My thoughts on this...
First of all, the W4 trailer Ciri has clearly been uglified:
This doesn't bode well for the aesthetics of the game.
My impressions are very different: what I find most striking about the
Witcher IV trailer is just how much it
looks like an extension of
The Witcher III. The lighting, materials and colours, how the trees are rendered. I can't go back and strip out my knowledge of what game the trailer is for, but if it were possible to run that experiment I think there's a good chance I could identify the trailer as depicting a
Witcher game from some of the landscape, village and secondary character shots alone. The art style is very consistent despite the >10-year gap between entries.
Regarding the character design, I think
one aspect of what we are seeing in that trailer is a consequence of maintaining that consistent art style with increased fidelity. The
Witcher games have a gritty, low-stylization aesthetic that befits the world they are set in, with characters more-or-less integrated into that world (contrast with something like
Stellar Blade where there is a noticeable gap between how its characters are rendered compared to the surrounding environments, or any number of games that have entirely different aesthetic/tonal presentations). The consequence is that as fidelity ramps up, characters appear less photogenic. It's similar to the phenomenon that the more recent
Mortal Kombat games have been grappling with: the brutal "fatalities" that are a signature feature of that franchise have become an increasingly dubious asset as the fidelity of their rendering has increased, such that what were once hilarious depictions of cartoonish violence are now increasingly gruesome and off-putting. For what it's worth, I think we can safely assume that there will be several soirée/dress-up opportunities in TW4 just as there were in TW3. I mean, the cinematic trailer for TW3 didn't exactly capture the full range of that game's tonal expression either:
I'm disappointed that they have changed Ciri's voice actor, though. Jo Wyatt was great in TW3.
Second, in the W4 trailer, we see Ciri using the exact same tactics as Geralt when fighting the monster.
From a lore point of view, this makes no sense. In order to drink Witcher potions, you have to undergo the Trial of Grasses, a process so dangerous only 3 out of 10 boys survive, and it has only ever been used on prepubescent boys, while Ciri is an adult woman. Why would Ciri undergo such a dangerous process just to gain some minor Witcher powers when she has the Elder Blood in her?
From a meta point of view, CDPR could have made Ciri the protagonist, even a Witcher, but they could have made her a teleporting, magic-using character. This would have opened up a whole new system of gameplay. Instead, CDPR decided to rehash the same potion/sign/swordplay formula they've been using in the last 3 games. This shows a lack of desire for innovation, which doesn't bode well for the gameplay and narrative of the game.
I think
The Witcher IV trailer sought to demonstrate three things:
1. That Ciri is the new main character.
2. That Ciri is a witcher.
3. That
The Witcher IV is still a
Witcher game: aesthetically, tonally, morally.
#2 is why the trailer goes out of its way to show the two swords, the medallion, the potions and the signs. Showing something that doesn't fit with what we know of Geralt and witchers would undermine the clarity of that message.
I would be surprised if Ciri's abilities in TW4 duplicate Geralt's exactly, but at the same time I wouldn't expect them to deviate too far from that formula. A successful new chapter requires both change and continuity: too much continuity risks stagnation, too much change risks a loss of identity. There is a clearly a large narrative gap to be covered to account for Ciri being de-powered to step into the Geralt's shoes as a witcher, the question is if you trust CDPR to bridge that gap in a compelling and satisfying way. Personally, I do. For all the flaws in CDPR's games that folks can reasonably point to, their characters and writing have been their most consistent strengths. That doesn't mean they're guaranteed to be successful this time around, but it means I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes it doesn't work out: I reserved my judgement regarding
Redfall based upon Arkane's previous stellar games (the
Dishonored franchise and
Prey) and was ultimately disappointed. Other times one is pleasantly surprised, as with how Denis Villeneuve's
Blade Runner 2049 turned out to be a worthy sequel to
Blade Runner.
The amnesia that Geralt suffers in the first two
Witcher games is arguably as significant a deviation from the source material (Sapkowski's books) as making Ciri a witcher is. Slavish adherence to the source material is not necessarily a recipe for success. Nor is casually picking-and-choosing from that material what to use and what to discard likely to be a recipe for success. If changes are necessary, they should be clearly motivated to productive ends (in the case of Geralt's amnesia, it was to allow the character to discover the world in concert with the player and to provide greater latitude for the player to make choices based on their own instincts) and with the full range of implications having been thought through. There are lots of folks who were disappointed by certain changes that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens made to Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings in creating their trilogy of films, such as the complete omission of the character Tom Bombadil, but it's also clear that those were carefully considered choices made by people with deep knowledge of and respect for the source material who nonetheless had to tell a story in an altogether different medium with different constraints. Conversely, the more recent backlash against
The Witcher TV series, or Amazon's
Rings of Power, appears to stem from the deeper sense that the people running these shows have little regard for the source material. Perhaps if I had actually read Sapkowski's novels I might feel otherwise, but at the moment my impression is that CDPR is on the Peter Jackson/LOTR end of that spectrum.
