The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt / Tropes D to H

This page covers tropes found in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Tropes A to C | Tropes D To H | Tropes I to R | Tropes S to Z | Hearts Of Stone | Blood and Wine

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D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: On the PC, Alt no longer targets enemies - that's now Z. E is the "use" key instead of "block". More frustrating, however, is R's rebinding from throwing bombs, daggers, and using traps to using consumables.
• Dangerous Deserter:
  • These stalk the No-Man's Land, living on banditry, attacking travellers and remaining settlements with impunity.
  • Averted in the "Missing in Action" sidequest, where a Nilfgaardian deserter rescues the missing Nordling brother you're trying to find. You have to decide if the family should leave him behind, or take him in and risk incurring the wrath of the Nilfgaardian army.
• Darker and Edgier: Both this and Lighter and Softer are Zig Zagged compared to the previous two games. Due to Wild Hunt being much bigger and with more focus on player's choices than the previous games ^note The two bits of Downloadable Content Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine have as much content as the second game, and those two combined is only about a third of the base game's length., it is much richer in tone compare to its predecessors and thus defied categorization. While The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a straight-up Crapsack World tour and all choices are Sadistic Choice, Wild Hunt's tone varied greatly between area and choices. At its worst, Wild Hunt has much darker villains ^note the Crones, the Hunt, Whoreson Jr, the Concerned Citizen, storyline ^note Radovid's victory is straight up Alternate-History Nazi Victory level of horror and the inevitability of the White Frost push it toward Cosmic Horror Story. At its best, Geralt can actively make the world a better place both by being a Small Steps Hero or making Ciri an enlightened Queen of the North and South and Savior of the Multiverse by defeating the White Frost.
• Darkest Hour: Occurs during the Battle of Kaer Morhen when all seems lost after Vesemir's death and the enemies breaking through the front gate. But then Ciri undergoes a Traumatic Superpower Awakening and saves the day for the heroes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Geralt has always had an understated sense of humor but he just drops all pretense at respect around the Nilfgaardians. The one exception is the Emperor who, no matter what, he addresses using the proper title. He can still refuse to bow, though.
• Death Glare: Triss gives a pretty good one to Menge if she kills him.
• Death Seeker:
  • In the ending where Ciri dies, Geralt returns to Crookback Bog to fight the Weavess, despite the overpowering godlike power she is said to possess. She herself will even say outright that she knows "the smell of a suicide's breath."
  • A common course for Skelligers who, for whatever reason, want to redeem themselves. Also found among elderly who want to die in battle, like a true warrior. Shortly before Geralt arrives in Skellige, King Bran dies when he goes off to hunt a bear alone with nothing but a knife.
• Deconstruction: Many things that occurred or were taken for granted in the first game are made darker, sometimes more realistic, sometimes just worse for the hell of it.
  • In the first game, one of the earliest sidequests involves saving the first town's innkeeper from murderous drunks, and she rewards Geralt with gratitude and sex. Here, part of the first portion of the main quest also involves saving the first town's innkeeper from murderous drunks, but instead of being grateful to Geralt and rewarding him, the innkeeper is horrified that he just murdered several of her friends and neighbors over what turned out to be a misunderstanding, and asks him to leave, and much later attempts to sell him out to Novigrad's Witch Hunters.
  • Remember "Beauty and Beast" from the first game, where you could cure a man of his lycanthropy with the Power of Love? This game has a quest called "Wild at Heart," where it turns out the man who hired you to find his missing wife was a werewolf who unknowingly killed her. And worse, her jealous sister arranged for it to happen so she could have a chance to hook up with him. The quest can end in a couple of ways, and both of them involve the werewolf dying. The Power of Love is not always a good thing.
  • "Heat of the Day" from the first game gave the Geralt the opportunity to help both a Noonwraith and a Nightwraith reconcile with their pasts and pass on peacefully. In this game, there are quests to deal with Noonwraiths and Nightwraiths that are causing problems, but while they had similarly tragic and undeserved ends, they're so far gone that they can only be put down violently.
  • The series, both books and games, is infamous for the fact that Geralt Really Gets Around. Try to seduce both Triss and Yennefer, and they propose a threesome, handcuff Geralt to the bed, and mutually dump him.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • The Continent is, as usual, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-intellectual. Nilfgaard is slightly better, but they are waging an unprovoked war of aggression, and their soldiers still engage in raping and looting (just not quite as much as the Northern Realms).
  • The Skellige Isles are a lot more egalitarian than the rest of the mainland (note the women-at-arms labeled "Shieldmaidens" about the towns), being a more friendly place than the other areas of the game, and it's notable as being ruled over by a Reasonable Authority Figure who Geralt is on very good terms with. Even so, it still has its own cultural norms that don't match modern society's.
    • Women are traditionally expected to immolate themselves to death as a standard funerary rite for their husbands, a practice that both Yennefer and Birna find appalling. In fairness, even most of Skellige finds this practice outdated; when Bran's younger wife immolates herself, multiple people try and stop her, and Birna (as the elder wife) gets a lot of scorn for not stopping her or taking her place.
    • Kinsmen of criminals are cast out from society at best, and outright executed at worst, regardless of their personal involvement, judgment or knowledge of the crime in question. This applies even if the kinsmen themselves expose the wrongdoing, as Svanrige Bran can attest to in the Heroic Sacrifice entry below.
    • In many taverns and feasts in Skellige, the player will often find a scantily-clad dancer with the "name" Captive. Further, it's stated by other Skelligers that they commonly take "wenches" during raids, often to take as their brides and sometimes simply to "make use" of them. Absolutely no one has anything negative to say about this practice, although Geralt can look slightly puzzled.
