The truth about Ciri in Witcher 4 - What the books REALLY say

Personally I find it curious as to WHY she would choose to "downgrade" like that, other than to honor her step-father, Geralt, story wise at least.

(Other than the devs wanted to show that woman could endure the trial as well.)

I think people should wait and see until after the game comes out (if ever in the near future) and then make a call. This is what i'll be doing same as with most other games i've purchased in the past. 'Woke' or no 'woke', bad developers or no, all about a game's quality will come out in the wash once reviewers have gotten their hands on it and put out their puff pieces on youtube and other sites. Hopefully we will get something resembling quality and fans of the other games won't be upset over the direction it takes. In the meantime all one can do is speculate. Given how sizable some development teams are these days, I find it hard to believe when one of them says they didn't have time to do things like flesh out character creation or add a capable save system. The better odds is most often due to saving money for whomever is in charge at the top.
Careful you almost made me spit out my tea. You are right however, a game set in an established universe set around things that aren't the usual fare would be quite refreshing. But developers often play it safe so we get what we get. This doesn't mean we don't get a gem now and then but those are like needles in the proverbial haystack.

I can't imagine the 1st 3 Witcher games played by anyone else but Geralt. So I don't think creating a character would work well for this series since it has such amazing story telling based on it, at least to me.

I also know someone who would love to play as a female Witcher. I think she prefers to play only female characters in games (don't quote me though lol). So good for her for the 4th Witcher game.

Play it safe or not, they should do it however they want and so far it's been very successful for them. :)
.

You don't need to imagine, you can simply watch ;)

The Witcher Demo 2002 gameplay video

Completely agree.

Don't know what the game might look like, but this is the first The Witcher trailer that left absolutely zero impression on me. When you remember Assassin's of kings trailer...

Well, I totally understand this. It's been also my approach but developing/production times for games right now are not negligible. I dont want to wait X years to then realize one of my favorite franchises (and studios) is "ruined". Maybe I'm naive about it but wouldn't it be better to let "them" now how we feel sooner rather than later? I mean, they dont necessarily need to change anything, in the end they should know what they are doing, but taking a step back to rethink anything that might have otherwise gone overlooked, is never bad, right?

I personally wouldnt ahve an issue playing as one of the mages/witches "parallel" to the witchers in that universe. I understand it might not be as successful as playing Geralt but... Heck, I even liked Thronebreaker :)

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-witcher-4-dev-cd-projekt-red-talks-ciri-fan-reaction-playable-geralt-coyness-and-if-the-game-will-honour-your-previous-choices

"Can you talk about how many years after The Witcher 3 we are here? Obviously, Ciri looks a little bit older, so we can assume it's a fair bit afterwards - can you say exactly how long?

Sebastian Kalemba: We cannot say exactly how long, but we can say 'a few' [years], that's for sure. And yeah, I would keep it at that.

Weber: Yeah, a few years, basically.

Kalemba: A few years." [laughs]

So Ciri in trailer 24-26 years old?.. ROFL
CDPR desperately need to touch some grass.

It's always best to wait and see with games, especially before plonking money down on what amounts to a gamble in the current era. I will be doing the same here while I play through everything else i've acquired over the years. Fun to speculate a bit in the meantime though, but not really much to base a purchase decision on just yet.
This would be good advice for a number of people i've come across online. But giving advice and getting people to take it? Now that's a horse of another colour. Very very tricky to pull off.

I'm convinced that the outcome of a lot of games has already been decided no matter what the players think. That's why we've had multiple releases this year which players were very negative about beforehand but they still released unchanged and sold as poorly as expected. I think studios are quite naïve to think they can ignore criticism but players are also naïve to think they can convince them to change something they don't like during production.

I mean, let's take a look at Ubisoft's situation with Assassin's Creed. The obvious solution to their criticism is to replace their choice of a black samurai and a female samurai with a Japanese male samurai (the only authentic choice). But they didn't do that, they argued with the criticism instead. Why? Because they've already decided what game they want to make, it doesn't matter what the players think.

Whatever direction CDPR has taken, the same is true. The story direction has likely already been baked into development and won't be getting revised. It doesn't really matter what the players think, they're getting the game CDPR has chosen to make. And they'll either like it and buy it, or dislike it and move on. There's not even anything inherently wrong with this, a studio can take whatever artistic direction they please, as long as they can acknowledge that players also have the option to not fund their next project if they're displeased.

Both the nature of magic and social aspects of its users are very interesting and complex in the Witcher setting.
I think, if developers put enough effort into studying the source material, and treat it with respect, they could develop even more successful RPG. Featuring sorcerer / sorceress as either a solo player character or a possible party member. ;)

It's not up to the developers. ESG is still very much a thing. We tried to get it outlawed here in the US and the current president vetoed the bill.

ESG governs and dictates the terms of loans these businesses get, based off of the diversity they include in the current gaming landscape.

It's the difference between getting a 1% loan and a 5% loan. If you factor in the math of how much these developers recklessly spend to develop their games, it adds up to a sizable difference.

Plus the top executives are also horribly out of touch, and think everyone who is a gamer has a California or New York mindset, including Europe and parts of Asia. This is pretty standard across the game development field, because a lot of the old leaders retired or have otherwise moved on, and they were replaced by younger people who think they know better because they went to a liberal arts college for their business degree.

So in essence, I don't really blame the developers. I blame the banks giving the loans, and executives green lighting these bone headed decisions.

Shadows is probably going to bankrupt Ubi, but they're probably going full steam ahead anyway, because gamers are just "loud, toxic and a minority of the playerbase".

EDIT: Also I have no problem with Ciri, but she isn't a proper Witcher and is more powerful with her base powers.

I must admit ESG is an absurd scheme...Somehow the unequal treatment of people based on skin, sex, orientation went from despicable to...progress.

In any case, developers aren't off the hook for as long as they play ball when their studio colleagues decide to act a fool. Let's seriously take a moment to process the absurdity of a workplace where it's no problem to insult your customers, have it be public knowledge, yet do 0 damage to your reputation. Veering off-topic, but I think the employees are not so different from the executives in this field. At least, those of particular companies.

You are probably right, but I try to give developers the benefit of the doubt, though very few deserve it.

The crazy thing is how openly racist the gaming industry has become to select minorities they deem to be the "majority."

Concord lead designers insult white people.
https://x.com/HaileyEira/status/1798134374778429756

Complusion Games' community manager outright insults whites and Asians, calling Asians "white adjacent" which is just racism to a minority.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/1br5471/i_wanna_rant_about_the_remark_from_compulsion/

And the fact that these individuals dont get any backlash, let alone consequences like getting fired for their racist remarks just shows that the devs also agree with this sentiment. I do think insulting customers has done significant damage to companies. Its just that gaming is quite slow in releasing products but I do think if people remember these acts, they will boycott and these studios housing such hateful figures will close down in the near future.

A surprising amount of the (western) population doesn't even believe in racism against white (or white-looking) people, or sexism against men. It's why developers like that are so outspoken, they see nothing wrong.

It creates an interesting dilemma though, as a black male am I privileged because I'm male or a minority because I'm black? Did I get the job over the white woman because she's female, or did I overcome a disadvantage because she's white. It's so dumb...

I was quite disappointed to hear that CDPR hired a guy whose publicly stated his dislike for gamers to be their lore designer for Witcher IV, as well as a couple of other interesting decisions. But like we're saying, maybe CDPR agrees with those opinions, hence the warm welcome.