Guys i need some input. I know im gonna get downvoted, but i really want some input and constructive criticism. Especially from woman.
How do you play a woman character? Like especially the witcher game?
Cuz i remember how many sex scenes were there, W3 never shy away from that aspect. And as a man I know and feel comfortable making those decisions for gerald you know? But if it is ciri, I would feel reaaaallllly weird controlling her “body” (you know?)
Like combat stuff and any other aspect, its the same. But when it gets to stuff that’s by design gendered, I honestly don’t know how or what to do.
Then there was this aspect of, ciri being a daughter of gerald. And I played gerald so internally i see ciri as like a daughter, and I would be kinda weird if the game starts to explore her sexuality or smth.
Like how many of you would wanna control/watch sex stuff for a character like that?
See, I played the Witcher 3, and did not experience any Sex Scenes, because I wanted to kill monsters, not have sex. So I do not expect my experience with The Witcher 4 to be any different.
I haven’t played the witcher specifically, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that this is the usual experience for women playing mainstream male-led titles with romance arcs. women have been playing and enjoying the witcher for a long while, including its sexual elements. if it’s possible for us it could be possible for you too! I know if I’m replaying Mass Effect I’m actually probably more likely to play as male Shepard (because I can’t be gay with Tali 😫)
ultimately one of the coolest things a game can do imo is encourage you to step into the shoes of character unlike yourself in a situation you’ve never encountered and ask you to make decisions as them. If you’re uncomfortable roleplaying romantic enounters as a woman, there might be some value in trying anyway! you may find the experience to be more similar than you’d expect. I recognize it’s probably more complicated if you have more paternal feelings toward her, but telling her story from her viewpoint does mean including elements that conflict with how she’s seen by Geralt - it’s her story now and it’d be a disservice to only include what’s comfortable from Geralt’s POV.
In any case, sexual content may be in the game and referenced here and there, but if it doesn’t interest you I expect you’ll be able to not see it. correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that you could play Geralt as aromantic and asexual if you wanted, yea? I imagine the same would be true here too.
You’ve played Cyberpunk 2077? Majority of players played female V. I don’t think they struggled to play as her either.
She’s an adult, and a videogame character. You’re not actually her parent either. Just a player who experiences the game through a character.
I knew at the end of 3 she was gonna take Gerald’s mantle at least for one game
“It’s Geralt.” -Geralt
I can’t wait!!! A little sad the OG Ciri VA didn’t come back tho
Feels like W4 being about Ciri is the worst kept secret in gaming.
There was some speculations that the next game is gonna let the player create their own character. So, having Ciri as the main character is a surprise for some.
To be honest, I was expecting an AC style game set during the Golden Age of Witchers. The schools of each nation are thriving, magic is abundant, Witchers are respected envoys to rulers, monster population is waning but one thing remains the same: Humans slaughter eachother in droves, rape pillage and plunder. Thus proving once more that Humans are the true monsters.
Can’t wait to see the Netflix adaptation again with Henry Cavill as Ciri.
You’re joking but I feel like that would satisfy EVERYONE’s fantasies
Just cast him as all the roles. in everything
He’s busy… Doing everything
I would crowdfund the shit out of that.
Super hyped, I’ve wanted a sequel with Ciri since finishing 3.
Please don’t Cyberpunk this up, CDPR…
They will cyberpunk this, because they also witchered Cyberpunk. As in “delivered less than promised and then mostly fixed it with patches”.
Yep, it’s their business model. People were pissed about Cyberpunk because they’d only played Witcher 3 after it was complete.
And I’m quick to forget that Witcher 3 had some nasty bugs at launch, too. I was stuck with at that damn giant in the ice cave for like a month before they fixed it.
what does that mean, cyberpunk is awesome
It took over a year before it was made into something worthwhile.
I love 2077 but CDPR keeps on ruining my modded excellence with worthless patches. I wish they’d just give up and leave it to the many amazing modders to add content and fixes. 🤷♂️
As with The Witcher 3, which is now regarded as one of the best games of all time.
Witcher 3 came out in May of 2015 and set the record for goty awards at the time. I don’t think it took that long to patch it up.