• Dem Bones: You never fight actual skeletons in the game, but the Wild Hunt itself has its armor styled to look like skeletons.
• Demoted to Extra: The Scoia'tael, which played a big part in the previous two games and whom Geralt had the option to ally with, serve no role in the story here, and are only involved in a couple of side quests. Neither Iorveth nor Yaevinn make any appearances.
• Despair Event Horizon: Geralt crosses it in the Ciri dies ending. He becomes a Death Seeker and there is no Playable Epilogue.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Certain quests will end if finished before taking it, but information gained during that quest can be used to go elsewhere and pick up on a new thread, or simply see its conclusion unfold.
  • There's also a lot of thought put into simple, physical effects. If you try to run into Yennefer's teleport in Vizima, for example, you get transported elsewhere in the palace.
  • In the "Princess in Distress" quest, there's a bear to slay to proceed. If the bear is slain before taking the quest, Geralt will comment on it.
  • Doing quest events out of order (such as killing a beast that is part of a contract before taking the contract) has the diary note variations of "Geralt found the beast during his travels".
  • The first clue in the quest "Skellige's Most Wanted" that something is amiss is that you can request a maximum additional reward from the quest giver and they accept automatically. Everyone else will have their "annoyance" meter raised and only accept a payment closer to the middle of the range of payment.
  • If Geralt is wearing Cat School Witcher gear during "Where the Cat and Wolf Play", Gaetan will comment on it.
  • If Geralt explores an area (such as a room or cavern) and finds items or a landmark before a mission takes him there, he'll often reference this in dialogue. For example, the mission "Novigrad Dreaming" takes Geralt to a Haunted House. He can go straight to the person he needs to meet, or he can explore the basement and other rooms first. If he does the latter, this changes his dialogue when the mission requires him to find items in the house; he'll remember having seen them and say where they were ("I saw a cot on the second floor.").
  • Entire sections of dialog will alter depending on the order you do certain quests (most notably, which quest you do with a character first). Others will comment on your appearance. For example, in Blood and Wine, the duchess comments on whether you are wearing formalwear, wearing a mask (though she gives you a different one in any case) and either tells you to put your weapons away or congratulates you for doing it beforehand.
  • In one Blood and Wine quest, Geralt finds a human woman with a curse that changes her appearance to look like a bird. One solution to the quest allows Geralt to lift the curse but leaves the woman with the lifespan of a bird, seven years. Should you choose that option, she says that she will tour the world and travel to Skellige. One particularly determined player meditated for seven in-game years, then was able to locate her body in Skellige.
  • In Velen there's a military checkpoint on a bridge over a river where you either need a real pass from the Baron or a fake one to cross, if you try to swim across where the guards can see you they'll fire arrows at you because you're crossing the border illegally.
  • The Youtuber XLetalis has dedicated their entire channel to finding out examples of this trope in the game. As of the time of typing, they're still discovering new examples.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: That shifty-looking fellow named Gaunter O'Dimm, who you shared a drink and a few words with at the very beginning of the game? He turns out to be a soul-stealing evil sharing a number of characteristics with the Biblical Satan.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Battle of Kaer Morhen is built up as the finale. You gather all the allies you've made over the course of the game, you start to feel the ripple effects of choices you made dozens of hours ago, and it's all planned in preparation for the finding of Ciri, which you've spent the whole game doing. Naturally, things don't go entirely as planned and the journey continues.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • There are diagrams for Viper steel & silver swords in White Orchard. Be sure to collect them & craft the swords before slaying the griffin.
  • The General skill Gourmet increases vitality regeneration for 20 minutes which greatly boosts survivability and eases up combat. By mid-game, Geralt has other options to top up his vitality and the skill slot Gourmet is taking can go to something more useful.
  • In general, General skills provide a massive boost early in the game but became much less desirable later due to not having any synergy with Mutagens and being replaced by skills from other trees or better equipment.
  • For the Gwent minigame, Hero cards. At the start of the game, they have much higher strength than most other cards, they're immune to weather effects, and they can't be scorched off the field. Later Hero cards with strength under 15 and no effects become Boring, but Practical.
• Disposable Sex Worker:
  • King Radovid bribes Whoreson Junior with prostitutes without care for the fact that he's made a habit of brutally murdering them.
  • The quest "Carnal Sins" involves a serial killer who is attacking people with various sinful or heretical habits, and one of his targets appears to be a lower-class prostitute from Crippled Kate's. Turns out the guy Geralt catches torturing her isn't the killer, but he still gives her several horrible burns before Geralt arrives, and she can still be left to her fate afte Geralt realizes the man isn't the serial killer.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the DLC quest "Where the Cat and Wolf Play," a Cat school Witcher massacres an entire village because the ealderman cheated him out of his pay for hunting a leshen and tried to kill him.
• Distaff Counterpart: Ciri is the Deuteragonist of the Witcher series and, in many ways, the actual main character. In The Witcher 3 she is, visually, "female Geralt". She has virtually identical gameplay to him minus signs and plus a Flash Step, despite her enormous degree of power.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The more you do Triss' storyline, the more the Witch Hunting craze in Novigrad becomes less like actual witch-hunts and more like the Holocaust. Which, given one of the largest persecutions of Jews in Europe was the Spanish Inquisition^note Royal decrees forced Jews and Muslims to choose between leaving Spain with what they could carry, and no cash or jewelry, for a "homeland" they hadn't seen in generations, or convert to Christianity. Many left, many converted, some pretended to convert and carry on hidden religions to this day. As terrible a choice as that was, the Catholic Church viewed it as a real choice and, unlike with forced coversions, practitioners would be punished if it was faked. The Inquisition targed those crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims., actually isn't so far-fetched a parallel as you might think. Incidentally, there's a lot of propaganda about Radovid around Novigrad, including an autobiography about how he struggled to get to the top.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Triss and Yen are both abusive in ways that would be very unlikely to fly if Geralt was a woman and they were men. While apparent in some regular dialogue such as Yenn's venomous and condescending attitude (which is framed as her being a Tsundere) or her destroying some of Geralt's possessions out of jealousy (e.g. his bed), it's most apparent with one particular subplot involving...
