Ciri stumbles hurriedly through a cave on the outskirts of Stromford, boots crunching through the remnants of ritualistic sacrifice. Her vision obscured by thick plumes of volumetric fog; pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5, powered by a next-generation Nvidia Geforce RTX GPU. The scene is mesmerizing. She sips a potion, and as the poison courses through the mutated monster hunter’s veins she is granted clarity of sight and sound – the Bauk no longer speaking in whispers but sharp shrieks as its flailing limbs meet the blade of Zireael, a legendary sword passed down through generations of Witchers. Ciri dances between strikes and lashes a silver chain around the creature’s neck, diverting a rush of flickering flames along its length until flesh sears. A monster has fallen, but Ciri learns that evil wears many faces back at the village. We’ve embodied the role of The Witcher before, but never like this.
“If you’re asking me whether we want to raise the bar again, the answer is yes,” laughs Małgorzata Mitręga, and the CD Projekt RED executive producer has every right to feel bullish. The Witcher 4 has been unveiled, a new single-player RPG from the studio responsible for revolutionizing open world game design in both the fantasy and science-fiction genres. CDPR says that it’s aiming to deliver “the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date” as it shifts focus away from Geralt of Rivia and towards Ciri, his adopted daughter only just beginning to chart her Path across a world where the old order is crumbling and dark forces are seizing their chance to rise.
“We definitely want to raise the bar with every video game that we create. This is what we did with Cyberpunk 2077 after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and we want to apply all of the lessons learned from both of these experiences and incorporate them into The Witcher 4,” says Sebastian Kalemba, game director. “You can look at the aesthetics of the trailer as a symbol of what we want to achieve. It’s pre-rendered footage on our custom Unreal Engine 5 build, and these are already the visuals that we are aspiring to have. This ambition is absolutely spread across all the departments at CDPR – our ambition is high, crazily high.”
Something ends, something begins
With the chapter closed on Geralt’s adventures across the Continent, The Witcher 4 represents a bold new beginning. “As this story happens a few years after Wild Hunt, I believe that not only new players but also seasoned players will get something from the experience,” says Kalemba. Ciri has been positioned as the protagonist of this new trilogy of Witcher games, now played by actor Ciara Berkeley following Jo Wyatt’s performance in Wild Hunt. You’ll guide the young hunter as she takes her first steps on the path of a witcher – shaping her character and abilities as the freshly mutated warrior understands what it means to hunt and slay monsters threatening ordinary people, so long as they can pay a price.
CDPR says that Ciri’s ascendance after appearances in The Witcher 3 was never in doubt. “From the very beginning, we knew it had to be Ciri – she’s a complex character and there is so much to be told about her. On the one hand, she’s very similar to Geralt, a continuator of his values – honorable, brave, just. But she also has this side we haven’t explored much – grim, rebellious, and fierce. She’s familiar, but at the same time she’s fresh. And she’s simply a badass,” says story director Tomasz Marchewka.
In the trailer we are able to see Ciri brandish the skills and bear the burdens of what it means to be a witcher, a savior to a people who fear what they cannot understand. She’s equipped with steel and silver swords, and a Lynx medallion – although CDPR isn’t willing to be drawn on where Ciri received her training, given that all of the known witcher schools are either destroyed or disbanded by the time Wild Hunt reaches its conclusion. “We have to wait and let you experience this story for yourself,” says Kalemba, with Mitręga teasing that “everything in the trailer is there for a purpose.”
For the time being, we’re left to reflect on the ways in which Ciri differs from Geralt. She may have been “raised by wolves” but she has a more inquisitive outlook on life, one that will shape her codex and values. “She is super engaged and determined, passionate about the task she’s encountering,” says Kalemba. “That’s the starting point for her. She just became a witcher, so she’s only just beginning to deal with this world and become a professional who kills monsters within it.” Mitręga adds: “She’s open, curious, and drawn to people, yearning for connection and understanding. This opens up uncharted territory in storytelling, where relationships and emotions are just as important as the fight for survival.”
A new witcher emerges
Speaking of that fight for survival, Ciri has already been to hell and back by the time we meet her in this cinematic – which Mitręga tells me is designed to be illustrative of what “the side-content experience will look like” in The Witcher 4. You may have caught Ciri’s pupils turning into slits, reflecting that she has already undergone the Trial of the Grasses – a rite of passage for would-be witchers that few are said to survive, mutating the body and imbuing it with new attributes. This trial is usually performed on young children, snatched at birth, forced into this life of wandering – Ciri is the first witcher by choice.
Players have speculated for almost a decade about what a sequel to The Witcher 3 would look like. While one of the Wild Hunt endings does position Ciri as a new witcher, there’s been debate about whether she would undergo the trials due to the power she already wields – she’s a source, born with a natural affinity for magical abilities. Given how powerful Ciri was by the end of Wild Hunt, and given this new connection between the world of the witchers and the world of the sorcerers, CDPR is quick to assure me that steps have been taken to avoid powercreep.
