• thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      anyone who has read the books was likely surprised that ciri wasn’t the main character of any of the games when they first started coming out :::especially since geralt dies at the end of the books :::

      ciri was more the mc than geralt for most of the books. she’s the child of destiny. she’s the young character that grows up as we follow their journey. she’s the one that finds herself and shows major character development throughout the books. the only character development geralt goes through is accepting his bond with ciri.

      the first two games never mentioning ciri was outright bizarre tbh. only even remotely possibly because geralt lost his memory. like, with where geralt as at by the end of the books the only thing you could possibly expect him to do on regaining his memory is frantically search for signs of his adopted daughter

      to a longtime book reader my reaction to ciri being the protag of the next game was “FINALLY”

      my only curiosity at this point is how much she’ll be like book ciri. does she know magic? in the books ciri goes to sorceress school and then gets trained in primal magic by unicorns and immortal space elves. can you fuck a horse? that was one of the more… questionable scenes in the book.

      tangent: sapkowski’s politics occasionally bleed through in weird ways in the books. like three’s a scene where a woman finds out she’s pregnant mid way through a literal war that our band wades through on their journey to save the world. the party basically needs the woman to proceed. she does not want the child. i believe it was the product of rape. yet for some reason geralt and a literal fucking vampire convince her that abortion is wrong and she should keep it instead of drinking a potion about it. it was so randomly out of character for everyone involved. but hey, that’s catholics for you i guess… /tangent

      i think they generally said that ciri lost her elder blood powers after the king of the hunt was killed right? otherwise I’m gonna be really curious how handle that as well. she should be sort of the world’s greatest sorceress otherwise. ooh, i wonder if she’ll make quips about cyberpunk and/or other worlds she’s traveled to. like, she spent Decent bit of time in Arthurian legend. she shows up briefly in Victorian London.

      also, what will the world at large look like? they can’t do it like the last time where your previous save could alter the new game based on your decisions. you were simply able to do too much. they’d need to make like 3 entirely separate stories at the very least. like, who rules the north? are you the empress of nilfguard? is the church burning all the nonhumans at record pace? you can basically decide the entire fate of the northern realms and all of its people in multiple ways… unless it just takes place elsewhere. maybe we’ll be in zerrikania this time or some shit. there are many distant lands that the games never take us. it would be much more doable that way. then you’d just have to change dialogue and maybe swap out a few characters.

      aaaanyway… yeah, anyone mad about her being the mc is a dumbass that doesn’t know shit about the story.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        21 hours ago

        can you fuck a horse? that was one of the more… questionable scenes in the book.

        Uhhh which book is that? If it’s the section I’m thinking of with Kelpie the horse, she’s entranced by its beauty and it’s rider/owner tries to use that to get into her pants (and ultimately died before he was successful) but I don’t believe she ever expressed sexual attraction at all to it by my memory from reading the books a couple of months ago.

        the party basically needs the woman to proceed. she does not want the child. i believe it was the product of rape. yet for some reason geralt and a literal fucking vampire convince her that abortion is wrong and she should keep it instead of drinking a potion about it

        The party is trying to find Ciri after her disappearance. Geralt and Cahir are having visions indicating that she’s presently in great danger and suffering (and at that she was!). Finding out while practically at the front lines of the great war that their incredible archer, Milva is pregnant completely derails their entire journey because she can’t ride, shouldn’t travel, and will need to rest in a safe area for a while (which they are at this point constantly far from anywhere safe), plus they can’t exactly bring a baby onto the battlefield they’re actively crossing. It’s one moral quandry wrapped in another. Ultimately Geralt and Cahir leave it to Milva’s decision, as does Regis the barber-surgeon/vampire who created the abortion potion.

        Also it wasn’t rape. While guiding a group of elves to safety, they hid in a thicket for a night with Nilfgaurdians surrounding them and searching for them. The elves decided that since they were likely to die a horrible death at any moment that they should take the time they have to find what enjoyment they can, and Milva decided to join in. It just so happened they did not die that night and now Milva is carring a halfling for whom she does not know the fathers name (for safety no names were shared with the elves she guided)

        i think they generally said that ciri lost her elder blood powers after the king of the hunt was killed right? otherwise I’m gonna be really curious how handle that as well. she should be sort of the world’s greatest sorceress otherwise.

        She gave up her magic after trying to use fire as a source of power out of desperation while navigating out of the “Frying Pan” desert. She wanted to save Little Horse the unicorn after an unfortunate battle with a monster she hadn’t yet learned of, but no other sources were available. My understanding is fire as a magical source is all consuming so it is forbidden to pull from for safety reasons, but that was largely left up to interpretation.

        Upon pulling from fire, she saw the imense power that presented her, the ability to rule the entire world, but also how that would hurt those she cared so deeply about, so she instead gave up her sourceress’ powers.

