1077841|Ciri||This is my story, not yours. You must let me finish telling it. — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , 2015

The first, original ending of The Witcher 3 from 2012 saw Ciri’s agency reduced at the end, as Geralt could talk her down from entering the Tower on Undvik. This ending saw the player having to choose between the life of his adopted daughter and sentient life everywhere, and the epilogue to the ending in which Geralt intervened, the ‘witcher-ending’, was bitter rather than uniformly happy, echoing the books in Ciri’s departure.

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323436|Hjalmar||[DEBUG] He calls all the islanders from the expedition, speaking to them referring to the legends and myths of Skellige to convince the warriors. 323438|Hjalmar||[DEBUG] He tells the audience that the elf Avallach is trying to open the rainbow bridge and trigger Ragnarok. He stole the Brisingamen crystal from Freya's temple. He convinces the warriors to act. 323440||[DEBUG] Hjalmar states that regardless of the past discord between the clans, they must unite and stop Avallach. 323442|Geralt||[DEBUG] He says he will help them in the fight. He shouts that another wave of monsters is coming.

323497|Mousesack||[DEBUG] He accosts Geralt, saying he needs to talk to him privately. He states there's something else he didn't want to tell everyone. 323499|Mousesack||[DEBUG] He mentions that, according to witnesses, Ciri knowingly helped Avallach steal the stone. 323501|Geralt||[DEBUG] He's surprised and asks if Mousesack has any idea what Avallach really wants to do, considering the Skelligan legends so skeptically. 323503|00000000||[DEBUG] He says that he thinks Avallach used Geralt to get rid of Eredin and the opposition among the elves. He probably wants the same thing as Eredin – power and an invasion of the witcher's world. 323505|Geralt||[DEBUG] He asks what the stone Avallach stole is. 323507|Mousesack||[DEBUG] He says it's a relic left on Skellige by the first elves. According to legend, it allows one to see connections between worlds.

323544|Mousesack||[DEBUG] He tells the witcher that he can't go any further with him. The unnatural cold has left him exhausted. 323552|Geralt||[DEBUG] He replies that he will go on alone. He will return for Mousesack later. 323554|Hern||[DEBUG] He curses the snowstorm and the monsters and says he is injured. 323556|Hern||[DEBUG] He states that his wounds are serious and he should go no further.

Geralt confronts Avallac’h in the Tower on Undvik.

323576|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He greets the witcher grimly, hoping he wouldn't follow them. 323578|Geralt||[DEBUG] He orders him to free Ciri. 323580|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He replies that Ciri is here of her own free will. 323582|Ciri||[DEBUG] She confirms Avallach's words. She explains to Geralt that they fled Novigrad secretly, knowing that Geralt would never agree to Avallach's plan. 323584|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He tells Geralt what his plan is. He doesn't care about power; he only wants to stop the cataclysm of white frost. 323586|Geralt||[DEBUG] He asks what this ritual is. 323588|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He says he must sacrifice his life and Ciri's. Only elder blood can close the passages between worlds.

[Geralt’s Choice] 323590|Geralt||[DEBUG] Convince Ciri to abandon her plan. 323594|Geralt||[DEBUG] He convinces Ciri that this plan is madness. It's unclear whether Avallac’h is right, and even if he is, the cataclysm could happen even hundreds of years from now. There must be another, better solution. [If Geralt has acquired enough positive rapport with Ciri over the course of the game (encouraging her to trust herself/be independent), then Ciri will be convinced.] 323596|Ciri||[DEBUG] She allows Geralt to convince him and apologizes to Avallac’h. 323598|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He states with sadness in his voice that he can't let them do this. The matter is too important, and too much depends on it, to squander it for selfish reasons.

Transition to battle.

323607|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He states that he doesn't want to harm the witcher, but he will if he has to. 323609|Geralt||[DEBUG] He replies that he could say the same. 323612|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He declares that it's not too late to stop this madness. 323614|Geralt||[DEBUG] He replies that Avallac’h should let them go then. 323616|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He states, irritated, that the witcher is as stubborn as all d’hoine. 323619|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He shouts at the witcher that this is too much. If the witcher doesn't come to his senses, Avallac’h will have to kill him.

