Summary
- The Witcher 4 trailer features Ciri, our new protagonist.
- The events of the trailer confirm that some potential events in The Witcher 3 are non-canon.
- One of The Witcher 3’s potential endings is almost certainly canon.
Last night’s Game Awards ceremony was undoubtedly one of the best in recent memory, combining multiple big announcements with appropriate spectacle and a handful of wholesome moments. One of the biggest surprises of the night was a cinematic trailer for The Witcher 4, which we hadn’t expected to see for at least another year, as CD Projekt’s next game only recently entered full production.
The trailer showed off series mainstay Ciri, who is most likely our new protagonist (and who appears to have been recast). Now a fully-fledged witcher, Ciri attempts to stop a village from sacrificing a woman to an arachnid creature, promising to slay the beast herself. After a hard-fought battle, Cirilla emerges victorious. Unfortunately, the villagers slew their willing sacrifice as Ciri killed the beast – a needless death, reflecting the casual cruelty of life.
The Witcher Now Has Canon
Interestingly, the trailer also gives us some information about what CD Projekt Red considers to be canon for the series. The Witcher 3 has 36 different endings, with some fairly radical differences between them. We can glean from the trailer which endings could be considered canon and which are now impossible in this continuity.
Any ending where Ciri dies should now be considered non-canon. This “bad ending” can occur if Geralt doesn’t interact positively with Ciri throughout some of the game’s final missions. Ciri doesn’t survive her encounter with the White Frost, and Geralt potentially allows himself to be killed by monsters because of his grief at losing the person he considered a daughter.
Another ending involves Ciri reclaiming her heritage and becoming the Empress of Nilfgaard. Although this technically hasn’t been ruled out by the trailer, it seems unlikely that Ciri would ascend to royalty to change the world, only to then go back to slaying monsters for coin. She’d likely have to flee the continent to avoid being recognised also.
The last and most likely ending is that Ciri survives her encounter with the White Frost. Geralt then has a silver sword forged and gifts it to Ciri, making her a full witcher. This always seemed like the proper ending for The Witcher 3 and is almost certainly the canon that CD Projekt is following. This is further evidenced by how long the camera lingers on Ciri’s silver sword, which appears to be the same one that Geralt gives her at the end of Witcher 3.
We don’t know exactly when The Witcher 4 is planned for release, but it appears it will be “beyond 2025” at the very least.
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.