The Witcher The Witcher IV - The Ciri Saga Begins

[Child of Malkav]

O'Dimm.

Can he be killed? He's like the Satan of the universe.

 

[Atlantico]

Tomb Raider started with a woman as the protagonist and kept a woman in the role of protagonist with every subsequent game. That courtesy doesn't often extend to franchises with an established male lead these days.

They are often retired or killed off and replaced with a woman.

You can go to various DEI pages for various companies committed to the cause and read through their policies of subversion. Sometimes it is subtle. Other times it is not - though they love and frequently seek to shove women into roles that do not suit them at the expense of men.

To the point where many games, even those not obviously compromised, now have women serving as city guards, blacksmiths, engineers, construction workers, military leaders and so on. Do exceptions exist in the real world? Certainly - but they are very few and far between and it is overwhelmingly men who shed blood, sweat and tears.

I know a decent number of men who do not care for the idea of playing as women in video games as a personal preference, myself included. Though there is a healthy balance to be struck and one that is no longer respected. In recent years there has been a sharp rise in the number of female protagonists. A game that goes the fan service route like Stellar Blade will sell much more than Concord or Dustborn by virtue of not having an ugly protagonist but it still won't prove as successful as, say, Black Myth: Wukong which has a monkey as a protagonist because...again, most gamers want to play male characters.

Lara is selling point of Tomb Raider. Geraldo isn't the selling point of The Witcher.

When did you turn into the second lamest troll on this forum? Every single post of yours is a lame-ass trollbait

Be more creative

 

[Atlantico]

You know the writing will be terrible just going with what was shown in the trailer. Before nu-Ciri kills the big bad demon he tells her she can't change anything. 3 doritos later and the girl is dead. Meaning the demon was actually right.

Instead of reflecting on her actions in the face of obvious failure she lashes out on the peasants with the "you're the real monsters!" line. You just failed the mission, go back to Witcher school and learn to wipe your own ass before trying to lecture anybody. But at no point there's any sign of regret or guilt, is all about ME and how COOL I am. Psychopathic behavior.

If they can't be consistent in a 6 minutes trailer, there's no way they will be able to write an 80 hour-long story without it falling apart.

What failure? She killed the monster that required sacrifices. No more sacrifices.

She didn't get paid: fail.

 

[Black]

Good riddance, Polaks can't have shit, it's their natural element.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

What a waste. Canonically Ciri cannot be a witcher, drink potions etc.

They should have let us make our own witcher, choose a school, origin, etc.

What a God damn waste.

 

[GloomFrost]

Good riddance, Polaks can't have shit, it's their natural element.

Nu CDPR is no different then nu obsidian or nu bioware or nu blizzard or any other AAA trash. I am amazed that so many people are still expecting anything half decent from w4.

 

[Wasteland]

I remember when “they should naje Ciri the new protagonist” was a fan theory I used to openly laugh at, because it sounded complete nonsense and too retarded to work both narratively and mechanically.

A character that comes with all the restrictions and limitations of the previous one in terms of being already too tied to pre-established narrative to be really flexible, PLUS she brings her own baggage of being too “lore-unfriendly” to work in the role of roaming witcher.

Congratulations CDPR, you are operating at “unhinged fanfiction” level at this point.

Yeah, and on top of that, Ciri represents some of the least enjoyable gameplay in the previous title, to say nothing of her association with endless hours of padding in the main quest, the finest moments of which coincidentally occur in Act 1, before Geralt really fixates on the search for Ciri (and before the player is forced to participate in any of her glorified cut scenes). "We made a whole game around the worst parts of Witcher 3" doesn't strike me as an especially compelling marketing campaign--irrespective of all the justifiable concerns about the developers' ideological baggage, the studio's work culture, or the internal logic of the lore/storyline.

Witcher 4 may also become a victim of Witcher 3's success. Back in 2015, the third game's blending of a Skyrim-sized open world with tons of well-written narrative side content was rightly seen as a triumph of presentation. CDPR took Todd Howard's boast, "see that mountain, you can climb it," and added a tantalizing possibility that there might actually be something interesting on the mountain. This was a big deal, back then. Even today, though I frequently criticize the game on its merits as a game, one could fairly argue that W3 has yet to be surpassed, for what it is.

