for it. This is how excellent coherent writing works and it was definitely not the game's problem, quite the contrary tbh.
And then you take all these hilarious experiments we have seen in 2024, being self-proclaimed anti-racist, inclusive and what not and at the same time pushing every stereotype button so hard with non-existing character writing that people don't even know it they will actually ever play enjoyable new games from their most beloved franchises.
Dude, did we live in diferent realities. It took years between the time that CDPR took our money, at least the money of sucker like me that preorderd the game, and the real deliver of the game. CDPR should not have the benefit of doubt. Between the preorder and Phanton Lybert took 5 years. Really, I don`t understand that way of thinking.
@@marducms seeing the last "highly regarded" release of CDPR, I totally agree and this is in fact what scares me most. But money or us getting a half-assed product (which is quite likely ) is not the question here. The question is more if they dare to add injury to insult and give us the whole lecture in contemporary politics... It would mean their doom.
@@mrpostaldude8289 Yes, and this is another concern.
But I would only consider to touch is this new game only after the launch of the first expansion. The same time where Cyberpunk 2077 where really ready to be played. And this decision I had taken even before the trailer. CDPR is not ot be trusted. DEI or not DEi. Woke or not woke. It doesn`t matter to me, they already treated me as a sucker once. I`m not gonna do the same twice.
@@marducmsNo I agree with him. Yes Cyberpunks launch was awful there's no denying that however from what I understand the CDPR devs didn't want to release the game in the state they did, that entire fiasco came down to the management and marketing teams, not the devs actually making it.
At one point these people started making promises about the game to the press without telling THE DEVELOPERS ABOUT IT!
the guy asking why so many female leads that was decided almost a decade ago
Diversity hire for actors is okay for me. But the diversity hire should be carefully done for writers and programmers - or just stop it - because the low quality ones will mess the game up bad.
If the devs make this a “woke game” it won’t simply be because of making Ciri the protagonist, but it is a red flag because it goes against lore and paves the way for a Mary sue girl boss that nobody likes. As much as I like CDPR I will not give them or any company the benefit of the doubt, I’ll hold off buying until reviews are out and I refuse to buy any woke game because talking with our wallets is working and the woke have lost the culture war, some of them are holding on against hope but it’s over for them.
Surprised to see so many comments ok with female protagonists. Every guy I know IRL won’t play games with fem protags, and vice versa for the girl gamers I know. Everybody prefers to play as their own sex.
Most people I know mostly don't care about what sex they are playing as, as long as the game is good.
You need better friends then
I think they showed a lot of female leads because of Lucia from gta 6 i like female leads and I was thinking maybe since the next gta game well feature a female lead it might had inspired them to show theirs also I am interested in picking up the Witcher 4 I seen season 1 of the series but I haven’t played any of the games can’t wait to see Ciri Story for the first time great video
While Ciri is ok.Making our own character would have tamped down on controversy and made things a lot easier for the developers at CDPR. I think they have made things unnecessarily difficult for themselves in the current climate, I loved Ciri.I loved female V.I loved femshep. But there are male players who won't play as females.They just refuse to do so.
K, well, they're missing out on a ton of games then, for a stupid reason. If it sucks, if it's not fun or not your genre, then yeah. Don't play. But there's not enough games in my favorite genres to avoid a really good one just because character isn't the same gender as me.
I always choose a female protagonist if it’s an option. I think she looks great.
HOWEVER, I don’t believe amateurish activist hacks hired as “narrative consultants” should be called “developers”. They are a cancer on the games industry.
Where is the witcher ?
I actually don’t mind if they have her as the main character but they better not apply the woke trash narrative to this series. It didn’t work with the show and it won’t work with the game. It doesn’t work with ANYTHING
The only thing i Don like about witcher game is that they make women as a secc object.
I think it’s so dumb people thinking playing as a woman is immersion breaking. How sexist is that? What about the millions of women who play games and they have to play as a dude?
They're just mad that they can't get an GF
It's actually what all the Proto-Chuds want: a strong attractive female lead that does not mess around for long. The OG Lara Croft type requests are actually obsessive sometimes, from one creator in particular. Then you give it to them and they call treason again because the PC is not 100% up to the holy book... I should stop with the Melonie references
@@aaronmail8836 It's true, source? me 😭😭😭
Yeah I’m sure the 5% of chick gamers are furious
@aaronmail8836 LMAO says the anime pfp
I can understand if you are a die-hard fan of the original books, this must be dirt thrown in your face seeing the sacred texts (reference intended) being cut apart and reglued to something you do not recognize anymore. I for sure still remember why I stopped watching GoT after season 4 or 5 back in the day.
Anyhow, for someone like me who plays only the games, this will be fine. I have too much RL stuff going on to bother about diving into every nerdy territory. This will be a decent game guys - if CDPR does not blow it like last time (that's the scary part)
The games have had their own canon since the original game 🤷♂
Most people who've read the book or into the lore would/should know that tbf, the books are very vague so no one should really fault CDPR for expanding on canon.
