Where The Witcher can (and should) go after the ending of The Witcher 3

polygon.com:

Almost seven years after behemoth role-playing game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched to critical acclaim, Polish developer CD Projekt Red has finally confirmed what most of us already knew: a new Witchergame is in active development.

What people are less likely to be well-versed on is what exactly this might entail for the series. Is this The Witcher4, a direct continuation of The Witcher3, or a totally new story? Will it incorporate original characters from Netflix’s enormously successful adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s saga? Most importantly of all, what has become of everyone’s favorite monster-hunting weatherman — without the White Wolf, how will anyone know when the wind’s howling?

The natural place to start is at the end of The Witcher 3. Interestingly, there are two endings worth considering here: the end of the core game, and the end of Blood and Wine, the game’s second major expansion.

The former is arguably a better indicator of what’s to come, but the latter gives us Geralt of Rivia’s beloved swan song — a performance so perfect that a return to the stage could only end in disaster. A future cameo from Geralt in a similar vein to Kazuma Kiryu in Yakuza: Like A Dragonor Emil in Nier: Automatacould be tasteful, but anything more than that … look, Geralt’s been through a lot. Let him drink his wine in peace.

It’s more worthwhile to look at the original, widely considered-to-be-canon ending for The Witcher 3. For those who are a little hazy on the details, there are three main ending scenarios in The Witcher 3: Ciri becomes a witcher, Ciri becomes the Empress, or Ciri dies. It’s also possible that Geralt dies in that last ending, although you never actually see him being killed — it’s just implied by the fact