Summary
- Former CD Projekt Red artist Dilara Özden shared stunning artwork showcasing The Witcher 4’s Ciri.
- The illustration, featuring Ciri wielding an unusual chain weapon, elicited widespread praise from The Witcher fandom.
A former CD Projekt Red artist has shared some beautiful artwork of The Witcher 4‘s Ciri wielding a new and unusual weapon. Her illustration later went viral on social media, impressing many The Witcher fans.
The fourth mainline entry in The Witcher series has been in the works since at least early 2022, when CDPR first confirmed its existence. Two and a half years later, the developer premiered the game’s cinematic reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2024 in December. The six-minute video confirmed the RPG’s protagonist as an older Ciri, who seems to have undergone the witcher trials and is now a full-time monster hunter by the time the game’s events take place.
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Three days after the trailer premiered, former CDPR artist Dilara Özden shared stunning artwork showcasing the older version of Ciri seen in The Witcher 4‘s cinematic reveal. Her rendition of the character features Ciri in front of a full moon, towering over some dying monsters. While the four fangs on the limbs in the foreground are typically associated with alghouls, the slenderness of the limbs suggests a different type of necrophage (corpse eaters in the franchise lore)—ghouls.
Ciri Wields Unusual Chain Weapon in Dilara Özden’s New Artwork
The first The Witcher 4 trailer featured Ciri wielding Zireael, a silver sword gifted to her by Geralt. But Özden opted for something more adventurous in her artwork, depicting Ciri as wielding an unusual weapon that’s basically a long chain with a blade on at least one of its ends. This armament might have been inspired by the surujin (or suruchin), a traditional weapon of the Okinawan kobudō, the weapon systems used in Okinawan martial arts. Not all types of surujin have blades, but those that do usually have them on just one end, whereas the other features a blunt object. Özden’s artwork shows only one end of Ciri’s chain weapon. The witcher herself is depicted as under the effects of a potion she drinks before fighting the Bauk in the trailer, as evidenced by the black circles around her eyes.
The original tweet sharing this stunning illustration amassed over 302,000 views, 21,000 likes, and 2,600 retweets within six days of going live. The artwork has also been making the rounds on other social media platforms ever since. Dozens of The Witcher fans praised Özden for her work, with some also expressing disappointment that she won’t be involved in the upcoming game. For reference, the illustrator left CDPR in 2023 and is currently working at Ghost Story Games, Ken Levine’s new studio developing BioShock-like first-person shooter Judas.
As for The Witcher 4, CDPR still hasn’t committed to a concrete release window for the game. The studio did previously confirm that The Witcher 4 is its main focus right now, meaning it will certainly hit the market before the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel—code-named Project Orion—does. With AAA game development cycles being at least five years long nowadays, the new The Witcher entry seems unlikely to debut before 2027.
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.