But boy oh boy, has Witcher 3 been imitated. Over and over and over again. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen open-world narrative-heavy "cinematic" "action-RPG"-ish games in the AAA space. The Assassin's Creed franchise now accounts for what, 3 or 4 shameless Witcher 3 clones, all by itself. Combine the outright clones with all of the narrative-heavy walking simulators and the open-world collect-a-thons released over the last ten years; toss in a healthy dollop of Brooklynite-millennial/feminist-writing fatigue, and the market starts to look oversaturated with what Witcher 4 appears to be selling, to a point where even the market itself may not yet fully appreciate its own lack of enthusiasm. We all know what it's like to get stoked for an upcoming title, only to find that we don't give a shit by the time it finally releases.

I don't believe W4 will be a commercial failure; CDPR still has more "gamer cred" than most any other big-name studio--but I wouldn't be surprised if it underperformed expectations. Substantially. Call me a hopeless optimist, but I can't help feeling that the winds of change are blowing. The public finally sickened of Marvel movies; corporate game publishers are laying people off right and left; quarter-billion-dollar GaaS projects are getting closed down a week after release, and mainstream "journalists" have even publicly speculated that the entire AAA business model is dead. Could it be that the boiling frog has had enough?

 

[Storyfag]

O'Dimm.

Can he be killed? He's like the Satan of the universe.

If anyone coudl threaten him, it'd be the Lady of Space and Time.

 

[thesecret1]

CDPR took Todd Howard's boast, "see that mountain, you can climb it," and added a tantalizing possibility that there might actually be something interesting on the mountain.

Dude, no. On the contrary, W3's world was utterly EMPTY and you could be sure that there would be fuck all on said mountain unless there was a map marker on it. Said map marker would mean that you will see some trashmobs there along with some generic loot, that's it. Open world was easily one of the weakest aspects of Witcher 3. Only in the DLCs did they put some effort into it so that the locations had some narrative behind them and usually had the world react to them getting cleared or made them part of some larger goal (such as rebuilding the statue). But main game? Engaging with the open world was an utter waste of the player's time.

 

[Nikanuur]

Tomb Raider started with a woman as the protagonist and kept a woman in the role of protagonist with every subsequent game. That courtesy doesn't often extend to franchises with an established male lead these days.

They are often retired or killed off and replaced with a woman.

You can go to various DEI pages for various companies committed to the cause and read through their policies of subversion. Sometimes it is subtle. Other times it is not - though they love and frequently seek to shove women into roles that do not suit them at the expense of men.

To the point where many games, even those not obviously compromised, now have women serving as city guards, blacksmiths, engineers, construction workers, military leaders and so on. Do exceptions exist in the real world? Certainly - but they are very few and far between and it is overwhelmingly men who shed blood, sweat and tears.

I know a decent number of men who do not care for the idea of playing as women in video games as a personal preference, myself included. Though there is a healthy balance to be struck and one that is no longer respected. In recent years there has been a sharp rise in the number of female protagonists. A game that goes the fan service route like Stellar Blade will sell much more than Concord or Dustborn by virtue of not having an ugly protagonist but it still won't prove as successful as, say, Black Myth: Wukong which has a monkey as a protagonist because...again, most gamers want to play male characters.

Like, there's little to disagree on the compromising stuff and all, but I'd say that connecting DEI and subtlety would be more of a making mountain out of a molehill than anything.

Stronk wymyn as protagonists, possibly with a lesbian friend, in a world in which the player ocassionally stumbles uppon a drag queen in a brothel, and one or two same-sex NPCs out of many try to hit on the player isn't 'that'.

Stronk wymyn with bodies closer to men's approximate, talking stronk crap while actually coming off as shallow and all over the place because of all the attempts to cater to every possible virtue, in a world where half of the characters dress as peacocks and dabble into homosexuality or gender topics, with alarming number of major men NPCs portraited as weak or crooks, and every other woman except the arch-villain portraied as a mother/warrior/priestess/prom-queen/philosopher/craftsman is 'that'.

We have had the former, and there's no reason to not see more of it. Elen Ripley, Lara Croft, Jesse Faden—some of the great lead roles.

 

[Sunri]

Ale się ludzie zesrali z tym wiedźminem będzie wojna domowa

 

[The people of Duckburg]

Even in short stories published in the 80's there were mages caring about preservation of endangered species against the will of unwashed masses.

See - Sapkowski was woke before it was cool.

Protecting endangered species is woke now?

Adolf Hitler, who introduced the first environmental protection laws would be very dissapointed by people confusing his work with those of queer dangerhairs.

Maybe woke is not the right word.

Uncle Adi was a vegetarian, didn't smoke, avoided alcohol, approved tons of health regulations based on scientific research. 'Lebensborn' does not exactly fit the 'traditional family model'. He was definitely progressive.