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Downplayed and somewhat justified. By the admission of both Geralt and Triss, the latter took advantage of the former's amnesia in many ways - one of which was getting him in bed (albeit willingly at the time) for up to a year. In story, this is treated as Geralt getting lucky with a sorceress babe. In particular, Yennefer always lashes out at Geralt when the subject of Triss is brought up, and in one case reminding her that you had amnesia at the time leads to her assaulting you with a teleportation portal, resulting in Geralt being dumped from dozens of feet in the air into the nearby lake. Geralt has no option to respond negatively to this, his two options being to apologize to Yen for even bringing it up or a snarky comment about how nice the view was. To which Yen responds by threatening to murder him next time he tries to use the amnesia excuse. No one ever regards Triss as being wrong for what she did, other than Triss herself. Even she doesn't really treat it with as much weight as you'd expect and potentially ends up as Geralt's love interest in spite of it; it's very unlikely that mainstream audiences would find this acceptable were the genders reversed.
  • This attitude has some justification In-Universe for those who don't know the full story: Geralt is infamously promiscuous and sleeps with others for less, Triss and Geralt are a genuinely loving and sacrificing couple, and Geralt has slept with Triss during one of his "breaks" with Yennefer before. So to outsiders, this just looked like one of those "breaks" and nothing much worth mentioning.
• Downer Ending:
  • On a personal level, if Geralt made choices that caused Ciri to feel worthless as a person outside of her Elder Blood (getting paid for bringing Ciri to Emhyr, say "relax, you don't have to be good at everything" when she's upset over Vesemir's death, telling her to calm down when she wants to trash Avallac'h's lab after learning of his experiments, etc). Ciri will not be confident in her fight against the White Frost, leading to her death. In Geralt's grief, he hunts down the final Crone of Crookback Bog, taking down ten relatively innocent peasants along the way before killing her with extreme prejudice and retrieving Ciri's old Wolf Medallion. He breaks into sobs over the medallion while monsters flood into the room, presumably killing him. Can be a sort of Bitter Sweet Ending if the world on a political scale ended up being pleasant in spite of Geralt's personally unhappy ending.
  • And on a political side of things, not doing the questline that leads to Radovid's assassination will mean he wins the war against Nilfgaard. Emhyr is assassinated as a sizable portion of his populace were sick of his constant attempts at world domination, Ciri will not return to Nilfgaard to take the throne (possibly leaving Nilfgaard in a precarious position overall) and Radovid rules over Redania and Novigrad where he continues his genocide against magic users and nonhumans.
• Downloadable Content: Both free and paid.
  • The Free DLC Program consists of:
    • 1) Temerian Armor Set - May 20, 2015; adds a full set of Temerian-themed light armor for Geralt and blinders, saddlebags, and a saddle for Roach
    • 2) Beard and Haircut Set - May 20, 2015; adds three more haircuts, three static beard styles, and Geralt's fourth beard stage to the list of barbers' options
    • 3) Contract: Missing Miners - May 27, 2015; adds a new contract to investigate the disappearance of miners from a small Skellige village
    • 4) Alternate Look: Yennefer - May 27, 2015; adds a new outfit for Yennefer, overwriting her default looks within the game, includes an on-off setting in the main menu options settings
    • 5) Nilfgaardian Armor Set - June 3, 2015; adds a full set of Nilfgaardian-themed medium armor for Geralt and blinders, saddlebags, and a saddle for Roach
    • 6) Elite Crossbow Set - June 3, 2015; adds three more crossbows for sale: a Nilfgaardian Crossbow, a Skellige Crossbow, and an Elven Crossbow
    • 7) Contract: Fool's Gold - June 10, 2015; adds a new contract to investigate an abandoned village in Velen inhabited almost entirely by pigs
    • 8) "Ballad of Heroes" Neutral Gwent Deck - June 10, 2015; adds alternate appearances for a select number of the neutral Gwent cards, includes an on-off setting in the main menu options settings
    • 9) Scavanger Hunt: Wolf School - June 17, 2015; adds a series of quests for finding the diagrams for School of the Wolf witcher equipment similar to the Viper, Cat, Griffin, and Bear scavenger hunts in the base game
    • 10) Alternate Look: Triss - June 17, 2015; adds a new outfit for Triss Merigold, overwriting her default looks within the game, includes an on-off setting in the main menu options settings
    • 11) Contract: Skellige's Most Wanted - June 24, 2015; adds a new contract for hunting down an infamous rock troll in Skellige
    • 12) Skellige Armor Set - June 24, 2015; adds a full set of Skellige-themed heavy armor for Geralt and blinders, saddlebags, and a saddle for Roach
    • 13) Where the Cat and Wolf Play... - July 1, 2015; adds a trio of quests involving a massacred village and the person involved
    • 14) Alternate Look: Ciri - July 18, 2015; adds a new outfit for Ciri, overwriting her default looks within the game, includes an on-off setting in the main menu options settings
    • 15) New Finisher Animations - July 22, 2015; adds a number of new finishers to the game
    • 16) New Game Plus - August 17, 2015; adds New Game Plus mode to the game
• Dreaming of Things to Come: The game begins this way, with the King of the Wild Hunt cutting down Geralt's young adopted daughter. While it's just a dream, he knows full well that it's an omen signifying that Ciri is in grave danger.
