In case you missed it, last week’s WitcherCon featured some pretty big reveals. On top of the Netflix series getting an official release date for season two and new DLC being announced for The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red is reportedly working on an all new Witcher comic called The Witcher: Ronin.
For what it’s worth, this is totally separate to The Witcher: Witch’s Lament, which is currently approaching its third issue. While Witch’s Lament is a great comic, I reckon it changes Geralt for the worse – in it, he’s a bit of a dick with next to nothing in common with the witcher we’ve come to know and love in the games, books, and Netflix series. Still, I’ll definitely check out the new entry when it launches in a couple of weeks’ time, which I will 100 percent end up writing about – look forward to it.
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Anyway, The Witcher: Ronin introduces a fascinating new spin on the existing Witcher universe in that it completely reimagines both Geralt and the world he inhabits. While what we see of The Continent in the books, games, and TV series is mostly based on Eastern Europe – although monster designs take inspiration from histories and mythologies as vast and varied as Portuguese vampire stories and the Furies of Ancient Greece – The Witcher: Ronin is set in a fictional region inspired by Japan. If you’re curious about what that might look like, be sure to check out the new Yennefer the Kunoichi figure that was recently unveiled on the CD Projekt Red store.
As well as the way Geralt dresses, the landscape and monsters inhabiting it will be directly derived from Japanese folklore. This is intriguing in and of itself – whether it be legendary creatures like the Koropokkuru, which you might recognize from Persona, or the Tange Sazen stories widely believed to be the inspiration for Sekiro, a Witcher story with Japanese folk elements is inherently imbued with potential. But on top of that, the fact this exists at all creates an endless amount of possibilities for what CD Projekt Red can do next – there are countless fascinating cultures and mythologies it can work with to create dozens of new Witcher stories.
Sure, up until now the world of The Witcher has been pretty uniform. Yes, we got to see the France-inspired Toussaint in The Witcher 3’s Blood & Wine DLC, and it’s true that we hear all about places like Kovir and Zerrikania in the books and codex entries from the games. Still, most of what we see transpires in the Northern Realms, with the games taking us to places like Temeria, Kaer Morhen, Redania, Kaedwen, and Aedirn – as well the occasional trip to Vizima. I love the stories told in The Witcher, but this newfound willingness to not just explore other areas, but reappropriate the entire shape of the universe into something new is ingenious.
Also – and this might be a little tinfoil-y – thanks to the Conjunction of the Spheres, there’s no reason to believe that this new iteration of Geralt can’t simultaneously exist alongside the one we already know. Because of Ciri’s unique position as the Lady of Space and Time, there is an admittedly far fetched but logically very real chance of her connecting this new comic to the timeline as we know it, somehow. What I mean is, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some sort of Zirael Easter egg in The Witcher: Ronin – although admittedly I would be even less surprised if that doesn’t happen, because it probably won’t. A man can dream!
That’s not why I’m writing this, though. While it would be cool to see multiple different versions of Geralt, and Dandelion, and Zoltan, and Yennefer, the real reason this is exciting is because it opens the door to all kinds of different cultural interpretations of this world. I’m from Dublin, right – I would love to see a version of Geralt that was akin to Cú Chulainn, roaming the 1st Century fields of Ireland hunting leviathan leshens and wicked wyverns. Hell, I’d even help write it – CD Projekt Red, you can find me on Twitter @cianmaher0.
Aside from that, there are dozens of countries that could be worked into this setting in a similar way to this new Japanese variant of The Witcher. If Ronin is a thing, the world is CD Projekt Red’s oyster.
I’m excited to read The Witcher: Ronin when it launches, not least because of the fact the current run of Witch’s Lament is excellent and remarkably distinct compared to other Witcher stories. Ronin looks like it could include some of the most unique Witcher material yet, though, and if this manages to be successful, we could see a whole host of ambitious new Witcher projects designed to expand the world in fascinating ways. Fingers crossed for The Witcher: Cú Chulainn, eh?
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