Thoughts about the story of the next Witcher game?

[ghostdog]

Since CDP stated that Geralt's story has ended (or at least the wild hunt story) but that the franchise will continue, what would you like and/or expect to see for the story of the next game?

-I guess having a new standalone Geralt story that takes place in the future would be easy, but it doesn't seem likely from what the devs have said.
-A sequel with Siri as the main character could also be possible, but it doesn't seem likely either, since the character is OP and it wouldn't fit with the general feel of of the games, though it would be interesting to travel between worlds.
-IMO the most likely option is that it will be a prequel. Aside from the fact that Geralt could still be the protagonist since he has already lived a very long time, my money is on Vesemir. I would really like to see a new game series with Vesemir as the protagonist, he is a great character and the possibilities are endless since the guy is ancient. Who knows what shit he was mixed in all these years, what's the story behind that hat Lambert was playing with?

DISCUSS!!

 

[Frozen]

Im all for Ciri carrying the torch.
Even OP her parts where the most fun gameplay wise.
And she was OP only for story passing reasons. Even like that she was clearly not invincible.
Geralt's story is finished, let him retire in peace. I wouldn't like for him to return even as NPC because they would do it only to kill him off.
Ciri is young 21, her story is just at the beginning and you could return her with little effort because there is no big difference in 3 endings regarding her (in the bad one she's missing).
You could only make 3 different entry points in regard to the Witcher 3 ending.
With Ciri you have in game non emersion breaking reason for fast travel, you can have more of her superpowers only balanced and the story should be about elder blood origin, Aen Elle and Aen Seidhe, the white frost etc.
The Wild Hunt turn out as not so bright and we could have real big bad from another world wonting her powers-creators of elder blood or some other entity carrying the gene. And unicorns.
You could also have more of political thingy like in the second game.
You can have her as a main character as Geralt was or go for party based system this time where she is central and your companion and your character is custom made.
Whatever they do its not like it will come before 2020.

 

[Carrion]

Wouldn't really want them to continue the story at all, not with a new character and definitely not with Ciri. I think that Geralt's character is what makes the setting work — his role of being a relic in a constantly changing world, the issues he faces when dealing with the evils of the world while trying to remain true to his own moral code, the outsider perspective he has on things, and so on. The story is so much driven by the characters and their relationship to Geralt that without that aspect you'd be left with a lot less interesting setting. Even the quality of the books was almost directly related to how much Geralt they had in them. Ciri would be the most obvious choice for a sequel, but she can't carry a story on her own and needs the link to Geralt in order to be anything more than the most blatant Mary Sue ever (I really hate using that term, but in this case I can't help it).

The Witcher is best when it comes to telling small, local stories (one of the reasons I'm really looking forward to the expansions), and they could keep churning out individual, expansion-like stories of Geralt's adventures and I'd be fine with that, set either before or during the game trilogy. I wouldn't really want to see any big adventures in the same universe, but if they did do something like that, I'd rather see a completely new character and a fresh location, Kovir or Poviss for instance, rather than using any of the existing characters. If they really wanted to use an existing character, the one I'd like to see would be Eskel, as he's a bro, he's close enough to Geralt as a character, there's a ton we don't know about him yet, his story's not yet concluded and he could be inserted into the current setting and timeline right away.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Next game should have Ciri as the main character. She won't be OP if they find some way of tempering her teleportation ability a bit.

Geralt and the others can appear along the way, depending on decisions made in previous games.

They can handle the status of Ciri by having different prologues.

Prologue A - if Ciri became a Witcher.

Prologue B - if Ciri became Empress

The main body of the story will be the same regardless, but then the epilogues can be different depending on the prologue and decisions made during the rest of the game. Will Ciri go back to being Empress, a Witcher or neither?

The game should also explain all the plot holes and confusion surrounding the white frost, and how Ciri beat it. Maybe also tie up some of the loose ends around the Wild Hunt.

 

[Jick Magger]

Prequel story, maybe even set it during the events of or immediately following the books, following another Witcher from a different school. Hell, why not set it before the events of the book during the heyday of the Witcher persecutions: you're a Witcher who was lucky enough to have been outside of Kaer Morhen when it was sieged and all the Witchers and mages were killed, and now find yourself an even bigger undesirable than usual, forcing you to go into hiding to far away lands. Go to different territories by having a blank slate protagonist, thus easing in new players who were scared off earlier by the two decade's worth of game and book lore. Biggest issues I had with the contracts of the earlier Witcher games was that it didn't really emulate the way living as a Witcher was like in the books, as it was too easy to get rich quickly off of all your contracts and selling loot. Mabye use this to give us a chance to really feel what it's like to be a Witcher who has to live off of his meager assignment-to-assignment pay. Maybe have cameos from a younger Geralt and Vesemir.


