The Witcher 4 and the Problem with Lore
The Witcher 3 is a very important game to me; it is a game that revealed to me the potential of video games as an art form. I would be fine if they burned the whole story down.
If you’re normal, unlike me, and have not been paying attention to the latest I Witcher news, allow me to explain. CD Prokjekt Red (CDPR) recently announced a follow-up to the 2015 hit Witcher 3 at the 2024 Game Awards. The teaser trailer revealed that Ciri, the series’ erstwhile backup protagonist, was about to helm her own trilogy. While this feels a little safe, it makes sense that Ciri would be the choice here, with her role in TW3 serving as a trial run for future games. Everything is looking up for fans of The Witcher, except for some fans who can never be happy. There are two main complaints being lodged by the haters, and I will address them in turn.
The first complaint is that Ciri has become “ugly” compared to her appearance in the previous game. The primary reason for this shift is Ciri’s age. The trailer shows Ciri years, if not decades, after the 21-year-old we know from TW3. It is not lost on me that the same fans that adore the century-old former male protagonist, Geralt, prefer the nubile nature of female protagonist Ciri. I think we can write this complaint off as that of incel freaks, but I can’t help but snickering at these people that have been clamoring for better graphics in video games freaking out at the perfectly rendered laugh lines on Ciri’s face. It’s almost like they don’t care about art but rather about seeing their anime ladies in crisp 4k.
The second complaint these philistines have is that the new Witcher trailer defies years of lore. I will attempt to be pithy here in the interest of not boring anyone: to become a “witcher” a person must go through a trial to mutate the body, thereby giving the person superhuman reflexes and other abilities helpful for monster-slaying. According to the lore, only males can survive the Trial of the Grasses (the trial used at the Wolf School, which is where both Geralt and Ciri train). The Witcher 4 trailer revealed that not only was Ciri the protagonist, but that she had also gone through the mutations to become a real witcher. You can see why the incels are pissed about this.
Lore is awesome. If used correctly, it can make for great storytelling. I love how Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books serve as lore in the Wax & Wayne series. Those characters and events you lived with become history, religion, and fairy tale. I have many happy childhood memories just listening to my great Uncle Ed tell me about the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles. This is what the pedants who value lore above all else do not understand: lore should be mutable. Eventually, the Dodgers leave for the west coast; eventually, Copernicus comes around and geocentrism fades away.
The idea that lore is an unchangeable force is incredibly reactionary. It is restrictive and poisonous to art. It is no coincidence that the obsession with lore has grown in tandem with the increased commodification of art. This type of lore is a tool in the commodification of art. It is the employee handbook, in the hands of multimedia conglomerates, that tells the artist what is and isn’t allowed to be created. That’s why lore is beloved by conservative fans of art: art is a commodity to be packaged and sold, and lore is especially marketable. We should be fighting against this tide with all our might. Art exists to expand our consciousness, and it should not be confined to so specious a concept as lore.
