The Witcher 4 trailer breakdown. Absent Geralt, Trial of Grasses and Serbian monster
A six-minute trailer is all we have so far on the subject of The Witcher 4. Is that not enough? You will be amazed at the number of details that can be uncovered by shining a little light on the plot and gameplay in the new CDP Red title.
Here we go again… Are you ready for a few years of analyzing, investigating, guessing, speculating, and generally poring over every detail of the new Witcher with a magnifying glass? Aren't you? Too bad, we just left the station.
In the first second of the trailer we see... Well, let's not overdo it. You know the stuff: it's the beginning of a new "saga" after the events of The Wild Hunt, with Geralt stepping back and Ciri taking his place as the main character, aspiring to pursue a "career" as a witcher. Now let's go into the details.
Warning: this text contains spoilers from The Witcher 3. If you haven't seen the end credits of this game yet, you better turn back.
When is The Witcher 4 taking place?
We don't know how many years have passed since The Witcher 3, but one glance at Ciri in the trailer is enough to realize that she is older than the last time we saw her. Of course, she is far from being the old geezer that Geralt was. CD Projekt Red stresses that the protagonist is a newcomer to the witcher trade, still developing her "codex," with her previous character traits of rebelliousness, curiosity about the world, and kindness to people remaining unblemished by cynicism or life experiences. So it shouldn't take more than a few years from the events of Wild Hunt – this would mean that the protagonist isn't yet thirty, since in that game she was just over 20.
What happened to Ciri's eyes?
A second glance at the face of Lion Cub of Cintra reveals that something has changed in her eyes. CD Projekt RED saved us from guessing and revealed everything: Ciri passed the Trial of Grasses, went through witcher mutations, and is now a full-fledged monster slayer. She has her characteristic lynx medallion and wields two swords (including the famous Zirael). She drinks toxic potions, and she has even learned to cast Signs, although in the books she didn't have a knack for it - unlike "higher" magic...
By the way, what about the superhuman powers with which Geralt's adopted daughter was able to outshine all the mages on the Continent? The trailer suggests that something happened that deprived her of these talents. She draws from the elements to cast spells but otherwise fights the monsters like a "normal" witcher, and it doesn't go as smoothly for her. For instance, she doesn't avoid attacks like in The Wild Hunt by teleporting around the battlefield. Or maybe for some reason she gave up her power again, like in the books?
In any case, these scenes suggest that we can expect more variety in the combat system in The Witcher 4 and freedom in character development – perhaps even to a degree similar to Cyberpunk 2077. An interesting fact is also the chain with which Ciri finishes the fight with the monster. We may find the chains in her arsenal, also in the game itself - and who knows what other "gadgets" we will get. Although it could just as well be a kind of "easter egg," referring to the intro of the first Witcher from 2007, in which Geralt used a chain in a fight with a striga.
What about our choices from The Witcher 3?
If you are reading this text, you probably know that The Witcher 3 had three main variants of endings - very different from each other. CD Projekt Red brushes off this issue. "The fourth installment won't break any canon," say the developers, without revealing, however, how they will deal with the fact that in one of the epilogues, for example, Ciri says goodbye to Geralt because she decides to take the throne of Nilfgaard. The developers only mentioned the final where she supposedly dies, hinting that there are clues indicating that the rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated.
In any case , the CDP openly declares that they want The Witcher 4 to reach new players. Because you know, almost a decade has passed since the release of The Wild Hunt, and that's a long time in the gaming industry and no one will be sentimental about the choices we made so long ago. Maybe three choices from the Inquisition respected by Dragon Age: The Veilguard isn't as little as I thought?
Of course, I'm not suggesting that CD Projekt Red will "turn its back" on the events of The Witcher 3 and somehow restart the series. Maybe, the scriptwriters prepared a more or less elegant explanation for the fact that Ciri ran away from the imperial court and is again running around in the forests. She revived the art of mutating witchers, which had not been practiced for a long time, even since her early youth when she first visited Kaer Morhen (in Blood of Elves). After Vesemir's death in The Wild Hunt, the last secrets of the Trails were largely forgotten, except for the details preserved in notes in Geralt's possession. Having a character capable of traveling through time and space allows you to push any plot twists you want…
Geralt, where are you?
Next up, the elephant in the room - Geralt's absence in the trailer is noticeable. The material aired during The Game Awards featured a brief line delivered by Doug Cockle, the "voice" of the White Wolf, announcing the start of a new Witcher saga. However, the video posted on CDP RED's YouTube channel lacks this detail.
However, developers indirectly reassured us that Geralt didn't die of old age or suffer any other unpleasant fate, and should still be hanging around somewhere. I wish he had accompanied Ciri at least as Vesemir did in the prologue of The Wild Hunt. But who knows, maybe he will be taking care of his business. Just don't let him sit in Corvo Bianco, because he will be far from his adopted daughter...
Where does The Witcher 4 take place?