If you're a diehard fan of the original books, then the entire game trilogy is lore breaking, as Geralt dies at the end.
I see, I am clueless...
Ciri is more the protagonist of the WItcher story than Geralt is. She is the centre piece of that univese. Everything that happens revolves around her and her actions. Anyonewho has more than 2 brain cells can undesrtand why CDPR made this choice even if you wanted a game where you customize a character alá Cyberpunk.
ciri is good i don't like creating your own character
They could have let Ciri have her own face, there would be 1000 times less controversy. Though making her The Witcher instead of Geralt is stupid too. And also there is certain connection between DEI practices and games quality, like Obsidian's "Outer Worlds" was not good, Remedy's "Control" was meh, and now we know what these studios have in common.
If the new game was called "Elder Blood" and it was Ciri NOT as a Witcher, I think more fans would be on board.
I think if Geralt was the main protagonist, pretty much ALL fans would be on board.
I think if it was game set in the future and we were making our own character, most fans would be on board.
Making her a Witcher though.. divides fans. Doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
In the books they never directly say that women can't be Witchers. They say 3 out of 10 BOYS survive the trials. The pronouns used are male pronouns. And the Polish.. I'm not Polish so I am only going off what I have read online, but the polish name for Witcher is also a masculine conjugation. So it is clear that Witchers are meant to be male. (Sure.. could be a cultural thing too.. Knights are male in our real world history for example, but either way.. up until now Witchers are male)
Now Ciri is so powerful she shouldn't even need the "power" of a Witcher because she is already so much more. So it is just odd.
With the trend of replacing masculine figures with (masculine) female figures I think it is fair that some fans are concerned.
Geralt is special among Witchers. Now though, taking a god tier character like Ciri and making her a Witcher we now in a way lessening Geralt.
Also I'm a fan of The Witcher because of Geralt. Take all the logic above and put it aside.. I'm a fan BECAUSE of Geralt. So now replacing him isn't going to be a positive in my book either way. Throw all the concerns on top of this.. and yeah.. it just leaves me with a bad feeling.
And then there is the fact that as a man, I don't really see myself role playing as a woman. I know some guys do, but I don't game just to game, the few games I do play (Mass Effect and Witcher.. recently BG3) I use male characters because I like to lose myself in the story. I find it weird that people have a problem with that too. It isn't really that deep.
they already decided not to continue with Geralt in future games 10 years ago when they released witcher 3 why are u still expecting geralt the fak?
geralts story ended twice now.. how would you even continue that? also if you dont want to play as a woman just dont play witcher 4?
Yeah I feel like they should keep "The Witcher" title but not add a 4. Like The Witcher: Inheritance or something. And I would assume she has not done the trial of the grasses since pretty much everyone in universe seems to agree that's a cruel practice. Geralt wouldn't do that to her even if it would work on her. I'm guessing she'll have her own abilities, paired with some monster hunting skills that Geralt has passed down to her.
Book lore also states Geralt and Yen died at the end, among other things that the games deviate from. You can't just cherry pick the parts of the lore you want relevant to justify something that's lore breaking as is.
Too many bots ngl
That's trans geralt
I don't mind Ciri as protagonist. I am just mad that they butchered her face. It's botox Ciri.
relax, it's just the cinematic trailer, in game ciri is most likely gonna look more like she did in the witcher 3. just look at geralts model from the trailers and compare it to his in game model
@KarinkoSvestičan I'm just hoping for that as well. I can't unsee botox Ciri now.
Wah wah total babies wtf is this
Just ban me please.
ugh, i hate these debates so much, i'm 90% most actual witcher fans dont care its ciri, she was a badass in the previous games. My issue is the 1. She was very much uglier in the trailer, super masculine, while in witcher 3 she was an absolute 9/10 2.They nerfed her power just to be a witcher from the looks of it, in 3 she was zooming all over the place makeing geralt look weak sometimes 3. Direction of the trailer had very strong "the message" vibes where in the end the real villains turned out to be men. Its all flags to me pointing towards a certain direction, nothing is definitive, but we should keep an eye on that stuff.
you now have a problem with a man being villain in a witcher game? and not before?
is this bait or are you mocking those people 😭
@@dr_diddy You have a good point. With the exception of the Witches. I don`t remember any other bad guy in the game that wasn`t male. I think that we had some females that had done bad things, but there was an explanation. It seems that CDPR was always the same. And this certain direction was already clear in Hearts of Stone, lots of thinks that could be seen as current day.