As far as I care, the main-line story of Geralt, Ciri, and the Wild Hunt is over. I liked The Witcher 3 overall, but CDProjekt had their one chance to make the finale good and they blew it. Not much point in making an entire other game just to try and rectify it, that moment's been and gone. Just let them have their happily ever after's.

In the interim, I wouldn't mind if they made a Telltale-esque episodic game starring Geralt in his earlier adventures, in the style of the first two Witcher short story collections.

 

[Paul_cz]

Frankly, I like playing as Geralt and the people around him, so any other option seems inferior to me. If it was up to me, they would reconsider, take Geralt and co. from the retirement (taking baths with Yen can be fun only for so long) and go do stuff. Zerrikania could be fun. Or the north, Kovir and such.

 

[odrzut]

I want to play as a doppler in an open world with 100s of side quests of TW3 quality. Fighting may be turn based for all I care, just make the characters and story great.

 

[Brayko]

Wait I thought they were finished. Why not quit while they're ahead and focus on Cyberpunk 2077? Why they gotta break my heart with cut and dry capitalism? *sigh*

Anyway may as well be Ciri but if they shock us with a new character that may be good I guess. As long as the setting is not in a desert or some frozen tundra all they have to do is keep doing what they did with the plot but if they're gonna milk the shit out of it I'm sure they'll run out of ideas and it will start to suck in terms of quality and our wallets then we'll move on to the next promising venture until the same shit happens again South Park Wall Mart.

 

[Wulfstand]

I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that the sequel would star Ciri but personally I'd much rather have the game allow the player to be a sorcerer/es or a doppler, i.e. change the gameplay a bit and focus on tight writing. (intrigue, characters, all that good stuff)

To be honest I hope they'll focus more on other projects first, as in Cyberpunk, and eventually return to Sapkowski's ip in a few years.

 

[ghostdog]

I'm not sure what the deal with Sapkowski is though. IIRC initially Sapkowski agreed that the game's story was canon, but then at some point he decided it's not? Has CDP the rights for as many games as they like and can they do anything they want with the story? Infinitron

 

[Carrion]

IIRC initially Sapkowski agreed that the game's story was canon, but then at some point he decided it's not?

Has he actually claimed that it was canon at some point? I think he's been a bit dismissive of the games from the start and treated them as well-made fan fiction at best, which essentially is what they are. It seems that he's grown a bit more fond of the games with time, actually, as in a recent interview in a Finnish game magazine he complemented CDPR for their portrayal of Geralt's character and also admitted that the games had got him quite many new readers (although he did vehemently disagree on the notion that the games would've been vital to his international success, as supposedly it was all about the quality of the books, heh).

 

[ghostdog]

Has he actually claimed that it was canon at some point?

Yeah I think you're right, Sapkowski probably never accepted it as canon. I think what I recall was the initial hinting from CDP that they where in full cooperation with him, while that was not really the case. He hasn't even played the games, and has probably never even read the game's story in detail, or watched a playthrough. Which is understandable since he doesn't want to be influenced by another writer's interpretation of his characters, even if it's very faithful, as the games are not adaptations of his novels.

 

[Frozen]

They should have consulted him on the story from the first game and after.
Don't know why that wasn't the case.
Maybe he wanted more money or he doesn't consider games a serious format for telling stories.
Generation gap maybe.

 

[ghostdog]

Sapkowski is a grumpy old geezer who obviously was never interested in computers and video games and probably hasn't even played pacman. I don't think he ever intended to be involved with the games especially since they weren't direct adaptations of his novels.

"I've never played any computer games, be it fantasy or others. Sometimes I read through dedicated gaming magazines or watch television programmes. Graphics and technology, sometimes, I admire. I cannot say anything about the plots, though. Apart from the fact that some types of games seem to lack any story whatsoever. Those seem to be all about the hack and slash."

The game - with all due respect to it, but let's finally say it openly - is not an 'alternative version', nor a sequel. The game is a free adaptation containing elements of my work; an adaptation created by different authors

"Adaptations - although they can in a way relate to the story told in the books - can never aspire to the role of a follow-up. They can never add prologues nor prequels, let alone epilogues and sequels.

