Summary
- The Witcher 4’s reveal trailer depicted a woman named Mioni perishing via human sacrifice.
- According to the game director, we’ll be able to save Mioni in the actual game.
- The world of The Witcher combines unrelenting cruelty with a spark of hope.
We’re all still reeling from the excitement of last night’s Witcher 4 cinematic reveal trailer that aired at The Game Awards. Although everyone was aware that CD Projekt moved the game into full production, none of us were expecting to see a trailer for at least another year.
The trailer revealed Ciri (who appears to have been recast) as The Witcher’s next protagonist, showcasing her in action against a powerful arachnid creature called a Bauk. The tone of the trailer is a bleak one, reflecting the unrelenting cruelty of the world that witchers inhabit.
We Can Save Mioni
The trailer takes place in a remote northern village where the villagers are intent on sacrificing a woman named Mioni, one of their own. This is done to appease a great evil (the Bauk) in the nearby woods. Ciri arrives to save Mioni, relying on her silver sword to solve the situation rather than a misguided sense of faith like the villagers. She tells Mioni to run back towards the village while she fights the Bauk.
Ciri eventually slays the creature after using several tools in her witcher arsenal, reflecting how far she’s progressed in the art of monster slaying since the events of The Witcher 3. After defeating the creature, Ciri emerges from the woods only to find that Mioni has been needlessly slain by the villagers. It’s a heartbreaking moment and an all too familiar feeling for Cirilla.
In a behind-the-scenes video for the trailer, The Witcher 4 game director Sebastian Kalemba reflects on the moment, saying people don’t always want to change even when presented with a better alternative. He also gives a teaser about what we can expect from the quest depicted in the trailer, in the actual game.
“This world is dark, it’s grim. But there is a light,” Kalemba says. “There is this warmth. There’s this hope in the end. In this case, Mioni got killed by her people. But as you know our games… there are choices and consequences. There’s going to be a way to save her and this is the hope that The Witcher world brings also. It actually gives you this contrast between grim and hope. This is what I love about this world.”
Whether this means we can stop the villagers from killing Mioni, or we can “save her” in a sort of supernatural way, remains to be seen. We’ll likely have to wait several years to find out as Geoff Keighley implied the game was coming out “beyond 2025” during The Game Awards.
The Witcher IV is a single-player, open-world RPG from CD PROJEKT RED. At the start of a new saga, players take on the role of Ciri, a professional monster slayer, and embark on a journey through a brutal dark-fantasy world. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it aims to be the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date.