I distinctly remember it taking at least until the first expansion for it to be considered one of the greats. GOTY Awards have never been a true tell for quality of a game in my opinion.
I think it took a month for it to be polished enough. I remember this because it was when cdpr spun its upcoming patches into a great pr move by calling them “free dlc”. I think it was like 11-12 weeks of continuous “dlc” and Reddit was eating that up and dunking on other devs while praising the game to be the best game of all time. I legitimately remember post on Reddit showing some glitches in the game and comments saying something like “the game is glitchy, but at least it’s just funny glitches and nothing game breaking”. Also, first expansion came out 5 months after the release, so it still tracks that the game was patched up somewhat quick.
Awards are bullshit, agreed. Also the first expansion was just 10/10.
Hard agree
Witcher 3 was buggy, but still a great game at launch. No so with Cyberpunk.
I disagree respectfully, I personally compare them.
The worst release for CDPR ever, I say this as a CDPR fan.
I’ve never played another cdpr game
Play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided & come back
I’ll bite. Patched 2077 is better than making devided in almost all aspects, although both are worth it.
Clearly you haven’t tried Mankind Divided, but hey there are 2 indie games in development called Peripeteia & DeepState if you don’t mind the retro-graphics
I have finished Mankind Devided, and while it’s a good game it is also very restricted and very small in scope compared to 2077.
Looks great… but it uses Unreal Engine 5
like most engines, UE5 is whatever you hack it into being. I hate developing with Unreal but I do have to admit it’s solid in a lot of ways. and has pretty mature content/LOD streaming, one of the biggest issues I saw with Cyberpunk at launch.
At least the benefit is the team can develop without it so we hopefully won’t see the issues it’s crutches create.
Hey maybe then we can get player character shadows that aren’t nightmare demons
What’s wrong with unreal engine 5…
Performance mostly. But also even when made by various AAA studios, the resulting games often have this uncanny similar-ness to them. Personally i prefer in-house engines even if its just to maintain variety in the industry.
Also obligatory shout out to id tech for continuing to show off their engines with indiana jones.
Yeah I don’t understand why they don’t just use SDL3 to make their own engine.
It’s very heavy on your computer
Given my experience with it in Satisfactory it’s rather heavy.
Really? Satisfactory ran so smooth for me I was like what engine is this
ue4 was already bad in that regard. Really sad that cdpr dropped their own engine as licensed engines are wrecking the engine market (mostly epic tbh). Just so not worth it to delevop ones own.
GOOD
Is it just me or is her face a bit weird? Like too much jaw?
I’d love to play the game as Ciri though, hope they make up a good story, it felt the Wild Hunt was her story, IDK what can top that.
I agree.
As someone else pointed out, Geralt looked quite different in the game vs the first cinematic launch trailer.
https://youtu.be/Swij8vsEEgQ?si=17YapBZ2Qzk1Bwhz
So who knows, time will tell. Also keep in mind it’s a new engine
Might be a character redesign. Geralt definitely got that treatment from 2 to 3.
And from 1 to 2, which was desperately needed.
Her face looks longer to me. I assume they’re trying to make her look more like a real person.
It looks like they created a monster trying to fit a bunch of features in a face. It’s on all thumbnails, same as clickbait videos. It’s a marketing stunt.
Reminds me of xiv. It always looks great ingame but half the time their cgi trailers mess up peoples face anatomy
She looks like a supermodel, what weird gooner take is this.
I was not commenting on her attractiveness, just that the defining character features seem to be different. She doesn’t look “older” or less attractive to me from Wild Hunt, just a different person.
It’s not as bad as when they dropped the voice actor for Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell though.
She looks higher resolution.
Her head looks more round and less angled.
She just looks different. It’s a bit of an uncanny valley for me, but I’ll get used to it.
You’re the one taking it to gooner/sexist territory, us fans of the series know the characters and when the overall face-shape changes but keeps defining features like the scar on her cheek, it’s a little unexpected and strange at first.
Me, a fan, instantly recognized her and noticed nothing “weird” about her. Caring at all about her jaw shape or whatever intrinsically makes you a gooner.
And honestly, you’re fucking weird for even responding to me.
