Video on CD Projekt Red's DEI & ESG rVideo on CDPR's DEI practices: th-cam.com/video/9xG3_Rz8Ams/w-d-xo.html GWENT STAMPS: 0:00 - intro 1:28 - Trailer Overview 10:03 - Ciri as the Protagonist 15:26 - The DEIlephant in the room 25:18 - Ciri made into a Witcher 35:20 - Ciri's Appearance
I can see why people see it as jab to religious people, because "God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac" is their favorite thing to bring up, even though they clearly did not read it themselves, because nobody was sacrificed in that story. It's simply just a story that tells you to trust God/do good no matter how hard it is to do. I was an atheist until I realized that all they do is use emotional arguments in their debates because I watched a lot of it. My main problem with it is that they are calling it Witcher 4 when it's clearly not a continuation of Geralt's story, and they forced her to become a Witcher to make it have a semblance of logic to it, instead of just calling it "The Elder Blood" or "Witcher: Elderblood/ Ciri's Saga". All of the things in the trailer are completely unnecessary.
@@zupremo9141 Ciri is at least the 2nd most important character in the franchise. I doubt they turned Ciri into a witcher just to make it a continuation. Tho whether or not the story reasoning is good is yet to be seen.
@@JawadBhuiyan I was also expecting her to be the next MC if we are not going to be able to create our own, My problem with it is they didn't have to make her a Witcher because she already have her own back story. She is a powerful mage that was also really good at swordsmanship, She literally have the coolest setup and they wasted it and also break the lore just to prove to us that "If men can do it women can do it too". I know we didn't know why they did it, but all of the evidence points to the DEI direction.
I admit that I am not a paid writer, but I do consider myself at least a decent analyst of story crafting. Either they're going to have to find a reason for Ciri to go through the trial of the grasses, an excruciatingly painful and often lethal procedure that hasn't been successful on anyone besides young boys in the 300 years they've been doing it, or they're going to need to come up with some magical reason that by its very nature is going to seem contrived. I consider writing to be worse when you can "see the strings" so to speak, when you think "oh the writer needed this person to be here for this and couldn't think of a good way to do it so it's just a lucky coincidence". She has the ability to travel between worlds, the storytelling potential is limited only by their imaginations, but instead they made her a witcher. It shows me that a) they're not confident she'd be able to stand on her own without pandering to the nostalgia of long-time fans of Geralt's and b) they're willing to sacrifice the pre-established lore and worldbuilding to do it (or make a political statement, or likely both).
Saw another commenter saying that in the books Vesemir tried some potions on her, from the trials, and her body had a violent reaction. Showing her Elder Blood wouldn't help her in this situation, maybe it'd even only make it worse. And also obviously showing how much AGAINST IT Geralt would be. It's going to be interesting to see how CDPR works this into the story. If they even bother to try it at all...
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski” Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place. She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@@JohnJohn-pm9wqOmg, finally someone with a common sense giving a chance to studio, which is known for it’s storytelling capabilities, to actually explain the intrigues they added in their trailer? Who could even thought of such thing? 😆
If you want the classic CDPR devs from The Witcher games and Cyberpunk, check out Rebel Wolves. The devs in CDPR aren't the same ones as before, those left and created a new studio.
I've checked their website before, the language in there is a total contrast of the language in CDPR's website. It's reminiscent of CDPR's language BEFORE going head-first into all of this bullsh*t. I can't wait for their vampire RPG game.
Ciri as an Elder Blood protagonist? Not a problem. Ciri as a full-on actual Witcher protagonist? Yes, SEVERAL problems. Long story short, her being an actual Witcher is incongruous to the lore and undermines her character arc. Bad move on CDPR's part. Should have given us a new pre-created character or let us devise our own. Something fresh. This? Definitely not it.
Man, now you got me thinking of a Witcher game letting us create our own Witcher... Eh nah, it'd probably f*ck with the lore too much... Though it's not like making her a Witcher and going off the books isn't going to either.
I heard that the games aren’t Canon to the books and that CDPR never said that they were so is it really a terrible decision that Ciri is a Witcher in this? The game set her up to be the main Witcher after the Canon ending of 3
@hugolyall677 Protagonist sure, but why couldn't she just be a part elven battle mage? Refine her teleportation powers and have her learn magic similar to signs.
@@arkeshn729 I haven’t beaten Witcher 3 or even gotten past act one so I don’t know or remember about that reason but she’s one of the main characters of the plot and this is a new saga so why the hell not? and I know about the ending from TH-cam. The reason I never got to it myself is because the game is a bit too long for me to beat and I’m worried I’ll screw it up by accidentally making the wrong choices. Sorry
@hugolyall677 CDPR games aren't book cannon, but they have their own lore. The trials of grasses are pretty much destroyed, and no girl has ever survived it. They can do what they want, but if the worldbuilding doesn't matter to the creators, why should it matter to the players? Witcher 3 if definitely a time commitment. I want to do a completionist run one of these days, but I can play at least 2 to 5 other games in the same timeframe.
From what I remember, we know female children did take the trial of grasses, we just don't know of any that survived. I don't recall it ever stating they can't. So, "no female witchers," doesn't really seem like a hard rule. The bigger issue is Ciri's age: The trial was normally administered on prepubescent children to fundamentally alter how their bodies would develop. We know Ciri hadn't undergone the trials by the time she was already an adult - that's a big issue you have to resolve in order to make her a "normal" witcher. There's an ending in Witcher 3 where Ciri effectively becomes a witcher, but they never imply she actually took the trial of grasses. It's stated Geralt taught her all he knew. Implying swordsmanship, tactics, poisons and yes, probably signs as well. Witcher signs are just very simple magics, so there's little reason Ciri couldn't learn or use them. Gameplay-wise CDPR could/should have Ciri play as a different flavor of Witcher than Geralt. Perhaps relying more on magic and poisons to make up for not being able to ingest decoctions without having undergone the trial as a child. I have no problem with Ciri as a protagonist, or even Ciri living the life of a witcher, but I'm disappointed they aren't exploring how her skills and hunting tactics might differ from other witchers rather than just retroactively shoehorning her into being a normal one.
It's implied in the books that most Witchers are male. The five Witchers we meet are men, and there's a running gag that Geralt's "child surprise" turns out to be a girls. But there's nothing to say "no female Witchers". Indeed, the Witcher world is a good bit more egalitarian than ours. We meet two female monarchs, and at least one female senior officer, and no one bats an eye. In the books, Ciri as a child tried and could not cast Witcher signs, implying the trial of grasses is not necessary to cast them. Ciri as an adult, having been trained by Yennifer to control her innate abilities, can do some magic. Witcher signs are simple magic, mocked by sorcerers, so there's no problem with Ciri casting signs. Witcher potion are another matter. You would need the trial of grasses for your body to tolerate them.
No there is no statement in the books. There are female witchers in paper rpg writen with Sapek so offitial. Is just not common becouse nobody normal will give gril to witchers if you can marry her for adventages. This is the reson why most of sourceres have deformations before magical change (in books)
Just think about it like this... it's all proto-science-magic or whatever. So sure, it's totally possible for there to be female witchers. They just haven't gotten it locked in yet, but also the system they already have works pretty well. First off, you get the kids when they are small, malleable, and brainwashable, they're like little Zealots to do your bidding. Why would you want to make this formula... work on adults? They'd have brains and their own sense of self. Harder to control basically. It's also easier to control one sex than two. If you had female and male witchers that's one more than you need, if you're concerned about that sort of thing. What if a noble dude wants to marry a Witcher? Would she? Could she? That's a wrinkle... or maybe not. I'm sure the royal family wouldn't be too keen on sterile brides. Think about the context of the stories and the time, setting, and the politics of the era. It's all very interesting to me at least, that even if you did have the formula would your School tell the other schools? Could female witchers be bad at some things and better at others? Do certain abilities work better just because of gender? The author of the book does put the notion that things like this are always kind of on the surface or within the text. But I think we haven't seen a female Witcher for just one simple reason... dude hasn't written it yet and he's getting up there in years. Plus the series seems to be working just fine at the moment. The thing is when you create your own universe and get fans, fandoms, and an awesome deal for your idea, you tend... to stick with what's making you the most cash. I know that sounds like I've got my evil corpo-hat on, but you know... you usually don't change your creative stuff until it's run dry or the story you've already told is done. He did leave a lot of this stuff open on purpose though. Plus a female Witcher does sound fun because you'd think it's no big deal for a male to be sterile, but with a female Witcher that could be a real _interesting_ point of contention to draw a character from. Lastly, maybe he just doesn't want to overdo it. Just like atGeorgee R.R. Martin, my bro has so many irons in the fire, so many stories running, he isn't likely to finish even half of them.
btw, if witcher ciri visits geralt in toussaint and tells him about her adventures there's already a mention of drinking a witcher potion. so there's that.
Nothing against Ciri being protagonist. The thing is, women can’t be Witcher’s, nobody knows how to perform the trial of the grasses anymore, Ciri was never fully trained as a Witcher… etc. they failed using the elder blood lore and make something totally different and really unique. Oh let’s do the same thing. 😂😂😂😂😂
Actually the lore says that none of the girls they tried survived, not that they can't. Just like any experiment you have to find the right measurements. Yennifer, recreated the Trial of Grasses in Witcher 3, to break the curse on Avallach. Ciri WAS fully trained as a witcher, she just never went through the trials. She got combat training, monster education, and alchemical training. If they left Ciri fully powered, the only monsters that would pose any danger to you are bosses. Because if you remember in Witcher 3, by the end of the game if you knew what you were doing you could mow through the army of wild hunt minions as if they were standing still. Unless they have completely depowered her elder blood, i'm still thinking it will be a resource like mana bar, that you can use and then wait for regen, or build back up in combat similar to Adrenaline points in Witcher 3.
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski” Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place. She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq Straight up BS. Ciri is a woman and already an adult, two things that make the survivability close to 0. Her elder blood is not a plot armor that nullifies Ciri to any harm or give her omnipotence, it was specifically to give her access to powerful magic. No one even knows how to perform the trial and make it adopt to the physiology of a woman. The needed equipment and knowledge has been lost and no trial was performed for years, so I don't know where you got the BS story of it being constantly advanced and studied by the Witchers (when even them don't know how). Vesimir, a fencing instructor, is the only one who barely knows and he is dead. Witchers were not needed anymore and so none was produced, making it a lost art. How would her elder blood be lost? It isn't an detachable part of her body, it is her genes. How would one even lose her genes? All of this is character assassination and that they are redoing everything that was already greatly established by Witcher 3. We had a strong, capable, lovely Ciri by the end of it. Now, what they did is have a potion drinking, sign casting Ciri which is just a generic Witcher. Truth is, I don't trust CDPR anymore with my money, those great writers that we had already left the studio. Time to find another series to support I guess.
@ bro, you didn’t read the books. The books are clear about women not turning into witchers. They tried but, 100% of the girls died. The success rate was 3/10 or 30% on boys. Another thing that’s very clear in the books is the fact that nobody knows how to perform the trial of the grasses anymore. It’s a lost forever knowledge.
@ I can’t reason with a person or have an intellectual discussion when you’re already determinant to weaponise your arguments against CDPR ignoring lore and mythos of the Witcher universe itself to play out your narrative against it. I don’t think you’re interested to come into terms. Now, your opinions aren’t the reflection of the author of the Witcher books. It doesn’t matter what you even think. The author never wrote that women cannot be Witchers. Mutation is a science experiment, it’s an evolving process and like every experiment it was constantly being studied. Yennefer was able to manipulate the trails of grasses to reverse the curse upon Avallac. How did that happen? Nobody ever manipulated the trials of grasses. This means that trials of grasses and the mutation depends on the correct measurements, women previously didn’t survive because the measurements where not accurate to the physiology of women. Geralt himself said in Kaer Morhen that Ciri could survive the trials of grasses but Yen and Triss said it’s not worth to lose Ciri over something that’s only instinctive. I think I have explained enough, when you carry so much personal agenda, intelligence will leave the room. There is absolutely no room for reasoning with you because you already hold your thoughts as the Bible. You can remain in your little bubble of comfort where you’re the king of the universe while people who are true fans of the Witcher series is gonna enjoy the hell out of this one. Keep crying
I dont like the whole vibe of, shes female geralt but better, im so tired of this trope, it would be much more interesting if ciri was her own type of monster hunter i.e. not a witcher but she can still hunt monsters because of her powers.
I really hope they don't do that to her, the best memories I have of Ciri in the game are of her contrasting personality. If they go down that path they'll ruin everything. They already ruined what made her special by making her a Witcher instead of focusing on the Elder Blood.
@TheDezembro that's exactly what I mean, her story is supposed to be unique, she doesn't need to be a Witcher to kill monsters, she was in fact more powerful than Geralt, witchers used their knowledge and potions and oils, this would've been so much more interesting, if she used her experience from learning under Geralt but had her own style of hunting, hell they should've even given her a different weapon but they are using the same one sword for monsters one sword for humans shiet. Have you seen the commentary of the dev on the trailer? The way he speaks about it really gives off that they want her to be a better Geralt.
@chucheeness7817 that's another thing they will have to nerf her powers, it's like if you were playing superman, technically you can just blow everything up, the only limitation is whatever the writer decides. In this case, you do I hope the writers are really good, because this is Goin way off from the books. The book series end with Geralt and Yen going off to Avalon a magical realm where only a select few are allowed, it's where king Arthur went in his story after he gets mortally wounded. And ciri is not allowed so she gets left behind. So this game is entirely off the books non-canon now.
Instead of comparing the new model of Ciri to a ridiculous over the top sci fi character, how about comparing her to her old model? The close up shots look terrible. At a distance she looks better though so it might be some engine camera lens effects up close but hard to tell. Close up her jaw and chin are clearly bigger than before and possibly to make that less obvious her face is bloated and rounder. Her forehead is smaller and narrower making the proportions of her face even more different. But again, that could be due to some fish eye lens effect. Considering who the developers are though I'm not holding my breath. What made the old model so compelling was that despite the character's immense power there was a hint of vulnerability behind those expressive eyes. That seems all gone now. The developers said she's more emotional than Geralt but in W3 she wasn't depicted as overly emotional. Rather she was subtle and thoughtful -- but not because she didn't have emotions, just that she didn't act them out all the time. I would much rather have seen how that Ciri took on the witcher trade than this angry, emotional version of Geralt.
I sure hope for a big change concerning this DEI bs. Imagine the feeling, having such parasites in your company. I am hundred percent sure this is outside pressure. No sane person would bring this upon himself. If only it was just the entertainment sector. Off topic but, sooner or later we may be forced to do something about it. One day, not buying a certain product won't be enough. That is their very purpose, to destroy what we love and cherish. Hope that more and more people understand the situation.
The pattern has been seen, the pattern is distrusted, the pattern has decided that Witcher 4 shall not be acknowledged to exist. I love the Witcher trilogy.
Exactly this good Sir, and this trailer sent me straight to prepurchase Kingdom Come Deliverance II Gold on Steam, when I was already waiting for the PC collector I ordered months ago.... Vote with your wallet, CDPR is next, right after Ubisoft and Naughty Dog.
In some cuts she looks worse than others, but in general not the worse appearance wise. The biggest problems are the possible big lore brakes already: Ciri can't drink Witcher potions(Exeption weaker potions like CAT), or she dies, can't use signs because she didn't train for it, and she refuses to ever be a witch. They could let her be a Witcher but using the powers from elder blood there is no reason to make her pass the trial of grasses
Man i all but stood up and clapped at your first point. Siri massacring a village of scared people as "revenge" is totally against what her mentor would've done. And the sad thing is the dumb people behind this game would look at her doing that as being a girl boss instead of a monster.
"Ciri massacring a village of scared people as "revenge" is totally against what her mentor would've done" Are you aware that Ciri in books at some point was drug using bandit and a murderer.
Ciri didn't massacre the village. We only saw her being angry at the village sacrificing the girl for nothing. She called them monsters too. CDPR left it to our imagination what would happen next. If this is a side quest then it will be up to the player to decide the action. We're not watching a movie, but a cut scene from an RPG game where they player can determine the outcome. So it's too early to conclude Ciri is a butcher.
I actually believe they were trying to mimic/copy certain beats from the Witcher 3 trailer. Some monster line at the end "Killing monsters" VS "No gods here. Only monsters" I think it was meant to imply the similarities between her and Geralt I am cautiously optimistic since it does fit the progression of the game buuuut this is one of those they need to walk the line with making this feel natural and not activism
Hey how come Geralt in Witcher The Wild Hunt doesn’t look like the Geralt in Assassins of Kings? Different body type, they ruined him by changing his look.