But Western words such as 'woke' or 'progressive' are only inaccurate approximations when confronted with true Slav mentality:

There's a significant difference between that kind of "progressive" and the modern concept of progressive, or what people call "woke". Ignoring the vegetarianism, those are just healthy practices. "Woke" people sure as hell don't promote being healthy. Maybe they'll make a big show out of it, but nothing they promote is actually healthy. One of their core tenets is the promotion of the mentally unhealthy. And since environmentalism was mentioned earlier, it's far in the background compared to identity politics for modern progressives. They'll mention it, but they have zero interest in practicing it. It's all about electric cars or lab-grown meat. Countries like China? Politicians or celebrities with their own private jets? Mega corporations? Not a fucking peep. Most of these supposed leftists are in bed with the megacorps or rich scumbags because they put up a rainbow flag on twatter.

It's dishonest to conflate the identity politics garbage with anything that could possibly have been considered progressive at one point in time. "Woke" basically refers to the modern "progressive gone mad". Don't erase the meaning of words.

As for the game, I pretty much gave up on the series after the first game. For the second one, they copied the Bamham combat without really understanding it or why it worked specifically in that game. The game was heavily consolized, both in UI and gameplay. I'll give them credit for having a middle chapter that differed a lot depending on who you sided with, but aside from that I found the game disappointing. The first one had its flaws, but there was a lot of charm too. I have an easier time excusing a flawed first attempt with a lot of soul, than a second attempt with deliberate decline. The third one seemed to be more of the second. And this one will presumably be even more of the same, with worse writing.

 

[markec]

 

[Wasteland]

CDPR took Todd Howard's boast, "see that mountain, you can climb it," and added a tantalizing possibility that there might actually be something interesting on the mountain.

Dude, no. On the contrary, W3's world was utterly EMPTY and you could be sure that there would be fuck all on said mountain unless there was a map marker on it. Said map marker would mean that you will see some trashmobs there along with some generic loot, that's it. Open world was easily one of the weakest aspects of Witcher 3. Only in the DLCs did they put some effort into it so that the locations had some narrative behind them and usually had the world react to them getting cleared or made them part of some larger goal (such as rebuilding the statue). But main game? Engaging with the open world was an utter waste of the player's time.

I think it's a matter of perspective. Witcher 3's map certainly features generic filler encounters. It's also true that Witcher 3's absolutely garbage-tier itemization hurt exploration. But the game also has just enough highly polished side quests lurking around to give the player a sense of what-will-happen-around-this-bend that simply doesn't exist in e.g. Skyrim. The monster quests alone shit all over most things you can find in Todd Howard's Viking-themed playground.

You're absolutely right that POI chasing in Witcher 3 isn't rewarding. And I'm on record saying that Witcher 3 is overrated generally--cursed with bad gameplay, boring RPG progression mechanics, poor character-build variety, and an extremely over-padded main storyline, the length of which compounds all of the aforementioned problems. Overall, I'm not even convinced that W3 is a better game than Skyrim. But if your argument is that Skyrim had more or better polished side content, then I just can't agree. Side content is W3's overwhelming strength. The game's problem is that it doesn't have much else going for it.

And yeah, the DLC were a big incline too, but again, they were just an improvement on the same formula--narrative heavy, highly polished, "cinematic" presentation interspersed with braindead Witcher-vision puzzles and dodge-roll-spam combat--but more focused (and with less Ciri, lol).

 

[thesecret1]

CDPR took Todd Howard's boast, "see that mountain, you can climb it," and added a tantalizing possibility that there might actually be something interesting on the mountain.

Dude, no. On the contrary, W3's world was utterly EMPTY and you could be sure that there would be fuck all on said mountain unless there was a map marker on it. Said map marker would mean that you will see some trashmobs there along with some generic loot, that's it. Open world was easily one of the weakest aspects of Witcher 3. Only in the DLCs did they put some effort into it so that the locations had some narrative behind them and usually had the world react to them getting cleared or made them part of some larger goal (such as rebuilding the statue). But main game? Engaging with the open world was an utter waste of the player's time.

I think it's a matter of perspective. Witcher 3's map certainly features generic filler encounters. It's also true that Witcher 3's absolutely garbage-tier itemization hurt exploration. But the game also has just enough highly polished side quests lurking around to give the player a sense of what-will-happen-around-this-bend that simply doesn't exist in e.g. Skyrim. The monster quests alone shit all over most things you can find in Todd Howard's Viking-themed playground.

