What would you want a new Witcher game to be about?

Once CD Projekt Red wraps up work on Cyberpunk 2077, a new singleplayer Witcher game seems likely. I mean, unless they become allergic to printing money at some point. Let's assume there is a new one in our distant future. 

What would you want a new Witcher game to be about? An entire game where you get to play Ciri becoming a Witcher? A prequel that's basically Young Vesemir Adventures? A sequel to Thronebreaker? Some kind of turn-based squad tactics game set during one of the Continent's many wars? Just more Geralt please?

Here are some of our ideas, plus a few from our forum members.

Ciri as the protagonist

Lauren Morton: CD Projekt RED has hinted at the possibility for Ciri to take the helm before. She has some memorable adventures in Wild Hunt but in reality you don't spend that much time in her boots. There are plenty of other stories about her in the Witcher novels to mine, and plenty of room to invent new ones as well. 

The happiest ending for The Witcher 3 has Geralt gifting Ciri her own silver sword. If that isn't a classic passing of the torch, I don't know what is. On top of that, Ciri has a few extra cool combat abilities that would be great to see front and center. Her demeanor is so different from Geralt's as well. We've all seen the stoic, grizzled old witcher navigate global politics and monster ethics time and again. I'd like to see how the more brash and passionate Ciri handles similar choices in a theoretical Witcher 4.

A clean slate

Rovin Valentine: I'd want a totally clean slate. I feel like at this point, the stories of all those characters are done. The Witcher 3, and then Blood & Wine, provided such a satisfying conclusion for all of them that it'd be oddly cheap to bring any of them out of retirement. Maybe with the exception of Ciri, who definitely has more adventures ahead of her, but even she feels like she's had her complete arc and earned a rest. 

Thronebreaker proved that there are plenty of other compelling stories to be told in that setting, in different parts of the world with different characters. Let's see an entirely new cast on their own adventures. Maybe even skip forward in time—what does that world look like 50 years after The Witcher 3, or 100, or even many centuries, after Geralt's story has faded into legend?

Bully, but with witchers

Christopher Livingston: I know hardly anything about The Witcher, having only played a couple hours of the games and having seen only 1.8 episodes of the show. But there are apparently 'witcher schools' (I looked at a wiki) so I'm thinking a game like Bully, where Geralt is a tough teen making his way through his education. He could deal with things like peer pressure ("All the cool kids are drinking Werewolf's Wrath, Gerry!") and puberty ("It's normal for a Witcher for your age to have your voice deepen to ridiculous, Batman-esque levels") and romance ("Do you like Yennefer? Check one box: [  ] Yes [  ] No"). And of course, bullies ("Toss us your lunch coins, Witcher, or we'll pound you!") Give us some brooding teen Geralt, I say.

You're a sorcerer

James Davenport: It's time to play a rogue sorcerer in a big city, maybe during an era where they're getting hunted down, though I'd like a complete departure from The Witcher 1-3's timeline. Let's see some new political factions, creatures, and characters. It's an opportunity for CDPR to take what they've learned from Cyberpunk 2077's first-person immersive sim design and basically make fantasy Dishonored in a huge open world. 

I do miss playing an established character though, someone everyone can endear themselves to. What I'm saying is I basically want the organic, candid version of Bathtub Geralt 2. 

School of the Cat stealth game

Andy Chalk: I don't want one. Why do we need one? The urge to relentlessly sequelize every halfway successful game that hits the market is why 80 percent of my virtual life is spent as a meathead with a gun the size of a Volkswagen. And yes, I consume sequels and reboots as much as the next guy, but that's what I'm stuck with, right? I eat what I'm fed.

All that said...

What I know about The Witcher comes from the games, so my knowledge of that world doesn't run deep. So when Netflix announced that Kim Bosnia will portray Vesemir in season 2 of its Witcher series, I dove into the wiki to get a little more background on the character. Predictably, I fell down the wikihole and landed on the School of the Cat, whose members have branched out from monster hunting into spying and assassinations, and are also apparently a little high-strung, to put it politely. They have some pretty serious bad blood with the School of the Wolf, too—that'd be Geralt's group—but hey, cats and dogs, right?

Anyway, if we're going to make a new Witcher game, I'd like to see this group take center stage. Make it a low fantasy Splinter Cell, with lots of stealth and quiet murder, and pure mercenary greed in place of Geralt's stoic heroism. Remember the guy in the cinematic at the end of the first Witcher game? Like that, but sneakier. (And in the new game, he wins.)

A fresh start

Wes Fenlon: Ciri deserves her own game, but as I sit here pondering the idea of another grand Witcher RPG, I think I want it to take a bit more after Bioware's school of RPG design. Really all I mean by that is that I think the next game should let you play as a blank slate character, a young Witcher in training you entirely mold for yourself. 

One of the great strengths of The Witcher 3 is how defined a character Geralt is before you even take control of him, but I think CD Projekt has the chops to do a totally fresh character well, too. If the writing is still good, I'd love to see a Witcher game that feels boldly different from what we've played before. 

From our forum

XoRn: The finale of the first season has me liking the idea of an RTS. Seiges, teleportation, fireball bombardments that require sacrificial units and mind control worms? Yes please.

A grand strategy could work equally well. Maybe just combine the two and get The Witcher: Total War?

OsaX Nymloth: Other Witcher schools—we know very little of them, their history. How come they were created, who founded them, why the differences. It could be even a prequel of sorts, showing the origins of witchers and different schools in times when humans had no reliable way of fighting off the monsters. That would also mean elf and non-humans being more prominent as well. There's lot of potential in the world.

Sarafan: CD Projekt Red clearly stated that we won't be playing as Geralt in the next Witcher game. His story is over, so the developers will have to think something new. I would like to play as a custom Witcher. You would choose a Witcher school in the character creation screen and select the appropriate skills. It would be good to have more options in developing your main character than in the previous Witcher games. As for the setting, I would go for the times when the Witcher schools were thriving.

Daxn: A Witcher in Ofier! I don't really mind if it's Ciri, Geralt or any other character. After playing Hearts of Stone, all I could think about is going to freaking Ofier. That place sounds too cool.

DrLimerep: Continuing Ciri's story would be my first choice, but it would be cool to explore another part of that universe that we haven't seen before. For example, a prequel set in a different part of the continent, such as Zerrakanaia.