The devs explained in the ign interview that Ciri is extremely passionate and tends to think with her heart rather than logic many times. She’s a deeply empathetic person and it influences her decisions. We know this to be true from the way she already acts, regardless of her mentoring from Geralt and Vesemir. At the end of the day Ciri is going to do what Ciri wants and all anyone else can do is try to encourage her to channel that into smart decisions. I think the end of the trailer captures her personality perfectly. She isn’t Geralt, we shouldn’t expect her to be.
As a RDR player I always thought playing with a new character (Arthur Morgan) would be not good and boy I was wrong, going by that logic I can give a chance to Siri as the main character in Witcher 4, however as they are both separate worlds and narrative wise are different and "The Witcher" has always been about Geralt, this decision seems wrong. Geralt is "THE WITCHER" as the name of the game says. Same goes for Kratos from GOD Of War, where the current games were centered around Kratos only as the game is about him "THE GOD OF WAR". Still looking forward to this game.
I will say, depending on the context they choose to go with, the whole “Ciri is arguably more important to the plot than Geralt”. It can be worrying, if referring to the third game, because Geralt actions dictate Ciri’s. However in regards to the books, which I have read multiple times, Ciri is the only reason the story exists, her existence changes Geralt. Ciri is the reason Geralt finds purpose, she’s the only reason he believes in destiny. She wants to be Geralt’s destiny, he wants to let her live her own life, but she chooses to be a part of his life and because she wants that he accepts that. The books are like 55% Geralt 45% by the conclusion of the saga but Ciri drives Geralts every move since the first time he meets her. Her existence even leads to him to reconcile with Yennefer. So in context to the book, she’s the main driving force and the foundation of Geralt in the story. So in context of the books she could be considered more important to the plot, because she is the plot. However Geralt makes her who she is so Geralt is the foundation of her story Geralt is “The Witcher” but they are equally important to eachothers plot. Just how the Sword of Destiny has two edges the Story of the Witcher has two edges one is Geralt one is Ciri. So if you take there relationship from the plot it is not “The Witcher”.
The religious comment ppl made about the trailer is cause of double standards. Like you wouldn't see a potrayal of rural folk like this if it was set in an oriental culture or native america. People are just bored of the same overused trope of "backwater medieval-europe zealots", hence why they compare it to reddit.
I've also made the "atheism" comment but about Ciri seemingly turning her anger towards group of villagers. Now thinking about it I probably shoud've said "nihilism" instead, because it's like she's acting out of subjective judgement... It just didn't sit right with me. Her whole anger was so fkn cringe to me.
@@justaquietpeacfuldanceshe wasn't saying "gods don't exist" and she certainly wasn't saying "Christ doesn't" not least because this isn't earth, although they do mention Jesus in Blood and Wine but the themes of The Witcher and trailer are clear. The biggest monsters are men (as in humans not males specifically). The line "there are no god's here, only monsters" is clearly a reference to 1. The fact the villagers clearly worshipped a monster thinking it was god, similar the The Crones, The Lesen in Skellige ect. So the quite literal fact "there was no god and this no reason to sacrifice and kill the girl" and 2. The fact that in the end the evil did not come from a monster or the wrath of a god but humans who killed an innocent girl out of tradition
I disagree with your stance on the anti-religious accusation. This whole thing does not hinge on the reality and truth of the said god, but Ciri's final speech. "No gods here" can simply signify that she thinks so ill of that specific place that it would be "godless," as a hyperbole, but that is if you take "here" as being literally limited to the geography. The whole phrase does sound like a reddit atheist statement, which wouldn't be surprising. Geralt himself is an atheist. I do not disagree, in that I think it is an undeniable fact that it had an intentional anti-religious sentiment, but I do with hour position that such a belief is invalid or even stupid.
People are overthinking the line. Her line about "No gods here, there are only monsters" is because it was not gods that choose girl as a sacrifice, it was the villagers and they are the monsters in this case especially since they killed her in the end.
Bro u cant just over analyze every line video game protag says. by your logic Geralt is very woke bec he saved that girl in 'killing monsters' trailer and even his mentor said to let it go. He even kills all soldiers when we dont see what Ciri does. Just calm down
No one had a problem with Claire Redfield ( RE 2 ) Nor Jill Valentine ( RE 3 ) - This is never about misogyny. Even to the most conservative entertainment consumer and producer...the Japanese. Do you know what the top 2 animes of ALL time are? Full Metal Alchemist and Frieren. Both were written by female authors. People have a problem with the "Madison Beerafication" of Ciri's face, which is prominently a *modern* Western standard. Modifying the novelty of her original look turned people off.
I think she looks hot dude. You got problems. This is too much man. Her head's not shaved and she doesn't have 8inch biceps... What's wrong here? When is enough enough. The left got weird because they went too left. Lets not go too right and prove them all right.
I agree with your point, but I have to pour this salt out. Frieren is quite bad, and terribly written, in pretty much every aspect of writing. (Well, I have seen worse, I guess)
@@mrgreenguy5193 Anita Sarkessian's Feminist Frequency ( 2013 ) Examples of Bad ones - Latest Star Wars trilogy ( 2015 - 2019 ) - GhostBusters 2016 - Batwoman 2019 - Captain Marvel 2019 - Mulan Remake 2020 - Woman King 2022 - Rings of Power 2022 - Saints Row 2022 - Queen Cleopatra 2023 - Dragon Age Veilguard 2024 - Concord 2024 - Acolyte 2024 Examples of Good ones - RE 2 Remake 2019 - RE 3 Remake 2020 - PREY 2022 - Alita: Battle Angel 2019 - Frieren 2024 - Kang Sae-byeok from Squid Game - Gamora from MCU - Arcane ( 2021- 2024 ) - Blue Eye Samurai 2023 - Baldurs Gate 3 : Shadowheart Laezel Karlach Minthara If your awareness of the "culture war" came from the recent election. Just browse a bit. "before the culture war started." How about good characters and stories are timeless. How about that?
@@mrgreenguy5193 Anita Sarkessian's Feminist Frequency ( 2013 ) Examples of Bad ones - Latest Star Wars trilogy ( 2015 - 2019 ) - GhostBusters 2016 - Batwoman 2019 - Captain Marvel 2019 - Mulan Remake 2020 - Woman King 2022 - Rings of Power 2022 - Saints Row 2022 - Queen Cleopatra 2023 - Dragon Age Veilguard 2024 - Concord 2024 - Acolyte 2024 Examples of Good ones - RE 2 Remake 2019 - RE 3 Remake 2020 - PREY 2022 - Alita: Battle Angel 2019 - Frieren 2024 - Kang Sae-byeok from Squid Game - Gamora from MCU - Arcane ( 2021- 2024 ) - Blue Eye Samurai 2023 - Baldurs Gate 3 If your awareness of the "culture war" came from Oct 2024, just browse a bit.
Ciri. The singularity. She incapacitated the ENTIRE wild hunt with a scream, can freeze an ENTIRE planet overtime, can move at hypersonic speeds, teleport and possibly time travel. They abandoned all this and gave us a female Geralt just so they could virtue signal? They literally had the perfect setup for a naturally badass female protagonist and they just hit delete and copy pasted an inferior Geralt 😭
😂😂😂😂 It's so f*cking crazy when you really start thinking about how this Kikimore fight would've gone if instead of drinking witcher potions and casting witcher signs she used the goddamn Elder Blood that everyone wanted to see more of when playing as her in Witcher 3. Ffs.
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski” Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place. She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq The books and author also never explicitly state or mention that Freddy Kreuger doesn't invade dreams and turn them into nightmares that kill the victims. So Freedy Kreuguer is a possibility in the Witcher. See how your reasoning is flawed? It's been pre-established the Trial of Grasses kills 7 out of 10 male adolescents, that no female has survived the experiments, and that no known female Witcher exists to date, and the knowledge and "science" of it has been lost or stopped. How many hoops are you going to jump through to make your argument sound? It's self serving at best and disingenuous at worse. What Yen performed was contrived whacky magical bullshit that worked because the writers made it work. Worse yet you create headcanon to justify why Ciri is the way she has been shown, instead of demanding that such lore and world shattering changes be pre-established and earned.
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq brother... You are lost in the sauce. The point of my post was that Ciri doesn't NEED the trial of grasses to be a witcher. Not gonna argue with you because discussions online don't work over text.
You're a voice of reason, and I appreciate that. I just hope that CDPR come to their senses and pull those red flags down and burn them. I want this game to be good. I want a great story with Ciri as the main protagonist. Gods, I hope they won't fuck her up... As for her looks, I fully agree with you. Also, if there's one thing I've learned over the years, then it is to not trust trailers.
I expected Ciri to be the next protagonist, not the next Witcher. I just hope it doesn't turn into ideological driven nonsense like Intergalactic. Perhaps I should start being offended due to the lack of Buddhism representation in video games that don't need it 😂
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski” Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place. She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@JohnJohn-pm9wq For starters, I didn't comment on how Ciri looks, so why bring that up? Secondly, I also never stated anything else except that I don't want the game to turn into some ideological nonsense. It's been expected that Ciri would mostly likely be in the next after the Witcher 3 but the also doesn't mean that she will or will not be a Witcher.
@@PiSonichu same here although just for reference the easiest way to see if they are a copy and paste spam commenter is to check their other comments on the video which is what I did
geralt looked like the finest specimen of a light weight male fighter. in witcher 4 ,ciri is ugly. age doesn't change bone structure and give you man jaw. she has been turned ugly because modern developers are too insecure about their own looks.
I want to play as Ciri not as female Geralt with girl boss attitude. Ciri is a sweet and caring girl, as Geralt as compassionate. I don't want a character tokenized when there LITERALLY no reason to. You want a female protagonist? You have it. And especially, you have a beloved character that has very deep development and a rich path forward to carry the series. I don't want this to be true but everything leads me to believe it so, that they will ruin Ciri's character just to make her unnecessarily more exceptional, she's already exceptional, you don't need to scream to people how strong she is, how independent she is, how gay she is. For some people, they haven't seen anything wrong with the trailer, they saw Ciri being a badass, and that's enough for them, they have a reason to root for this character, and they're happy the series is coming back. Good for them, it's enough, they'll have a great time. But for me, and many more fans, it's painful to see the future of The Witcher walking into a place we're not welcome. Like Veilguard was to old school fans of the old games, the new one spitted on their faces and called them bigots for daring to question the care with the material.
We have been so gas-lit by the game and film industry. Unfortunately, women don’t make great men. This means that masculine roles, such as that of the witcher, rarely transfer satisfactorily to female protagonists. The only way to do this is to give the female character male characteristics. Unfortunately, this just leads to an unbelievable and unlikable protagonist.
I will say even as a woman I prefer playing an attractive character whether male or female. No one wants to stare at an unattractive character for hours on end.
I'm sure all the girls who played witcher 3 thought men need a more realistic self insert. Instead of fangirling about how hot the dude is. I remember that vividly that girls were just eating him up. Especially compared to the meth sephiroth that was him in 1&2.
The problem for me is her face and voice, I don’t want to play as my Mother or anyone’s Mother, I don’t mind Ciri as the Witcher or whatever but her looks, well I don’t care for it!
So you don’t mind playing a guy who looks like he’s 60 years old, but you do mind playing a woman who looks like she’s about 35 years old? Double standards much?
Much of the old guard has packed up and left, so I have no hope or faith that Andrzej Sapkowski's work will be respected, nor what CDPR cemented in the trilogy, as the Director Sebastian Kalemba has stated in an interview and I quote, "we want to bring in new players [and customers] who do not play our game[s]." So already we are starting off on the wrong foot of respecting the established consumer for the "promise" of this amorphous crowd. We are already seeing excuses being made for something that is rather contrived and pedantic to begin with: Witcher Ciri. The excuse and lie will be it is now CDPR's to do with what they want and the story "must change" and our critiques are unjustified whining while throwing in the tried and true slander of, "you're just an ist and phobe" if you have issues or concerns with what is being sold. As if they are owed our loyalty, money, or even time, while using the low hanging fruit of the vocal, loud, and toxic minority to create bad faith arguments to earn their "moral brownie points." Radical changes in story have to be earned. They need to show us why female Witchers exist or why they must exist, and why Ciri is the best candidate for these transmutations beyond pandering to the simpletons whose neurons firer off at the slightest of fanservice; while proving this isn't just some DEI & ESG agenda and narrative being pushed. They shouldn't expect anyone to just swallow that Elder Blood Ciri is now just a simple player and not a mover or shaker of the world. By the end of Witcher 3 Ciri is quite the power house that trivializes most Witcher threats by the fact she is the girl of destiny who controls time and space. For a business that burned a lot of trust & good will with Cyberpunk 2077 they are asking a lot of individuals to take it on good faith they will respect the established lore, world, and characters with such a shocking reveal that turns such things on its head: female Witchers and an Elder Blood creature at that. Already their are weak and self serving arguments of, "well Andrzej Sapkowski never said their was never any female Witcher's" as if his characters PoV's haven't stated time and again the Trial of Grasses kills 7 out of 10 male adolescents, that females have never survived the Trials, and that no known female adult Witcher exists, while all knowledge and science of the process has been largely lost, and that no Sorcerer to date has begun or continued the work; I half expect them to think Santa Claus is real within the Witcher world seeing as the author never explicitly wrote he doesn't exist. Lastly, what Yen did in the Witcher 3 with their mock Trial of Grasses and magical bullshit was contrived writing, and if the individual doesn't understand that I can't help them through their self imposed brain rot and retardation. It's all just insufferable.
She's clearly very upset because they killed an innocent woman but I don't think Ciri would just butcher the villagers, that's something you seem to assume this Ciri might do because of her being very upset...? I agree Geralt wouldn't have that strong of a reaction but that's one of the things that differentiates Ciri from him. I disagree with your take that it's a detachment from her character, she was always more emotionally involved. She also doesn't have the life experience of Geralt who is nearly 100 years old or Yen who is even older. As for them saying Ciri is arguably more important: they say that because she is! I guess some people miss that point because the games have you play as Geralt like 99% of the time and Ciri's character is only really introduced in the third game. But the books dedicate a pretty significant amount of time talking about her adventures while on the run, often bouncing between Geralt's journey and Ciri's. She has more time dedicated to her than any other character besides Geralt in the main series of books. It's not Geralt that some very powerful people try to have a kid with, it's not Geralt's spawn that is prophesized to end the world, it's not Geralt that people try to perform messed up experiments on because they want the immense power from his blood and it's not Geralt that the Lodge tries to influence into becoming their most important member. This is not to say Geralt is not important but interpreting their statement about Cir's own importance as them shitting on Geralt to prop her up is just wrong. She won't be "just another witcher". You can literally see her drawing power from water and casting a spell afterwards in the trailer (nice throwback to the books when Yen teaches a young Ciri about magic). Kalemba has clarified that she's a mutated source and I'm curious to see how they handle it but I'm intrigued, not disappointed. I know we're all tired of this and just want good games but this doesn't come across as ideologically driven to me. It's just CDPR doing their thing: a very story driven game and memorable characters. PS: the monster she fights in the trailer is called a bauk. Vesemir wouldn't be that mad at you because it's the first time it makes an appearance in the series.
we havent even seen any gameplay. and the trailer just left us with a bunch of unanswered questions. yall out here making videos about nothing at this point. but that being said im not that excited either. and there are a lot of ways things could go wrong with this game. But like i said we havent seen enough to have any meaningful opinions on it.