• Drone of Dread: Fittingly, the music in Crookback Bog.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • If he survived the previous game, then Henselt is unceremoniously killed in a surprising betrayal by Radovid.
  • Crach an Craite gets an unexpected and violent death just before the Final Boss, and no time is given to acknowledge that.
  • Felicia Cori, a minor character from Witcher 2 is seen burning at the stake in the cutscene that plays the first time the player enters Novigrad's square. Alongside her is the Doppler replacing Chappelle, a minor character from the books Geralt was also familiar with.
  • Zdenek, a participant in the fist-fighting Gladiator Subquest of both previous games is found murdered by thugs outside Whoreson' arena.
• Dub Name Change: All but two villages in Velen (the exceptions being Benek and Toderas) have been renamed for the English version, as was Eskel's horse and the antagonist of the quest "Following the Thread".
• Dude, Not Funny!: Eskel gets on Lambert's case when the latter tries to steer the drinking banter during the night before Uma's treatment towards Triss, while in Geralt's and Yennefer's presence.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Despite the fact that Geralt is a well-known monster slayer, random NPCs tend to spit at him and make rude comments due to the high amount of prejudice against non-humans in the North. This mainly happens in Novigrad and the surrounding areas; the people of Skellige and Toussaint seem to be much more pleasant on the whole.
• Dump Stat: Also doubles as Power Up Let Down, there are quite a few:
  • The whole Signs skills tree becomes this come NG+, especially when playing on the hardest difficulty setting. Geralt only has a maximum of 16 skill slots, 4 of which can only be slotted with Alchemy skills when designing the perfect build with the Euphoria mutation (see Game-Breaker page for more details). Meanwhile, many signs, with the exception of the 1st 2 skills in the Axii branch, have either been nerfed or don't work well in NG+. You will most likely use the remaining slots for more important combat & alchemy skills.
  • The General skills tree also applies, with only a handful of exceptions (Cat School Techniques, Rage Management, Metabolism Control, & Gourmet being examples).
  • While the Alchemy skill tree has plenty of useful abilities, it also has some misses:
    • Hunter Instinct sounds awesome on paper, increasing critical damage with every adrenaline point against the enemy the corresponding sword oil is targeting. Too bad it’s bugged & doesn’t work.
    • Killing Spree, also qualifies. If you're powerful enough to kill the first few enemies without much trouble, then you don't really need a power boost to kill the remaining enemies.
• Dump Them All: One way of resolving the Love Triangle is for Geralt to break it off with both Triss and Yennefer.
• The Dung Ages: Played very, very straight in Velen and Novigrad. Velen is a battle-scarred no man's land being contested by the forces of Radovid and Nilfgard, and as a result most of the region has collapsed into lawlessness, with bands of soldiers, brigands, and monsters attacking anybody stupid enough to go out on the roads. Famine and disease run rampant in the area, and the majority of the civilians either live under brutal military rule or are desperately fleeing north to escape the bloodshed. Novigrad is a Wretched Hive controlled by a Corrupt Church and a group of criminal gangs where mages and intellectuals are regularly burnt at the stake and nonhuman citizens are treated like second-class citizens.

E

• Early Game Hell: The starting bits of the game, White Orchard in particular, can be a bit tricky. Everyone and everything is a higher level than you (even the basic wolves are level 5), you barely have any potions or oils to help you in your fights, you don't have many abilities, you rarely find new gear to replace your old with, you don't have a lot of money to buy new gear (and what you do have will, surprisingly often, go to smiths to repair the stuff you already have), and even healing items can be a bit rare. Things start to ease up by the time you leave White Orchard and become much easier once you complete the main quests in Velen.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Subverted in that, while the "bad ending" type choices are usually pretty clear, the poor wording of some of the options can make it easy to accidentally select the "wrong" choices. Further, in many cases, what seems like a "good" choice (ie, rescuing a bunch of orphans) can actually be the "bad" choice in the long term (rescuing them leads to Anna's torture and death, the Baron's suicide, and the murder of everyone in Downwarren).
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • The Baron gets one if Geralt times events just right. Some of the main characters can also get happy endings depending on choices made during the game:
  • If Geralt romances Yennefer, the two of them retire from adventuring and politics. They settle down and enjoy a quiet, peaceful life where they eat breakfast in the afternoon (and often in bed) and pass the days with lazy strolls and long conversations.
  • If Geralt romances Triss, the two of them travel to Kovir where Triss becomes an advisor to the king. Geralt enjoys a life of luxury and comfort - although he does take the occasional Witcher contract to alleviate boredom, shown as Triss administering an After-Action Patch-Up to Geralt.
  • There are two possible happy endings for Ciri. In one of them, she follows in Geralt's footsteps and becomes a Witcher, living a life of excitement and adventure while achieving fame and renown throughout the world. In the other ending the becomes the Empress of Nilfgaard, and proves to be a good ruler because she possesses both her father's political instincts and Geralt's simple human decency.
• Easily Forgiven: If you spared Aryan in 2, then his mother, Baroness La Valette, treats Geralt as a good friend despite his rather big role in Temeria crushing her rebellion and massacring her people.
• Elaborate Equals Effective: The Witcher gear upgrades not only get more effective as they go up, they also get more elaborate.
