What the ending of The Witcher 3 tells us about the new The Witcher saga

Almost seven years after the Behemoth RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Critically acclaimed Polish developer CD Projekt Red has finally confirmed what most of us already knew: a new Witcher Game is under active development.

What people probably don’t know as well is what exactly this could mean for the series. Is this The Witcher 4a direct continuation of The Witcher 3, or a whole new story? Will it feature original characters from Netflix’s hugely successful adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s saga? Most importantly, what became of the ever-popular monster-hunting weatherman – without the White Wolf, how will anyone know when the wind is howling?

The natural starting point is at the end of The witcher 3. Interestingly, there are two endings here worth considering: the ending of the core game and the ending of blood and winethe second major expansion of the game.

The former is arguably a better indicator of what’s to come, but the latter gives us Geralt of Rivia’s beloved swan song – a performance so perfect that a return to the stage could only end in disaster. A future cameo appearance by Geralt in a manner similar to Kazuma Kiryu in yakuza: Like a dragon or Emil in Nier: Automata

It’s more worth looking at the original ending, which is widely considered to be canon The witcher 3. For those who are a little confused about the details, there are three main ending scenarios The witcher 3: Ciri becomes a witch, Ciri becomes the empress or Ciri dies. It’s also possible for Geralt to die in this final ending, although you never actually see him get killed – it’s only implied by the fact that the house he’s in is surrounded by a million or so monsters.

Aside from these four ending conditions, there are also a variety of other permutations designed to texture the state of the world based on the choices you made throughout the story. Is Radovid still king, or has he been dethroned by a ragtag group of the Northern Realms’ most unlikely allies? What about the Bloody Baron? Did he die or did he go to the Blue Mountains with Anna? Who rules Skellige? There are so many different options for The witcher 3 to solve the development a witcher 4 Respecting everyone’s decisions can’t be easy.

And yet there is one, actually halfway decent clue from the microscopic information CDPR has given us so far: a lonely, half-submerged locket with what appears to be a cat’s face.

Image: CD Projekt Red

in the The Lady of the Lake – the fifth and chronologically final novel in Sapkowski’s witcher saga – Ciri manages to reclaim three witcher medallions from a bounty hunter named Leo Bonhart. Later in the novel, she is reunited with Geralt and Yennefer at Stygga Castle, at which point we get the following paragraph:

She took out the locket that Bonhart had taken. She put the cat around her neck and gave Geralt the wolf. “I hope you know it’s just a symbol?” he said.

“Everything is just a symbol.” She took Swallow out of his sheath.

It’s worth noting that it’s more than: “Ciri has a cat medallion and the picture for the new witcher Wild also looks like a cat medallion!” Im The Witcher 3 The “good” ending – the one where Ciri becomes a witch – your final main task before tackling the DLC is to free Zireael, Ciri’s famous sword from the novels. Do you know what Zireel means in Elder Speech? Swallow. (You can inscribe this on the sword if you wish, or you can choose the Elderspeak for “The lightning that cuts through the darkness, the light that breaks the night”. Regardless of the inscription, the sword itself is called Zireel.)

Just as this sword is literally a symbol of the beginning of Ciri’s life as a witch, the reference to one of the lockets she took from Bonhart in the new promotional material feels like a conscious choice. As she herself puts it, “everything is a symbol” – but those two very specific things are the only recognizable symbols from the end The witcher 3

This is obviously just speculation, but it’s rational based on the information we’ve received so far. Fans have been clamoring for Ciri to become the next protagonist of the series ever since she was teased at the end of The witcher 3while even players less invested in the universe can see that Geralt has already gotten the happy ending he deserved.

Who knows – maybe Ciri will be the one who has to try to find Geralt this time? Maybe he gets a little too cheerful after she visits his vineyard blood and wine, and after several glasses of his best Erveluce, accidentally falls into a trap set by a Wild Hunt apologist. (That’s not going to happen, of course, but it’s fun to think about.)

What matters is that the cat locket has a lot more ways of actually meaning something than meets the eye. Maybe this game tells a story about a brand new witcher from the School of the Cat. Perhaps the fact that the pendant is buried means a nightmare of the wolf –Esque collapse of the caravan of Dyn Marv, the new seat of the school (the old one was the aforementioned Stygga Castle). Maybe we’re miles away and it’s actually supposed to be an odd looking dog inspired by Elden Rings messaging system.

Regardless of what it means, we’re getting a new witcher Game – the fact that with so much evidence supporting different thoughts and theories we can speculate as to what this might lead to is exciting. But Ciri really should play the main role.