Yeah i kinda thought the same, the tone of the ending really feels like ciri is about to slaughter them. Which is really opposite of Geralt would have taught ciri. And I'll go ahead and point out since I'm already on the subject, she's showing far too much emotion for being a supposed witcher. She's showing much distress to get the girl to run to safety. Snaps at the guy that grabs her shoulder. Shows seething anger at the villagers at the end. While witchers do feel emotions, the trial of the grasses mutes them so much that most people believe they have none, calling them cold hearted monsters. While they made ciri more battle hardened from the appearance in this video, she's just not acing like a witcher as you also point out. In the topic of playing ciri. Well I'm one of the guys that can't get enough Geralt. Years back i was upset to find out he wouldn't be the MC in the next game, long before the release of cyberpunk, i made my peace with it and when embraced three idea of playing as ciri. Playing as the princess of time and space sounds like it would be great. Didn't even mind seeing the 2 swords on her back. Until you see her drink the potion, see her cat eyes, casting witcher signs. That's where my main problem really begins. Let's just set aside that Geralt was vehement against her becoming a witcher, tho he taught her the ways, the combat of the witcher. Having her drink three potion is an official announcement that she took the trials of the grasses. The potions give anyone that's not a witcher a painful, sometimes a long drawn out death. You do a great job breaking down why there aren't any female witchers. 100% fatal to girls that took the trials. 70-80% fatal towards boys who had to be 12 years old in order to stand a chance to survive it. The problem with ciri specifically going thru the trials especially when people try to say "her elder blood tho!" Is that vesimir thought the same thing. He figured "maybe because her blood she could actually survive the trials unlike any other girl" and so have her the prep potions (the same stuff they have uma) and she had the worst reaction, most violent reaction to the potions vesimir had ever seen. Presumably it's precisely the elder blood that gave her such a bad reaction. Again you've covered all this stuff quite well. I'm simply adding in opposition to what some people are saying to excuse her becoming a witcher. If it's instead explained by "some school of witchers that are miraculously still operational enough to create new witchers despite it being a lost art and closely guarded secret" then it's such a weak cop out. A poor explanation because the plot demands it. So no matter how they try to explain it, I'm not getting behind it
Thanks for the additional info! I didn't read the books, so I know I'm missing a lot of info & context. I had no idea that Vesemir had done a bit of a test that failed so aggressively. Yet another reason why the Trial wouldn't work for her, but even more importantly - another reason why Geralt would never want her put through it. I have no idea to what extent CDPR is going to go to explain this away in this game... If they even bother trying to explain it at all...
They don't mute them that's a lie that Geralt perpetuates so he is able to not get involved with things it just that peasants are uneducated and will believe anything
I just don't want to play as Ciri. I don't like playing as women. I don't think there is anything wrong with that either. I can relate to men, I can't relate to women. Some will say, "then don't play". Any yeah, sure.. fine. But as a fan of The Witcher for over 20 years I think I'm allowed to voice my disappointment. But besides me just not wanting to play as Ciri because she is a women, there are also other reasons. Geralt is THE Witcher. He was special. His tolerance to the mutagens was abnormal and as such he was mutated more than the other Witchers. If all the witchers are considered special, then Geralt was special among special people. He was unique. Sure the saga was about Ciri. And sure, through the books Geralt shared the spot light with Ciri as we got a lot of the story from her PoV. But the series main character is Geralt. It also has been. There is also a reason the games went with Geralt as the main character in the first three games. Now some will say that Ciri being the main character is the natural progression... I get it. The games had Geralt "retire". But come on.. that wouldn't happen. Geralt would take a vacation sure, but there is no way he would just stop. That isn't in his character. I can't believe people are arguing that those of us saying to bring Geralt back haven't read the books or played the games.. but they aren't realizing that Geralt just would NOT retire. It's weird. Now IF they wanted to continue Ciri's story they should have kept her NOT a Witcher and just called the game "Elder Blood" or something like that. Them making Ciri a Witcher is going belittle Geralt. It seems they already have. In the trailer breakdown the dev pointed out that Ciri did the chain attack like Geralt did, but she has magic so she also ignited it with magic fire. So geralt can fight with a chain.. but Ciri can do that AND infuse it with magic. Ugh. And Ciri is the most powerful being in the Witcher... her being the main character means they had to nerf her like crazy. So I disagree. This game should have continued with Geralt. That is 100% obvious. If this trailer showed Geralt was the main character people would question why he came out of retirement, nearly everyone would be excited. Now though.. its extremely divided. A LOT of people won't buy it simply because they want to play as Geralt. And there is NOTHING wrong with that. The Witcher IS Geralt. It just is. If you asked people who they think of first when they hear The Witcher it is going to be Geralt. I do fear this game is going to suffer. I am sure some people will think it is fine, but I don't think it will be the huge hit that Witcher 3 is. It might not be true, but I do think it is leaning toward the wokified stuff. Geralt will be in the game, but I fear he will be there simply as a jobber. Ciri will probably need to save him or some other crap. I can see it now.. a bunch of nekkers are attacking and Geralt is struggling and about to die. Ciri comes in and easily kills them all and helps him up. They will probably also have cringy lines like Geralt saying some shit like "You are better than I ever was" or something like that. :( In terms of Ciri's look.. I mean.. I don't know. I actually thought she looked fine. She gave me Agatha vibes. It is a shame. We'll see.
The only clear reason why she even tried to go through the trials is that it was literally the only thing she could try before she dies. Any other reason would be either contrived or stupid. No one in the universe of Witcher knows what would happen exactly when the Elder blood goes through the trials. This means that she’s more likely to die and explode than the trials actually working. We know that Ciri will survive anything because of plot armor, but she and the people around her don’t know that. People kept saying she’ll survive because of Elder blood, but no one in that universe can say that definitely. This means that the only reasons left is that she’s going to die and Witcher trials is literally the last thing they can try on her before she dies.
To be fair, Ciri walked towards these people unarmed, so ending is vaguely ambigous. But also, if she slaughtered them then monster was right in a sense, which is interesting. Also, apparently cutscene is going to be a playable side quest, so it will most likely have multiple outcomes, and this is one
Their commitment to DEI has bassically ensured that i wont be buying this game either way. I wont support such a divisive and evil pratice. Plus i doubt they can even make another game like witcher 3, theyve lost a lot of talent, theyve had to outsource to other companies for updates to cyberpunk, and DEI has a proven track record of being very negative to the social climate and development of games. And yeah ciri face in the trailer is not that important even if it looks goofy and off putting at times. But Personally the witcher 3 trailer is way cooler..
I'm doing a Witcher 3 run right now and I'm in the H&S DLC and it still amazes me how good the writing is. For a DLC no less! I thought that B&W was a worse main story but Beauclair is a beautiful region, filled with side-quests and it has one of the best side-quests in the game imo (Equine Phantoms). I do not have super high hopes for Witcher 4, sadly. I would love to be wrong, but we already see the signs of bloated, triple A, politically-compromised slop that have infected so many other once beloved studios. It's early, we'll have to wait and see.
It's truly amazing the amount of work put into fleshing out everything at such high quality. It's easy to get immersed and go with the flow. I'd love nothing more than to be wrong as well 'cause this one hurts. 'Losing' Dragon Age, Avowed, Arkham, and some of the Sony exclusive properties is one thing but this one is a shock. They were always so pro-consumer and so.... Passionate about the medium. Now their company structure and messaging are looking like just any of the other ones.
@@TheDezembro Exactly! I don't want to be right. I don't have an agenda, it's not because I hate women or gay people, I just care about good writing. As you've said, these politically-minded restrictions companies are putting on writers are antithetical to the creative process. I think Ciri can work as the main character and I agree it was set up in one of the W3 endings. _However_ with all the other DEI shit CDPR is incorporating it makes me nervous that it's going to be another political propaganda piece rather than an exploration of the human condition.
My honest issue with Ciri as the main protagonist is the fact that she is too strong! I mean this, she is the chosen one, child with elder blood, mentored by both seasoned veteran Witcher Vesemir and Legendary Witcher Geralt, her parental mother is Yennifer who is one of the strongest witches with ties to a strong coven(so Ciri more than likely knows magic), Ciri's blade given to her by Geralt is said to be the best sword that no Witcher has ever had one like it, her bio father is emperor to the largest and strongest kingdom in the verse making Ciri a princess and to top it all off, it looks like she under went the trial of grasses, further enhancing her already ludicrous strength. Unless she's going to fight some new eldritch god I cannot imagine her struggling in any regard.
I am 100% for a cyberwitcher. We already played 3 Witcher games. And Ciri's time warp ability IS a sandevistan. If she came back from cyber realm with actual cyberware it would be epic. A truly new genre with new gameplay never done before.
36:50 Bro, what? Look at her jaw in the trailer and tell me that isn't manly af. She somehow grew the manliest jaw possible between her being 21 in W3 to whatever age she is in W4.
Isn't man jaw supposed to be larger, blocky and protruding? Hers is sharp and convex or whatever its called (angular), like a woman. What grew from the first game was the cheekbones and the eyebrows (or her eye sockets got deepened) It's obvious it's not the exact same character model but given how different their cinematics always looked, I'm not gonna bother with it until I see more. 😅
And he’s actively getting shit on by the comments for it. I don’t understand how so many people are giving CDPR the benefit of doubt where there ample evidence to have concerns. Time will tell in its end quality , but the blind loyalty people have without an ounce of critical thinking is par the course in gaming discourse.
If they turn ciri into an fucking stereotypical girl boss that will be a blow to the fanbase who liked her but time will tell. I hope they don't go Mary sue it never ends well. She's already an great character witcher 3 showed us that.
I completely agree, the biggest problem seems to be the writing ie the storytelling and how the character is portrayed. That is Witcher 3’s best quality. They can polish the graphics as much as they want if they don’t have good writing it just won’t be as good.
Many good points made here. About the "anti-religious messaging" in the W4 trailer, I would say it's hinted here and there but it's perhaps not a big deal. If there is a stain on the floor it's up to you to say whether the floor is dirty or not. It's little things like the way the man says "It's tradition" as though that alone justifies human sacrifice. Someone who truly believed that Ciri was about to interfere with a sacred ritual should have said so much more. I would not argue that this village cult is like Christianity, but that the villagers seem ta have been justified to view this monster as a deity. There must have been truly compelling reasons for anyone to even consider sacrificing their child. The monster hides in the mist and seems to use disembodied voices, so it would not need to show it's true form. The villagers may have been so deeply deceived that Ciri would be wrong to punish them. But the trailer confidently finishes on her righteous rage against superstitious and murderous men. About the protagonist being anyone but a Witcher, I think that would be a bad idea. The title refers to Geralt primarily, but also the setting, which means we can use other characters as POV. However, the gameplay of these games is so super-specific to your character being a witcher (with swords, potions, signs, monster hunting, meditation, mutations, legendary gear, etc) that playing as a mage or regular warrior would feel like a fundamentally different gaming title. Whether Ciri should be that witcher is another can of worms.
Mary Kanney works at CDPR's USA branch on Cyberpunk 2 . She is not a game director, so she has no power over what will or not be in the CP2. She DOES NOT work on the W4.
Ciri as a witcher can happen because of the Elder blood factor, secondly as a child of surprise this can play a huge factor think of it as a cheat code thanks to Geralt oath by the Law of Surprise making Ciri his Destiny. There is no evidence in the books that Ciri took the trial of Grasses maybe it will happen in Witcher 4 story quests, third huge detail in the trailer is the medallion of the Lynx a symbol for the Witchers school of the Cat, On the canon lore this school succeeded on creating a female Witcher by the name of "Ważka AKA Dragonfly" under the Law of Surprise wish explains why Ciri wearing a Lynx magical Medallion, finally the potion she took on the trailer very similar to the focus potion formula sharpening the senses making her see better in the fog with more speed and focus also blocking out the Bauk’s creature whispers, Bauk's can smell and sense fear even manipulate humans through trauma by whispers very dangerous even for a witcher to engage in melee combat without a special potion.
If they find a very compelling story reason why Ciri could survive and become a witcher, it maybe very awesome. However i suspect they wont even show you, or make it a one sentance explination that is never shown
Absolutely agree about the anti-religion claims being simply silly. On Ciri "attacking" the villagers... Firstly, looks like this trailer was a mirror of the Witcher 3 trailer where Geralt saved a woman from the "monsters", bandits. He kills them brutally in the trailer. I personally don't like that they made this direct reference, but the situation is very similar... Second, you didn't know if Ciri killed those villagers. Maybe she did, or maybe she beat up the one who actually killed the girl and left, who knows? Maybe this will be our decision to make in game. Third, I think there might be a hint there to something from the Witcher books that has never been explored, which is the fact that Ciri's power has a dark side. The prophecy even says that she would either destroy or save the world. I think it would be interesting to explore her struggle to control that power, and the fear of losing herself to that power - which may well be the reason why she is not using her power much in the trailer. In the books there is a period in which Ciri becomes pretty ruthless and dark for a period. I hope they explore that in some way. I also would love to see her jumping to another world even if briefly. But who knows, this was just a teaser and I can't draw conclusions yet. And look, on the books everything really is about Ciri. Yes, Geralt starts as the protagonist, but Ciri is the motivation and center of the story and grows to replace him in the books. So I think that's what the Developer meant when he said she was more important, though he really should have thought a little about the gamers who never read the book. Now about activism... Look, there is bad writing in this industry, and it's not the activism that causes it. To me, a brainless babe made to play with male fantasies, with no story behind her, is as bad a game as one in which the ideology is forced. It's sad that the people who want to include minorities are not always the best writers, but bad games exist regardless, and the fact that people are focusing the hatred on women, lgbtqi, etc is telling me that the prejudice is there. There is no hatred for badly written games with traditional white male or with seductive models as protagonists. People just don't play them, or say it's bad and move on with their lives. Why? I think it's because as much as they don't want to admit it, either the prejudice or refusal to be criticized is there, and they would do well in looking to the inside and recognizing that. Now about the "misogyny" in the Witcher books, I must point out, as much as I love the books, there are some things that I could only roll my eyes at. There are good things, and some others obviously come from a stereotype vision of women. For example: in the books, all women sorcerers are futile, manipulative and over focused on good looks and seduction. I am a straight woman and I hated the heck out of almost every woman in that book, Ciri and Milva being the only ones that I liked. Yes, even Yennefer was insufferable, though a little bit better than the rest (Triss included). Ciri is treated as someone everyone wants to impregnate (even her own father) because nobody sees a woman as the subject of the prophecy, they think it must be a male son she will bear. I even kinda like that as a critique, so I think the books are a mixed bag. Now, I don't know why it's such a big issue that Ciri could become a female Witcher. She is special. She has the Elder Blood. That's the most basic heroic trope - the things that nobody thought could be done, *he* did it! That's why he's a hero! But when the hero is a woman, the judgement is different? She can't break any rules or overcome impossible odds? Why? I would prefer that she becomes a Witcher in spirit only, given that it was a pretty brutal process, so no one would want Ciri to go through it. But if the story is told well and there is a good reason for her to go through the trial, I don't care. Even Geralt submitted himself to something similar again, in one of the expansions, to activate the mutations mechanics. Considering we don't even know if she really has gone through the trial of grasses (her eyes were not yellow, could be a different or incomplete ritual), I will simply wait and see and I think any reasonable person should at least have that in mind. I just wish people who disagree on these things could be civil and just comment on their worries without becoming irrational bullies, so everyone could grow from the discussion.
I do not get the impression that Ciri “butchers” the villagers at the end of the cinematic AT ALL. Haven’t seen that take anywhere but here in this video
I was so hoping they would have gone for an Arthur Morgan approach. Nobody had faith or attachment to a brand new protagonist who had nothing to do with the first game, but by this point hes easily more popular than John was. Granted a new protagonist would have had bigger shoes to fill against Geralt, but still -- they had the opportunity to do something very unique and instead it feels like they are squeezing every last drop from the teet of familiarity.
It wasn't a witcher though. It's like normal people trying to hunt monsters: yes they can do it but they usually make a mess of it. It was shown that we give her a sword, so she'll go around monster slaying. The assumption not being she underwent the trails, but rather her powers were enough to give her the edge. Then again, it was not clear what happened to her powers after the end
I think the trailer is being over analyzed here. First of all, Ciri isn't Geralt and probably has her own moral compass. It's not like all witcher's are indifferent to what's going in the world. CDPR said in an interview that Ciri's path can be determined by player decisions much more than Geralt. Ciri has just begun the journey as a witcher. We can expect to start the game before Ciri goes through the trials of the grasses so we can learn how it happened. I have no problems with Ciri behaving quite differently from Geralt. I would have hated to play a Geralt clone. Then it's better to continue with Geralt. We don't know at all if Ciri will slaughter the village after they killed the girl. All we know is that Ciri is angry they sacrificed her for nothing, hinting that they're monsters too. We dont even know how Ciri ended up in that village. Maybe it was because of a side quest she took, but could have ignored. Maybe we saw one possible outcome of that quest. CDPR just wanted to introduce us to Ciri as the protagonist and show us her abilities. We saw that she's a very capable bad ass fighter who would have made even Geralt proud. We know nothing yet about the plot of Witcher 4 so it's best to be cautiously optimistic. The trailer didn't give us indications about Witcher 4 being tainted by DEI and woke. Granted, that disease is spreading, but give CDPR the benefit of the doubt before making any conclusions. I don't even think we can say Ciri was uglified. She's 10 years older in Witcher 4 and hardened by life. I think she has aged well from an innocent girl into a bad ass woman. Ciri is still the beautiful Ciri we know. She's not turned into a troll like Kay Vess from Star Wars Outlaws. Most reactors to the Witcher 4 trailers are very excited. It could be CDPR will eventually disappoint us, but so far they haven't fallen from grace like Bioware have. Personally I think Ciri as the protagonist was the best choice they could have made. People wanted to continue her story after Witcher 3 and without Geralt as the protagonist then she is the best option. A generic witcher would have been an anti climax. CDPR are cooperating with Andrej Sapkowski so i'm not afraid they will butcher the Witcher lore.