"Ciri fought against Whoreson Jr. and his men. She was mowing them down like it's nothing. Clearly part of "ThE MeSsAgE" to portray men as weak and evil that should be cut down mercilessly" - You guys, 2024, had Witcher 3 came in 2024, not 2015
life is strange girls there many Games wit leading Girls Portal 2 , The Walking Dead ., Assassin's Creed Syndicate . Resident Evil 3 , Half-Life: Alyx . Bright Memory . Mirror's Edge: Catalyst .Silent Hill 3 . Assassin's Creed Odyssey . Tomb Raider . Celeste . Uncharted: The Lost Legacy , Bayonetta . Alien: Isolation , Hell blade: Senua’s Sacrifice , Horizon: Zero Dawn
It's just a situation of video game tourists thinking it's the w- word even though this has always been coming.
yeah there are definitly alot of grifters who latch on to any kind of drama if it serves their purpose. Even tho they dont even play the games
Youre a shill bro
I'm fully OK with Ciri being the main character. I think they made her look worse but I'm sure we will have mods to make her 'hot' shortly after launch. I don't think she looks horrible but I simply do not understand why people act like making characters gorgeous is an issue.
Note this isn't just for female characters and while the look is different the standard is their for men. Do you think most men look look at Geralt or Thor etc?
It’s incredible that that these publicly traded companies know replacing the male lead with a woman will undoubtably cost them money and they still do it.
lmao you wanted to play witcher 4 retirement simulator? no male lead is being replaced, the average game dev just has a more normal outlook on life than you. If you continue going down that path you will quickly find yourself enjoying nothing anymore. stop watching those slop anti woke youtubers and touch some grass. for your own sake
@ Lmao the vast majority of the comments agree with me on virtually every version of this trailer on TH-cam. And there’s literally a million ways they could have gone without resorting to appeasing the social justice warrior crowd with a chick protagonist. No matter how much they try and ram it down everyone’s throat, shit like the Witcher and other media are male dominated fan bases, and the strong woman lead is always going to fail. There’s countless examples.
@@boxnews171 ok good vote with your wallet and don't buy the game. According to your logic witcher 4 will fail that way and all will be fine in the world.
@ lol I plan to not buy the game, the game will fail, and maybe studios will come back to sanity. Ask Disney how the woke bullshit crusade is going or Ubisoft.
@@boxnews171 I wish you the best and hope one day you will come back down to reality. This is not good for you but I guess you already know that. Reach out to other people. Find or reconnect with friends, it would help you. Don't want to sound condescending btw I think was in a similar spot than you in the past.
The game is titled The Witcher IV, but if Geralt isn't the main protagonist and there isn't a compelling narrative reason for the title, it should be called something else or at least have a sub-title, e.g., "The Witcher IV: The Chronicle of Ciri," or whatever. To me, it feels like a bait-and-switch, a tactic often deployed as part of the Neo-Marxist playbook when it comes to modern entertainment. They're removing a popular male protagonist, and replacing him with a female protagonist while using the male protagonist's popularity to sell the product. I realise using Ciri as Neo-Marxist propaganda is a debatable assumption given her overall importance to the series because it's feasible she will make for a suitable lead. However, seemingly breaking with lore to turn her into a witcher screams, "Here's our improved female version of the thing you like". CDPR are skilled storytellers in the videogame space, so there may be reasonable explanations for these decisions. Nonetheless, given what we've seen more broadly in modern entertainment, The Witcher IV appears to have a few red flags.
wtf lol
Bait used to believable
This must be a bait, right? Or just schizoposting?
How is it a red flag. Throughout witcher 3 the game pretty much revolves around ciri. The game literally set up that you would be ciri in the next game. I'm excited to play ciri. There is so much more story and possibly reunions with people she meet in witcher 3. I hope there is a quest where she can meet the bloody baron again.
@@rrhill1 The Witcher franchise is named after Geralt because he is The Witcher and the main protagonist. If CDPR calls the game The Witcher IV it implies that Geralt will be the main protagonist, which is false advertising at best and a bait and switch at worst. You and I might follow the gaming news, so we know about the switch, but the franchise appeals to millions of customers and many of them don't follow the gaming news, so misleading customers comes across as a bit of a red flag, whether it's to push Neo-Marxist propaganda or not. After all, It wouldn't be the first time that CDPR has misled customers.
I actually disagree that CDPR used the previous game to set up the franchise to continue with Ciri as the main protagonist. There were multiple endings of which one had that outcome, but the most common ending was Ciri becoming Empress. To get Witcher Ciri the player had to make several very specific dialogue choices throughout the game, which means most players didn't get that ending.
For the record, while I would prefer to play as Geralt, I don't mind playing as Ciri provided the game is advertised correctly and there are compelling story reasons as to why this is the case and why she is now a full witcher. However, if it appears we're playing as Ciri because CDPR has decided to push this peculiar Neo-Marxist corporatism we've seen in so many franchises, including this one (The Netflix shows), I also consider that a red flag.
CDPR are master storytellers though and my concerns might be for naught, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be concerned in the first place because the zeitgeist and history suggest they're reasonable.