The Witcher 4 first trailer shows main character and it’s not Geralt-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The Witcher 4 – that’s not Geralt (YouTube)

Geralt of Rivia is not the main playable character in The Witcher 4, as the game’s reveal trailer kicks off The Game Awards 2024.

It’s long been rumoured that The Witcher 4 would star Ciri as the main character, instead of Geralt, and now it’s been confirmed, after the follow-up to The Witcher 3 got its first ever trailer at The Game Awards 2024, in the early hours of Friday morning.

The trailer is pre-rendered, with no actual gameplay, but it shows a young girl (with imagery seemingly inspired by the movie Midsommar) being sent out by her village to cleanse it of a nearby evil.

How she’s supposed to do that isn’t clear, but Ciri intervenes and takes on the monster using both magic and her twin swords, although in typical The Witcher fashion no good deed goes unpunished and there’s a bittersweet ending to the whole story.

When will The Witcher 4 be released?

Since the game only entered full production this year it’s going to be a long time until it’s out. The trailer doesn’t mention a date but given how long games take to make nowadays, particularly ambitious ones like this, you’ll be lucky if it’s released before the end of the decade.

CD Projekt are not likely to forget the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 either, which almost ruined the reputation of the company, so they’re going to take every care to make sure the game is bug free before it’s launched, which could easily lead to delays on top of whatever far off release date it does get.

Although it’s never been referred to as The Witcher 4 before, the game is supposedly the start of a new trilogy, but whether Ciri will be the protagonist for all three titles remains to be seen.

Will Geralt be in The Witcher 4?

It’s likely the trailer has little or nothing to do with the main story of the game, so apart from the focus being on Ciri there’s probably little to really take away from it.

Earlier in the year, Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle confirmed that ‘Geralt will be part of the game’, while confirming that ‘the game won’t focus on Geralt, so it’s not about him this time.’

He actually got in trouble with CD Projekt for saying that but while Geralt appeared to retire at the end of The Witcher 3’s last piece of DLC, Blood And Wine, Ciri doesn’t look that much older than she did in the game and so it stands to reason that Geralt is still active.

Whether he’ll be playable is impossible to say for sure but since Ciri was playable in some chapters of The Witcher 3 that suggests that there’s a good chance Geralt will be playable for at least some part of The Witcher 4.

The new game is being made in Unreal Engine 5 (CD Projekt)

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