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Originally Posted by Indian Chief
I just read through the article quickly and maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything over the top in that regard. There was one question and answer that touched on the subject, but I don't have any issues with it.
Spoiler!
Coming back to Ciri more broadly, there was a sense with The Witcher 3, and I think a lot of Witcher fiction as a whole - the TV series as well as the books - that this is a man's world, and that the experience of a woman is actively quite a significant theme in The Witcher in a lot of different forms. The women of this world are subjected to a lot of violence, they're heavily sexualized in different ways. There's the kind of 'deal with the devil' that sorceresses have to have to make where they lose their fertility and so on. Watching the trailer, it seemed to maybe channel this: there's Ciri, a woman trying and failing to save another woman from more of this universe's violence, right? Is that an intentional theme that you were channeling with the trailer? And also, is it something you're intentionally looking to explore in the game, the experience of a woman in particular through Ciri's eyes in this world?
Weber: I mean, I would say the world of The Witcher is a really dark one that's really inspired by, of course, dark fantasy folklore. But also medieval to early Renaissance history, and that is a world that was tough - tough for many different groups, women among them. As an example, in The Witcher, we also deal a lot with racism when it comes to non-humans, and this is something that we want to keep up with The Witcher 4. I think it's something that has always been really important. We make games for adults, and it also means that we tackle some difficult topics. We tackle them in interesting ways. We tackle them without giving easy answers, but often opening difficult questions that players have to answer. And I think some of those questions might be going in this direction as well, because, yeah, Ciri is a woman, and as a witcher in this world, this is an unusual state. So I don't think it's going to be this story everywhere, but since this is a part of this world, and we want to tackle so many of those different themes, it's definitely also going to appear there as well.
The question was more leading in that direction and the answer was fair in regards to the world of The Witcher. |
It's not that it's egregious or anything. I just don't enjoy it.
I don't play RPGs to have the entire story dictated to me ostensibly because of the devs' choice of main character.
It's not about DEI for me. Baldurs Gate has plenty of DEI. It also has a shit ton of player agency. This just seems like CDPR doubling down on telling the story as strictly as possible, this making choice an illusion.
I mean, they're invalidating some of the possible outcomes of 3 to make Ciri the protagonist in 4. I guess for me it comes down to if I wanted to play this much story force fed to me, I'd just play the Last of Us.