Witcher channel asks for sign ins due to age so using the IGN vid atm, if anyone knows of a way to archive this or whatever please go for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWMu6JeT2g8
Some 4chan thoughts on the matter.
https://boards.4chan.org/vrpg/thread/3675650/witcher-4
c/Gaming thoughts on the matter.
https://communities.win/c/Gaming/p/19A0ojiz4R/witcher-4-ciri-the-girlboss/c
I saw a screenshot of Ciri's face in the Witcher 4 trailer, they really gave her a butterface didn't they.
Like even with her scars in 3, she was beautiful, just playing as Geralt made me seeing her less for partner in a sexual sense, more beautiful daughter I wanted to cuddle after slaying a monster lol.
Anyway the inability to just have beautiful women presented in games when they were there in previous years old games does not instill confidence this will be anything more than lackluster.
From the 4chan thread: https://i.4cdn.org/vrpg/1734055711246447.png
Like night and day, if night was post wall and living off nothing but cheese.
I expected worse. She looks like a 45 years old lady who got botox.
same here, it looks like she just got older.
And had plastic surgery to make her facial structure more masculine.
Typical bee sting face, like Aloy
At least it makes it obvious that most if not all of the people who worked on W1-W3 have left CDPR. It looks so fucking bad.
We really have a HUGE issue in the West of companies coasting off the success of it's predecessors, not bothering to learn or innovate off them.
Some are explaining her looks as "aging". Yeah, because nobody ages beautifully, not even in fantasy land.
I haven't kept up with any changes to the lore, if any, but her using signs and potions was strange to me. Ciri was already OP, being able to teleport anywhere at will, even in combat, so I wonder why they're going with that. Unless... they're going with a "she lost her powers" route, because of what shed did to stop the White Frost, but that would mean having to undergo the Trials of the Grasses which the other witchers were (at least somewhat) against. Especially Lambert.
Whatever the case, little to no faith in a new witcher sadly, no matter the protagonist.
Some are
huddinghuffing copium to try and explain how shit the product is.Except in this fantasy land the magic users literally keep themselves lookingy young with magic. Yenn is around 100 years old, so is Geralt. These excuses are grasping at straws the book lore dismissed the chances of years ago.
It's always funny how in fantasy and sci fi they need THOUSANDS of excuses to explain why they can't draw for shit.
Harder to explain ugly when magic and sci fi surgery is available.
Similarly how and why someone who is trans can exist in D&D when there are multiple ways to literally change from one sex to the other, beneficial or otherwise as it can range from Divine blessings/wishes to cursed items someone made. If the movement was sincere the "curse" of wearing a belt for the rest of someone's life would be a pittance of inconvenience if it actually did what so many claim to want done. But they don't, because it would then remove their special label where they can talk about how they are vegan/into cross-fit/trans.
If not incompetence it's willful sabotage when they base it off a real model and deliberately uglify her when we all know basic bitch tech these days can render nearly identical. Not sure which is it in this case but the end result is the same.
This was basically my reaction. She already had access to greater powers than Witchers, and Witchers have to nearly kill themselves to be able to do things like signs and have the constitution for potions. Why would she risk an 80% chance of death for lesser powers?
She's not a goddamn Geralt clone.
Hell, aren't Sorceresses generally more powerful than Witchers? And isn't Ciri supposed to have greater potential than even them, as she is?
It did bug me in the "good ending" chat Geralt and Ciri share where she mentions drinking a Swallow potion. It's been shown that non witchers can't survive those and while her own abilities might protect her from them she's still not an actual witcher.
Non witchers can SURVIVE a potion like swallow, they just don't fully recover (remembering that one quest)..
It happens at least twice in 3, or can do. The first time players encounter it is when talking to the bootynist, I mean, the botanist at the start in White Orchard when Geralt offers the use of Swallow to try and heal someone. The two outcomes are either you don't offer the potion and the person dies, or you do but it renders the dying part catatonic so not much better.
There's a second time in Skellig when Geralt finds a note belonging to someone who looted a witcher's belongings and drank one of the potions. It kills the looter.
The white orchard one I was referring to, maybe the botanist's skill lessened the damage of the potion so it wouldn't kill her but not enough for her to fully recover. But hell witchers have to be careful of the toxicity of their own potions.
Technically already happened in the books when she burned herself out but then her teleporting was something else entirely so wouldn't be a surprise if she gets amnesia or something that limits her and she just unlocks everything again through the power of closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as is standard for girlboss characters.
Just point out how they went over-the-top in beautifying Geralt. Compare Witcher 1(which is more true to the books) and Witcher 3, where he gets hit with the hollywood model stick.
I'm not surprised they uglified Ciri in the least, but damn is it depressing to see.
Geralt in Witcher 3 is a model? This is the first comment I've ever seen about this. He's just an extremely fit guy, which naturally enhances looks.