Yes, Geralt wouldn’t want Ciri to become a Witcher, but . . . Who else would put her through the trial of the grasses if not him? If he knew she was going to do it, regardless, he would be there. They could easily do this through flashback, leaving Geralt’s legacy safe. CDPR has NEVER made these mistakes in their previous games, despite having a really strong record for, “representation,” and, “diversity.” And Ciri would look different, since everyone who survives the grasses mutates.
In the lore, the lack of females was simply due to it working first and better on men first. So, they went with that and decided not to go in the female direction. It could possibly work on women, but the schools decided to basically, not go that route due to the social norms. Yen, Triss, or whoever else could most likely make it work eventually since in the games they've already adjusted the concoctions before. It's not really impossible that women can't be Witchers. Just think about it, like a stick of deodorant, that is not PH balanced for a lady. It's not that complicated, totally possible, but most of the schools don't really remember how to start from scratch, so it's just not done because lots of girls would have to die before they got it right. Plus, you got that whole thing about killing females who'd be a resource... children, ladies, wives, nurses... etc. Versus a very possible corpse. It's in the lore.
If they're mirroring that trailer of Geralt when it ends with him saying "...killing monsters," I can easily understand Ciri saying something similar, and she's a volatile character, unlike Geralt, so while she's doing something Geralt wouldn't approve of, I do understand her bloodlust. Do I agree with it? No. The ozempic face redesign is pretty atrocious.
The problem with Ciri as a protagonist is her powerlevel. You haven't read the books but even in the game she stopped WHITE FROST. The power that destroyed countless worlds, and she stopped that on her own, she that powerful. She is THE strongest sorceress in the world and taught swordplay by one of the best swordsman in the northen kingdoms. Making her a witcher is like giving Adam Smasher a Budget Arms Slaught-O-Matic and say that NOW he is even more powerful. It's just ridiculous and beyond stupid. It can be justified in the story but no matter what it will be looked down upon. I have nothing to say about her looks in the trailer though, Gerald looked very different there as well so will wait for a game appearance before jumping on that band-wagon
I enjoyed Ciri's teleportation focused combat style. There are plenty of ways to use teleportation offensively and it's not she could learn other types of magic 🫠
I think you would be pretty angry to see a young girl about to be sacrificed by her village, saving that girl, almost dying in the process, and then the people in the village kills the girl anyway.
@@mrgreenguy5193 I'm not Ciri and Ciri has delt with situations like this before. I can't ignore how out of character this is just because I would respond differently. I'm not as experienced as Ciri, I've never dealt with people as extreme as this unlike Ciri, I'm not a professional monster hunter like Ciri. I'm not Ciri but I know Ciri has dealt with these situations before and knows how to handle it.
I think for the trailer, we're missing a little context or we don't know the full story for Ciri and why she's against them in the first place. It might be more than just that. So I wouldn't judge it too much.
I'm with you on the Ciri as the protagonist and why it is done well, in comparison to TLOU2. I already liked TLOU1 but when they killed off Joel for the sake of introducing another character and then forcing us to see from her POV, I still didn't buy it. I still hated Abby. I didn't care about her sob story. I already allied myself to Joel and Ellie and I already know revenge is bad, bla bla bla. I still want my choice to off Abby during the final moments, just like I would have in Ghost of Tsushima. (Ghost of Tsushima should've won GOTY, so Vuck You GOTY Awards).
As for the Religious things getting in the way, I think you should ignore them as we always have been. We can never reason with people who has harsh or deep religious faith and beliefs because they're not often as open minded to see different perspectives. So I wouldn't bother with them.
The DEI thing that CDPR has hired, yeah... We've seen this happens before, multiple times. Especially with Sweet Baby Inc. We know how bad that this can happen. So I'm also worried about that but until I see anything, I'm not going to judge it. Just like Naughty Dog's new IP "Intergalactic" here, the moment I see something, I know that I'm not going to like it. It's the same here for me. I'll wait until they show us something. I still worry about this, but yes... It is not looking good.
Ciri made into the Witcher is great. The people calling it out Sexist really has no idea. In Malaysia, every men and women are allowed to join the military, to learn how to defend themselves. However! They are not allowed to participate in the frontline war for us. Instead, they serve as the defenders for the other women and children in the country. At least that's how it was back what I learned back then. Outside countries like the US has criticised it saying it is Misogynistic, but we disagreed. Saying they need to be protected. It is the same here for me in Witcher's stories and lore. The women can't be Witcher, because they DIE. Is it Misogynistic, to prevent further lost of lives? Absurd and redacted. I hate that idea from the Western Ideology. I can't call them out either, because YT doesn't like it. YT hates it. Yet allowed those Vuckers in the industry and let them say things because they're "Priviledged" here for having identified differently, when they're just as human as us if not worse.
The biggest red flag is the disregard for the lore. Direct, willful lore contradictions for CDPR calls into question everything about the game. The game could be good, but I want the world of the Witcher not this fan fic, they're not getting my money. On Ciri's design, I will just point out that the trailer is specified as being done in UE5, so it's very possible that's her in-game model but at much higher fidelity since CDPR switched to UE for this game.
As much as I can see the POV of those saying "they broke canon" with Ciri becoming a Witcher, "they're" wrong. The TTRPG books ARE canon, like it or not, so "She-Witchers" ARE canon... Rare and taboo and even MORE dangerous to make than male witchers, but they ARE canon. They were made successfully in the Cat and Manticore schools, so that isn't such an issue for me. What REALLY pisses me off is what I ABSOLUTELY see as a misdirection and bait and switch done for this game. The devs flat out said "the Witcher 4 game will have a Witcher We've never met before... it'll be an entirely new Witcher that the player chooses". They never ONCE corrected any of the many, many players and content creators who talked about a custom protagonist, and they absolutley insinuated it'd be a different point in the timeline than the original Witcher trilogy. Adding to this, is the fact that Ciri as a protag completely unwrites and ignores our choices at the end of Witcher 3. I chose to make Ciri a ruler of her own kingdom! I deliberately chose NOT to have her finish her trials. Also, her demi-god powers so vastly and completely overshadow any perceived benefits from finishing the trials, it is completely immersion breaking for me. I guess it's not a canon issue, it's not an aesthetic issue - she's gorgeous in this trailer - it's the fact that yet another studio is lying by omission, suggesting without backing anything up, their changes to Ciri's personality, and the fact that almost every dev and voice actor involved in Witchers 1 to 3 are now gone from the studio. Do I think it's going to be dead on arrival? No. But I'm still VERY burned from Veilguard and Cyberpunk and I'll absolutely be waiting until after a full clear review or five before I buy it.
And to follow up, Ciri was NEVER the "main character" of the books or games. She was a strong SECONDARY character in a couple of the books and ONE game. This idea that she IS "the main protag", that smacks of the TV series and is an instant and impassible turnoff for me. Re that other (weirdly forgettable lol) game, I have no issue with how she looks, I've had a shaved head before. It's hassle free and I loved it. What I absolutely did NOT love about that trailer was the incessant brand name drops/real world product placement (porche, coke, mcdonalds, CD brands and current world band names etc.), and her incredibly obnoxious personality. It was like a trainwreck style blending of GI Jane looks and Mean Girls personality and I'm NOT at all here for it. It was like a short, bald Taash all over again 🤮
You don't find uglifying a pretty character an issue? You don't find that a game that is known for its great lore and character to utterly break it be an issue? I'm curious did you play any of the Witcher games before and why did you enjoy it?
@@mrgreenguy5193 Dear brother notice how I said she's ugly not older. Her face proportion is not right it is elongated and her head is larger than it should. Aging would not do that. And why is it that only females aged like milk in video games while the men age like fine wine?
disagree with last of us example, it was we as an audience wanted those characters to be happy , safe & stay together hence the open ending. But the story itself was incomplete. "the more you pick up the character , the more you cartoonify them" - u do understand there is always the potential for change & new addition in chrs building on existing ? also football & chrs are completely different stuff how can you compare them bruh. But yes i do agree with geralt retiering. this DEI stuff, just cuz they have it on their website doesn't mean they are only hiring women or minorities or something else , they still have majority of male developers both in lead as well in general. Many of the staff is same & others have left it is a company this stuff happens. How just one individual (you gave as a ex) responsible for the entire company again?. Can't we just wait for the game & then bash it if it's bad or agenda driven. my guy if they said "ciri was more important to the plot" & you are saying "yeah kinda true since she was child of elder blood" , then it literally means yeah she was more important to the plot , they didn't say "geralt was a side chr not important at all" , they said he is important not more than ciri , he was important for ciri as a chr, he was important cuz ciri is HIS child of destiny his story is important for ciri's to happen but he wasn't the one to stop white frost so both are important in their roles. You are looking too far. for ciri becoming a witcher , "The trial of grasses" said geralt, "is a ritual that changes the body & the mind. it's never been completed by a woman. not once. Every time they tried, the women died. *But it's not impossible* Also it was confirmed by the director that she is not a full blown witcher yet, she is on it's journey and she can use elemental magic " --from the offical breakdown of the trailer. the conflict of ciri's entire char is her being burderned as a child of elder blood which she didn't choose, where as she wanted to be a witcher. it is not abt need , but what she wanted , if she can feel closer to vesemier & geralt by being witcher then that's fine & interesting. again, Director has said she isnt going to be like geralt , she is going to be different,she is going to listen to her heart more & be emotional sometimes immature. Just cuz she is more emotional doesn't mean she is a moron, she is learning. you can't say you don't want geralt to return, yet want a new character to behave exactly like him & if both are very similar then what's the point of having different chr , math aint mathing. she is a different chr ofc she is gonna take different decision do your research my guy.
I never thought of the concerns you brought up, and I appreciate that you did. I know Ciri is a woman, (and in the book she does have a relationship with a woman) but I hope, the preserve the integrity of the Witcher world and the story. This is not a feminist movement, this is not a LGBTQ coming out story. Witcher 3 is so loved by the fans. Netflix tried to push their woke agenda on Witcher fans and it clearly did not work lol. I HOPE cdpr knows better than to try that again.
I don’t think it goes against lore, they’ve tried to make female witchers before but women have never made it through the mutation process, but Ciri isn’t a normal woman she has powers of her own, if there were a woman that would survive the process it would be her
OP - we didn't need another last of us when you play as ellie, I want a new cast! also OP - I like this new witcher where we play as Ciri can you not see this is the same situation?
I guess my thing is we don't know what she did to the whole village. She walked towards the camera in anger. For all we know she hit the guy, yelled at him, or slaughtered everyone. Also, you are comparing Ciri to Geralt but they are different people. Just because she was trained by them doesn't mean she will take up their morals or beliefs. She is a powerful young woman who has gone through a lot. She can make her own calls on things now as opposed to waiting for Geralt. That being said, I agree with everything else. She didn't need to be a Witcher. Geralt wouldn't want her to do this.
Logically speaking there is an anti religious messaging though, you just need to look really hard to see it, and maybe it's not healthy to be looking into stuff this hard and be this sensitive about this. There could easily be some evil god behind the monster, and I doubt that Ciri has any authority to proclaim that there isn't one. She dismisses this just because such god would clash with what she thinks is right. Technically speaking that's anti-religious. But it's sort of pro-Christianity though, because when she says that, she assumes that Christian way of thinking is a correct one, and everything that clashes with it surely cannot be the work of a god.
There has been so much horrible criticism of this trailer, so I REALLY appreciate a balanced and rational critique of the trailer talking about the very real issues in an adult way. (Instead of crying screaming doom posts.) Here's to hoping some of the red flags we are seeing don't doom the game, because in the end the "real" fans just want a good game.
Except, she sits next to the father who begs her with his eyes to take revenge on the man who beat him and killed his daughter. Whether she would slaughter the entire village? That isn't known yet.
Finally a good video with sam valid criticism and concerns instead of "witcher 4 is woke and ciri looks like a man" I personally think that if they play it right and explain some things game will be good
Video on CD Projekt Red's DEI & ESG rVideo on CDPR's DEI practices: th-cam.com/video/9xG3_Rz8Ams/w-d-xo.html
GWENT STAMPS:
0:00 - intro
1:28 - Trailer Overview
10:03 - Ciri as the Protagonist
15:26 - The DEIlephant in the room
25:18 - Ciri made into a Witcher
35:20 - Ciri's Appearance
I can see why people see it as jab to religious people, because "God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac" is their favorite thing to bring up, even though they clearly did not read it themselves, because nobody was sacrificed in that story. It's simply just a story that tells you to trust God/do good no matter how hard it is to do. I was an atheist until I realized that all they do is use emotional arguments in their debates because I watched a lot of it.
My main problem with it is that they are calling it Witcher 4 when it's clearly not a continuation of Geralt's story, and they forced her to become a Witcher to make it have a semblance of logic to it, instead of just calling it "The Elder Blood" or "Witcher: Elderblood/ Ciri's Saga". All of the things in the trailer are completely unnecessary.
@@zupremo9141 Ciri is at least the 2nd most important character in the franchise. I doubt they turned Ciri into a witcher just to make it a continuation. Tho whether or not the story reasoning is good is yet to be seen.
@@JawadBhuiyan I was also expecting her to be the next MC if we are not going to be able to create our own, My problem with it is they didn't have to make her a Witcher because she already have her own back story. She is a powerful mage that was also really good at swordsmanship, She literally have the coolest setup and they wasted it and also break the lore just to prove to us that "If men can do it women can do it too". I know we didn't know why they did it, but all of the evidence points to the DEI direction.
@@zupremo9141 Christians were telling for the 2k years that "there are no (pagan) gods, there are only monsters, demons, devils".
@@zupremo9141 I guess we'll see if that is the case.
I just want to get to Milfgaard.
as we all do, as we all bro.
Ciri has become the Empress of it.
It's still funny to me that CDPR embraced this meme and put a ''Milfguard'' ads throughout Night City.
I just want Cirilla.gif
MILFgaard 😏😏😏
I admit that I am not a paid writer, but I do consider myself at least a decent analyst of story crafting. Either they're going to have to find a reason for Ciri to go through the trial of the grasses, an excruciatingly painful and often lethal procedure that hasn't been successful on anyone besides young boys in the 300 years they've been doing it, or they're going to need to come up with some magical reason that by its very nature is going to seem contrived. I consider writing to be worse when you can "see the strings" so to speak, when you think "oh the writer needed this person to be here for this and couldn't think of a good way to do it so it's just a lucky coincidence". She has the ability to travel between worlds, the storytelling potential is limited only by their imaginations, but instead they made her a witcher. It shows me that a) they're not confident she'd be able to stand on her own without pandering to the nostalgia of long-time fans of Geralt's and b) they're willing to sacrifice the pre-established lore and worldbuilding to do it (or make a political statement, or likely both).
The only person it barely worked on in the games was an ancient elf named avalach and in the game it was stretch
Saw another commenter saying that in the books Vesemir tried some potions on her, from the trials, and her body had a violent reaction. Showing her Elder Blood wouldn't help her in this situation, maybe it'd even only make it worse. And also obviously showing how much AGAINST IT Geralt would be.
It's going to be interesting to see how CDPR works this into the story. If they even bother to try it at all...
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski”
Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place.
She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@@JohnJohn-pm9wqOmg, finally someone with a common sense giving a chance to studio, which is known for it’s storytelling capabilities, to actually explain the intrigues they added in their trailer? Who could even thought of such thing? 😆
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq hear, hear 🍻
If you want the classic CDPR devs from The Witcher games and Cyberpunk, check out Rebel Wolves. The devs in CDPR aren't the same ones as before, those left and created a new studio.
I've checked their website before, the language in there is a total contrast of the language in CDPR's website. It's reminiscent of CDPR's language BEFORE going head-first into all of this bullsh*t. I can't wait for their vampire RPG game.
@@TheDezembro They already have the title for it “Dawnwalker” I so hyped for it!
Oh that makes so much sense now. Lol
Thanks for the tip
Their website is encouraging. Can't wait to see what they produce.