• Endless Winter: The White Frost is a Lovecraft-esque interdimensional horror that engulfs entire worlds across the multiverse in an endless frigid wasteland. The world upon which Geralt lives is next. The Wild Hunt, a band of spectral cavalry that are actually extremely racist elves, are steering it to other worlds instead of their own and have weaponized it. Wherever they or their hounds have visited, there is permanent frost and snow enveloping the area, and areas where it's taken over or actively encroaching are so frigid that it's harmful.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Over the course of the game, Geralt will have to team up with many former enemies and adversaries, including Emhyr, Dijkstra, Letho, Philippa, and Avallac'h.
  • In both battles with the Wild Hunt, characters who are normally mortal enemies fight together in order to stave off the extra-dimensional invaders who threaten the entire world.
  • In the final battle against The Wild Hunt, the Skelligers and the Nilfgaardians, who have been preparing to wage a naval battle against each other, quickly fight alongside one another against the Elven invaders, if only due to their respective leaders' - Crach an Crait and Emhyr van Emreis - mutual desire to protect Ciri from them.
• The Empire: Obviously there's Nilfgaard, but the kingdom of Redania has also become this under Radovid's rule, having absorbed several other northern kingdoms and become arguably even worse than Nilfgaard.
• End of an Age: No matter how the game ends, the political landscape for the Northern Kingdoms is irreversibly changed. Either Nilfgaard conquers them fully, or they're absorbed by Redania, which becomes an empire in its own right.
• Engineered Heroics: In one sidequest, Geralt lets himself be defeated by Dandelion in combat in order to convince a love interest of Dandelion's prowess.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Exploited by the mob boss that Lambert's tracking down - when confronting the pair of Witchers, he has his wife and two children present, calmly introducing them before getting down to brass tacks.
• Evil-Detecting Cat: Played with. Cats tend to hiss at Geralt whenever he gets close to one, and considering the general consensus regarding Witchers, it fits.
• Evil vs. Evil: The Nilfgaard-Northern War going on in the background is pretty much this.
  • On the one side, Nilfgaard is a largely fascist state who is invading the North once again with no reason other than a desire for conquest; they put locals in their conquered territory into forced servitude and, even when some of their military appear to be Reasonable Authority Figure types, they mostly turn out to be too eager for Disproportionate Retribution.
  • On the other side, King Radovid is the only Northern Monarch of any ability still standing and has exploited the invasion to take over the other Northern kingdoms himself, including more-or-less taking over the “Free City” of Novigrad; he has Church Militant Witch Hunters rounding up sorceresses and non-humans to be burnt alive due to Fantastic Racism and paranoia, and the soldiers under his command tend to be equally racist and abusive.
  • Even if the player would like to Take a Third Option by supporting Roche and Dijkstra when they decide to assassinate Radovid, this just creates a smaller one between the two when they then promptly turn on one another; on the one hand, Dijkstra is a power-hungry Jerkass former spymaster who's become a powerful crime boss, and Roche, though ultimately a good man, has betrayed what he used to stand for by "whoring himself out to Niflgaard" as he himself puts it. In either case, Dijkstra can't hold back Nilfgaard while Roche actively bows to them, so it just gives victory to Nilfgaard.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A downplayed example. After Vesemir welcomes Geralt back to Kaer Morhen, he discusses how Yennefer has been unusually fussy since she arrived, even throwing a bed out of the window. Geralt is confused about why she would do that, because it's just furniture and a waste because it's pretty well-made. Vesemir agrees and said that Triss always liked it... and then both men look at each other as the pieces fall in place.
• Eye-Dentity Giveaway: The shapeshifter Dudu is missing an eye, and as a result every form he takes also has a closed eye with a scar over it.
• Eye Scream:
  • The Concerned Citizen gouges out their victim's eyes and places smoldering coals in the sockets.
  • In one quest, an NPC is tricked into gouging out one of their own eyes, thinking it's penitence for a previous wrongdoing.

F

• Face–Heel Turn: Yennefer appears to have joined the Nilfgaardian military. Subverted though; while she has, it's so she can find Ciri (plus she wasn't exactly given a choice in the matter). Geralt quickly joins her.
• Faction Calculus: The four Gwent decks, including:
  • Northern Kingdoms (Cannon): Strong offence, weak defence. Strongest Tight Bond Units, best Spy, best Siege Units empowered by Leadercard. On the flip side, the deck is greatly susceptible to Scorch which can burn and entire chain of tight bond units and somewhat susceptible to weather.
  • Nilfgaardian Empire (Balanced): Even spread in all three row, some strong stand-alone cards, weaker Tight Bond unit, weaker spies than Northern Kingdom. Leadercard focus on neutralizing enemy rather than boosting army. Best fit for attrition strategy thanks to the highest number of Spies and Medic.
  • Scoia'tael (Subversive): Few strong stand-alone card but they do have Muster to quickly boost their number; Agility for tactical flexibility and Medic to quickly recover in the next round.
  • Monsters/Wild Hunt (The Horde): All about overwhelming the opposition by using Muster to amass a great number of weak units. Further empowered by Eredin's melee-boosting ability. Like any true horde, Monsterdeck can be tricked into over-extending themselves thus leaving them weaker for later round.
  • Skellige^note Added in Blood and Wine (Gimmick) - Skellige has a lot of cards with the Brotherhood property. King Bran is good for alleviating the effects of weather on the field, and King Crach can make things harder for medic-centred decks like Nilfgaard and Scoia'tael.
• Fake Longevity: There's nearly a hundred treasure-caches to be found floating in the Skellige Isles, but most players don't go out of their way to collect them. The reason being the majority of caches contain nothing but low-grade loot and Shop Fodder, can only be reached by piloting a slow and fragile boat, and at every cache you'll face a tedious encounter with Sirens or Drowners.
