Projekt Red - gamebastion.com

I don't think anyone saw it coming, but thanks to The Game Awards last night, we've been given our first look at The Witcher 4, and eagle-eyed fans have already spotted a clue that appears to canonize a certain Witcher 3 ending. 

In The Witcher 4 (which is actually called that, despite developer CD Projekt Red previously being rather noncommittal about the name), Ciri is the star of the show, and story director Tomasz Marchewka says that "from the very beginning we knew it had to be" her. As has been highlighted by fan @LastKnownMeal on Twitter, it appears that her story follows on from the ending to the third game that sees her become a witcher herself, after Geralt bestows the silver sword, Zireael, upon her. Lo and behold, she's a witcher in this trailer, and on top of that, we can also see that she appears to be carrying that very same sword. You can see its distinctive hilt with a ring shape at the top in the screenshot below. 

Same sword Ciri got from Geralt in The Witcher 3 it seems. pic.twitter.com/F1fTk6V5zkDecember 13, 2024

There are 36 different endings to The Witcher 3, which was always going to make creating any kind of direct continuation tricky. Who knows, perhaps it's not even so simple as following on from just one of them, but Zireael's presence is certainly compelling evidence to point to it being this one in particular. 

With six glorious minutes of trailer to pore over, I imagine that this is just the start of the theories Witcher fans are going to generate about the upcoming game and its plot. For a start, we already heard Geralt at the end, which suggests he'll have a role of some sort even if he's not the protagonist. Funnily enough, that'd also suggest that the rumor Geralt actor Doug Cockle accidentally shared earlier in the year is probably correct, even after he recently admitted to being "slapped by CD Projekt Red" over saying it.

You can check out all of last night's big news in our roundup of everything announced at The Game Awards

Doug Cockle