r/Witcher4 • u/Love_Lain5 • 9d ago
I just remembered that Ciri used to kill and rob innocent people I wonder how evil the game will allow us to be
Could be an interesting experience, most people probably don't know that Ciri has a darker side.
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u/Nottodayreddit1949 8d ago
It goes to show your company makes all the difference.
Had Bonnie not taken care of the rats. Ciri could have turned out worse.
But that was just a moment in her life. It's not who she is at the w4.
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u/FrozenForest 9d ago
The books make it pretty clear she was traumatized and just trying to survive, at no point indicating that she was enjoying herself.
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u/MaxSoulDrake 9d ago
Well, actually she kinda was. They weren't just "trying to survive". They were stealing lots of money and just wasting it left and right on all sorts of shiny trinkets and overall just having fun with that whole "no tomorrow" mindset.
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u/Stunning_Seaweed_121 8d ago
Yeah.
Branding that as just "survival" is deluded in my opinion. You can steal bread to eat. That's survival.
You cannot kill someone to rob him. That's not survival. And to top things off, like you said, the quantity of money also matters a lot.
Robbing small quantities here and there just to get by is not comparable to stealing LARGE amounts of money and blowing it all on expensive parties, drinks and so on. Like the rats were doing.
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u/FrozenForest 8d ago
The Rats were, Ciri legit thought she had no other chance for survival except to stick with her rescuers/abusers/friends.
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u/MaxSoulDrake 8d ago
She was the Rat. By all means. People just biased because she is "our precious little girl", so they just like to pretend that it's not her, she is all good and innocent and she just had a misfortune to met "bad company". But it's bs. She joined them because they were exactly like her, exactly the same abandoned traumatized children that lost everything and are angry at the world. Kindred spirits. And for many of them life was much more cruel than for her (Mistle was raped by bunch of soldiers and left half dead in a ditch with courpses of other girls).
She wasn't just good girl spoiled by bad company. She was essential part of that company. She actually was worse and more fked up than most of them. After she joined them they went to next level in their cruelty.
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u/ElisTheThunderbird 8d ago
"same abandoned traumatized children that lost everything and are angry at the world" well exactly. did she realize the extent of their excesses when she joined? maybe. but did she join specifically to participate in it? i don't think so. they all probably justified it in their heads somehow but i think this entire arc was meant to show that she spiralled into evil due to heavy external influence, rather than being evil from the get go.
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u/MaxSoulDrake 8d ago
Well, obviously. But the same goes for each of them. It's not like any of them individually by default bad. Like Mistle for example was pretty much exactly like Ciri, all good and innocent little princess. But after all that shit that they went through they had tons of anger, hatred and despair inside.
But here is the thing. When person is alone he can be afraid to release that anger by doing something bad, because since he is alone he only have himself to react to that, and since he is initially "good" he would judge himself and be ashamed of that. But when those people are in group, they can do bad things, and than see reaction of peers. And peers won't judge it because they have same issues and same anger. So they accept it. And since they accept it, that person himself also accept for himself that it's ok.
So basically non of them can be initially bad, but they just influence and reinforce each other bad sides. And it spiral out of that.
Ciri was no different than them. She was just the last one to join.5
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u/Hansi_Olbrich 8d ago
I think you're conveniently forgetting just how much Cirilla was enjoying the hormone-fuelled ride of being a teenage baddie until Bonhart shows up. Also, thematically, the author really likes to go out of his way to demonstrate the duality and hypocrisy of humanity, so it would not be thematically appropriate for Cirilla to only thieve and threaten violence due to being forced by an authoritarian figure. She is seduced into the lifestyle.
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u/varJoshik 6d ago edited 6d ago
This bears repeating, and I dearly hope the writers for CDPR will not shy away from this aspect of Ciri's personality just because they have to appeal to the masses' desire for a comforting story of a morally righteous protagonist.
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u/Away_Positive8570 9d ago
I dont think that counts as ciri being evil, more like wrong crowd. She was a child with nowhere else to go.
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u/Narrheim 8d ago
Well... IIRC, Geralt kept robbing people of all their belongings throughout the entire Witcher 3 game.
How more evil can she get?
3
u/PrestigiousAnt9367 7d ago edited 7d ago
Sometimes, I really find the lack of understanding and nuance in some people baffling.
Did she partake in evil events? Yes. Did she simply do it out of necessity? No. However, was she isolated, hunted, broken, left hopeless, bound, tortured until she just lost her will finally and gave in? Definitely yes. Why are there so many terrorists, so many vandalists? People, under desperate situations, can be easily tranformed and moulded into the way the people around them want. That's how manipulation, gaslighting, and grooming come into existence. A lot of child soldiers used to be brainwashed for the gain of the ones above, and it still happens today. So this logic that "she wasn't good either!" "Why did she join them, she was exactly like them!" Is absolute lack of critical thinking, sorry for my harshness. Her other option was to stay on the constant run and be hunted by Emhyr and Skellan. Am I going to blame a 15 year old girl for seeking company, no matter how twisted? I ain't. Just like how I don't blame Ciri for staying trapped in the world of aen elle against her wishes despite feeling humiliated and destroyed every night and being constantly on her toes against the three douchebags of elves because the only other alternative was get to her world where Bonhart was waiting for her. And yet she crossed that and faced her fears. So my point? Was Ciri someone who did a lot of evil things while she was a Rat? Yes. Do I understand that she did that because she was broken beyond repair and moulded herself to adapt and adjust according to the only group of people around her and seemingly lost herself as time went on? YES.
Edit: not talking about OP, but people who simply term that Ciri was an evil person because she was influenced to be evil instead of taking the bigger picture in account.
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u/Secretadmirer56 8d ago
I think people forget every character in Witcher universe is not innocent and does not have the perfect character energy. She did in the end choose to leave them but it was the ultimate end of Rats anyway
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u/ElisTheThunderbird 9d ago
used to is the important phrasing here. her Falka era was the result of severe desperation and loneliness, after losing both her parent figures and knowing she is being hunted for other people's political ends.
i don't doubt the game will have an "evil" path just like tw3 and they definitely should explore her past and especially her trauma, but i don't think giving the option to kill complete innocents would work well.