CD Projekt Red gives Ciri the story she deserves in The Witcher 4

Lore has always been a tricky subject for fans when it comes to adaptations: if you stick too close to the original text, you end up with a scaled-down version of what you already love; too loose an adjustment and suddenly your beloved series is unrecognizable. I’m pretty candid about the fact that, as far as the Netflix TV show is concerned, Witcher fans have had a harder time than most when it comes to their franchise being tarnished by bad decisions. So it’s no surprise that when CD Projekt Red unveiled the first trailer for The Witcher 4, in which Ciri is the main character and seemingly a full-fledged Witcher, some fans (albeit a minority) met it with skepticism. However, with three Witcher games under its belt, CD Projekt Red has earned the benefit of the doubt.

The most understandable concerns from these fans seem to be about how The Witcher 4 fits into the world and canon of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books. Ciri for example, after the events of The Witcher 3would have been older than normal to undergo the Trial of the Grasses, and in the books she was stripped of much of her magic when she saved Ihuarraquax – but in the trailer she uses magic freely. What’s confusing about these fan concerns, however, is that they already seem oblivious to the relationship between CD Projekt Red’s games and the Witcher canon. It’s not that the two necessarily broke up, but that they were never closely linked to begin with.

The Witcher games have never been strict adherents to the books they’re based on. Instead, they were always more about committing to the spirit and themes of Sapkowski’s series than bringing his words virtually to life. And as a fan of Sapkowski’s books, I think this is one of the greatest virtues of CD Projekt Red’s game series. The rich complexity and detail of the world and characters that Sapkowski created always felt like they could be stretched much wider than the pages of his novels and short stories, and in CDPR’s capable hands we were able to see that expansion. of the world.

This is part of what makes The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt perhaps the best entry of any variety in the entire Witcher franchise. This game jumps beyond the established canon of Sapkowski’s novels and imagines a somewhat extra-canonical story set several years after the end of the book. It’s an extension and continuation of the stories of Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri, but it captures the essence of their characters, and the entire world of The Witcher and everything in the history of the series.

Throughout the game, Geralt’s quest to find Ciri and then save her brings him into contact with his world’s strangest inhabitants. And while the game gives you choices about how to deal with it, CDPR’s writing leaves you fantastically on edge, ensuring that despite his best intentions, Geralt’s quests continually have unexpected and often tragic outcomes, making them thematically resonant with the best of Sapkowski . short stories. In other words, it’s everything the Netflix series failed at; so far, the creative team for the show has adapted the plot of Sapkowski’s novels quite closely, but seems completely uninterested in its themes.

But what’s even more confusing for the self-proclaimed fans of The Witcher 3 who now express their skepticism about the evolution of Ciri in The Witcher 4 is that her transformation was first introduced in Wild hunt. Depending on the choices players made during the game, Ciri could end up The Witcher 3 dead, as the queen of Nilfgaard, or on her way to becoming a Witcher. The question of how she got from that path to where we see her The Witcher 4‘s cinematic trailer looks less like a plot hole and more like the exact plot of The Witcher 4 yourselfsomething that was confirmed X from CDPR studio head Adam Badowski.

And the truth is, as a fan of Ciri and Sapkowski’s books, I’m fortunate that CD Projekt Red is committed to continuing her story and giving her a narrative future. Given the studio’s track record to date of capably expanding Sapkowski’s characters and world, it’s hard to imagine her being in better hands, including those of her original author. The only real downside is that it may be quite a few years before we actually get to see how her story plays out.