• False Innocence Trick: Geralt can find a man tied up and left to be killed by Drowners. He claims the peasantry did it because he was a deserter. Geralt can point out that even Temerian peasants are unlikely to leave a man to be eaten alive by monsters just for desertion. He admits there was "other stuff." If Geralt frees him, he goes on to be a ruthless bandit. In a rare aversion of Ungrateful Bastard, he offers to share his plunder.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Seeing three young nubile women nude sounds like it should be Fanservice. But not when you know that their true forms are hideous-looking old crones whose appearances are rife with Body Horror. And especially not when you see those naked women covered in blood and eating human flesh.
  • Sirens appear as beautiful topless winged mermaids. That is until they drop the act and show their real grotesque visage.
  • One of the sections where Ciri is playable involves her going to a sauna with a female companion around her age (a Skelliger named Astrid), and while you can have Ciri choose to don a Modesty Towel or not, Astrid will always strip down to her panties since that's just the norm in a sauna...as well as her fairly realistically rendered mother, who's there in the entire scene.
  • Bruxae in the Blood and Wine expansion are a downplayed example, they do show vampiric features but they retain their nude female bodies. Alps on the other hand have an unnerving white skin and a more demonic appearance.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Skellige is basically an Ireland-Scandanavia analogue with Highlander Vikings, veering close to Culture Chop Suey territory.
  • The college town of Oxenfurt and its student inhabitants are analogous to England's revered Oxford University.
  • The sunnier, Mediterranean culture of Toussaint, with its vineyards, Fleur De Lis heraldry, wine culture and brightly coloured architecture, is seemingly based on Southern France and Italy. The capital city of Beauclair, with its ruling Duchess and wealthy inhabitants, is suggestive of the Principality of Monaco.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The original books were all about subverting traditional fairy tales and legends by portraying characters as real people and adding a pragmatic professional to the story. Witcher 3 lives up to the books by adding most of what Slavic fairy tales have to offer (Ekhidnas, Leshyis, Chorts, and Crones) as well as traditional European myths.
• Fantasy Metals: A few. Standard iron, silver, and steel are present. But so are orichalcum and dimeritium, both of which are annoyingly rare, absurdly expensive, and absolutely necessary for crafting all of the game's best high-end weapons and armor.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The opening cinematic of the game has a priest talking about the evils of monsters, sorcerers, and Witchers. This is ironic given the only people who can deal with monsters are sorcerers and Witchers. A similar scene can even be encountered in-game, with Geralt having the option of quickly shutting the priest up.
  • King Radovid hates mages in general and sorceresses in particular with a passionate fury. Oddly, he has nothing against Witchers and considers Geralt his friend (which Geralt, clearly, does not reciprocate). Strangely, the Lodge of Sorceresses members can't seem to wrap their heads around Radovid feeling this way. Of course, Radovid will order Geralt's death after he's supposedly outlived his usefulness.
  • Eredin's people are one of the most extreme examples of racist elves there is. Their sheer disgust for humans puts into sharp perspective that prejudice can belong to anyone and the amount they subject poor Ciri to is terrible. The fact they desperately need her is the worst part of all this for them. Geralt can call Avallac'h out on this only for him to point out, rightly, that humans are every bit as genocidal and racist against other intelligent species on Geralt's world. Particularly elves.
• Father's Quest: Uniquely, the main plot is this for both Ciri's adoptive father, Geralt, and her biological father, Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, as both more or less work together (the latter providing Geralt with the initial lead the Witcher pursues, as well as any financial and military assistance Geralt may need) to find and protect Ciri from the titular Wild Hunt, who seek to harness her powers for their own uses.
• Feet of Clay: Fergus is presented as the only master armorer in the game, with Yoana as his apprentice. In reality, he can barely forge a nail while she's the actual master smith. She made an arrangement with him to pose as the brains of the operation because no one would believe anyone but a dwarf could possibly be a master armorer, let alone a woman. Unlocking her as a smith requires having to end the charade.
• Fetus Terrible: The Botchling is the spirit of a miscarried child who was abandoned without proper burial rites. It comes back from the dead to haunt the family that abandoned it, causing miscarriages and murdering infants and pregnant women.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: After The Battle of Kaer Morhen and Vesemir's death almost everyone present for the battle goes their own way. Only Geralt's closest friends and Avallac'h return with Geralt to Novigrad.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: In the last boss battle against Eredin, he throws Geralt into a different, larger battlefield: they start out on one of The Hunt's ships, then Eredin drags Geralt onto a snow-covered cliff through a portal, and then, after a sword duel, Eredin beckons Geralt to pass through another portal, which brings them back to the ship their fight started on for the last phase of the fight.
• Final Boss Preview: The Big Bad, Eredin, and his Co-Dragons, Imlerith and Caranthir, are shown cutting Ciri down at the end of the idyllic-dream-turned-nightmare that is the prologue.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Despite being former adversaries, Ciri and the Mysterious Elf bond through all their trials and tribulations against the Wild Hunt. Possibly subverted though, because there's evidence to suggest that Avallac'h may only be interested in Ciri for her connection to Lara Dorren, which makes him a Broken Pedestal once Ciri finds out (though there's reason to believe that the person who gave this account lied about it out of jealousy just to spite Ciri).