Turns out she did undergo the Trial of the Grasses
Is it from the books? Or the first 3 games?
Then it doesn't count. Shitty retcons to excuse shitting sequels should be dismissed for the shitshow they are.
Yeah, and she died for some players, so gg you dipshit. What other forced narratives are going to happen? Did Geralt end up with Yenn or Triss? Did he save Beauclair or not? What happened to
David BeckhamOlgierd?lolno, JFC these idiots don't even know their own bullshit. Ciri has been fighting with a sword for years, even just by the time she shows up in 3. There's a ruthless murderer/assassin in the books that had killed several witchers already that Ciri ends up being the one that kills him, it's where she gets her Cat medallion in the first place before the Crones take it in 3. She's already burned herself out magic wise, she's traveled to Earth, Cyberpunk, the homeworld of the Unicorns and Aen Elle, and done far, far more in the short time she's been alive than most do even just account for normal livespans, something she doesn't even have because of her heritage as a child of the Elder blood, descendant of Lara Dorren, and status as a Source.
Zero fucking surprise these vultures have no idea what they are talking about.
Geralt, nor any of the other remaining witchers, would ever have allowed Ciri to undergo that trial. I don't remember the exact number, but it kills about 70-90% of all the kids that undergo it. Geralt loves Ciri like a father. He simply would not have let her do it, would not teach her what ingredients were used, how to make the potions, or done it for her.
Furthermore, if I remember correctly, there are several story points, lines of dialogue, and quests in Kaer Morhen (the Witcher 3) that say the trial of grasses is no longer possible. The manuscripts detailing the knowledge are all gone. The apparatuses for doing the trial are in ruins. And Vesemir was the last remaining witcher who knew the ingredients, and he was killed in Witcher 3.
This is all lore shattering, character destroying bullshit for just another girlboss game.
I'm unaware of the book lore, is there even a single precedent for an adult to undergo the Trial? In the lore of the games, the only example we have of witchers' secrets being used on adults were the Salamandra mutant soldiers from Witcher 1. Oh hey, maybe I just wrote the lore for Ciri being a butterface now...! You're welcome CDP.
Intuitively it feels like the reason they take witchers as kids is because the trial only works on kids, when it works at all. Genetically altering an adult, who has already undergone all their physical development, doesn't sound like it would make the trial easier, instead it sounds impossible.
If witcher schools could witcherfy adults, even adults with magic capabilities, there should be no good explanation for witchers dying out.
EDIT: also, since it just occurred to me - are we supposed to celebrate the fact that she's sterile now ('And That's A Good Thing...!')? Or will they dodge that uncomfortable implication with convenient plot armour or strategic non-discussion?
WHY?
Because it's a product in the skinsuit of a beloved story, literally no other reason. No point torturing your head.
The MC has to be Ciri because of member berries, feminism, and the alternative being a white male in 2024. The MC in a Witcher game has to be a witcher or else people get mad plus half the lore and gameplay mechanics are gone, so she has to have done the Trial of Grasses. Any further fake explanation of 'why' is going to be totally post hoc, in fact consider it subject to constant internal revision right up until release.
More intentional uglification of female characters?
Ciri's face is, in my opinion, the least of the problems.
The actual problem is that CDPR will completely butcher her character, they will make her into a girlboss and they will give her a lesbian romance as the "main one" in order to rectify the "mistake" that was her relationship with Mistle.
This new game will bring a new wave of "fans", people who never read any of the books or played any of games because they considered it a "male fantasy", they'll swarm every single discussion about the series, gushing about how "progressive" the new game is and complaining about how the fanbase is still full of "chuds and incels", and when you complain they'll retort by saying that the Witcher series was "always woke".
A shame really, the Witcher fanbase was one of the few who managed to stay surprisingly consistent despite the dogshit that was the Netflix series, and now this will be all for nothing.
In 3 she was REALLY powerful but lacked confidence so needed Geralt to encourage and guide her.
She was also not emotionally dead as look how she arrives back in 3, I can guarantee they lack the writing talent to convey the same emotions.
Geralt with the best armour and hairstyle I see. Bear set is incomplete but getting there.
Yea, CDPR went full ESG and are on the their path to death, does not help that they will use the UE5 further showing the talent leaving and hiring even more diversity. So how long untill the end, I still think that Ubisoft will fall quicker than CDPR, they got the secondary rev stream of GoG to keep them alive longer than ubisoft.
Supposedly gog was losing them money plus they've replaced the old staff with wokeshits.
Checklist
[X]Ugly
[X]Female
[X]Mary Sue
[X]Boring "realistic" environment
[X]Boring "realistic" robot enemies
[X]3rd person action
Pure westoid AAA slop
Also
[x] Made in Unreal Engine
Robot enemies?
Maybe enemies that might as well be robots?
As much as I liked ciri in the 3rd game, I'm not interested in playing games with female leads.