THanks mate! I was wondering what happened to the blokes. I will keep an eye out for their planned dark fantasy saga.
Ciri as an Elder Blood protagonist? Not a problem. Ciri as a full-on actual Witcher protagonist? Yes, SEVERAL problems. Long story short, her being an actual Witcher is incongruous to the lore and undermines her character arc. Bad move on CDPR's part. Should have given us a new pre-created character or let us devise our own. Something fresh. This? Definitely not it.
Man, now you got me thinking of a Witcher game letting us create our own Witcher... Eh nah, it'd probably f*ck with the lore too much...
Though it's not like making her a Witcher and going off the books isn't going to either.
I heard that the games aren’t Canon to the books and that CDPR never said that they were so is it really a terrible decision that Ciri is a Witcher in this? The game set her up to be the main Witcher after the Canon ending of 3
@hugolyall677 Protagonist sure, but why couldn't she just be a part elven battle mage? Refine her teleportation powers and have her learn magic similar to signs.
@@arkeshn729 I haven’t beaten Witcher 3 or even gotten past act one so I don’t know or remember about that reason but she’s one of the main characters of the plot and this is a new saga so why the hell not? and I know about the ending from TH-cam. The reason I never got to it myself is because the game is a bit too long for me to beat and I’m worried I’ll screw it up by accidentally making the wrong choices. Sorry
@hugolyall677 CDPR games aren't book cannon, but they have their own lore. The trials of grasses are pretty much destroyed, and no girl has ever survived it. They can do what they want, but if the worldbuilding doesn't matter to the creators, why should it matter to the players?
Witcher 3 if definitely a time commitment. I want to do a completionist run one of these days, but I can play at least 2 to 5 other games in the same timeframe.
From what I remember, we know female children did take the trial of grasses, we just don't know of any that survived. I don't recall it ever stating they can't. So, "no female witchers," doesn't really seem like a hard rule. The bigger issue is Ciri's age: The trial was normally administered on prepubescent children to fundamentally alter how their bodies would develop. We know Ciri hadn't undergone the trials by the time she was already an adult - that's a big issue you have to resolve in order to make her a "normal" witcher.
There's an ending in Witcher 3 where Ciri effectively becomes a witcher, but they never imply she actually took the trial of grasses. It's stated Geralt taught her all he knew. Implying swordsmanship, tactics, poisons and yes, probably signs as well. Witcher signs are just very simple magics, so there's little reason Ciri couldn't learn or use them.
Gameplay-wise CDPR could/should have Ciri play as a different flavor of Witcher than Geralt. Perhaps relying more on magic and poisons to make up for not being able to ingest decoctions without having undergone the trial as a child. I have no problem with Ciri as a protagonist, or even Ciri living the life of a witcher, but I'm disappointed they aren't exploring how her skills and hunting tactics might differ from other witchers rather than just retroactively shoehorning her into being a normal one.
It's implied in the books that most Witchers are male. The five Witchers we meet are men, and there's a running gag that Geralt's "child surprise" turns out to be a girls. But there's nothing to say "no female Witchers". Indeed, the Witcher world is a good bit more egalitarian than ours. We meet two female monarchs, and at least one female senior officer, and no one bats an eye. In the books, Ciri as a child tried and could not cast Witcher signs, implying the trial of grasses is not necessary to cast them. Ciri as an adult, having been trained by Yennifer to control her innate abilities, can do some magic. Witcher signs are simple magic, mocked by sorcerers, so there's no problem with Ciri casting signs. Witcher potion are another matter. You would need the trial of grasses for your body to tolerate them.
No there is no statement in the books. There are female witchers in paper rpg writen with Sapek so offitial. Is just not common becouse nobody normal will give gril to witchers if you can marry her for adventages. This is the reson why most of sourceres have deformations before magical change (in books)
Just think about it like this... it's all proto-science-magic or whatever. So sure, it's totally possible for there to be female witchers. They just haven't gotten it locked in yet, but also the system they already have works pretty well. First off, you get the kids when they are small, malleable, and brainwashable, they're like little Zealots to do your bidding. Why would you want to make this formula... work on adults? They'd have brains and their own sense of self. Harder to control basically. It's also easier to control one sex than two. If you had female and male witchers that's one more than you need, if you're concerned about that sort of thing. What if a noble dude wants to marry a Witcher? Would she? Could she? That's a wrinkle... or maybe not. I'm sure the royal family wouldn't be too keen on sterile brides.
Think about the context of the stories and the time, setting, and the politics of the era.
It's all very interesting to me at least, that even if you did have the formula would your School tell the other schools? Could female witchers be bad at some things and better at others? Do certain abilities work better just because of gender? The author of the book does put the notion that things like this are always kind of on the surface or within the text. But I think we haven't seen a female Witcher for just one simple reason... dude hasn't written it yet and he's getting up there in years. Plus the series seems to be working just fine at the moment.
The thing is when you create your own universe and get fans, fandoms, and an awesome deal for your idea, you tend... to stick with what's making you the most cash. I know that sounds like I've got my evil corpo-hat on, but you know... you usually don't change your creative stuff until it's run dry or the story you've already told is done. He did leave a lot of this stuff open on purpose though. Plus a female Witcher does sound fun because you'd think it's no big deal for a male to be sterile, but with a female Witcher that could be a real _interesting_ point of contention to draw a character from.
Lastly, maybe he just doesn't want to overdo it. Just like atGeorgee R.R. Martin, my bro has so many irons in the fire, so many stories running, he isn't likely to finish even half of them.
btw, if witcher ciri visits geralt in toussaint and tells him about her adventures there's already a mention of drinking a witcher potion. so there's that.
Nothing against Ciri being protagonist.
The thing is, women can’t be Witcher’s, nobody knows how to perform the trial of the grasses anymore, Ciri was never fully trained as a Witcher… etc. they failed using the elder blood lore and make something totally different and really unique. Oh let’s do the same thing. 😂😂😂😂😂
Actually the lore says that none of the girls they tried survived, not that they can't. Just like any experiment you have to find the right measurements. Yennifer, recreated the Trial of Grasses in Witcher 3, to break the curse on Avallach. Ciri WAS fully trained as a witcher, she just never went through the trials. She got combat training, monster education, and alchemical training.
If they left Ciri fully powered, the only monsters that would pose any danger to you are bosses. Because if you remember in Witcher 3, by the end of the game if you knew what you were doing you could mow through the army of wild hunt minions as if they were standing still. Unless they have completely depowered her elder blood, i'm still thinking it will be a resource like mana bar, that you can use and then wait for regen, or build back up in combat similar to Adrenaline points in Witcher 3.
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski”
Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place.
She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq Straight up BS. Ciri is a woman and already an adult, two things that make the survivability close to 0. Her elder blood is not a plot armor that nullifies Ciri to any harm or give her omnipotence, it was specifically to give her access to powerful magic.
No one even knows how to perform the trial and make it adopt to the physiology of a woman. The needed equipment and knowledge has been lost and no trial was performed for years, so I don't know where you got the BS story of it being constantly advanced and studied by the Witchers (when even them don't know how). Vesimir, a fencing instructor, is the only one who barely knows and he is dead. Witchers were not needed anymore and so none was produced, making it a lost art.
How would her elder blood be lost? It isn't an detachable part of her body, it is her genes. How would one even lose her genes?
All of this is character assassination and that they are redoing everything that was already greatly established by Witcher 3. We had a strong, capable, lovely Ciri by the end of it. Now, what they did is have a potion drinking, sign casting Ciri which is just a generic Witcher.
Truth is, I don't trust CDPR anymore with my money, those great writers that we had already left the studio. Time to find another series to support I guess.
@ bro, you didn’t read the books. The books are clear about women not turning into witchers.
They tried but, 100% of the girls died. The success rate was 3/10 or 30% on boys. Another thing that’s very clear in the books is the fact that nobody knows how to perform the trial of the grasses anymore. It’s a lost forever knowledge.
@ I can’t reason with a person or have an intellectual discussion when you’re already determinant to weaponise your arguments against CDPR ignoring lore and mythos of the Witcher universe itself to play out your narrative against it. I don’t think you’re interested to come into terms.
Now, your opinions aren’t the reflection of the author of the Witcher books. It doesn’t matter what you even think. The author never wrote that women cannot be Witchers. Mutation is a science experiment, it’s an evolving process and like every experiment it was constantly being studied. Yennefer was able to manipulate the trails of grasses to reverse the curse upon Avallac. How did that happen? Nobody ever manipulated the trials of grasses. This means that trials of grasses and the mutation depends on the correct measurements, women previously didn’t survive because the measurements where not accurate to the physiology of women. Geralt himself said in Kaer Morhen that Ciri could survive the trials of grasses but Yen and Triss said it’s not worth to lose Ciri over something that’s only instinctive.
I think I have explained enough, when you carry so much personal agenda, intelligence will leave the room. There is absolutely no room for reasoning with you because you already hold your thoughts as the Bible. You can remain in your little bubble of comfort where you’re the king of the universe while people who are true fans of the Witcher series is gonna enjoy the hell out of this one. Keep crying
I dont like the whole vibe of, shes female geralt but better, im so tired of this trope, it would be much more interesting if ciri was her own type of monster hunter i.e. not a witcher but she can still hunt monsters because of her powers.
I really hope they don't do that to her, the best memories I have of Ciri in the game are of her contrasting personality. If they go down that path they'll ruin everything.
They already ruined what made her special by making her a Witcher instead of focusing on the Elder Blood.
@TheDezembro that's exactly what I mean, her story is supposed to be unique, she doesn't need to be a Witcher to kill monsters, she was in fact more powerful than Geralt, witchers used their knowledge and potions and oils, this would've been so much more interesting, if she used her experience from learning under Geralt but had her own style of hunting, hell they should've even given her a different weapon but they are using the same one sword for monsters one sword for humans shiet.
Have you seen the commentary of the dev on the trailer? The way he speaks about it really gives off that they want her to be a better Geralt.
Is that why she doesn't have her teleport dodge anymore? That's so lame
@chucheeness7817 that's another thing they will have to nerf her powers, it's like if you were playing superman, technically you can just blow everything up, the only limitation is whatever the writer decides. In this case, you do I hope the writers are really good, because this is Goin way off from the books.
The book series end with Geralt and Yen going off to Avalon a magical realm where only a select few are allowed, it's where king Arthur went in his story after he gets mortally wounded. And ciri is not allowed so she gets left behind. So this game is entirely off the books non-canon now.
@@Mardark-e4s Yeah, nerfing is the typical trope too. Because "you have to".
Canon Ciri would've said "i'll save the village" instead of the "save yourself" from the pratiarchy.
Instead of comparing the new model of Ciri to a ridiculous over the top sci fi character, how about comparing her to her old model? The close up shots look terrible. At a distance she looks better though so it might be some engine camera lens effects up close but hard to tell. Close up her jaw and chin are clearly bigger than before and possibly to make that less obvious her face is bloated and rounder. Her forehead is smaller and narrower making the proportions of her face even more different. But again, that could be due to some fish eye lens effect. Considering who the developers are though I'm not holding my breath.
What made the old model so compelling was that despite the character's immense power there was a hint of vulnerability behind those expressive eyes. That seems all gone now. The developers said she's more emotional than Geralt but in W3 she wasn't depicted as overly emotional. Rather she was subtle and thoughtful -- but not because she didn't have emotions, just that she didn't act them out all the time. I would much rather have seen how that Ciri took on the witcher trade than this angry, emotional version of Geralt.
I sure hope for a big change concerning this DEI bs. Imagine the feeling, having such parasites in your company. I am hundred percent sure this is outside pressure. No sane person would bring this upon himself. If only it was just the entertainment sector. Off topic but, sooner or later we may be forced to do something about it. One day, not buying a certain product won't be enough. That is their very purpose, to destroy what we love and cherish. Hope that more and more people understand the situation.
The pattern has been seen, the pattern is distrusted, the pattern has decided that Witcher 4 shall not be acknowledged to exist. I love the Witcher trilogy.
Exactly this good Sir, and this trailer sent me straight to prepurchase Kingdom Come Deliverance II Gold on Steam, when I was already waiting for the PC collector I ordered months ago.... Vote with your wallet, CDPR is next, right after Ubisoft and Naughty Dog.
@@lordstayfrosty Maybe I should try that one, I'm not much of an RPG person. But I'll have to try it. It's got enough fanfare to justify it.
Wait until the fucking game releases bozo. Sure it COULD be full of sweet baby inc bs but it could also be a very good game
@@lordstayfrosty am I the only one who's worried about KCD2? I get the first one was good but it was janky as hell almost unforgivably so
What pattern exactly?
In some cuts she looks worse than others, but in general not the worse appearance wise. The biggest problems are the possible big lore brakes already:
Ciri can't drink Witcher potions(Exeption weaker potions like CAT), or she dies, can't use signs because she didn't train for it, and she refuses to ever be a witch. They could let her be a Witcher but using the powers from elder blood there is no reason to make her pass the trial of grasses
I think the question is not HOW worse but WHY worse. Why make her look worse at all?
Man i all but stood up and clapped at your first point. Siri massacring a village of scared people as "revenge" is totally against what her mentor would've done. And the sad thing is the dumb people behind this game would look at her doing that as being a girl boss instead of a monster.
Uncle Vesemir would be devastatingly disappointed.
"Ciri massacring a village of scared people as "revenge" is totally against what her mentor would've done"
Are you aware that Ciri in books at some point was drug using bandit and a murderer.
@@ifyoulookclosely6863 we arent talking about the books. I can pick apart all the differences between the books and the games. Dont go there.
They didn't show her doing that....
Ciri didn't massacre the village. We only saw her being angry at the village sacrificing the girl for nothing. She called them monsters too. CDPR left it to our imagination what would happen next. If this is a side quest then it will be up to the player to decide the action.
We're not watching a movie, but a cut scene from an RPG game where they player can determine the outcome. So it's too early to conclude Ciri is a butcher.
Breaking cannon.That is the problem going against the lore
I actually believe they were trying to mimic/copy certain beats from the Witcher 3 trailer. Some monster line at the end "Killing monsters" VS "No gods here. Only monsters" I think it was meant to imply the similarities between her and Geralt I am cautiously optimistic since it does fit the progression of the game buuuut this is one of those they need to walk the line with making this feel natural and not activism
Hey how come Geralt in Witcher The Wild Hunt doesn’t look like the Geralt in Assassins of Kings? Different body type, they ruined him by changing his look.
The devs explained in the ign interview that Ciri is extremely passionate and tends to think with her heart rather than logic many times. She’s a deeply empathetic person and it influences her decisions. We know this to be true from the way she already acts, regardless of her mentoring from Geralt and Vesemir. At the end of the day Ciri is going to do what Ciri wants and all anyone else can do is try to encourage her to channel that into smart decisions. I think the end of the trailer captures her personality perfectly. She isn’t Geralt, we shouldn’t expect her to be.
As a RDR player I always thought playing with a new character (Arthur Morgan) would be not good and boy I was wrong, going by that logic I can give a chance to Siri as the main character in Witcher 4, however as they are both separate worlds and narrative wise are different and "The Witcher" has always been about Geralt, this decision seems wrong. Geralt is "THE WITCHER" as the name of the game says. Same goes for Kratos from GOD Of War, where the current games were centered around Kratos only as the game is about him "THE GOD OF WAR". Still looking forward to this game.
I will say, depending on the context they choose to go with, the whole “Ciri is arguably more important to the plot than Geralt”. It can be worrying, if referring to the third game, because Geralt actions dictate Ciri’s. However in regards to the books, which I have read multiple times, Ciri is the only reason the story exists, her existence changes Geralt. Ciri is the reason Geralt finds purpose, she’s the only reason he believes in destiny. She wants to be Geralt’s destiny, he wants to let her live her own life, but she chooses to be a part of his life and because she wants that he accepts that. The books are like 55% Geralt 45% by the conclusion of the saga but Ciri drives Geralts every move since the first time he meets her. Her existence even leads to him to reconcile with Yennefer. So in context to the book, she’s the main driving force and the foundation of Geralt in the story. So in context of the books she could be considered more important to the plot, because she is the plot. However Geralt makes her who she is so Geralt is the foundation of her story Geralt is “The Witcher” but they are equally important to eachothers plot. Just how the Sword of Destiny has two edges the Story of the Witcher has two edges one is Geralt one is Ciri. So if you take there relationship from the plot it is not “The Witcher”.