I hope she knows how to play Gwent.
I liked gwent. Tried the app, didn’t understand wtf was happening, deleted it.
Same. The worst thing they can do to fuck Witcher 4 up is change the gameplay of Gwent
As if anyone expected to play as any other character than Ciri.
I hoped for a witcher (whichever gender) from one of the other schools, tbh
I kind of hoped for a custom character like V
I think every game should have a customizable player character.
Every game feels a bit broad. Even if just for the sake of development, I’m okay with story-focused games having pre-built characters. Especially if we’re not actually meant to like or agree with the character we’re playing as, such as Martin Walker in Spec-Ops: The Line.
Give me one good reason I shouldn’t be able to have a customizable PC in Tetris.
Seriously: I think narratives in games should be based on player choice. To me, that’s the difference between a game and a book or movie. To choose your own path instead of passively following one.
But clearly I am a minority here. Some of the biggest games are linear set-piece things with no choice in the narrative structure. Even open-world games tend to be linear narratively.
To use your example of Spec Ops: The Line: there is significant player choice that the main dude did not have to be a rigid character. They could have been as customizable as V from Cyberpunk 2077, and the effect would still land.
You’re getting downvoted but I agree, to an extent. If it’s an RPG telling a grand story, and not an individual piece dedicated to a unique individual, then yes.
Same. Dunno why the downvotes.
I didn’t downvote but I disagree. It is nice to be able to roleplay your own character but I also like having well written established characters
They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Mass Effect worked.
If we’re following rediquette, (if such a thing still exists or can even be applied to Lemmy) downvotes shouldn’t be used on things you disagree with.
Over time the concept of the downvote lost its meaning, even on Reddit (and that happened a while ago).
Sadly most people just downvote when they don’t like what you’ve said, not if it’s factually incorrect or misinformation etc.
So did I, but I mean, given the current game development climate, Ciri was an extremely predictable pick.
Not only is Ciri a woman, which modern games seem to be making super majority of main protagonists these days, but she also has market familiarity. Her character is recognizable and therefore has a builtin audience, where a new character does not.
If women make up around 50% of the people on earth, shouldn’t they make up around 50% of the main characters?
I think that wanting equality over men/women % of MC is not something you would want to focus on I would rather have a quality story and universe whatever of the gender of the MC.
( I will clarify my point , I am an human therefore I am for gender equality obviously but I don’t think that this metric is the most interesting )
I mean, I agree. But, based on that argument, it’s totally fine if 100% of pre-created MCs are women then, since it’s only the story and universe that are important (and I would be 100% a-ok with that happening).
True
I completely agree that the quality of the story is kinda the whole point, but I am tired of seeing comments like the one RightHand made; complaining that she is a woman just because she is a woman.
Yep redpills comments are tiring
It isn’t a complaint, simply an observation. I usually pick to play as a woman in games I can choose the gender of the protagonist anyway.
Same. If I’m going to have to look at an ass for 40 hours of gameplay, I’d rather it was a woman’s ass.
Besides, they’ve already established some of her signature abilities and had people play as her in some of the previous game, kicking the familiarity up an extra notch.
Yep. Ciri isnt the worst choice in the world, I just was hoping I could have played as my own character instead. It will be interesting to see what they do with the story.
Yeah, I’d have preferred making my own character too but, failing that, a great character that’s already established in the series and has been a lot of fun playing as so far ain’t bad either!
I really hope they don’t stick with Ciri gameplay from TW3, I never liked when I was forced to play as Ciri, her abilities was less fun than Geralt signs.
Judging by the video, she’ll be behaving more like a witcher, with the two swords, the signs, and the potion quaffing. If they hold to that and also let her keep her “short teleport” move from TW3, I’m looking forward to it 🙂
If they changed the double dodge = roll to double dodge = short teleport, but not as crazy as in TW3 that would be cool, they could also make the whole gameplay more agile than TW3, seems like a good fit for Ciri.
I did. The games already completely shit on the ciri book lore. I was hoping for a fresh slate with new characters, perhaps during a different time period entirely.
Young vesemir FTW?
I was hoping you could be the first witcher. That would have been awesome.