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Yennefer is an interesting case. Geralt has, in the books at least, been clear he's an atheist. However, he's been known to show great respect for religion (the non-crazy/evil/fraudulent kind, at least) as well as people of faith. He's also open to new things and experiences. Yennefer, by contrast, denies that a spirit she summons back into a corpse is a person, just rotting meat, echoes of the person who was and about as sapient as a photograph, and even Geralt is put off (having dealt frequently with ghosts and wraiths who seemed pretty well convinced of their own personhood). Yennefer may simply be rationalizing.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Geralt is phlegmatic, Ciri is straight choleric, Yennefer is melancholic, Dandelion is all the way sanguine, Triss is sanguine with some phlegmatic, Dijkstra is choleric.
• Freudian Excuse: Radovid makes allusions to horrific abuse at Phillipa's hands to explain his nightmarish hatred of magic. It's implied her continued freedom and the pressures of the Nilfgaardian war, plus his past, has driven him over the edge.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Keira's questline is foreshadowed during the quest "Wandering in the Dark." When Keira and Geralt are separated, he finds her shrieking at the sight of rats, and she is so afraid of them that she can't even move. Additionally, when you exit the elven ruins, Fyke Isle is immediately visible. Keira eventually sends you to Fyke Isle to clear the island of its curse, and gives a suspicious answer when asked why she didn't go do it herself. Turns out the tower is crawling with rats.
  • In "A Towerful of Mice" there are many subtle hints that Annabelle is a vengeful Plague Maiden instead of a lonely ghost.
  • A seer in Velen will foretell Geralt's future if he's given some Dragonroot - said future is the ending sequence of the game in Skellige, prior to the Playable Epilogue.
  • If you play Gwent with Fergus, he has a subpar deck and is very easily beaten. If you play with Yoana, she has a suprisingly solid deck and can easily trash you at this stage of the game. A nice nod to who is the real master armourer.
  • In the Carnal Sins quest line, Geralt notes that Hubert Rejk looks quite young for someone who twenty years ago taught the middle-aged Joachim von Gratz. It turns out that not only is he the serial killer in question but a vampire.
  • One of your first experiences in the game is meeting a mangy vagrant calling himself Gaunter O'Dimm, who helps direct you to Yeneffer, followed by vanishing as quickly. What at first appears like a visual glitch gets explained in the Hearts of Stone expansion. And if you make certain choices, Gaunter will literally tell you how to get the best endings for the game if you haven't reached them as yet.
  • As Geralt and Cerys throw all the evidence they have in attempts to prove Birna's guilt in instigating the berserker massacre at Kaer Trolde and she shrugs it off over and over, you can see the increasingly horrified face of her son Svanrige behind her, as the realization dawns on him that she really is guilty.
  • During the quest Possession, the Hym can be seen in the place of Jarl Udalryk's shadow whenever he's outside.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played straight with allies but averted for enemies. If you position yourself well, you can get enemy archers to shoot their own comrades in the back accidentally, while dodging a hit in a crowd will most likely lead to someone else getting accidentally hurt or even killed.
• Friends with Benefits: Name-checked as a possible relationship type between Geralt and Keira Metz. It's even name dropped by the trophy/achievement you get for completing her storyline.
• From Bad to Worse: As bad as it was in previous games, it's much, much worse now with the literal end of the world bearing down.
• Funny Background Event:
  • During the quest "Hunting a Witch," when Geralt visits Keira Metz in their portal boudoir, the camera pans to the right at the end of the cut-scene... giving us a view of two rabbits happily rutting away.
  • Not all dialogue scenes are pre-rendered cutscenes; many take place "in-world" as AI-controlled characters go about their business. Occasionally the A.I. glitches, however, resulting in the NPC characters doing unexpected things, like walking into Roach and falling down, or getting caught up in a fence and proceeding to run in place throughout the dialogue.
• Fun with Acronyms: Some of the game's quests and text has a bunch of amusing acronyms:
  • Ugliest Man Alive
  • Defensive Regulatory Magicon, defeated by Gottfried's Omni-opening Grimoire
  • Gaunter O'Dimm

G

• Game-Breaking Bug: A rather notable one can occur during the final boss fight. You follow the enemy back through a portal... only for the camera to be stuck on the top of a mountain far away. You'd then lose the fight (as you can't see Geralt at all) and have to start all over again. It was particularly frustrating right at the climax of the game. Thankfully it could be fixed by manually changing the objective in the quest menu right before teleporting.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In-Universe even, the quality of Gwent Spy cards ^note which give a number of points to the enemy in exchange for drawing two cards, so the fewer points they have, the better they are largely reflect their prowess in espionage as well. Stefan Skellen's claim to fame was being hanged for treason and is the worst (9); Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen pranced around the North like a peacock being Obviously Evil and fooled no one as to his true intentions (7); Stennis is all but stated to be behind Saskia's poisoning, but the evidence of the crime wasn't enough to properly convict him (5); Vattier de Rideaux and Sigismund Dijkstra are relatively successful heads of intelligence for Nilfgaard and Redania respectively (4); and Thaler is arguably the best spy in the game who excels at Hiding in Plain Sight and once converted three trolls to his cause and is thus the top-tier spy in Gwent as well (1). As for the ultimate Spy Card, The Mysterious Elf Avallac'h (0 points, Hero Card so the enemy can't recycle it) is a massive Red Herring. The character is shifty from the start, has a secret nobody knows, and evidence mounts at the end implying he may usurp Eredin's position as the Big Bad. At the moment of truth however, Ciri reveals that he is unambiguously on her side and like her, is looking to stop the White Frost permanently.