“The gap between her being totally overpowered at the end of the previous game and now, with the skill set we showed off in the trailer… something totally happened in-between,” Mitręga teases. “We had to delve deep to consider how we would address this – we have huge respect for the lore, for both the books and for what made it into our previous games. But this was one of the first questions we found the answer for, and it’s how we were able to create this original story which starts with The Witcher 4.”
“We want to apply all of the lessons learned from both of these experiences and incorporate them into The Witcher 4”
Sebastian Kalemba, game director
There’s a lot of unanswered questions. CDPR insists that all of the Wild Hunt “endings are important” without delving into specifics on canon, while the studio refuses to be drawn on how Ciri became a witcher and whether Geralt was involved in the transformation. But what we can do is delve into that skill set which Mitręga mentioned before. “She’s faster, more agile – but you can still tell that she was raised by Geralt, right?” That last point speaks to her tenacity and courage, but there’s far more to Ciri than meets the eye.
What CDPR is teasing out in this trailer is a fusion between traditional witcher combat proficiencies and her unique ability to wield magic. If you recall from the original trilogy of Witcher games, Geralt is only able to cast exceptionally basic ‘signs’. But as a Source, Ciri is able to wield powerful sorcery; you see this in the trailer, as she shifts from backfoot to upper hand after drawing energy from a water source and channel it into ‘Bolt’, an electrifying spell that transitions the battle into its next phase.
Ciri wrapping a silver chain around the Bauk’s neck may be a fun callback to The Witcher’s opening cinematic, but how she is able to enchant this utility tool with fire is unlike anything Geralt could have achieved in that iconic fight against the Striga some 16 years ago. “What you’ve seen is a tease, but it’s there for a reason. You can see the swords, you can see the chain, and you can see her using magic too, and how she uses them all against the boosted monster she encounters. It’s there to show you what our ambition is with The Witcher 4,” says Mitręga.
“We wanted to sell this idea of Ciri being fearless,” adds Kalemba. “Of course she’s afraid, because this monster represents fear. But let’s say that the first layer of combat is actually about the Bauk, the monster playing with Ciri’s inner fears and demons. She’s able to slice and cut him a bit, and this is the way she defeats the first layer of the monster. That’s one thing, but we also wanted to sell this idea of there being really creepy monsters, monsters that we’ve never experienced in this world – and the Bauk is just one of many monsters that you will encounter later in the game. But it represents this idea of what the next level of monster hunting is, right?”
Kalemba tells me that CDPR wants to “create this feeling that monsters are a real threat”, not only to Ciri but to the people who occupy the world around her. “In this case, the monster is so dangerous that for years it was eating people and somehow forced these people to believe in some superstitions – that’s why they thought he was a god for them, because Ciri is probably the very first character that was able to look into his eyes and really understand what this creature is about. I think that’s a great statement that we set out here with the trailer.”
Into the shadows
Where is Geralt?
Worry not, CDPR hasn’t killed off Geralt. The studio closed the book on his adventures across the Continent with The Witcher 3, putting a fine point on his retirement through the excellent Blood and Wine expansion. CDPR wont be drawn on what role Geralt will play in The Witcher 4, but has confirmed that he’ll appear – whether he’s still hanging out in Touissant remains to be seen.
“We tend to make very character-driven stories, I would say that this is our power,” says Kalemba. “We tailor the entire story around the character, allowing you to immerse yourself even more as we expand this world to showcase new regions.” CDPR is yet to truly reveal the scope of its next open world, although we do know that the studio is angling for a more brutal dark-fantasy world – one where the populace is becoming even warier of witchers as their numbers thin across the Continent.
Underscoring the experience will be that opportunity to embody the role of a witcher. Traveling the world seeking contracts, confronting monsters, and dealing with the consequences of your choices. “The world of The Witcher 4 is a place full of moral ambiguity, and so the stories we tell there rarely provide easy answers of good and evil,” teases narrative director Philipp Weber. “Ciri’s story is a battle against destiny. This battle comes at a price that will have to be paid eventually – either by Ciri or by those dear to her. Your actions within the open world, the people you permit to come close to you, all have the potential to affect the path Ciri goes down on, and who she will become.”
It’s likely that CDPR is about to go dark. The Witcher 4 has no release date and no confirmed launch platforms, largely a result of the studio attempting to circumvent making early promises that it will later struggle to keep – lessons, I’m assured, were learned from the Cyberpunk 2077 launch. So for now all we are left to do is replay that trailer over and over again, piecing out details of the dangerous world Ciri is set to occupy. “What I really love about our trailer,” says Kalemba, “is that there are three monsters in there. First of all, Ciri has her inner-monsters which she has to defeat; then you have a real monster; and then you have a monstrous people. All shades of monstrosity, and that represents this world perfectly.”
With The Witcher 4 having only just entered full-scale production, expect to be waiting a while for more information. In the meantime, why not go back and play one of the best games like The Witcher 3.