I don’t know how it would’ve tied into the “Witcher” arc… because I don’t think they were around yet? But I would have loved to had a game set during the “Conjunction of the Spheres”.
Huh? What do you mean? I’m saying i would have liked to play as the first witcher, which would have taken place 400 years or so prior to the first game.
Edit: apologies i misunderstood your comment. See my below response. A game based on the conjunction would have been awesome. Too bad.
They meant they wanted a game set during the conjunction of the spheres but didn’t know if witchers were a thing yet at that timeframe in the lore. The wording made it seem like they were talking about your first witcher idea but they were talking about a different alternate timeframe setting they’d like to see.
Ah gotchya. Thank you. Yes, in the lore (as best I can remember) there were no witchers during the conjunction. It was when humans first appeared.
I think you’re both asking for the same thing. IIRC my lore correctly, Witcher clans were founded after the Conjunction to deal with the sudden influx of monsters. A game about the first Witcher could be set mere months after the event.
I sound like a huge nerd here but i believe witchers were created 500 years prior when the humans first got to the continent and encountered monsters. Both humans and monsters came from the conjunction. It is never explained what humans were doing for the first 1000 years after the conjunction (conjunction was 1500 years ago) prior to arriving on the continent. I assume they also had to deal with monsters or maybe the monsters were dropped only on the continent? No idea. The author was unfortunately not very consistent or clear on historic lore. Perhaps it was intended. I’m not sure.
Source: I spent way too much time looking at lore explanations and engaging on forums.
In my opinion it doesn’t make all that much sense because of major Witcher 3 spoilers.
WITCHER 3 SPOILER BELOW
Spoiler
How so? One of the endings literally has geralt gift a witcher sword to Ciri. The only thing I’m confused about is how she now seems to have the witcher mutations
Witcher books spoiler
One of the early Witcher books mentioned that Ciri was given some witcher drugs while she was training at Kaer Morhen, but didn’t undergo the trial of the grasses at Triss’ request.
Continuation of the book spoilers
Wacky books tbh. I don’t remember thinking it was for her to undergo trail they gave it to her, but mostly because that’s all they really knew to do
It makes perfect sense with two of the three endings, and could even work with the third depending on how much CDPR wants to explain the cosmology behind the white frost.
Nah. Cat eyes and witcher potions don’t. They have some explaining to do.
Is it really that hard to imagine she eventually undertook the Trial? Yeah Kaer Morhen lost the ability to administer the Trial, but there’s like 10 different Witcher “schools.” Maybe we’ll see Ciri working with the School of the Crane or w/e.
As far as we know it has never been done on a woman or an adult. Also, she already has super powers. Why risk a procedure that only 3 in 10 young boys used to survive?
This is just wrong, School of the Cat managed to successfully get to a point where 1/10 women survived. School of Crane is the later iteration of the School of Cat, which is why I mentioned them specifically. It’s reasonable to assume they kept iterating on the original formula for the trial, so maybe they’ve gotten to a survival rate of 3/10 for women as well by the time of the game?
As for why, it’s because Ciri wants to be a proper Witcher like Geralt. She was raised in Kaer Morhen, one of the ending of Witcher 3 is Geralt handing her a Witcher sword. You really can’t think why she would take the Trial, even knowing the risk?
Ciri can’t be a proper Witcher. She can’t do Signs because she is a Source, as Triss discovered. That was at least half the reason her Witcher training was cut short and Triss took over her training before they sent her to Yennifer. The other half being the herbs and mushrooms they were giving her were interfering with her development. She never got the Witcher mutagens at all. Ciri’s abilities are completely different from those of a Witcher due to her Elder blood.
School of the Cat managed to successfully get to a point where 1/10 women survived. School of Crane is the later iteration of the School of Cat, which is why I mentioned them specifically.
Where is this info from? I could only find fan fiction so far.
As for why, it’s because Ciri wants to be a proper Witcher like Geralt.
Too thin for a 70% death rate when you already have most of what it takes for other reasons.
I imagine we’ll get that lore in the game no?
