By now, you probably know The Witcher 4 is coming and it will feature Ciri as a protagonist, and a true witcher to boot. But there’s a lot of people that don’t think that’s possible, and now I feel like I’m the one going through the Trial of the Grasses.
I was sitting in the crowd at The Game Awards when I realized Ciri was going to be the protagonist in The Witcher 4, and the energy for the reveal was tremendous. And why wouldn’t it be? Ciri is a beloved character, one of the focal points of the masterpiece that is The Witcher 3 and the culmination of its story. Spoiler alert for those of you who still haven’t played it, but one of the best endings you can actually get in the game (and some say the best ending, full stop) is Ciri rescuing the world from an unstoppable force and then slipping away from her imperial responsibilities to become a witcher. The Witcher 4 trailer made good on that ending, showing off an older, hardened Ciri who has picked up a few new tricks of the witcher trade. These include potions that are dangerous for normal humans, as well as cat-like eyes that indicate she’s gone through the witcher mutations which make those potions marginally safer to consume, known as the Trial of the Grasses in the games and Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories.
That final detail is what many people are arguing about. All the main witchers in the games and Sapkowski’s works are male, as the Trial of the Grasses already has a low survival rate among boys that are to become witchers, while they’re not administered to girls at all, as it’s asserted they cannot survive the mutation process. To many of these people, that means Ciri can’t become a witcher, and CD Projekt is engaging in fan service and/or disrespecting source material by “forcing” Ciri as a true witcher.
And to that I say: Who the hell cares?
Seriously, what are we even talking about here? We don’t think the Lady of Space and Time, the carrier of the Elder Blood, the almost-literal magic bullet in The Witcher series couldn’t possibly be the first woman to survive the Trial of the Grasses in this fairy tale world? Does anyone realize how stupid that argument sounds?
Even if we take out the arguments for or against the existence of female witchers in the past (which mostly seem to rely on fan fiction and a character or two in Sapkowski’s novels), we are talking about the most powerful magical entity seemingly in existence from the last game. The explanation in The Witcher 4 will likely be “yeah, she’s hugely powerful and resilient, and so X and Y then happened and they figured it out.” And that’s going to be a fine explanation because of who the hell we’re talking about (again, THE LADY OF SPACE AND TIME).
If anything, players should be excited about the narrative possibilities this opens up. Ciri clearly uses some abilities that Geralt never had access to in the trailer, such as seemingly absorbing some power from a stream of water and converting it into electricity, as game director Sebastian Kalemba indicates in his trailer breakdown.
But also, we don’t see Ciri use her space-time powers from the last game at all. There’s no teleporting around the battlefield here, and instead she gets hit, battered, and beat up—a lot. Did the Trial of the Grasses sever some of Ciri’s connection to the deep power of her Elder Blood?
If that’s the case, it both makes Ciri safer (probably not being chased by interdimensional beings anymore) and also more vulnerable. She becomes a character that has to learn and grow again, often painfully. You know, kind of like the main character in an RPG? Almost like a real witcher, considering how part and parcel getting hurt by monsters is to the witcher trade?
There’s plenty of dumb arguments about Ciri in the wake of The Witcher 4 trailer. Don’t even get me started on the people saying CD Projekt made her look ugly. But this one is by far the dumbest, and one you’re best avoiding at all costs.