        If you want anything to complain about in the books it should be Milva’s winging about being an illiterate farm girl that honestly was out of character and just seemed written in so she wouldn’t outshine the others

        Edit: Cahir’s attraction to Ciri is also creepy as hell the way it’s written, but that might be intentional, since that’s at a point where she’s coming to realize that everyone wants something from her, everyone will tell her why she should want to give them what they want from her but nobody ever seems to care or ask what she actually wants.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          21 hours ago

          By [email protected]’s description I know what scene they’re talking about. It’s not great but it’s not as bad as they make out. Basically she ends up traveling for a bit with this really smarmy dude. Think incel used car salesman. He’s described as having greasy hair, he’s clearly not trustworthy and acts only in his own best interest, and is constantly trying to get into Ciri’s pants. But, he’s riding this incredible horse the likes of which Ciri has never seen before (and it turns out to in fact be a magical horse) and Ciri is just entranced by this incredible and majestic horse, and smarmy dude can tell, so he makes sure to use the horse to get Ciri to interact with him even though they both know she wants nothing to do with him and only gives him the light of day to see his horse.

          Anyways smarmy dude and Ciri end up running from some bandits, smarmy dude is injured but plays down how badly, and basically uses this plus gifting her the horse she’s so entranced by to manipulate and guilt her into agreeing to sleep with him (from her perspective it’s been made clear how curious but nervous she is about sex, so she’s not entirely opposed, but it’s also implied up to this point that she’s far more into women than men) and then just as she’s starting to potentially enjoy the pity sex with the asshole but before either of them can actually get their pants off, he fucking dies!

        • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          no, but she kind of wanted to… but it’s also way more fucked than that. please don’t make me type it out here. I’ll just say it involves violent rape while she’s still under age. it could be construed as a trauma response, but it’s debatable… I’m not convinced that sapkowski would have known what a trauma response was when he wrote that scene in the… 90s?

          can’t actuality remember which book that happened in.

      • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        I was under the impression that it wasn’t Victorian London, but The Plague Year. IIRC she, canonically, brings a blanket infested with plague lice from here to there, and ends up dropping it next to the ship Catriona, which is how the Catriona plague actually gets started. It was one of those “oh shit, yes, that explains everything” moments for me when I first read the books.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          22 hours ago

          She does also extremely briefly travel to Edwardian or Victorian London (I forget exactly what year it was). It’s mostly depicted through a newspaper clipping from The Sun and a rebuttle from another newspaper calling out their quoted witness for trespassing and strongly implying he was inebriated at the time and being an unreliable source. It’s quite comically written really

    • kinther@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      She is the main character toward the end. The story was great and I need to replay it

      • goodeye8@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        She’s not just the main character towards the end, she is the main character of the story. We play Geralt, who is a side character in Ciri’s story.

        • kinther@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I never really thought about it like that. Is that how the book series goes? I probably should read those as well

          • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            kind of, it’s more like it starts a geralt’s story, but becomes ciri’s story. the first two books are all geralt. after that it’s about geralt and ciri’s relationship. then by the last book we barely even see geralt.

            then after the series was finished he started writing more little stories from earlier in geralt’s life.

            as i said in another comment. it’s downright bizarre that ciri doesn’t get mentioned until the third game. she almost makes more sense as the protag anyway.

    • wrekone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Came here to say this. Anyone that’s played Witcher 3 should have already known that Ciri was going to be the protagonist in the next game. I can’t wait. Ciri is badass.

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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      2 days ago

      I mean, I prayed to the nether gods that we’d get a Letho game. He’s the perfect protagonist if they wanted to move away from the books and more firmly into their own OC. Always had huge main character energy, and would be perfectly suited for exploring the morally grey areas of the Witcher world.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 days ago

      Well, unless you fucked up the choices near the end. Really not fond of CDPR’s habit of that.

      • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, there were a couple of tiny decisions, any of which failed you out if you got them wrong, and several of them had deceptive descriptions during the QTE.

    • imecth@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      If anything, Ciri’s the character whose story is wrapped up by the end of Witcher 3, she saved the world and fulfilled her destiny. Unlike Geralt or the sorceresses, she does get old too.

      It’s definitely understandable that a lot of players would feel betrayed at having Ciri becoming the MC after 3 games of Geralt. People would riot if you made someone else than Lara Croft the MC of tomb raider. A better solution would probably be a character creator for a new generation of witchers. Ciri is too powerful to be the MC.

      • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Isn’t the good ending geralt giving her a Witcher blade and calling her an official witcher? That to me sets up part 4. End of the day im glad geralt gets a rest. Besides they’re remaking 1 and 2 so the geralt fix will come

        • imecth@fedia.io
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          2 days ago

          There’s plenty of different endings, but yeah that’s probably the one they’ll make canon.

          The thing is Geralt is The Witcher, making Ciri the protagonist is a bastardization of the saga. Imagine that J.K rowling came up with a new book, titled it Harry Potter 8, and made the protagonist Hermione. To me this shows a real lack of understanding of their audience, people play The Witcher for the fantasy of being Geralt, of being a monster killer, of hooking up with every sorceress. But obviously IP sells, and they aren’t gonna change the title of the saga to something like “child of the elder blood”.

          I wish them the best of luck, maybe they’ll pull off a fallout 3 and reinvent themselves. But I personally will be passing on this spinoff.