323592|Geralt||[DEBUG] Allow the ritual to be completed. 323600|Geralt||[DEBUG] He sadly agrees that the cause is noble and Ciri has the right to decide her own fate. 323602|Avallac’h||[DEBUG] He thanks the witcher. He states that he has taught him a great deal about humanity and that in the past he has judged people too hastily. He bids the witcher farewell. 323604|Ciri||[DEBUG] She bids Geralt farewell.

Nothing is known about what happens with Avallac’h.

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556959|Geralt||Save your threats. You've lost. 556961|Eredin||As have you. Avallac'h tricked us both. 556963|Eredin||He had us fight one another… while he took Ciri. — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt , 2014

Fans have speculated about whether Avallac’h was supposed to be the final boss and true villain of the game. However, the ‘noble treason’ (storybook label) was not one in the malign sense of the word. The elf is not exploiting Ciri, forcing her to do something he himself would not do; he is willing to face death with her. Participating in the ritual that would claim both her and Avallac’h’s life is Ciri’s decision by default, and, in case Geralt convinces her not to go through with it, the player will later see Ciri regretting what happened in the Tower and going off anyway to try and put an end to the White Frost; on her own now.

The narrative also wanted the player to see Avallac’h’s point of view and empathise, starting from the symbolic Curse of Inversion that changed the elf into the Ugliest Man Alive, letting the player witness an inner journey of character development, to calling him out for creating the Wild Hunt despite now trying to dismantle it, to taking him and Geralt on a buddy-cop adventure Through Time and Space in a more elaborate manner while letting the player interrogate his motives (over a drink, too). Contrary to 2015, Geralt is more trusting of Avallac’h; likely because Geralt has more of a choice over the final part of the game. The narrative must sustain tension. Later, when all decision making is taken out of Geralt’s hands, he becomes more suspicious in order to add tension this way, but by then his suspicion amounts to nothing whereas in 2012 it amounted to a confrontation neither really wanted.

In short, Avallac’h in the original script was not written as a secret villain; at worst, a tragic fanatic.

In 2012, the game was more of a personal and philosophical struggle between two male figures over the soul and destiny of the woman connected to them. It was very in line with the confrontation between Geralt and Avallac’h in The Tower of the Swallow :

‘Secondly, now that she has taken the right road, the Swallow will cope wonderfully by herself. She carries too mighty a force inside her to fear anything. She doesn’t need your help. And thirdly… Hmmm…’

‘I’m still all ears, Avallac’h. All ears!’

‘Thirdly… Thirdly, someone else will help her now. You can’t be so arrogant as to think that the girl’s destiny is exclusively bound to you.’

Whose influence wins out? The notion of ‘we owe the world?’ or ‘if this is what it takes to save the world, better to let it die.’ Except unlike in the books, Geralt lacks the stronger argument, because nothing Ciri does is degrading or forced. By default, the heroic act is by her choice. That Avallac’h cannot accept her changing her mind is a different question. (His refusal echoes his wound from the books: a Plan that he deems inevitable and necessary, a person he cares about who has agreed to help, foiled by mortal mutant. Geralt may be taking Cregennan's role here when he characterises his intervention as 'selfish.') As is the inversion of the White Frost, which makes writing such a story possible at all (i.e. creating conditions in which Geralt is not obviously in the right, because Ciri's power now is needed to seal rather than breed).

(You can really feel how much of the the games’ narrative is the way it is because they wanted to avoid the topic of ‘Ciri’s children’, which is a little too mature for Western gaming audiences, I suppose.) (The White Frost in the games is the cold that pours through the cracks between places and times, and exists basically because you’ve had elves and unicorns ripping holes in the fabric of reality for a millennia or so.)

Choices

The original ending questions Geralt’s parental love, casting a more morally ambiguous light on it and shifts his role from empowerment to potentially selfish and controlling intervention. His intervention is completely understandable, but has dire consequences and implications nevertheless. The question the 2012 script seems to pose is:

• If you fear your daughter has made the wrong decision, but have no way of verifying this, should you let her go through with her decision anyway?

Decisions the player makes during the game, acting as a kind of role model with his own values, will end up determining whether or not Geralt manages to build enough rapport with Ciri to be able to intervene with her plan in the Tower. So not only does the player get the choice to intervene, there is a chance that when you choose to try and stop Ciri you can fail. It almost feels like the scales are stacked against being able to stop the pair’s co-sacrifice because in some sense that is how heavily love weighs against duty, reasoning, and taking ‘the god’s eye perspective.’

