Witchers have a lot of tools in their arsenal, from the iconic steel and silver swords to various potions and elixirs. One of the many things these monster hunters can use in battle are Signs, simple spells that have offensive or defensive effects. The Witcher 4 will likely bring Signs back, and could potentially expand on the feature due to Ciri’s greater magic skills compared to previous protagonist Geralt. Ciri’s unique status gives The Witcher 4 the opportunity to feature more in-depth and customizable Signs than the previous three games did.
Related
Every Major Witcher Character’s Status Ahead Of The Witcher 4
With The Witcher 4 on the horizon, here’s what Geralt, Yennefer, Triss and the rest were up to at the end of Wild Hunt.
Ciri Has Magic Skills That Geralt Lacks
As a bearer of Elder Blood, Ciri has access to magical abilities above and beyond those of a standard witcher. In her youth, she trained with sorceresses like Triss Merigold to further strengthen her inherent powers. During Ciri’s playable segments of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, she was able to use this magic to teleport around the battlefield and slow time in a way that Geralt could not.
CD Projekt Red has confirmed that, in The Witcher 4, Ciri will be a full witcher, able to utilize potions and presumably Signs similar to Geralt. It has not been confirmed whether she will retain her unique powers from the previous games. However, regardless of what mutations Ciri may have gone through in the time between the two games, it is likely that she will still possess at least some of the inherent magical strength she was born with as a descendant of Lara Dorren. Because of this, The Witcher 4 has the opportunity to experiment with Signs to make them more complex and better suited to Ciri’s magical acuity.
The Witcher 4’s Signs Could Be More Customizable
For the most part, Signs in the previous Witcher games were fairly straightforward. Igni created fire, Quen produced a shield, and so on. However, there was some variation allowing for a limited degree of player customization. The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings introduced armor, weapons, potions, and skills that enhanced the intensity and duration of various Signs. Similarly, Wild Hunt provided alternative options for some, such as an Igni variant that produces a continuous stream of fire or a Yrden variety that both damages and slows affected enemies.
The Witcher 4 could lean into this even further by giving each sign a separate, in-depth skill tree with more customization options compared to Wild Hunt. Wild Hunt took the first steps to making Signs more than just occasional-use spells; they really felt like a vital part of Geralt’s arsenal and often played a key role in defeating tricky monsters. With Ciri’s greater powers, signs in The Witcher 4 could evolve further – perhaps with three or more variants per sign, instead of one or two, or even more ways to enhance and change their effects.
Ciri’s Elder Blood Powers Could Form A Symbiotic Relationship With Witcher Signs
Ciri has a variety of magical abilities, but they primarily focus on time and space. By the end of the original Witcher novels, she has become powerful enough to travel between worlds and realities, including to the distant past and far future. With Ciri stepping into the protagonist role in The Witcher 4, she could use Signs to build on her existing powers. In particular, the sign Yrden, which slows enemies, could be further empowered by Ciri’s mastery over time. Alternately, she could pair her room-shaking magical scream with the more directed telekinetic blasts of Aard to create an attack that can incapacitate a single enemy or take out a horde of foes depending on how she uses it.
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.