The decorations with a quasi-Slavic feel and the cool climate indicate that in the trailer, Ciri is exploring the Northern Kingdoms, likely even farther from the equator than the lands of Redania depicted in The Witcher 3. CDP RED confirmed that the open world will in fact include new, "epic" lands located in the northern part of the Continent. They did not provide more precise geographical coordinates, except for the information that the village from the trailer is called Stromford.
Personally, I would put money on the coastal kingdoms of Kovir and Poviss and the smaller states around them. Theoretically, Kaedwen also lies in the north, but in Wild Hunt we visited a section of this country that includes Kaer Morhen and its surroundings, so calling them "new" would not entirely fit these areas.
What else is interesting in the trailer?
Are you still holding on? So, here are a few minor curiosities as we approach the end of this text.
- The monster that Ciri fights is a new feature in the Witcher bestiary – bauk, inspired by mythology from Serbia (and therefore in the spirit of the work of Andrzej Sapkowski, who drew ideas for monsters from the cultures of all kinds of peoples).
- The silver sword wielded by Ciri is the Swallow – although the shape is not entirely accurate, it is most likely the same weapon that the heroine received from Geralt in the "witcher" ending of Wild Hunt. It's interesting that we've already seen at least three different blades called Swallow - including the original steel sword from the book. Could it be canonical inaccuracies? Maybe there's a deeper story behind this? Unless Ciri, following the example of Geralt and horses, simply gives such a name to each of her weapons...
- The music in the trailer was composed by P.T. Adamczyk – (co-)author of the soundtrack for Cyberpunk 2077 (and the expansion), Gwent and Thronebreaker. The soundtrack for The Witcher 3 was composed by Marcin Przybylowicz.
- Remember the image of the mysterious coins we saw in the news announcing that The Witcher 4 was entering full production? It seems that they constituted a kind of "teaser" for the first trailer and they depicted the entrance to the bauk's lair.
Conclusion
I had concerns whether one "cinematic" trailer would tell us enough about The Witcher 4 to allow for a full text analysis. And the fears were confirmed: the details of individual scenes in this trailer could be discussed for a long time. What's the deal with these different Swallows? Does the lynx-shaped medallion actually means some unknown witcher school, or is it just a piece of metal in an individualized shape? What did Ciri do to the poor villagers in the trailer's finale? Do the flowers on the head of the girl being sacrificed symbolize something...?
I will end with the speculations here. I'm too old and value a good night's sleep too much to get excited about cinematic trailers and scrutinize them with a magnifying glass until the wee hours. I'm not even sure if I'm eagerly waiting for The Witcher 4 with bated breath on my graying face, or just a little bit. After Crossroads of Ravens and Cyberpunk 2077, I no longer have any love for the work of either Sapkowski (the book quickly began to fade from my memory), or CD Projekt RED (I will carve “Remember! No-preodrers!" on my tombstone). But if you're looking for someone to analyze Assetto Corsa Evo trailers frame-by-frame for you, hit me up!
Hubert "hexx0" Sledziewski analyzes
The events depicted in the first trailer of The Witcher 4 remind me of the "In the Heart of the Woods" quest from the third installment of the series. Some residents of Ferlund believed that the Forest Spirit was taking care of them, while others considered it a cruel being. The Stromford village from the fourth game seems to be similar - some settlers want the girl to "disappear into the fog, to join the gods", but someone, probably the unfortunate girl's father, hired Ciri, having a hunch that there are no gods in the fog, that at most a monster is lurking in it. In both cases, blood is shed, and not just of the beast.
It should be added that blood spurts out exceptionally spectacularly in the trailer for The Witcher 4. The monster, bauk, seems to be a creature that fans of the universe have not yet encountered. Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon copes with it extraordinarily efficiently, which, as we can see, she owes not only to magic, but also to the Trial of the Grasses she has undergone. CDP RED probably had to go this way if they wanted to cast Ciri as the protagonist. The question is, how will they explain it. Did the girl came into conclusion that she was risking her life too much by fighting monsters without mutations? Who helped her with this - Geralt and/or Yennefer, or did she do it against them, or even without their knowledge?
I have many questions about this. One thing is beyond doubt – the knowledge about the Trial of Grasses has not been lost, which we partially experienced in The Witcher 3, when we took part in Uma's "disenchantment". If the lack of mutagens - stolen by the Salamander in the first game - did not stand in the way then, Ciri would certainly have been able to obtain them. Paradoxically, I am more curious about the explanation of the heroine's transformation than about how she eventually ends up on the trail - and this is regardless of the fate we prepared for her in the third game. I never believed that Uncle Vesemir's "little devil" would sit long on the Nilfgaardian throne, while her "noble death" was figured out by the community in 2022, and the developers from CD Projekt Red confirmed the validity of the conclusions drawn at that time.
The last element I want to draw your attention to is the witcher medallion on Ciri's neck. It is very different from the snarling wolf that dangles from around Geralt's neck in Wild Hunt. As we know, this one depicts a lynx - the existence of a witcher school with such a distinctive sign caused quite a stir when CDP RED revealed the game. Perhaps this is where we should look for the answer to the question who did Cirilla ask for help with the Trial of the Grasses?
More:We comment on first The Witcher 4 trailer. „We're all gonna change our graphics cards”