"Maybe it's time to set the matters straight," he went on. "'The Witcher' is a well made video game, its success is well deserved and the creators deserve all the splendour and honour due. But in no way can it be considered to be an 'alternative version', nor a 'sequel' to the witcher Geralt stories. Because this can only be told by Geralt's creator. A certain Andrzej Sapkowski."

"I will definitely skip any 'alternative ideas'," Sapkowski promised. "It'll come easily to me anyway, as I don't know any of them. And even if I knew, it would be funny and silly were I to write based on the game's suggestions. I suppose I have made myself clear when I said that I will never accept any ideas and concepts of 'complementarity plots' and 'building coherent stories'. A story can only be contained in a book."

 

[TheEntitledOne]

-Ciri loses her Marisue powers for reasons.
-Her power level resets to that of her time with the Rats.
-Ofc recovers her powers slowly but soon you get back to jumping through worlds.
-Must have a part where you butcher some guys while ice-skating.
-By midgame you are back in full power and by endgame you can stop time and all that shit. Will feel OP even for animu JoJo standards.
-Dozens of sexcards. You go around ravishing barmaids and princesses from the multiverse. Every guy she tries to romance dies a horrible death (her dickstarvation is the source of her powers).
-God-Empress of the multiverse ending.

 

[Frozen]

I expected as much from Sapkowski .
Its the same thing as my father they are the same generation and at first he was totally off from computers like its a plague.
Now he's old don't have anything to do and surfs almost all the time when he's home.
Its a fear of new things, he would probably lighten up to the idea of interactive storytelling if he was more exposed to it.
Especialy when you consider that CD Projekt did more than anyone to do it in a relatively decent manner.

 

[Sjukob]

Main character ? Anyone but Ciri . I would be glad if she dissapears entirely .
No another worlds and similar crap .
No annoying "friendly" sorcerers and sorceress around main character .

As long as you keep to those points I'm fine with whatever they do , I hope they will return to TW1 format .

 

[Sjukob]

But seriously , what I think , that they will make a game about Lambert or Eskel . Remember when Witcher sepperated in the first game ? I think that moment will be a start .

 

[Neanderthal]

Honestly i'd rather not play as a Witcher anymore, it's been done to death and the setting is robust and well realised enough to be interesting whatever the protagonist. I'd play Roche in the blink of an eye, or a Temerian knight, a Scoiatael, any of the fucking Dwarves because they're dudes etc. You can have biases this way, have a cause, support something rather than defaulting to Witcher neutrality, and really take a part in the most interesting aspects of the world, the politics and the human interaction.

Mind you that said I wouldn't mind playing as Berengar, took me some right effort to keep that fucker alive and game didn't even fucking acknowledge it or bring him back. Or maybe one of Jacque/Alvins creations, a schoolless Witcher freak without a place in the world, trying to find out what he is. Or Letho of course.

 

[Jick Magger]

Sapkowski is a grumpy old geezer who obviously was never interested in computers and video games and probably hasn't even played pacman. I don't think he ever intended to be involved with the games especially since they weren't direct adaptations of his novels.

He kept saying, really 'threatening' would be the better word, that he was gonna write another entry in the series that'd disregard the games and render them utterly non-canon. He wound up pussying out in the end and just writing an interquel set during the short stories that only had a couple of hints towards the events after the saga.

 

[Gregz]

Thoughts about the story of the next Witcher game?

It has already been written, by one of our very own:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-gender-scrolls-dongguard-a-codexian-cyoa.90576/

 

[Eyestabber]

Dunno if this has been posted already, but I would really like to play a prequel of sorts, some 100+ years before Witcher 1, in a time when Witchers were common and the game would allow me to create my own Witcher. A Witcher game with character creation, the ability to choose your witcher schools (we hear about witcher schools in the game, but they don't really play a role in any witcher game so far). Vesemir could be an NPC, I mean, young Witcher-in-training Vesemir would be a cool sight. But no Geralt and no Ciri, pls.

 

[racofer]

Boobs and butts. Both male and female.

 

[Aeschylus]

Bad ending with Radovid alive is canon, game will be titled Witcher IV: Where the Hell Is Everybody?

 

[The Outsider]

I think they'll definitely return to Ciri, she has so much potential. Yeah she might be a bit OP to make a story about her, but that's where the devs come in. They'll have to find a way around that.

I'd like to see the witcher universe a long time before the first game, a prequel of a sort.