Ciri is a witcher because she identifies as one /s
The religious comment ppl made about the trailer is cause of double standards. Like you wouldn't see a potrayal of rural folk like this if it was set in an oriental culture or native america. People are just bored of the same overused trope of "backwater medieval-europe zealots", hence why they compare it to reddit.
Yeah.. the old " Religious are bad, Atheist Stalin good" delusion.
I've also made the "atheism" comment but about Ciri seemingly turning her anger towards group of villagers. Now thinking about it I probably shoud've said "nihilism" instead, because it's like she's acting out of subjective judgement... It just didn't sit right with me. Her whole anger was so fkn cringe to me.
Bored of medieval settings and British accents all over the then known world
@@justaquietpeacfuldanceshe wasn't saying "gods don't exist" and she certainly wasn't saying "Christ doesn't" not least because this isn't earth, although they do mention Jesus in Blood and Wine but the themes of The Witcher and trailer are clear. The biggest monsters are men (as in humans not males specifically). The line "there are no god's here, only monsters" is clearly a reference to 1. The fact the villagers clearly worshipped a monster thinking it was god, similar the The Crones, The Lesen in Skellige ect. So the quite literal fact "there was no god and this no reason to sacrifice and kill the girl" and 2. The fact that in the end the evil did not come from a monster or the wrath of a god but humans who killed an innocent girl out of tradition
I disagree with your stance on the anti-religious accusation. This whole thing does not hinge on the reality and truth of the said god, but Ciri's final speech. "No gods here" can simply signify that she thinks so ill of that specific place that it would be "godless," as a hyperbole, but that is if you take "here" as being literally limited to the geography. The whole phrase does sound like a reddit atheist statement, which wouldn't be surprising. Geralt himself is an atheist.
I do not disagree, in that I think it is an undeniable fact that it had an intentional anti-religious sentiment, but I do with hour position that such a belief is invalid or even stupid.
People are overthinking the line. Her line about "No gods here, there are only monsters" is because it was not gods that choose girl as a sacrifice, it was the villagers and they are the monsters in this case especially since they killed her in the end.
Lol, people getting their panties into a twist because a fictional character might not believe in another fictional character
Bro u cant just over analyze every line video game protag says. by your logic Geralt is very woke bec he saved that girl in 'killing monsters' trailer and even his mentor said to let it go. He even kills all soldiers when we dont see what Ciri does. Just calm down
No one had a problem with Claire Redfield ( RE 2 )
Nor Jill Valentine ( RE 3 )
- This is never about misogyny.
Even to the most conservative entertainment consumer and producer...the Japanese.
Do you know what the top 2 animes of ALL time are?
Full Metal Alchemist and Frieren. Both were written by female authors.
People have a problem with the "Madison Beerafication" of Ciri's face, which is prominently a *modern* Western standard. Modifying the novelty of her original look turned people off.
I think she looks hot dude. You got problems. This is too much man. Her head's not shaved and she doesn't have 8inch biceps... What's wrong here? When is enough enough. The left got weird because they went too left. Lets not go too right and prove them all right.
I agree with your point, but I have to pour this salt out.
Frieren is quite bad, and terribly written, in pretty much every aspect of writing. (Well, I have seen worse, I guess)
You're only mentioning examples from before the culture war started.
@@mrgreenguy5193 Anita Sarkessian's Feminist Frequency ( 2013 )
Examples of Bad ones
- Latest Star Wars trilogy ( 2015 - 2019 )
- GhostBusters 2016
- Batwoman 2019
- Captain Marvel 2019
- Mulan Remake 2020
- Woman King 2022
- Rings of Power 2022
- Saints Row 2022
- Queen Cleopatra 2023
- Dragon Age Veilguard 2024
- Concord 2024
- Acolyte 2024
Examples of Good ones
- RE 2 Remake 2019
- RE 3 Remake 2020
- PREY 2022
- Alita: Battle Angel 2019
- Frieren 2024
- Kang Sae-byeok from Squid Game
- Gamora from MCU
- Arcane ( 2021- 2024 )
- Blue Eye Samurai 2023
- Baldurs Gate 3 :
Shadowheart
Laezel
Karlach
Minthara
If your awareness of the "culture war" came from the recent election. Just browse a bit.
"before the culture war started."
How about good characters and stories are timeless. How about that?
@@mrgreenguy5193 Anita Sarkessian's Feminist Frequency ( 2013 )
Examples of Bad ones
- Latest Star Wars trilogy ( 2015 - 2019 )
- GhostBusters 2016
- Batwoman 2019
- Captain Marvel 2019
- Mulan Remake 2020
- Woman King 2022
- Rings of Power 2022
- Saints Row 2022
- Queen Cleopatra 2023
- Dragon Age Veilguard 2024
- Concord 2024
- Acolyte 2024
Examples of Good ones
- RE 2 Remake 2019
- RE 3 Remake 2020
- PREY 2022
- Alita: Battle Angel 2019
- Frieren 2024
- Kang Sae-byeok from Squid Game
- Gamora from MCU
- Arcane ( 2021- 2024 )
- Blue Eye Samurai 2023
- Baldurs Gate 3
If your awareness of the "culture war" came from Oct 2024, just browse a bit.
Ciri. The singularity. She incapacitated the ENTIRE wild hunt with a scream, can freeze an ENTIRE planet overtime, can move at hypersonic speeds, teleport and possibly time travel.
They abandoned all this and gave us a female Geralt just so they could virtue signal? They literally had the perfect setup for a naturally badass female protagonist and they just hit delete and copy pasted an inferior Geralt 😭
😂😂😂😂 It's so f*cking crazy when you really start thinking about how this Kikimore fight would've gone if instead of drinking witcher potions and casting witcher signs she used the goddamn Elder Blood that everyone wanted to see more of when playing as her in Witcher 3. Ffs.
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski”
Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place.
She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
What? Every Witcher 3 fan at the end of the game said Ciri would be the next logical protagonist. She also becomes a Witcher in one of the endings
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq The books and author also never explicitly state or mention that Freddy Kreuger doesn't invade dreams and turn them into nightmares that kill the victims. So Freedy Kreuguer is a possibility in the Witcher. See how your reasoning is flawed?
It's been pre-established the Trial of Grasses kills 7 out of 10 male adolescents, that no female has survived the experiments, and that no known female Witcher exists to date, and the knowledge and "science" of it has been lost or stopped. How many hoops are you going to jump through to make your argument sound? It's self serving at best and disingenuous at worse.
What Yen performed was contrived whacky magical bullshit that worked because the writers made it work.
Worse yet you create headcanon to justify why Ciri is the way she has been shown, instead of demanding that such lore and world shattering changes be pre-established and earned.
@@JohnJohn-pm9wq brother... You are lost in the sauce. The point of my post was that Ciri doesn't NEED the trial of grasses to be a witcher.
Not gonna argue with you because discussions online don't work over text.
You make a very good point about geralt not just barging in and throwing his weight around just because he thinks it's not right.
You're a voice of reason, and I appreciate that.
I just hope that CDPR come to their senses and pull those red flags down and burn them. I want this game to be good. I want a great story with Ciri as the main protagonist. Gods, I hope they won't fuck her up...
As for her looks, I fully agree with you. Also, if there's one thing I've learned over the years, then it is to not trust trailers.
I expected Ciri to be the next protagonist, not the next Witcher. I just hope it doesn't turn into ideological driven nonsense like Intergalactic. Perhaps I should start being offended due to the lack of Buddhism representation in video games that don't need it 😂
There is no mention in the Witcher books that women cannot be Witchers. The novels never said that out rightly. It means women don’t survive in normal circumstances. This is a quote from the books “Thus far almost every Witcher who is actually called such is male”. In lore reasons those women didn’t survive the trial of grasses.” But it never says one cannot. The books also never mentioned how many women went through the trial. Majority of men don’t survive either. A quote from Reddit “There is one female Witcher that is on the knife-edge of official canon, which is Dragonfly from the first polish pen and paper Witcher RPG. The rpg was not popular, and the company went under. But - it existed with the approval of Sapkowski”
Also, mutation is an experiment and it was constantly being advanced and studied by Witchers. It’s an evolving process. Even in the game Geralt hold the idea in favour of Ciri when Yen and Triss were against her becoming a Witcher in Witcher 3 (dialogue and scene in Kaer Morhen). Ciri is no ordinary female to begin with so I don’t think that explanation could apply to her. We cannot apply common peasant logic on perhaps the most powerful character in the Witcher 3 saying she cannot pass the trials of grasses because she is a women. The author of the Witcher novel wrote the novel in such a way that there is room for explanation, predictions and expansion. Ciri doesn’t age normally but she does age and there is no established metric or number to measure her aging process which could also be altered after the mutation took place.
She is the first of her kind and her becoming a mutant is indeed a breakthrough in the mythos. I also think she lost her powers after defeating the frost. People should rather be excited than question it. Lore and story telling is not a weakness of CDPR, they will make a stellar explanation out of it. Also, Ciri as shown in the CGI trailer is better for good reasons because Ciri from Witcher 3 is not mature enough to be a full fledge protagonist in such a major title. A hardened and more seasoned Ciri makes total sense from a lore and gameplay perspective. CGI’s aren’t the final indication of what characters look like in game. Geralt looked very different in the first Killing Monsters CGI trailer of the Witcher 3
@JohnJohn-pm9wq For starters, I didn't comment on how Ciri looks, so why bring that up? Secondly, I also never stated anything else except that I don't want the game to turn into some ideological nonsense. It's been expected that Ciri would mostly likely be in the next after the Witcher 3 but the also doesn't mean that she will or will not be a Witcher.
@@PiSonichuit's a copy and paste spam commenter or a bot
@@recruit-legionary wouldn't be the first time i fell for it lol
@@PiSonichu same here although just for reference the easiest way to see if they are a copy and paste spam commenter is to check their other comments on the video which is what I did
geralt looked like the finest specimen of a light weight male fighter.
in witcher 4 ,ciri is ugly.
age doesn't change bone structure and give you man jaw.
she has been turned ugly because modern developers are too insecure about their own looks.
I want to play as “what a prick” Lambert
I want to play as Ciri not as female Geralt with girl boss attitude. Ciri is a sweet and caring girl, as Geralt as compassionate. I don't want a character tokenized when there LITERALLY no reason to. You want a female protagonist? You have it. And especially, you have a beloved character that has very deep development and a rich path forward to carry the series. I don't want this to be true but everything leads me to believe it so, that they will ruin Ciri's character just to make her unnecessarily more exceptional, she's already exceptional, you don't need to scream to people how strong she is, how independent she is, how gay she is.
For some people, they haven't seen anything wrong with the trailer, they saw Ciri being a badass, and that's enough for them, they have a reason to root for this character, and they're happy the series is coming back. Good for them, it's enough, they'll have a great time. But for me, and many more fans, it's painful to see the future of The Witcher walking into a place we're not welcome. Like Veilguard was to old school fans of the old games, the new one spitted on their faces and called them bigots for daring to question the care with the material.
We have been so gas-lit by the game and film industry. Unfortunately, women don’t make great men. This means that masculine roles, such as that of the witcher, rarely transfer satisfactorily to female protagonists. The only way to do this is to give the female character male characteristics. Unfortunately, this just leads to an unbelievable and unlikable protagonist.
I will say even as a woman I prefer playing an attractive character whether male or female. No one wants to stare at an unattractive character for hours on end.
I'm sure all the girls who played witcher 3 thought men need a more realistic self insert. Instead of fangirling about how hot the dude is. I remember that vividly that girls were just eating him up. Especially compared to the meth sephiroth that was him in 1&2.
This trailer made me miss Leo Bonhart.
Totally agree with current Ciri's appearance part. Her face will probably change 10 times over before final release.
The child been sacrificed, represents the witcher for a normal audiance.
The problem for me is her face and voice, I don’t want to play as my Mother or anyone’s Mother, I don’t mind Ciri as the Witcher or whatever but her looks, well I don’t care for it!
So you don’t mind playing a guy who looks like he’s 60 years old, but you do mind playing a woman who looks like she’s about 35 years old? Double standards much?
@ I’m a male, Mothers are a special person in our lives, enough said
Much of the old guard has packed up and left, so I have no hope or faith that Andrzej Sapkowski's work will be respected, nor what CDPR cemented in the trilogy, as the Director Sebastian Kalemba has stated in an interview and I quote, "we want to bring in new players [and customers] who do not play our game[s]." So already we are starting off on the wrong foot of respecting the established consumer for the "promise" of this amorphous crowd.
We are already seeing excuses being made for something that is rather contrived and pedantic to begin with: Witcher Ciri. The excuse and lie will be it is now CDPR's to do with what they want and the story "must change" and our critiques are unjustified whining while throwing in the tried and true slander of, "you're just an ist and phobe" if you have issues or concerns with what is being sold. As if they are owed our loyalty, money, or even time, while using the low hanging fruit of the vocal, loud, and toxic minority to create bad faith arguments to earn their "moral brownie points."
Radical changes in story have to be earned. They need to show us why female Witchers exist or why they must exist, and why Ciri is the best candidate for these transmutations beyond pandering to the simpletons whose neurons firer off at the slightest of fanservice; while proving this isn't just some DEI & ESG agenda and narrative being pushed. They shouldn't expect anyone to just swallow that Elder Blood Ciri is now just a simple player and not a mover or shaker of the world. By the end of Witcher 3 Ciri is quite the power house that trivializes most Witcher threats by the fact she is the girl of destiny who controls time and space.
For a business that burned a lot of trust & good will with Cyberpunk 2077 they are asking a lot of individuals to take it on good faith they will respect the established lore, world, and characters with such a shocking reveal that turns such things on its head: female Witchers and an Elder Blood creature at that.
Already their are weak and self serving arguments of, "well Andrzej Sapkowski never said their was never any female Witcher's" as if his characters PoV's haven't stated time and again the Trial of Grasses kills 7 out of 10 male adolescents, that females have never survived the Trials, and that no known female adult Witcher exists, while all knowledge and science of the process has been largely lost, and that no Sorcerer to date has begun or continued the work; I half expect them to think Santa Claus is real within the Witcher world seeing as the author never explicitly wrote he doesn't exist.
Lastly, what Yen did in the Witcher 3 with their mock Trial of Grasses and magical bullshit was contrived writing, and if the individual doesn't understand that I can't help them through their self imposed brain rot and retardation.
It's all just insufferable.
I am very eager to see people's reaction when Witcher 4 finally releases.
She's clearly very upset because they killed an innocent woman but I don't think Ciri would just butcher the villagers, that's something you seem to assume this Ciri might do because of her being very upset...?
I agree Geralt wouldn't have that strong of a reaction but that's one of the things that differentiates Ciri from him. I disagree with your take that it's a detachment from her character, she was always more emotionally involved. She also doesn't have the life experience of Geralt who is nearly 100 years old or Yen who is even older.
As for them saying Ciri is arguably more important: they say that because she is! I guess some people miss that point because the games have you play as Geralt like 99% of the time and Ciri's character is only really introduced in the third game.
But the books dedicate a pretty significant amount of time talking about her adventures while on the run, often bouncing between Geralt's journey and Ciri's. She has more time dedicated to her than any other character besides Geralt in the main series of books.
It's not Geralt that some very powerful people try to have a kid with, it's not Geralt's spawn that is prophesized to end the world, it's not Geralt that people try to perform messed up experiments on because they want the immense power from his blood and it's not Geralt that the Lodge tries to influence into becoming their most important member.
This is not to say Geralt is not important but interpreting their statement about Cir's own importance as them shitting on Geralt to prop her up is just wrong.
She won't be "just another witcher". You can literally see her drawing power from water and casting a spell afterwards in the trailer (nice throwback to the books when Yen teaches a young Ciri about magic). Kalemba has clarified that she's a mutated source and I'm curious to see how they handle it but I'm intrigued, not disappointed.
I know we're all tired of this and just want good games but this doesn't come across as ideologically driven to me. It's just CDPR doing their thing: a very story driven game and memorable characters.
PS: the monster she fights in the trailer is called a bauk. Vesemir wouldn't be that mad at you because it's the first time it makes an appearance in the series.
we havent even seen any gameplay. and the trailer just left us with a bunch of unanswered questions. yall out here making videos about nothing at this point. but that being said im not that excited either. and there are a lot of ways things could go wrong with this game. But like i said we havent seen enough to have any meaningful opinions on it.