You're absolutely right that POI chasing in Witcher 3 isn't rewarding. And I'm on record saying that Witcher 3 is overrated generally--cursed with bad gameplay, boring RPG progression mechanics, poor character-build variety, and an extremely over-padded main storyline, the length of which compounds all of the aforementioned problems. Overall, I'm not even convinced that W3 is a better game than Skyrim. But if your argument is that Skyrim had more or better polished side content, then I just can't agree. Side content is W3's overwhelming strength. The game's problem is that it doesn't have much else going for it.

And yeah, the DLC were a big incline too, but again, they were just an improvement on the same formula--narrative heavy, highly polished, "cinematic" presentation interspersed with braindead Witcher-vision puzzles and dodge-roll-spam combat--but more focused (and with less Ciri, lol).

To me, open world is open world, side content is side content – completely separate baskets to compare. After all, you can have side quests even without an open world (but you can't have POIs without it). But fair enough, I do agree that W3's quests were it's strong point. In fact, I'd say the game was built mostly on their backs, since everything else was shit. It's a hallmark of CDPR at this point – the game systems are poor, but the presentation is very strong and you're surrounded by eye candy. Style over substance for certain, but even style has its value. Unfortunately, it seems the style is about to nosedive as well with W4, if the trailer is anything to go by.

 

[Ryzer]

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Virgin, I presume?

 

[Child of Malkav]

If anyone coudl threaten him, it'd be the Lady of Space and Time.

Hm, maybe. Except she hasn't demonstrated any time related abilities whereas Gaunter just stops time by clapping and kills some dude with a spoon. Even the Unseen Elder wouldn't be able to do much.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

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This is exactly why they will do it, and will definitely even address it in-game.

A strong woman breaks free from conformity and economical, traditional, or gendered roles and is strong because of it. The girlboss archetype necessitates that the girl be opposed to any roles men would want her to have. It will be brought up that she could be queen of the whole continent if she wanted to and she'd be the best queen ever, but saving the village girls is more important for her so that's what she'll do instead.

 

[Ryzer]

She was already a girlboss in Witcher 3 with extremely op powers.

 

[Thalstarion]

Hm, maybe. Except she hasn't demonstrated any time related abilities whereas Gaunter just stops time by clapping and kills some dude with a spoon. Even the Unseen Elder wouldn't be able to do much.

The Witcher 3 was written with the idea that some beings were simply too powerful for Geralt to defeat. I do not expect such nuance from the sequel - it'll fall back on the same lazy tropes infesting the genre as a whole. Ciri being so powerful is in itself what makes her a boring protagonist next to Geralt. Realistically, she'll never find peace due to the nature of her powers as there will be those seeking to exploit them and endanger those close to her. As...we saw during her segments in the previous game.

The trailer suggests that everything about her has been changed. Her appearance. Her voice. Her attitude. I greatly dislike the character in general, though she was at least affable and friendly. Even to controversial, complex figures such as the Bloody Baron.

That isn't carrying over. All signs point to her being another 'strong woman who acts like a parody of a man'. I guarantee the nutty writers will brag in interviews about how much more interesting and emotional she is compared to Geralt, despite Geralt having a surprising amount of depth for a man with muted emotions.

 

[ColaWerewolf]

She was already a girlboss in Witcher 3 with extremely op powers.

A girlboss with daddy issues and expectations placed on her, she was "fated" to save/sacrifice herself for the world. The trailer even directly addresses this, with the village girl being "fated" to sacrifice herself for the good of a male-dominated society. Breaking free from that and being OP for her own sake without the shakles of patriarchal society is a necessary step in ascending to the Mary Sue enlightenment.

 

[Fedora Master]

Good riddance, Polaks can't have shit, it's their natural element.

Nu CDPR is no different then nu obsidian or nu bioware or nu blizzard or any other AAA trash. I am amazed that so many people are still expecting anything half decent from w4.

Especially here.

 

[Rahdulan]

A strong woman breaks free from conformity and economical, traditional, or gendered roles and is strong because of it. The girlboss archetype necessitates that the girl be opposed to any roles men would want her to have. It will be brought up that she could be queen of the whole continent if she wanted to and she'd be the best queen ever, but saving the village girls is more important for her so that's what she'll do instead.

Funny you bring that up because not enough people played Thronebreaker. Gwent-based gameplay aside I believe that game demonstrates CDPR could write a strong female protagonist without coming across as obnoxious. Then again that team apparently broke off and formed their own studio so fuck it.

 

[Ryzer]

Strong Dragon age 2 vibes.

 

[Desiderius]

Prosped Rekt

Suits, man