There have been a few hints leading fans of The Witcher to suspect that another Witcher title could be in the pipeline at CD Projekt Red, albeit a long way off. The developer has confirmed that it is not working on a direct sequel to The Witcher 3, but that there remains a possibility for other games set in the Witcher universe, after Cyberpunk 2077 is released.
A lot of fans, however, will be skeptical that a Witcher game could work at all without Geralt as the protagonist. The big question hanging over the franchise’s future is whether The Witcher’s world can stand up by itself, or whether Geralt was a uniquely compelling character to see it through.
The Next Witcher Game
When asked by if Ciri would be the protagonist in future Witcher games, CD Projekt Red seemed dodgey on the question. It seems a real possibility, though, if only due to the success of the last game. The Witcher remains the company’s most valuable IP, even after re-negotiations with the books’ author, and has made CD Projekt Red one of Europe’s most valuable game companies. And many may want to know what becomes of Ciri next.
It seems likely at least that CD Projekt Red will be telling more stories in The Witcher's universe in the years to come, but that those stories will not be about Geralt of Rivia. Fans will have to wait and see whether they’ll get to return to the world of The Witcher, but the question remains as to whether a Witcher title could even work without Geralt as its protagonist.
The World of The Witcher
Beyond Geralt himself, the world of The Witcher stands out as fascinatingly intentionally generic, in the sense that almost every single piece of medieval fantasy pop culture seems to show its head somewhere. The world contains parallels to everything from Tolkien’s hobbits to Macbeth – both the actual three witches and the play itself almost verbatim – to just about every Grimm fairy tale which seems to be real in some way in The Witcher's world. Geralt’s universe can feel almost overcrowded at times in its commitment to containing seemingly every fantasy race and trope.
There is an in-universe explanation to this, to some degree. The Conjunction of the Spheres is an event in The Witcher's timeline that jumbled up the multiverse, leaving magic and creatures from all different realms and realities mixed in together, hence the need for Witchers to begin with. The upside of this for both the Witcher books and the game series so far, has been that it allows Geralt to interact with a huge diversity of creatures across his adventures while the story remained focused through the lens of Geralt’s Witcher work.
If Geralt is not the protagonist, the writers could have a huge array of options to choose from for a new main character. The problem that arises, however, is that besides Witchers themselves, there isn’t a huge amount to distinguish the world of The Witcher from many other fantasy worlds. In other words, the world of the Witcher is only really distinguished by telling its stories through the perspective of a Witcher.
While the developer could certainly tell a new story about another Witcher or a character already closely tied to the original story like Ciri, the fact that multiple employees have stated that the company is not interested in developing The Witcher 4 makes it seem unlikely that the storytellers would want to tell a story where comparisons would be so easily drawn with the original.
A game where players take on the role of another Witcher could work easiest. Geralt is an immersive character to play as not because his personality aligns with the players, but largely because his Witcher work and sardonic detachment make some features of gameplay appear in-character. In other games, for example, completing side-quests can feel immersion breaking when there’s a world-threatening menace on the loose, but for Geralt, Witcher contracts are how he survives.
The features of Geralt that make his character immersive, therefore, could still be present in a Witcher protagonist with a new and unique personality in a way that wouldn’t work in other franchises. The idea, however, of embarking upon the first Witcher project without Geralt and attempting to create a new character who could stand up to his legacy appears extremely daunting, if not insurmountable.
Cyberpunk and CD Projekt Red’s Future
The direction of The Witcher's future is currently deeply tied to the success of Cyberpunk 2077. If CD Projekt Red’s upcoming release proves to be as groundbreaking as the developer hopes, then it will show that the studio is capable of making extremely immersive RPGs where the player has far more control over their character customization and personality than they did in The Witcher.
This could make it more likely that fans will get an opportunity to explore the world of The Witcher through a more customized protagonist. It would certainly be an unprecedented shift for the series, but what Cyberpunk is trying to do is unprecedented as well: provide players with an open-world and complete character customization in Cyberpunk 2077 (as in Bethesda-style RPGs) but also make the game as character-driven as RPGs with relatively pre-established protagonists (as in most BioWare RPGs, and the previous Witcher games).
If CD Projekt Red is able to prove that a synthesis is possible between those two schools of RPG design which emerged out of the early 2010s, then the way players think about video game protagonists may change, and perhaps a story could be told in The Witcher’s world that doesn’t include Geralt, but allows players to forge their own narratives.
Both Bethesda and BioWare have fallen from prior heights and have released games like Fallout 76, Anthem, and Mass Effect: Andromeda which have been met with disappointing receptions compared to their earlier titles. CD Projekt Red opened up a whole other studio to help develop Cyberpunk, but after the project is complete the company will remain a very different one to the studio that developed The Witcher series, and its future is uncertain.
For now, whether fans will get any more Witcher games remains to be seen. When it comes to the nature of the protagonist, some fans have already raised concerns that Cyberpunk’s V may not be as customizable as promised, and while CD Projekt Red wants to push the possibilities of what an RPG main character can be, that ambition is by no means an assurance of success or failure.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One