Yeah i kinda thought the same, the tone of the ending really feels like ciri is about to slaughter them. Which is really opposite of Geralt would have taught ciri. And I'll go ahead and point out since I'm already on the subject, she's showing far too much emotion for being a supposed witcher. She's showing much distress to get the girl to run to safety. Snaps at the guy that grabs her shoulder. Shows seething anger at the villagers at the end. While witchers do feel emotions, the trial of the grasses mutes them so much that most people believe they have none, calling them cold hearted monsters. While they made ciri more battle hardened from the appearance in this video, she's just not acing like a witcher as you also point out.
In the topic of playing ciri. Well I'm one of the guys that can't get enough Geralt. Years back i was upset to find out he wouldn't be the MC in the next game, long before the release of cyberpunk, i made my peace with it and when embraced three idea of playing as ciri. Playing as the princess of time and space sounds like it would be great. Didn't even mind seeing the 2 swords on her back. Until you see her drink the potion, see her cat eyes, casting witcher signs. That's where my main problem really begins. Let's just set aside that Geralt was vehement against her becoming a witcher, tho he taught her the ways, the combat of the witcher.
Having her drink three potion is an official announcement that she took the trials of the grasses. The potions give anyone that's not a witcher a painful, sometimes a long drawn out death. You do a great job breaking down why there aren't any female witchers. 100% fatal to girls that took the trials. 70-80% fatal towards boys who had to be 12 years old in order to stand a chance to survive it. The problem with ciri specifically going thru the trials especially when people try to say "her elder blood tho!" Is that vesimir thought the same thing. He figured "maybe because her blood she could actually survive the trials unlike any other girl" and so have her the prep potions (the same stuff they have uma) and she had the worst reaction, most violent reaction to the potions vesimir had ever seen. Presumably it's precisely the elder blood that gave her such a bad reaction.
Again you've covered all this stuff quite well. I'm simply adding in opposition to what some people are saying to excuse her becoming a witcher. If it's instead explained by "some school of witchers that are miraculously still operational enough to create new witchers despite it being a lost art and closely guarded secret" then it's such a weak cop out. A poor explanation because the plot demands it. So no matter how they try to explain it, I'm not getting behind it
Thanks for the additional info! I didn't read the books, so I know I'm missing a lot of info & context. I had no idea that Vesemir had done a bit of a test that failed so aggressively.
Yet another reason why the Trial wouldn't work for her, but even more importantly - another reason why Geralt would never want her put through it.
I have no idea to what extent CDPR is going to go to explain this away in this game... If they even bother trying to explain it at all...
Too long not reading allat. Give me a TLDR
They don't mute them that's a lie that Geralt perpetuates so he is able to not get involved with things it just that peasants are uneducated and will believe anything
You meant to say come back to my hotel room and play gwent.
did a game that showed signs of being woke turn out to not be woke? no never. the games turned out worse than we imagined
I just don't want to play as Ciri.
I don't like playing as women. I don't think there is anything wrong with that either. I can relate to men, I can't relate to women.
Some will say, "then don't play". Any yeah, sure.. fine. But as a fan of The Witcher for over 20 years I think I'm allowed to voice my disappointment.
But besides me just not wanting to play as Ciri because she is a women, there are also other reasons.
Geralt is THE Witcher. He was special. His tolerance to the mutagens was abnormal and as such he was mutated more than the other Witchers. If all the witchers are considered special, then Geralt was special among special people. He was unique.
Sure the saga was about Ciri. And sure, through the books Geralt shared the spot light with Ciri as we got a lot of the story from her PoV. But the series main character is Geralt. It also has been.
There is also a reason the games went with Geralt as the main character in the first three games.
Now some will say that Ciri being the main character is the natural progression... I get it. The games had Geralt "retire". But come on.. that wouldn't happen. Geralt would take a vacation sure, but there is no way he would just stop. That isn't in his character. I can't believe people are arguing that those of us saying to bring Geralt back haven't read the books or played the games.. but they aren't realizing that Geralt just would NOT retire. It's weird.
Now IF they wanted to continue Ciri's story they should have kept her NOT a Witcher and just called the game "Elder Blood" or something like that. Them making Ciri a Witcher is going belittle Geralt. It seems they already have. In the trailer breakdown the dev pointed out that Ciri did the chain attack like Geralt did, but she has magic so she also ignited it with magic fire. So geralt can fight with a chain.. but Ciri can do that AND infuse it with magic. Ugh.
And Ciri is the most powerful being in the Witcher... her being the main character means they had to nerf her like crazy.
So I disagree. This game should have continued with Geralt.
That is 100% obvious. If this trailer showed Geralt was the main character people would question why he came out of retirement, nearly everyone would be excited. Now though.. its extremely divided. A LOT of people won't buy it simply because they want to play as Geralt.
And there is NOTHING wrong with that. The Witcher IS Geralt. It just is. If you asked people who they think of first when they hear The Witcher it is going to be Geralt.
I do fear this game is going to suffer. I am sure some people will think it is fine, but I don't think it will be the huge hit that Witcher 3 is.
It might not be true, but I do think it is leaning toward the wokified stuff.
Geralt will be in the game, but I fear he will be there simply as a jobber. Ciri will probably need to save him or some other crap. I can see it now.. a bunch of nekkers are attacking and Geralt is struggling and about to die. Ciri comes in and easily kills them all and helps him up. They will probably also have cringy lines like Geralt saying some shit like "You are better than I ever was" or something like that. :(
In terms of Ciri's look.. I mean.. I don't know. I actually thought she looked fine. She gave me Agatha vibes.
It is a shame.
We'll see.
The only clear reason why she even tried to go through the trials is that it was literally the only thing she could try before she dies. Any other reason would be either contrived or stupid. No one in the universe of Witcher knows what would happen exactly when the Elder blood goes through the trials. This means that she’s more likely to die and explode than the trials actually working. We know that Ciri will survive anything because of plot armor, but she and the people around her don’t know that. People kept saying she’ll survive because of Elder blood, but no one in that universe can say that definitely.
This means that the only reasons left is that she’s going to die and Witcher trials is literally the last thing they can try on her before she dies.
To be fair, Ciri walked towards these people unarmed, so ending is vaguely ambigous. But also, if she slaughtered them then monster was right in a sense, which is interesting.
Also, apparently cutscene is going to be a playable side quest, so it will most likely have multiple outcomes, and this is one
Their commitment to DEI has bassically ensured that i wont be buying this game either way. I wont support such a divisive and evil pratice. Plus i doubt they can even make another game like witcher 3, theyve lost a lot of talent, theyve had to outsource to other companies for updates to cyberpunk, and DEI has a proven track record of being very negative to the social climate and development of games. And yeah ciri face in the trailer is not that important even if it looks goofy and off putting at times. But Personally the witcher 3 trailer is way cooler..
I'm doing a Witcher 3 run right now and I'm in the H&S DLC and it still amazes me how good the writing is. For a DLC no less! I thought that B&W was a worse main story but Beauclair is a beautiful region, filled with side-quests and it has one of the best side-quests in the game imo (Equine Phantoms). I do not have super high hopes for Witcher 4, sadly. I would love to be wrong, but we already see the signs of bloated, triple A, politically-compromised slop that have infected so many other once beloved studios. It's early, we'll have to wait and see.
Sometimes plagiarism is done well.
th-cam.com/video/TkiP64adGjY/w-d-xo.html
It's truly amazing the amount of work put into fleshing out everything at such high quality. It's easy to get immersed and go with the flow. I'd love nothing more than to be wrong as well 'cause this one hurts.
'Losing' Dragon Age, Avowed, Arkham, and some of the Sony exclusive properties is one thing but this one is a shock. They were always so pro-consumer and so.... Passionate about the medium.
Now their company structure and messaging are looking like just any of the other ones.
@@TheDezembro Exactly! I don't want to be right. I don't have an agenda, it's not because I hate women or gay people, I just care about good writing. As you've said, these politically-minded restrictions companies are putting on writers are antithetical to the creative process. I think Ciri can work as the main character and I agree it was set up in one of the W3 endings. _However_ with all the other DEI shit CDPR is incorporating it makes me nervous that it's going to be another political propaganda piece rather than an exploration of the human condition.
My honest issue with Ciri as the main protagonist is the fact that she is too strong! I mean this, she is the chosen one, child with elder blood, mentored by both seasoned veteran Witcher Vesemir and Legendary Witcher Geralt, her parental mother is Yennifer who is one of the strongest witches with ties to a strong coven(so Ciri more than likely knows magic), Ciri's blade given to her by Geralt is said to be the best sword that no Witcher has ever had one like it, her bio father is emperor to the largest and strongest kingdom in the verse making Ciri a princess and to top it all off, it looks like she under went the trial of grasses, further enhancing her already ludicrous strength. Unless she's going to fight some new eldritch god I cannot imagine her struggling in any regard.
My concern is the most interesting part of Ciri's story will be behind her. Maybe they could tell a smaller scale story with personal stakes.
What little children the monster is asking to be sacrificed ? That was a grown woman 🤔
I am 100% for a cyberwitcher. We already played 3 Witcher games. And Ciri's time warp ability IS a sandevistan. If she came back from cyber realm with actual cyberware it would be epic. A truly new genre with new gameplay never done before.
36:50 Bro, what? Look at her jaw in the trailer and tell me that isn't manly af. She somehow grew the manliest jaw possible between her being 21 in W3 to whatever age she is in W4.
Isn't man jaw supposed to be larger, blocky and protruding? Hers is sharp and convex or whatever its called (angular), like a woman.
What grew from the first game was the cheekbones and the eyebrows (or her eye sockets got deepened)
It's obvious it's not the exact same character model but given how different their cinematics always looked, I'm not gonna bother with it until I see more. 😅
Definitely not masculine but looks like amateur modeling. The face is extremely puffy like she got a bunch of botox.
I dont understand, what is wrong with the game?
As usual, one of the most reasonable voices in the conversation. Excellent video.
Thanks so much, dude! I appreciate it. 🙏
And he’s actively getting shit on by the comments for it. I don’t understand how so many people are giving CDPR the benefit of doubt where there ample evidence to have concerns.
Time will tell in its end quality , but the blind loyalty people have without an ounce of critical thinking is par the course in gaming discourse.
If they turn ciri into an fucking stereotypical girl boss that will be a blow to the fanbase who liked her but time will tell. I hope they don't go Mary sue it never ends well. She's already an great character witcher 3 showed us that.
I completely agree, the biggest problem seems to be the writing ie the storytelling and how the character is portrayed. That is Witcher 3’s best quality. They can polish the graphics as much as they want if they don’t have good writing it just won’t be as good.
Many good points made here. About the "anti-religious messaging" in the W4 trailer, I would say it's hinted here and there but it's perhaps not a big deal. If there is a stain on the floor it's up to you to say whether the floor is dirty or not. It's little things like the way the man says "It's tradition" as though that alone justifies human sacrifice. Someone who truly believed that Ciri was about to interfere with a sacred ritual should have said so much more.
I would not argue that this village cult is like Christianity, but that the villagers seem ta have been justified to view this monster as a deity. There must have been truly compelling reasons for anyone to even consider sacrificing their child. The monster hides in the mist and seems to use disembodied voices, so it would not need to show it's true form. The villagers may have been so deeply deceived that Ciri would be wrong to punish them. But the trailer confidently finishes on her righteous rage against superstitious and murderous men.
About the protagonist being anyone but a Witcher, I think that would be a bad idea. The title refers to Geralt primarily, but also the setting, which means we can use other characters as POV. However, the gameplay of these games is so super-specific to your character being a witcher (with swords, potions, signs, monster hunting, meditation, mutations, legendary gear, etc) that playing as a mage or regular warrior would feel like a fundamentally different gaming title. Whether Ciri should be that witcher is another can of worms.
it's the usual "fuglify her with the man-jaw treatment + add 20 years of age" to avoid the male gaze.
not buying this slopp.
did you even watch the whole video? ...
@@IlRe720 Did you?
Mary Kanney works at CDPR's USA branch on Cyberpunk 2 . She is not a game director, so she has no power over what will or not be in the CP2. She DOES NOT work on the W4.
Ciri as a witcher can happen because of the Elder blood factor, secondly as a child of surprise this can play a huge factor think of it as a cheat code thanks to Geralt oath by the Law of Surprise making Ciri his Destiny. There is no evidence in the books that Ciri took the trial of Grasses maybe it will happen in Witcher 4 story quests, third huge detail in the trailer is the medallion of the Lynx a symbol for the Witchers school of the Cat, On the canon lore this school succeeded on creating a female Witcher by the name of "Ważka AKA Dragonfly" under the Law of Surprise wish explains why Ciri wearing a Lynx magical Medallion, finally the potion she took on the trailer very similar to the focus potion formula sharpening the senses making her see better in the fog with more speed and focus also blocking out the Bauk’s creature whispers, Bauk's can smell and sense fear even manipulate humans through trauma by whispers very dangerous even for a witcher to engage in melee combat without a special potion.
Witchers are to witches what a widower is to a widow! Ciri is a WITCH!!!
If they find a very compelling story reason why Ciri could survive and become a witcher, it maybe very awesome. However i suspect they wont even show you, or make it a one sentance explination that is never shown
Absolutely agree about the anti-religion claims being simply silly.
On Ciri "attacking" the villagers... Firstly, looks like this trailer was a mirror of the Witcher 3 trailer where Geralt saved a woman from the "monsters", bandits. He kills them brutally in the trailer. I personally don't like that they made this direct reference, but the situation is very similar...
Second, you didn't know if Ciri killed those villagers. Maybe she did, or maybe she beat up the one who actually killed the girl and left, who knows? Maybe this will be our decision to make in game.
Third, I think there might be a hint there to something from the Witcher books that has never been explored, which is the fact that Ciri's power has a dark side. The prophecy even says that she would either destroy or save the world. I think it would be interesting to explore her struggle to control that power, and the fear of losing herself to that power - which may well be the reason why she is not using her power much in the trailer. In the books there is a period in which Ciri becomes pretty ruthless and dark for a period. I hope they explore that in some way. I also would love to see her jumping to another world even if briefly. But who knows, this was just a teaser and I can't draw conclusions yet.
And look, on the books everything really is about Ciri. Yes, Geralt starts as the protagonist, but Ciri is the motivation and center of the story and grows to replace him in the books. So I think that's what the Developer meant when he said she was more important, though he really should have thought a little about the gamers who never read the book.
Now about activism... Look, there is bad writing in this industry, and it's not the activism that causes it. To me, a brainless babe made to play with male fantasies, with no story behind her, is as bad a game as one in which the ideology is forced.
It's sad that the people who want to include minorities are not always the best writers, but bad games exist regardless, and the fact that people are focusing the hatred on women, lgbtqi, etc is telling me that the prejudice is there. There is no hatred for badly written games with traditional white male or with seductive models as protagonists. People just don't play them, or say it's bad and move on with their lives. Why? I think it's because as much as they don't want to admit it, either the prejudice or refusal to be criticized is there, and they would do well in looking to the inside and recognizing that.
Now about the "misogyny" in the Witcher books, I must point out, as much as I love the books, there are some things that I could only roll my eyes at. There are good things, and some others obviously come from a stereotype vision of women. For example: in the books, all women sorcerers are futile, manipulative and over focused on good looks and seduction. I am a straight woman and I hated the heck out of almost every woman in that book, Ciri and Milva being the only ones that I liked. Yes, even Yennefer was insufferable, though a little bit better than the rest (Triss included). Ciri is treated as someone everyone wants to impregnate (even her own father) because nobody sees a woman as the subject of the prophecy, they think it must be a male son she will bear. I even kinda like that as a critique, so I think the books are a mixed bag.
Now, I don't know why it's such a big issue that Ciri could become a female Witcher. She is special. She has the Elder Blood. That's the most basic heroic trope - the things that nobody thought could be done, *he* did it! That's why he's a hero! But when the hero is a woman, the judgement is different? She can't break any rules or overcome impossible odds? Why?
I would prefer that she becomes a Witcher in spirit only, given that it was a pretty brutal process, so no one would want Ciri to go through it. But if the story is told well and there is a good reason for her to go through the trial, I don't care. Even Geralt submitted himself to something similar again, in one of the expansions, to activate the mutations mechanics.
Considering we don't even know if she really has gone through the trial of grasses (her eyes were not yellow, could be a different or incomplete ritual), I will simply wait and see and I think any reasonable person should at least have that in mind.
I just wish people who disagree on these things could be civil and just comment on their worries without becoming irrational bullies, so everyone could grow from the discussion.
