First reported by GamesRadar, CD Projekt Red builders have revealed that Ciri’s powers of teleportation are going to be severely toned down and even absent in The Witcher 4—no extra zipping round like an anime protagonist for Zireael. She’ll make up for it, although, with full Trial of the Grasses witcher potion-chugging and a few extra spectacular offensive magical talents than Geralt’s dinky indicators.
In a bigger interview about The Witcher 4 with GamesRadar, government producer Małgorzata Mitręga addressed “the hole between her being completely overpowered on the finish of the earlier sport and now, with the ability set we confirmed off within the trailer.” Mitręga would solely say that “one thing completely occurred in-between.”
“We needed to delve deep to contemplate how we’d tackle this—we have now large respect for the lore, for each the books and for what made it into our earlier video games,” Mitręga defined, “But this was one of many first questions we discovered the reply for, and it is how we have been capable of create this authentic story which begins with The Witcher 4.”
As for what Ciri will provide as an alternative, Mitręga mentioned that “She’s quicker, extra agile—however you possibly can nonetheless inform that she was raised by Geralt, proper?” It additionally seems like Ciri can have extra intensive magic talents at her disposal than Geralt’s witcher indicators—the facility she makes use of to zap the monster in The Witcher 4’s first trailer is outwardly a spell referred to as “Bolt.”
Speaking to Eurogamer, sport director Sebastian Kalemba supplied an identical summation of Ciri’s depowering: It’s a secret, however it was one thing they labored on extensively and that may determine within the story. “We can’t let you know precisely how,” mentioned Kalemba. “But we will let you know simply, like, consider us: that was one of many issues, or first issues, that we have been fixing, to verify—the way in which we develop right here, we don’t go away something and not using a clear reply. And the reply we’ll present for positive, as quickly as we allow you to expertise the sport.”
I discovered these explanations reassuring: One of my massive considerations about having Ciri as a protagonist shifting ahead was that she was simply so overwhelmingly highly effective by the tip of The Witcher 3, and I additionally did not actually take pleasure in how these powers felt in her playable segments from Wild Hunt. Don’t get me flawed, these sections have been nice story and presentation-wise, and so they have been in an entire different league than The Witcher 2’s sluggish alternate participant characters, however her zippy teleporting at all times simply felt too slippery and frictionless.
The potential for taking part in a extra full-on spellsword Ciri has me intrigued. Lore-wise, Witcher indicators are presupposed to be situational cantrips, however a sign-based battlemage construct made for a enjoyable method to play The Witcher 3, with Geralt unlocking a flamethrower model of Igni, frost-empowered Aard, and (my favourite) an alternate turret model of Yrden. As for the way Ciri misplaced her spacetime juice, I may see something from a voluntary relinquishing of her harmful powers, to them having light after the defeat of the White Frost, to some nefarious entity having sapped them away.
