CD Projekt explain The Witcher 4's reveal trailer: "Geralt could have said this about Ciri as well"

rockpapershotgun.com:

The Witcher 4's moody and opulent announcement trailer is an "adaptation" of a planned quest from the forthcoming RPG, CD Projekt have confirmed, designed to show off both the "tough choices" in store and, more specifically, set new lead Ciri apart from previous protagonist Geralt by having her "mirror" another female character. All that's from a new making-of video, which also dips into the design of the announcement trailer's monster, the Bauk - part goblin, part scorpion, part jaguar and part dinosaur.

You probably don't need CD Projekt to spell these things out - the trailer framing is hardly subtle - but it's useful, nonetheless, to get some brief firsthand insight on how the trailer relates to the main game.

The trailer takes place in the village of Stromford, which has a tradition of sacrificing young girls to the Bauk to stop it coming into town and eating everybody. Classic Grendel shenanigans. Mioni is the latest sacrifice. She's also, in a way, Ciri's doppelganger. "Mioni and Ciri are a little bit [like] mirrors of each other," narrative director Philipp Weber comments in the video. "The traditions of Stromford mean that Mioni has to be sacrificed. That's her destiny, and she accepted that destiny. Ciri is known as somebody who does not accept destiny. She fights back at it."

The trailer plays up this mirroring by opening with Mioni being undressed and ritually bathed for the sacrifice, while Ciri is pictured armouring up. "We parallel the traditional preparations that Mioni goes through, and then the Witcher preparations that Ciri goes through," Weber adds.

The overall idea behind the trailer is to convey the emotional flow of a Witcher 4 quest, and convey that Ciri may respond differently to such situations than gruffalo grizzlybonce Geralt, hero of the first three Witcher video games. The trailer sort of positions Geralt as an oppressive figure, in fact. Of the accompanying voiceover from Mioni's father, who praises her sense of selflessness