Cyberpunk 2077 game director Adam Badowski is not a fan of a certain The Witcher 3 fan theory that has been making the rounds since the E3 2018 reveal trailer.
Ever since developer CD Projekt Red first announced Cyberpunk 2077 fans have been curious to know if it is truly a standalone series or if it connects to the studio’s other popular franchise, The Witcher. On its face, the beliefs sounded far-fetched but there is a scene in The Witcher 3 that gave credence to theories that Ciri might appear in Cyberpunk 2077. However, those theories will remain just that, as game director Adam Badowski says there are no plans to “join universes.”
During an E3 2018 interview with Polygon, Badowski was asked whether or not players could expect to see Ciri pop up in Cyberpunk 2077, either as an Easter Egg or an NPC. But Badowski didn’t simply say, “no,” he reportedly put his head in his hands and said that he hated that question.
Given that Ciri describes a place eerily similar to Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City in The Witcher 3, there were bound to be questions about the two universes crossing over. It seemed like CD Projekt Red had put in the scene specifically to prepare fans for its next game and maybe to leave the door open for a Ciri cameo. Turns out that is not the case.
Badowski even acknowledges that there are members of the Cyberpunk 2077 development team that would like to see Ciri appear in the game, but he says that, “We are not Kingdom Hearts.” Clearly the man has strong feelings about having characters from one property appear in another.
While it is possible that Badowski is simply trying to misdirect fans, he does sound pretty definitive. Maybe a developer will be able to sneak in a playful nod to The Witcher 3 character but anything meaningful is unlikely to happen.
Still, the fact that fans were able to connect the dots between Ciri’s description of a world with houses of glass and people with metal in their heads and Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty impressive. Fans even went so far as to take Ciri’s dialogue and use it to narrate the Cyberpunk 2077 reveal trailer, and it works surprisingly well.
Cyberpunk 2077 is slated to release for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
