Will Ciri from The Witcher be in Cyberpunk 2077?

They don't call beloved Witcher character Ciri the Lady of Space and Time for nothing. Among her many magical talents is the ability to conjure up portals (Geralt hates portals) and skip merrily between different worlds and planes of existence. This is thanks to the elder blood running through her veins, a result of her being a descendant of a powerful elven sorceress.

But enough lore. This ain't the Witcher wiki. We're here to talk about a fan theory that has been drifting around the internet for years: will Ciri appear in Witcher developer CD Projekt Red's next big RPG, Cyberpunk 2077? It seems like a wild flight of fancy, the stuff of poorly written fan fiction, but there might be something to it. Consider this conversation from The Witcher 3.

Ciri: "[Avallac'h] found a portal and took us to a world where Eredin couldn't find us for... oh, perhaps half a year."
Geralt: "What was that world?"
Ciri: "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Geralt: "Try me."
Ciri: "I saw houses of glass. People there had metal in their heads, waged war from a distance, using things similar to megascopes. And there were no horses, everyone had their own flying ship instead."
Geralt: "Ciri, stop fooling around."
Ciri: "Told you you wouldn't believe me."

The world Ciri describes here sounds a lot like Cyberpunk 2077's dystopian future. Houses of glass? Sounds like skyscrapers to me. Metal in their heads? That's gotta be the cyber implants main character V (and pretty much everyone) in Night City has. Waged war from a distance? That's guns, baby. Flying ships? Flying cars, innit. Even if Ciri isn't describing Night City, it's a futuristic city of some kind, and I love the idea of her hanging out there for six months, impressing the cyberpunks with her sick medieval sword skills.

The problem is, at least one high-up member of the Cyberpunk 2077 development team hates the idea. Or at least hated it back in 2018, according to this Polygon interview. When asked about Ciri possibly making an appearance in Night City, game director Adam Badowski said: "I hate this question. We are not Kingdom Hearts. We are not joining universes, and I know that there are a lot of fans on the team and they would like to have Ciri in the game. But I am totally against it, still.”

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I think Ciri is gonna make an appearance; just not in the way people are expecting. I highly doubt we'll be fighting alongside her, or even see her briefly hopping out of a portal. In the same way the conversation in The Witcher 3 kept it vague, it's likely we'll find a subtle reference to Ciri, probably hidden away on a computer somewhere. There'll be an email about a "strange white-haired woman with a scar" or something along those lines. Actually seeing her, unless it was a very well hidden easter egg, would feel a bit too much like fan service.

Then again, I did encounter some pretty wild cameos in Cyberpunk 2077 when I played it for my 15-hour preview, including a famous game designer and the voice of a character from a well known PC game. So maybe we will see Ciri leaping around with a sword, slicing up cyber-gangsters and corporate goons. I guess it all depends on whether the rest of the Cyberpunk team were able to convince Badowski that it was a good idea after all.