It’s almost definitely a break with the series in that you likely won’t be able to import your save file, which always was a core feature of the series. There are also other lore details that don’t add up here, which have already been explained. There could’ve been many ways to progress the story but I don’t see how that is possible here. It’s most likely a soft reboot.
It could work the same way as the three origin stories in CP77: each ending from The Witcher 3 leading to a separate intro story with a time skip before the main game begins.
I guess that could be possible though I doubt it. The 3 origin stories in Cyberpunk were extremely shallow and didn’t add anything to the story. I don’t see why they would go for it again when it didn’t work out last time.
Some games do allow you to import saves from older games that have swapped the MC. They just take the choices you made in the story arc and use that to create conditions for the world you’re now in. But it’s a rare occasion from what I know.
I was hoping for Eskel or Letho to be honest. Ciri is a safe choice but a bit on the boring side. Eskel would have been a lot more multi-layered protagonist and dialogues would have been funnier.
I was praying for Letho even though we all knew it was going to be Ciri (for better or worse, we’ll see).
Leaning into the moral grey of the Witcher world with Letho would have been awesome, he says (in one of the endings to his story) he’ll head out east over the mountains so we could have gotten some all-new environments and it would have been 100% CDPR IP so they could have done whatever they wanted without trampling over lore too much. Plus Letho is just an amazing character with huge protagonist energy. Oh well.
Same. I was hoping for a totally different story or a different time period entirely. Instead it’s just boring Ciri again. Rip.
2.5 games of geralt? Just fine! 0.5 games as ciri? BoRiNg!!!
Yes ciri “existed” in the previous games but we never saw her and we never played as her until the Wild Hunt.
Dread it. Run from it. Witcher 4 with playable CIri still arrives.
Wow.
Honestly after their absolute shit show with cyberpunk I’m more excited to sit back and watch them fuck it up again than for the game. They’ve lost my respect and their credibility as developers. I will pirate anything from them
They’ve given Cyberpunk 4 years of support for free since the initial launch, including a full overhaul of the game. I get the state of the launch was dogshit, and you can bet your ass I’m not pre-ordering, but still holding onto this grudge is just petty. How much more sorry do you need them to be?
I paid dlc isn’t free support.
I don’t need them to be sorry. They had years to make the game and released garbage. I’m sick of that happening in the gaming industry and I don’t support companies that do it.
Well good news, because you don’t need to pay a dime to get updated to version 2.2 and receive all the free updates. Phantom Liberty is a cool story, but has zero impact on gameplay.
They fixed CP2077 and as a matter of fact the game is pretty good, plus they are a European company so we should support them.
Yeah, they did. I wasn’t a fan of every part of Cyberpunk 2077, but I have to hand it to them: the gameplay was pretty solid compared to the mess I read about at launch. They even made the player controls responsive and reasonably nice to use. That alone was a huge improvement over The Witcher 3.
(Geralt, I’ll never forgive you for all the times you stepped forward into danger when I pressed back to avoid it, or decided to fiddle about with a candle when there was something more important for your hands to do, or moved like a lumbering sloth instead of… well… a witcher.)
I’m optimistic about this one.
I haven’t played the game since launch so maybe I outta give it another try but I still lost respect for them. Releasing an unfinished product shouldn’t be praised even if they did fix it. Should’ve been delayed in the first place.
Why does them being European mean we should support them tho?
Yeah it was a rough launch. I just picked it up during the last steam sale and it’s fucking amazing now though! I can’t put it down!
I should give it another try but they stopped updating the game. I’m not expecting them to be like no man’s sky but you still need mods to add in shit that was promised like the metro system
They added the (never promised) metro system last year and just released another huge free update two days ago.
They actually just released a giant patch last week!
The devs are amongst the best in the business, blame those responsible, the suits who demand unfinished products to be released. Nintendo with their older mentality of shipping phyisical media does not have the luxury to ship an unfinished product and more studios need to take a page from their book.
A rushed product is forever stained by its bad launch, a delayed product is eventually good. People have been waiting for star citizen for over a decade, we can be patient.
Nintendo is a shit company that hates its fans. Definitely not who I would use as a good example. And star citizen is a scam, not a game.
Here goes the cycle anew. Thank you CD project red and all the consoomers happily enabling then.