The last thing you expect to see in Cyberpunk 2077’s futuristic world filled with hovering cars, a helluva lot of neon signs, and implants in your eyeholes is an ashen-haired woman outfitted in fantasy gear. Carrying a sword. But pay enough attention to a particular quote in The Witcher 3 and suggestions dropped by none other than Geralt’s voice actor and there’s a strong case for Ciri (briefly) appearing in Cyberpunk 2077.
BE WARNED: if you haven’t finished The Witcher 3, or have a strong desire to delve into the books, don’t read any further. You have been warned.
Ciri, the interdimensional traveller
See, *deep breath* Ciri is otherwise known as the Lady of Space and Time, a title which gives you a fairly strong hint about the kinds of powers she has. As a Source, she was born with innate magical prowess that’s incredibly hard to control. Plus she has the Elder Blood, an Elven gene (or curse, depending on how you look at it) that imbues her with even more magical power. So much, in fact, that she’s one of the few beings who can open interdimensional gateways created for the sole purpose of invading other realms by the Wild Hunt elves. That means that during the events of The Witcher 3 she’s being pursued by the Wild Hunt so they can use her as a living key to other worlds. Nasty.
These gateways can go anywhere, to any time. In the books they sent Ciri to medieval Europe, where she accidentally kickstarted started the Bubonic Plague. But a brief speech of hers in the Witcher implies that she’s already visited the world of Cyberpunk 2077 once...so there’s a chance that she could have a cameo in CD Projekt Red’s futuristic RPG.
When talking to Geralt, Ciri talks about her time in other worlds. Specifically, one sounds very familiar indeed. In her own words:
“I fled through many worlds, many times...They came very close to catching me, once. It was then that Avallac’h appeared, out of nowhere. He found a portal and took us to a world where Eredin couldn’t find us for...oh, perhaps half a year...People there had metal in their heads, waged war from a distance, using things similar to megascopes. And there were no horses everyone had their own flying ship instead.”
Without a doubt, she’s talking about Night City, or at least one of the metropolises where Cyberpunk 2077 is set. Its inhabitants can implant microchips into their heads - just like the metal Ciri mentions - like the Kiroshi optical scanner, which shows you extra details about the objects and people in your eyeline. It doesn’t take a bit of high-powered tech to figure out that “waging war from a distance” refers to remote-controlled drones or nuclear warfare accessed at the push of a button, all used with something like a megascope (the fantasy equivalent of video calls and teleporting). Plus we’ve already seen many a “flying ship” in action in the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 trailer. So yeah, Ciri almost definitely spent half a year in Night City.
But wait, there’s more
Other evidence also points to Ciri popping up in the future. As well as potentially appearing in the next game set in the world of the Witcher (just don’t expect the next one to be called The Witcher 4), even Geralt’s voice actor Doug Cockle has mentioned that the ashen-haired one could visit other worlds in the future. During a talk with Gamereactor, he says that “this is my own opinion, and CD Projekt Red knows what they are doing, and I have no idea what the plan is, but... If I was CD Projekt Red, I would make The Witcher 4, but I would be focusing on Ciri. In The Witcher 3 she hints at visiting other worlds (including Cyberpunk 2077!), and I think a game around her visiting those different worlds would be a cool Witcher 4”.
Perhaps a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077 could pave the way for a potential time-travelling, world-jumping next instalment in the Witcher franchise. Establishing that Ciri can teleport into other dimensions could even lay the groundwork for a time-skipping power, similar to the one used in the Titanfall 2’s story campaign. But there’s one rather critical thing to bear in mind - in order for a cameo to be a cameo, it can’t be a long, drawn-out sequence. Just a flash of grey hair in a crowd would be enough, or overhearing NPCs talk of a woman walking around with a sword. As we all learnt from Ed Sheeran’s appearance in Game of Thrones, making a big deal of a cameo kind of misses the point. Not to mention that when Ciri was last in Night City she was hiding from the Wild Hunt, so she’d likely be trying to escape notice. Either way, Ciri popping up in Cyberpunk 2077 could signal big things for the Witcher franchise - or just be a discrete little nod to fans everywhere.
