djwolf001;n7706710 said:
I think it is quite possible that there will be some kind of new Witcher game eventually, CDPR themselves did not rule out the possibility (again, here is a collection of links to the relevant interviews). It just looks like it would not be a continuation of Geralt's adventures. It would obviously still have an open world, probably even a more impressive one than TW3 due to running on more powerful hardware. With a new and possibly customizable character, there would be more freedom also in how you can role play.
This is not really on topic here, there are other threads where it has been discussed enough already, but you cannot choose a different past in dialogue (unless it explicitly serves the purpose of save import simulation), that would not be a clever mechanic, just bad writing. As I already noted before, the fact that ignoring the quest leads to the same outcome as completing it and choosing the "magic's gone" option tells that it is not about literal "magic" that created love, as the relationship can be broken by free will.
Not sure how much that is related to the topic, but anyway, the two sorceresses have almost exactly the same amount of game content if you combine TW2 and TW3 (see here), and also the same number of sex scenes. In TW3, Yennefer plays a greater role in the main story because of being the adoptive mother of Ciri, and maybe also because she was not in the prequels, and Wild Hunt could even be her only game in case the series is "rebooted" in the future with a new cast. But if there really is a bias, that is just another reason to move away from Geralt and friends - they are largely pre-defined by the novels, and this limits the freedom of the writers in giving role playing options without contradicting the books too much. Starting over with a clean slate means they can write whatever they want without upsetting fans of the novels.
There is a difference between a failure that gives you a loading screen, and an actual ending (of which there is a relatively small finite number) where you are shown an epilogue, narrated slides, and the credits. It is perhaps not too unreasonable to expect the latter not to be simply ignored by a sequel in a series advertised as being "full of meaningful choices and impactful consequences", even if it might be OK in a simple action game where you do not expect choices to matter anyway. And it already happened before that a major NPC could die in one game and only conditionally appear in the next one (Letho, Siegfried). Of course, it is also an option to make Ciri survive the "bad" ending and explain how she returned, since it is not actually confirmed in the game that she died, although after that the choices deciding her fate would hardly be meaningful any longer.
Hart95;n7715750 said:
They might very well be able to still write a good story with Geralt, but my point was that if they (similarly to me) believe that it is possible to write a better one with someone else, then I would rather see that than reverting to yet another Geralt game for marketing reasons.
Well, a game in a relatively distant future as Ciri's son is also an option, although I am not a fan of the idea of playing as some kind of god child or chosen one (be it Ciri or her son), I would prefer a "simple" witcher and a story that does not revolve around saving the world.
However much talent they have, they can only work within the confines of what has already been established in the novels and previous games, and what is realistically possible with the amount of time and resources available. Again, a hypothetical Geralt or Ciri sequel does not have to be outright "bad" for me to clearly prefer the option of a new protagonist, it is enough that I think the latter is overall better, and I do not want TW3 choices to be ruined by a sequel either, because that by itself would already make the existing games worth less than they were before. So far, I have not really seen much reason to continue other than wanting to see more of the familiar characters, which would be better served by more expansions, and there are also the GWENT single player campaigns to look forward to.
The writers of the game either believed that he would by the time such choice becomes available in Wild Hunt, or they were not honest about giving the choice in the first place and it is only there for additional sales/milking fans of the previous games. In the first case, there is no particular reason for an unbalanced portrayal of the relationships, not that it is that unbalanced overall. If it turns out that the latter is true, I do not think I will buy more of their games, I would not be able to trust them again. But returning to the topic, as I mentioned before, in my opinion the rigid and pre-defined relationships between Geralt and his "family members" make them not well suited to being the protagonist of an RPG. That is why, for example, none of your choices in interaction with Yennefer have real consequences (other than dialogue changes and the like) outside The Last Wish, it is all linear because staying consistent with the books does not leave much room for alternate paths. I do not think it would be better with Ciri, and canonizing Ciri's and maybe even Geralt's fates from TW3 would even make things worse, because it defines the characters further by locking out the other paths, not to mention making it suspect why those choices were originally put in the game (or future ones for that matter) at all.
The game does not specifically say whose choice it is to leave after the second game, and exactly why.
In any case, to summarize, I am not against the idea of more Witcher games, but I am also fairly confident that at this point the best option is to consider the trilogy finished and start a new story with different characters. Fortunately, the interviews so far do not seem to disagree with this stance, at least they seem to be fairly consistent about Geralt's story being over, although there is still the possibility of a Ciri sequel, which, to be honest, I like even less than just sticking with (maybe 10-20 years older) Geralt.
