Anyone who plays through The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is invited to make a choice between the two great loves of Geralt of Rivia: Yennefer of Vengerberg or Triss Merigold. That decision even informs the game’s farewell to Geralt. However, CD Projekt Red has recently disclosed that players didn’t always get to choose between Geralt’s lovers.
CD Projekt Red co-CEO Adam Badowski told PC Gamer that the option to romance Triss was added late in the game. Until then, the team had been focusing on Geralt’s relationship with Yennefer. But adding Triss back into Geralt’s heart gave the game more personality .
“[The romance with Triss] wasn’t [there] from the beginning,” recalled Badowski. “But at some point we understood that this lack of conflict, personal conflict… There was a lack of something… This decision was made pretty late, but it was great. It was a great decision.”
The Witcher video games take place beyond the original stories by author Andrzej Sapkowski, and CD Projekt Red didn’t bring Yennefer or Ceri into the narrative until the third game. Conversely, Triss had a much bigger role in the first two Witcher games and she was one of Geralt’s primary romance options. If the possibility of romancing Triss had been absent from The Witcher 3, it would have been a missed opportunity to continue that romantic thread.
Although the game celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, CD Projekt Red is planning one final patch for The Witcher 3 that will introduce mod support for the game’s console ports. CD Projekt Red is also currently developing The Witcher 4, as well as a remake of The Witcher. Both titles will be built using Unreal Engine 5, and The Witcher 4’s tech demo offered a glimpse at how that may look when the game is eventually released.
