The Witcher 4 devs say romance will "absolutely" be a part of the RPG, it just has to be "super compelling and very meaningful"

News
By published

It's official, Ciri is single and available

The Witcher 4 cinematic screenshot showing a closeup of Ciri, protagonist of the new adventure
(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

The Witcher 3 is famous for its divisive love triangle, but an emotionally ambiguous, magical throuple could never stop developer CD Projekt Red from believing in love, so they promise The Witcher 4 will have enough of it. 

That's because romance is "a part of the way we make games," director Sebastian Kalemba tells GameSpot in a new interview. "It is a part of human nature. It's a very normal thing. Without that, I think we wouldn't be able to tell the very full story."

While Ciri hasn't yet had the chance to meaningfully explore romance in The Witcher games, Andrzej Sapkowski's books depict the powerful princess as having passionate relationships with both men and women, causing bisexual women around the universe (including me) to rejoice. One of us, one of us...  

But these flirtations – and most of Ciri's romantic experience, for that matter – are tinged with the sewer stink of assault, traumatizing Ciri throughout her exhausting coming-of-age. Ideally, The Witcher 4 allows Ciri to survey all her options in a safer environment where she gets to luxuriate in love, just like Geralt did before her. 

Encouragingly, though Kalemba avoided specifics in his GameSpot interview, providing Ciri with fruitful relationships seems to be part of CD Projekt Red's plan. Kalemba continues to tell GameSpot that, with The Witcher 4, "we want to pay a lot of attention to [romance] and make it super compelling and very meaningful."

"It's an important part of life," executive producer Małgorzata Mitręga agrees in the interview.

"So it's not just to make a romance for the sake of making a romance," Kalemba says. "That's not the CDPR way." 

CD Projekt Red says its "ambition is high, crazily high" with The Witcher 4 as devs hope to "apply all the lessons learned" from Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.