Trash. She looks like she's had bad cosmetic surgery. She casually does witcher stuff like chugging potions despite never having undergone witcher mutations. Tryhard ladyboss voice acting. Finally the theme of the trailer itself is retarded and goes against the nuance you'd normally find in the Witcher games.
I think we're all tired of reddit-atheist tier ideas, but the theme of 'ritual and sacrifice is... le BAD' is especially moronic in games where ritual and sacrifice have established power, and there is a confirmed spiritual world beyond the material. Terry Pratchett used to play with this idea in Discworld, where magic and gods were practically a mundane presence so that the concept of rational materialist characters come across as extra goofy, even though it might seem the more intuitive stance for the reader. Modern writers, especially lefty woke women ones, can't seem to grasp this though and so they come up with shit like this trailer where they're obviously just using the iconography of sacrifice as a rallying cry to say 'look, it's some bad people'.
In the witcher world it is thoroughly established that humans make mutually beneficial pacts with magical forces all the time, even if it's not exactly what they think it is. Someone will shelter a werewolf, a dragon, a vampire, or whatever, in exchange for allowing the monster to indulge itself in secret. A witcher like Geralt will often allow it to continue if he considers it the lesser evil. There's a scenario almost exactly like the one in the trailer in Skellige in TW3, where a village has a traditional coming-of-age arrangement with what turns out to be a Leshen. They send their young men out to test their strength against it, which often results in their death. Geralt can choose to undergo the test of strength - indulging the monster, essentially - or opt to side with the anti-tradition faction in the town and destroy the monster. In witcher fashion, there's no glorious ending either way, but killing the monster tips the balance of power in the village and results in an unavoidable massacre. It also reveals the anti-traditionalists to be perfectly fine with sacrificing women when they feel a tangible benefit (because one choice on this branch is to kill a woman the Leshen has marked).
Any sign of that nuance in this trailer? No, just 'sacrifice bad, women most affected'. The dialogue literally goes:
So maybe it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, in a split between anti-traditionalism themes and autopilot feminist simp mode, which I discussed in another reply a while back:
Feminist and leftist writers are definitely incapable of getting lost in a fantasy setting. They have to use a fantasy setting to overtly spread their own ideologies, using the setting as a skinsuit to spread the message. They're incapable of nuance, which is why their messaging feels like being hit over the head with a hammer, and drives people away. Whereas intelligently written fantasy and scifi hides the messages much better, leaving the created world feeling real, where the lessons contained within make sense within the confines of the world, the characters, and the story, letting the reader interpret the lessons for themselves, making them much more widely applicable.
In a broader sense, I think men are predisposed to be better fantasy and scifi writers than women, for the same reasons above. Women, at least modern women, want the attention to be on them, so their created worlds feel hollow, merely a backdrop to tell the story they want, replete with the central girlboss character that's an obvious stand in for the writer. Men are less vain, so they're better able to leave themselves out of it, to let the story tell itself, while he merely sets up the chessboard. At least that's what I've seen.
That was to be expected. CDPR went full ESG.
Before I even saw her ugly face I couldn't stand the writing. This really sucks.
Unfortunately, looking at the thousands of normie product-consumers in the comments makes me think this will be popular and go the way of Baldur's Gate 3 despite its obvious problems.
Edit: What makes the uglification worse is that Ciri and Yennefer in Witcher 3 were the first genuinely beautiful CGI women I'd seen in a game.
Yeah, after cyberpunk, I have zero interest in any game release by CDPR. Until they publically disavow ESG, DIE policies.
I joked some months ago saying the game is gonna turn into TES oblivion quest marker fetching between cutscenes of men causing/failing to solve problems and leaving everything up to an exasperated ciri
You guys, there are decades of games made by white & japanese males in a golden era of creativity. Every time a jewish brown lgbt woman game comes out a bunch of you buy it and complain about it from the perspective having bought it. Why? Why not just download another pre-existing game when you are bored instead of quite literally being part of the problem and funding people who hate you.
Then you have the other group that buys it to mod it.. ive been a modder since half life 1 and its dissapointing.
It's funny how these feminist types misunderstand gender stereotypes. Men and women are different. These people are just assigning male traits to women, and getting ugly women. Men can be grizzled and it's seen as manly and handsome.
They chose the Worst Option, no surprise there.
Lordy. She hit every branch falling out of the ugly tree. Especially her nose.
Test
https://communities.win/c/Gaming/p/19A0ojiz4R/witcher-4-ciri-the-girlboss/c
So for whatever reason the Gaming link doesn't work in the OP but works fine in comments.
Anyway, gonna be a shitshow as expected.
Imp in shambles because he has nobody else to talk to about this any more.
https://communities.win/c/Gaming/p/19A0ojiz4R/witcher-4-ciri-the-girlboss/c/4ZHjf3ZrcNU
https://communities.win/c/Gaming/p/19A0okpjUs/no-i-have-absolutely-no-idea-why/c