I do not get the impression that Ciri “butchers” the villagers at the end of the cinematic AT ALL. Haven’t seen that take anywhere but here in this video
100% agree. Great video! feels like CDPR builds tons of explanations to make Ciri a witcher just because the game is called Witcher.
isnt ciri stronger than an actual witcher?, i wonder why would they downgrade her except for gameplay
I was so hoping they would have gone for an Arthur Morgan approach. Nobody had faith or attachment to a brand new protagonist who had nothing to do with the first game, but by this point hes easily more popular than John was. Granted a new protagonist would have had bigger shoes to fill against Geralt, but still -- they had the opportunity to do something very unique and instead it feels like they are squeezing every last drop from the teet of familiarity.
The finale of W3 literally makes Ciri a Witcher.
W4, Ciri is the Witcher.
Fandom: WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?
Exactly
That wasn’t canon foolish one
It wasn't a witcher though.
It's like normal people trying to hunt monsters: yes they can do it but they usually make a mess of it. It was shown that we give her a sword, so she'll go around monster slaying. The assumption not being she underwent the trails, but rather her powers were enough to give her the edge. Then again, it was not clear what happened to her powers after the end
I think the trailer is being over analyzed here.
First of all, Ciri isn't Geralt and probably has her own moral compass. It's not like all witcher's are indifferent to what's going in the world. CDPR said in an interview that Ciri's path can be determined by player decisions much more than Geralt.
Ciri has just begun the journey as a witcher. We can expect to start the game before Ciri goes through the trials of the grasses so we can learn how it happened.
I have no problems with Ciri behaving quite differently from Geralt. I would have hated to play a Geralt clone. Then it's better to continue with Geralt. We don't know at all if Ciri will slaughter the village after they killed the girl. All we know is that Ciri is angry they sacrificed her for nothing, hinting that they're monsters too.
We dont even know how Ciri ended up in that village. Maybe it was because of a side quest she took, but could have ignored. Maybe we saw one possible outcome of that quest.
CDPR just wanted to introduce us to Ciri as the protagonist and show us her abilities. We saw that she's a very capable bad ass fighter who would have made even Geralt proud.
We know nothing yet about the plot of Witcher 4 so it's best to be cautiously optimistic.
The trailer didn't give us indications about Witcher 4 being tainted by DEI and woke. Granted, that disease is spreading, but give CDPR the benefit of the doubt before making any conclusions.
I don't even think we can say Ciri was uglified. She's 10 years older in Witcher 4 and hardened by life. I think she has aged well from an innocent girl into a bad ass woman. Ciri is still the beautiful Ciri we know. She's not turned into a troll like Kay Vess from Star Wars Outlaws.
Most reactors to the Witcher 4 trailers are very excited. It could be CDPR will eventually disappoint us, but so far they haven't fallen from grace like Bioware have.
Personally I think Ciri as the protagonist was the best choice they could have made. People wanted to continue her story after Witcher 3 and without Geralt as the protagonist then she is the best option. A generic witcher would have been an anti climax.
CDPR are cooperating with Andrej Sapkowski so i'm not afraid they will butcher the Witcher lore.
Yes, Geralt wouldn’t want Ciri to become a Witcher, but . . . Who else would put her through the trial of the grasses if not him? If he knew she was going to do it, regardless, he would be there. They could easily do this through flashback, leaving Geralt’s legacy safe. CDPR has NEVER made these mistakes in their previous games, despite having a really strong record for, “representation,” and, “diversity.”
And Ciri would look different, since everyone who survives the grasses mutates.
Gaze = Averted
Wallet = Closed
Non-BUYnary gamer rights are human rights.
In the lore, the lack of females was simply due to it working first and better on men first. So, they went with that and decided not to go in the female direction. It could possibly work on women, but the schools decided to basically, not go that route due to the social norms. Yen, Triss, or whoever else could most likely make it work eventually since in the games they've already adjusted the concoctions before. It's not really impossible that women can't be Witchers. Just think about it, like a stick of deodorant, that is not PH balanced for a lady. It's not that complicated, totally possible, but most of the schools don't really remember how to start from scratch, so it's just not done because lots of girls would have to die before they got it right. Plus, you got that whole thing about killing females who'd be a resource... children, ladies, wives, nurses... etc. Versus a very possible corpse.
It's in the lore.
If they're mirroring that trailer of Geralt when it ends with him saying "...killing monsters," I can easily understand Ciri saying something similar, and she's a volatile character, unlike Geralt, so while she's doing something Geralt wouldn't approve of, I do understand her bloodlust. Do I agree with it? No. The ozempic face redesign is pretty atrocious.
The problem with Ciri as a protagonist is her powerlevel. You haven't read the books but even in the game she stopped WHITE FROST. The power that destroyed countless worlds, and she stopped that on her own, she that powerful. She is THE strongest sorceress in the world and taught swordplay by one of the best swordsman in the northen kingdoms. Making her a witcher is like giving Adam Smasher a Budget Arms Slaught-O-Matic and say that NOW he is even more powerful. It's just ridiculous and beyond stupid. It can be justified in the story but no matter what it will be looked down upon. I have nothing to say about her looks in the trailer though, Gerald looked very different there as well so will wait for a game appearance before jumping on that band-wagon
I want to play Ciri in a Witcher 4, not gender bend Geralt with anger issues.
I enjoyed Ciri's teleportation focused combat style. There are plenty of ways to use teleportation offensively and it's not she could learn other types of magic 🫠
@@arkeshn729no one said they removed teleportation
I think you would be pretty angry to see a young girl about to be sacrificed by her village, saving that girl, almost dying in the process, and then the people in the village kills the girl anyway.
@@mrgreenguy5193 I'm not Ciri and Ciri has delt with situations like this before. I can't ignore how out of character this is just because I would respond differently. I'm not as experienced as Ciri, I've never dealt with people as extreme as this unlike Ciri, I'm not a professional monster hunter like Ciri. I'm not Ciri but I know Ciri has dealt with these situations before and knows how to handle it.
@@65firered Brother, ciri fucking hates people like this with a passion. People who uses others like tools. Way to tell on yourself lmao
I think for the trailer, we're missing a little context or we don't know the full story for Ciri and why she's against them in the first place. It might be more than just that. So I wouldn't judge it too much.
I'm with you on the Ciri as the protagonist and why it is done well, in comparison to TLOU2. I already liked TLOU1 but when they killed off Joel for the sake of introducing another character and then forcing us to see from her POV, I still didn't buy it. I still hated Abby. I didn't care about her sob story. I already allied myself to Joel and Ellie and I already know revenge is bad, bla bla bla. I still want my choice to off Abby during the final moments, just like I would have in Ghost of Tsushima. (Ghost of Tsushima should've won GOTY, so Vuck You GOTY Awards).
As for the Religious things getting in the way, I think you should ignore them as we always have been. We can never reason with people who has harsh or deep religious faith and beliefs because they're not often as open minded to see different perspectives. So I wouldn't bother with them.
The DEI thing that CDPR has hired, yeah... We've seen this happens before, multiple times. Especially with Sweet Baby Inc. We know how bad that this can happen. So I'm also worried about that but until I see anything, I'm not going to judge it. Just like Naughty Dog's new IP "Intergalactic" here, the moment I see something, I know that I'm not going to like it. It's the same here for me. I'll wait until they show us something. I still worry about this, but yes... It is not looking good.
Ciri made into the Witcher is great. The people calling it out Sexist really has no idea. In Malaysia, every men and women are allowed to join the military, to learn how to defend themselves. However! They are not allowed to participate in the frontline war for us. Instead, they serve as the defenders for the other women and children in the country. At least that's how it was back what I learned back then. Outside countries like the US has criticised it saying it is Misogynistic, but we disagreed. Saying they need to be protected. It is the same here for me in Witcher's stories and lore. The women can't be Witcher, because they DIE. Is it Misogynistic, to prevent further lost of lives? Absurd and redacted. I hate that idea from the Western Ideology. I can't call them out either, because YT doesn't like it. YT hates it. Yet allowed those Vuckers in the industry and let them say things because they're "Priviledged" here for having identified differently, when they're just as human as us if not worse.
Ciri's appearance is something I feel neutral about. She's not exactly "Insanely beautiful" in my eyes, but she's great. She's okay.
The biggest red flag is the disregard for the lore. Direct, willful lore contradictions for CDPR calls into question everything about the game. The game could be good, but I want the world of the Witcher not this fan fic, they're not getting my money.
On Ciri's design, I will just point out that the trailer is specified as being done in UE5, so it's very possible that's her in-game model but at much higher fidelity since CDPR switched to UE for this game.
A nuanced take that doesn't pick sides?
I must be dreaming.
As much as I can see the POV of those saying "they broke canon" with Ciri becoming a Witcher, "they're" wrong. The TTRPG books ARE canon, like it or not, so "She-Witchers" ARE canon... Rare and taboo and even MORE dangerous to make than male witchers, but they ARE canon. They were made successfully in the Cat and Manticore schools, so that isn't such an issue for me.
What REALLY pisses me off is what I ABSOLUTELY see as a misdirection and bait and switch done for this game. The devs flat out said "the Witcher 4 game will have a Witcher We've never met before... it'll be an entirely new Witcher that the player chooses". They never ONCE corrected any of the many, many players and content creators who talked about a custom protagonist, and they absolutley insinuated it'd be a different point in the timeline than the original Witcher trilogy.
Adding to this, is the fact that Ciri as a protag completely unwrites and ignores our choices at the end of Witcher 3. I chose to make Ciri a ruler of her own kingdom! I deliberately chose NOT to have her finish her trials. Also, her demi-god powers so vastly and completely overshadow any perceived benefits from finishing the trials, it is completely immersion breaking for me.
I guess it's not a canon issue, it's not an aesthetic issue - she's gorgeous in this trailer - it's the fact that yet another studio is lying by omission, suggesting without backing anything up, their changes to Ciri's personality, and the fact that almost every dev and voice actor involved in Witchers 1 to 3 are now gone from the studio.
Do I think it's going to be dead on arrival? No. But I'm still VERY burned from Veilguard and Cyberpunk and I'll absolutely be waiting until after a full clear review or five before I buy it.
And to follow up, Ciri was NEVER the "main character" of the books or games. She was a strong SECONDARY character in a couple of the books and ONE game.
This idea that she IS "the main protag", that smacks of the TV series and is an instant and impassible turnoff for me.
Re that other (weirdly forgettable lol) game, I have no issue with how she looks, I've had a shaved head before. It's hassle free and I loved it. What I absolutely did NOT love about that trailer was the incessant brand name drops/real world product placement (porche, coke, mcdonalds, CD brands and current world band names etc.), and her incredibly obnoxious personality. It was like a trainwreck style blending of GI Jane looks and Mean Girls personality and I'm NOT at all here for it. It was like a short, bald Taash all over again 🤮
A new cast of protagonists with cameos by Geralt, Ciri etc would be FAR more preferable to grossly violating Witcher lore.
Hi, I didn't play trough witcher 3 yet. Like only 1/3 of the game, where you play as Ciri. Are the spoilers here or can I watch the video? Thanks 😺
No spoilers here. The only thing is that Ciri is the main character but you already know that so go on ahead.
@BloodAssassin thank you 😸
.... honestly cant understand what the issue is
Their brain is rotting. And it is very profitable to make videos like this
You don't find uglifying a pretty character an issue? You don't find that a game that is known for its great lore and character to utterly break it be an issue? I'm curious did you play any of the Witcher games before and why did you enjoy it?
@@shadow19978 Brother, she's older and this is a cgi trailer. Geralt looked way better in game than he did in his cgi trailers
@@mrgreenguy5193 Dear brother notice how I said she's ugly not older. Her face proportion is not right it is elongated and her head is larger than it should. Aging would not do that. And why is it that only females aged like milk in video games while the men age like fine wine?
disagree with last of us example, it was we as an audience wanted those characters to be happy , safe & stay together hence the open ending. But the story itself was incomplete.
"the more you pick up the character , the more you cartoonify them" - u do understand there is always the potential for change & new addition in chrs building on existing ? also football & chrs are completely different stuff how can you compare them bruh. But yes i do agree with geralt retiering.
this DEI stuff, just cuz they have it on their website doesn't mean they are only hiring women or minorities or something else , they still have majority of male developers both in lead as well in general. Many of the staff is same & others have left it is a company this stuff happens. How just one individual (you gave as a ex) responsible for the entire company again?. Can't we just wait for the game & then bash it if it's bad or agenda driven.
my guy if they said "ciri was more important to the plot" & you are saying "yeah kinda true since she was child of elder blood" , then it literally means yeah she was more important to the plot , they didn't say "geralt was a side chr not important at all" , they said he is important not more than ciri , he was important for ciri as a chr, he was important cuz ciri is HIS child of destiny his story is important for ciri's to happen but he wasn't the one to stop white frost so both are important in their roles. You are looking too far.
for ciri becoming a witcher , "The trial of grasses" said geralt, "is a ritual that changes the body & the mind. it's never been completed by a woman. not once. Every time they tried, the women died. *But it's not impossible*
Also it was confirmed by the director that she is not a full blown witcher yet, she is on it's journey and she can use elemental magic " --from the offical breakdown of the trailer.
the conflict of ciri's entire char is her being burderned as a child of elder blood which she didn't choose, where as she wanted to be a witcher. it is not abt need , but what she wanted , if she can feel closer to vesemier & geralt by being witcher then that's fine & interesting. again, Director has said she isnt going to be like geralt , she is going to be different,she is going to listen to her heart more & be emotional sometimes immature. Just cuz she is more emotional doesn't mean she is a moron, she is learning.
you can't say you don't want geralt to return, yet want a new character to behave exactly like him & if both are very similar then what's the point of having different chr , math aint mathing. she is a different chr ofc she is gonna take different decision
do your research my guy.
maybe you should make a video my guy,
instead of writing a book in the comments my guy
I never thought of the concerns you brought up, and I appreciate that you did. I know Ciri is a woman, (and in the book she does have a relationship with a woman) but I hope, the preserve the integrity of the Witcher world and the story. This is not a feminist movement, this is not a LGBTQ coming out story. Witcher 3 is so loved by the fans. Netflix tried to push their woke agenda on Witcher fans and it clearly did not work lol. I HOPE cdpr knows better than to try that again.
18:59 please NEVER stop playing that "Holy jesus" when you run this clip. It simply completes it 😂.
gotta love full metal jacket 😂
I don’t think it goes against lore, they’ve tried to make female witchers before but women have never made it through the mutation process, but Ciri isn’t a normal woman she has powers of her own, if there were a woman that would survive the process it would be her
My major issue is why do I have to play as this annoying girlboss instead of an actual witcher I can create myself and choose a school?
OP - we didn't need another last of us when you play as ellie, I want a new cast!
also OP - I like this new witcher where we play as Ciri
can you not see this is the same situation?
I guess my thing is we don't know what she did to the whole village. She walked towards the camera in anger. For all we know she hit the guy, yelled at him, or slaughtered everyone. Also, you are comparing Ciri to Geralt but they are different people. Just because she was trained by them doesn't mean she will take up their morals or beliefs. She is a powerful young woman who has gone through a lot. She can make her own calls on things now as opposed to waiting for Geralt. That being said, I agree with everything else. She didn't need to be a Witcher. Geralt wouldn't want her to do this.
Logically speaking there is an anti religious messaging though, you just need to look really hard to see it, and maybe it's not healthy to be looking into stuff this hard and be this sensitive about this.
There could easily be some evil god behind the monster, and I doubt that Ciri has any authority to proclaim that there isn't one. She dismisses this just because such god would clash with what she thinks is right. Technically speaking that's anti-religious.
But it's sort of pro-Christianity though, because when she says that, she assumes that Christian way of thinking is a correct one, and everything that clashes with it surely cannot be the work of a god.
I always find the Justice question to be a bit funny. What do you think is just?
There has been so much horrible criticism of this trailer, so I REALLY appreciate a balanced and rational critique of the trailer talking about the very real issues in an adult way. (Instead of crying screaming doom posts.)
Here's to hoping some of the red flags we are seeing don't doom the game, because in the end the "real" fans just want a good game.
at no point, the trailer said that she would slaughter the villagers. second, ciri is not geralt. lol
Except, she sits next to the father who begs her with his eyes to take revenge on the man who beat him and killed his daughter. Whether she would slaughter the entire village? That isn't known yet.
I've also noticed it's the same quest from W3. I understand the implication but can't help seeing it as a lazy decision.
Finally a good video with sam valid criticism and concerns instead of "witcher 4 is woke and ciri looks like a man"
I personally think that if they play it right and explain some things game will be good
I feel like every change **could** work well if done masterfully, but probably won't.