CD Projekt RED has gone on a proper press tour following the unveiling of The Witcher IV with that stunning trailer at The Game Awards 2024. They explained why Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon was picked as the new protagonist, confirmed the new voice actress, and talked about her new powers glimpsed in the trailer.
In a recently published Q&A with Gamespot, the developers also discussed whether there will be any romance in the new game for Ciri and what that will look like.
Sebastian Kalemba (Game Director): Absolutely. It's a part of the way we make games. It is a part of human nature. It's a very normal thing. Without that, I think we wouldn't be able to tell the very full story.
Małgorzata Mitręga (Executive Producer): It's an important part of life.
Sebastian Kalemba: But as always, we want to pay a lot of attention to it and make it super compelling and very meaningful. So it's not just to make a romance for the sake of making a romance. That's not the CDPR way.
The inclusion of romance in The Witcher IV is not at all surprising. It has been a staple of the series ever since the first installment, although in that one, it was arguably very shallow, with Geralt of Rivia 'collecting' romance cards dedicated to each of his conquests. It is widely believed that this mechanics will be removed in the upcoming The Witcher Remake in development at Fool's Theory.
The romances got a lot better with the subsequent franchise entries, but they'll have to take another step forward in quality with the new title, given the new protagonist and the fact that she isn't at all accustomed to romances in the established lore. In the books written by Andrzej Sapkowski, she is very young, and throughout her whole life, she's had to deal with a lot of trouble from people who wanted to control her one way or another.
Even in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, where she is now a 21-year-old young woman, she doesn't really have any real love interests. It won't be at all easy for CD Projekt RED to find a good match for her while retaining the inherently fierce and rebellious nature of a character who's gone through so much for one still relatively young. The good news on that note is the developers can probably ask the author himself for help following the new partnership signed with Sapkowski five years ago.
The Witcher IV went into full production earlier this year. The studio now has around 400 developers focused on the project, but with an estimated size similar to that of the massively successful predecessor, it's probably going to be a while before we can play it ourselves.
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