CD Projekt Red’s six-minute CG trailer offered an evocative short story, introducing us to a young woman whose small, secluded village is offering her up to a monster in the neighboring forest. At least, they intend to, until a Witcher — bearing the telltale dual swords on their back — shows up at the sendoff ceremony. That Witcher is quickly revealed to be Ciri, who sets off into the woods to rescue the woman about to sacrifice herself.
Ciri achieves her goal, sending the woman back to her father. That means she must take on the terrifying monster in the woods herself. She does, and an epic battle ensues. Ciri wins, beheading the creature, then sets off back to the village. But when she gets there, she finds that the superstitious villagers have done what the monster could not, driving a knife through the young woman’s heart. Her father weeps with her dead against his chest.
A CG Trailer Doesn’t Tell Us Much
It’s a compelling trailer, telling an entire story in a matter of minutes. It manages to make you care about the young woman and her father, and it gets you to see Ciri as a fundamentally different kind of Witcher than Geralt was. In the trailer, she is driven by anger more than Geralt ever seemed to be. Geralt was a stoic, albeit good-hearted, monster hunter. He cared about people, but was in it for the coin at the end of the day. Ciri seems to be driven by a thirst for justice, and that’s a major distinction that will make it interesting to play as her.
It will probably be a long time before we get a chance to do that, especially if CD Projekt Red is following the same release strategy and schedule it did for Cyberpunk 2077. It can be difficult to remember at this point, but that game was revealed all the way back in 2013. Few people remember that trailer, as hype for the game really began to build when CD Projekt Red showed it off behind-closed-doors at E3 2018 and full production ramped up following the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That 48-minute long gameplay presentation, which was eventually posted online, really sold the potential of the game.
Rememberiing Cyberpunk 2077’s Original 2013 Trailer
But back in 2013, CD Projekt Red offered a short CG trailer that set the mood for Cyberpunk 2077 with a small glimpse of its world — as the police gunned down a synthetically enhanced woman in the street in slow-motion — but gave zero indication of what it would actually be like to play. The Witcher 4’s debut trailer was about three times as long, but showed just as little actual gameplay. Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t launch until 2020, meaning there was a seven-year gap between reveal and release. Whether the game was being worked on full-time during this long period doesn’t matter when expectations were already being set for its audience.
That was a slightly different case as, when CD Projekt Red unveiled Cyberpunk 2077, it was in the middle of The Witcher 3 development. As far as we know, The Witcher 4 is getting the lion’s share of CDPR’s attention. There isn’t another huge RPG it needs to ship first. And yet, games are taking longer and longer to develop. The Witcher 3 was CDPR’s main focus for four years, Cyberpunk was its main focus for five years. Four years have already passed since Cyberpunk launched and here we are with a CG trailer that risks making all of the same mistakes.
In both cases, CDPR put out quality expansions after the base game. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine followed within a year of The Witcher 3, and Phantom Liberty launched three years after Cyberpunk 2077.
CDPR could surprise us and launch The Witcher 4 in the next few years, but I think it’s much more likely that The Game Awards trailer was a statement of intent, just like that 2013 Cyberpunk CG trailer. If we’re playing Ciri’s big adventure before 2031, CDPR will be bucking its own trend and the broader industry trend of longer development cycles. I would love for that to be the case. But, for now, well… it was a nice trailer.