The player’s hand is not held quite as much and the stakes are high. Because the epilogues of the published game ring out almost like fairy tales – ‘there was this mysterious cataclysmic force and now it’s handled and the handler is alive and well and everything is well.’ Geralt’s decisions’ only real influence is on whether Ciri will decide to return to him; it has no direct effect on the fate of worlds.

Meaningful player choice is always an aspiration and a point of pride for CD Projekt. The decisions players make always end up having some impact on Ciri but the story structure became more lenient toward the player with the 2014 rewrite. It made the player more of a spectator to a bigger story unfolding around them. Now, considering that Ciri’s trilogy was already in the plans, this is understandable, but also leaves us with questions as to what could such changes mean going forward?

The published game is more family-friendly, consoling the parent rather than injecting them with anxiety: we can just do our best and hope, without knowing which of our behaviours end up mattering in influencing our children’s choices. It judges Geralt less, but it also asks less of him.

The player never has to ponder the orb: in what circumstances are we truly compelled to override someone’s agency while also loving them and wishing for them to do what feels right, and when, if at all, is overriding someone else’s independence justifiable? The published game never makes the player uncomfortable about our stances maybe doing some harm; everything is reframed so that trusting Ciri is always correct and Avallac’h’s motives are always a little suspect, and in the end it flatters both the player and Geralt. But it’s a little less interesting story by way of letting us off the hook.

Then again, what you owe the world vs what you owe the people you love is a more divisive sell. And while this is a richer dilemma for the player, it comes at the expense of Ciri and an unimpeachable will of her own.

Co-sacrifice

This shared martyrdom seems like a dark reflection of Cregennan’s and Lara’s love story and end; a kind of liebestod between two people sharing a perspective that Geralt can never have. Particularly since Avallac’h in this script has come to see Ciri as ‘a wonderful person’ and undergone character growth (culminating with his admission that Geralt ‘taught him a great deal about humanity’ and that he was wrong about humans).

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I am recording the dialogues from the epilogues from the 2012-2014 game. They include:

• Ciri Tries Being a Witcher
• Ciri as Empress
• Ciri Sacrifices Herself

They are all incredibly bittersweet if not outright lacking in sugar. I love them.

Please note that I have used these gentlemen's plot summaries for some of the descriptive action.

(Epilogue) Ciri Tries Being a Witcher

This ending is achieved if Geralt managed to convince Ciri to abandon her plan with Avallac’h and prevented Ciri from becoming close to Voorhis.

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Geralt and Ciri are out fishing around the outskirts of Novigrad. Nearby, between the trees at the edge of the forest, you can see an old mill, whose wheel is powered by a fast-flowing stream. The orange sun slowly sets, hiding behind a wooden building. The forest is getting dark and gray. Ciri is holding an envelope, on which the Nilfgaardian seal with the sun in the coat of arms is clearly visible. The girl's hands break the sealing wax with a crack. Ciri beings to read the message,

365351|Ciri||We, Emhyr var Emreis, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd, blah blah blah… Emperor of Nilfgaard, we summon Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, rightful heir to the crown, to the imperial court in the city of Nilfgaard, blah blah blah… 365355|Geralt||Read, don't blah. 365357|Ciri||This is terribly boring. Couldn't he have written normally, like to his daughter? 365359|Geralt||Normally, you could write a letter of greetings, but I'm guessing this one deals with more serious matters. 365362|Ciri||Even much more serious. Emhyr wants to abdicate and put me on the throne. 365365|Geralt||Well, well... I've done many things in my life, but I've never looked for traces of bruxa with the Empress. 365367|Ciri||And you won't. 365369|Geralt||No one is asking you to do that. 365371|Ciri||I'm glad we agree on this.

Ciri slowly, methodically tears the paper into small shreds, which she throws into the stream flowing toward the mill. The parchment particles are carried away by the current.

365392|Geralt||Are you sure about this? 365394|Ciri||Politics stinks worse than a rotting corpse. 365396|Geralt||Let's find out. 365399|Geralt||Perhaps you should return to the inn after all. 365401|Ciri||Are you trying to insult me? 365405|Geralt||What do you think? 365417|Ciri||Screw you. 365419|Ciri||Would you leave a friend in a situation like that? 365421|Geralt||Now I'm a witcher first and foremost. 365423|Ciri||Me too.

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