  • The reason that is given in-story as to why all the Grandmaster witcher set diagrams are in Toussaint is because witchers would bring the diagrams to the grandmaster armorer there and then get themselves killed pursuing dangerous monsters to afford the extreme costs of these armors. This is represented in-game, as upgrading one armor set from master to grandmaster can cost upwards of 20,000 crowns, more than the entire refit and upgrade of your vineyard.
  • This can apply to all three games but, in the story of the books, monsters are becoming less and less common in the Witcher's world, making Witchers less and less necessary. Yet the game series portrays a world absolutely brimming with monstrous creatures. Justified, as one of the main reasons that monsters are rare is because walled cities and large armies can easily deal with external threats and drive back the monsters. With the war ravaging the countryside, large armies being focused on the battlefield instead of protecting the local populations, the monsters are making a comeback. Notably, throughout the games, one of the most common monsters types are necrophages, which thrive in the war situation that is tearing through the North.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In the first game, Geralt had amnesia and many of his previous skills had atrophied. This was used to justify his level-grinding to higher levels. The second game had a somewhat organic feel because everything was scaled to your level. The third game dispenses with this and just places high-level monsters all over the place which Geralt must avoid til later levels. Given he is, at this point, the greatest Witcher (if not overall warrior) on his world and has all of his memories back, this is just plain weird.
  • Story-wise, Geralt and the other witchers are supposed to be quite poor given that most of what they earn killing monsters has to be spent on accommodation and preparing potions and such for the next fight. In spite of this, Geralt can easily earn thousands of crowns in the course of the game and have little to spend it on other than improved gear. The economy apparently only works this way for Geralt: Gaetan the Cat School Witcher reveals that he was offered 12 crowns for a leshen contract, which barely covered the cost of the potions he used in the fight. Geralt is routinely offered ten times that for a contract, plus a bit more if he haggles, and can easily earn far more than 12 crowns by killing a group of low-level bandits, looting their cheap gear and selling it to a merchant or simply picking herbs and berries for potions in the woods and selling them to an alchemist. There is also the fact Geralt doesn't have to eat or pay any sort of fees for renting a place to sleep (or sleep at all) or for Roach's fodder, thus cutting off the regular Witcher expenditures.
  • Story Geralt despises thieves and there are numerous occasions where the player can choose to kill a thief or group of thieves. Gameplay Geralt can be played as a full-blown Kleptomaniac Hero and will loot the houses of the poorest peasants, the docks of every major city, brothels, banks, herbalists, blacksmiths, army headquarters, and multiple ruler's castles, stealing everything he can get his hands on. There is one mission in the Blood and Wine expansion where Geralt can grave rob an entire crypt worth of loot, while also taking the time to murder a couple groups of grave robbers after insulting them for being grave robbers. It's even lampshaded by the game during which an NPC inquires about Geralt's sudden wealth and asks if he's ever gone through other people's belongings. To which the player can respond "Never in my life".
  • Rescuing Ves at Mulbrydale requires you to slaughter Nilfgaardian soldiers, but in the ensuing cutscene and afterwards once you're done you'll see Nilfgaardians just standing around totally cool with you having just killed their comrades.
  • In a related note, the "Abandoned Location" quests require you to clear the area of enemies (monsters or bandits usually) so the populace can return. However the cutscene showing people moving back triggers as soon as you hit the final blow on the last enemy. Which has the bizarre situation where people are moving about their day and children are playing on top of bloody dismembered corpses and monster entrails scattered all over the place.
    • Thankfully this was fixed in Toussaint and in an unexpected Gameplay and Story Integration feature, a cutscene reloads the map after these areas are cleared, showing time passing by and later villagers are shown restoring the damaged buildings, corpses being loaded onto a wagon, with people understandably crying over them, at least one vendor NPC will always effusively thank Geralt for helping them and other realistic touches to make the transition less jarring.
  • Due to the Beef Gate method mentioned before of just raising the level of enemies to keep you away from certain areas, it can be pretty jarring to find random mooks so ridiculously overpowered they could destroy early game bosses with no trouble. It's somewhat hilarious when during one of the Hearts of Stone quests you find an elderly couple who claim they can't fend for themselves or hunt for food, yet they're both lvl 32 and will wreck you in 2 hits if you're not properly geared and close to their level. Even more egregious is the fact that, random wolves roaming around Toussaint in packs of 5-10 are lvl 35, that's the same level as the end-game bosses and even the Superboss creatures of the main game. All that the world really needs to stop the Wild Hunt are a pack of wolves and an elderly couple armed with kitchen knives.
  • The "Black Pearl" sidequest consists in going to Skellige to search through sea shells lying on the sea floor next to a beach until you find a black pearl. The black pearl isn't a unique item (though not exactly a common one) and it's possible to acquire some before starting the quest, but you can't complete the quest by giving one to Nidas at the exact moment you start his quest. The only way to proceed is to go to Skellige with him, dive in the area he shows you, then bring him the pearl you'll find there.
• Gang of Hats: In addition to countless generic bandits, the Novigrad underworld is run by the Big Four, four mob bosses whose gangs have hats of ranging gimmicks.
  • Francis Bedlam is a self-styled King of Beggars who leads a conventional Thieves' Guild (though that term isn't used) common in fantasy works.
  • Count Sigi Reuven is the former Redanian Spymaster who used his massive network of contacts and informants to build a new life as a mob boss, he runs a bathhouse which caters to Novigrad's wealthy and doubles as a meeting place for the Big Four.
  • Cleaver is a dwarf who says his main business is "entertainment," all members of his gang are fellow dwarves who wear bandanas with the gang's symbol on them. It's possible they were inspired by Dragon Age's Carta.
  • Whoreson Junior's gang is by far the most gimmick filled, most of his mooks dress like jesters and harlequins and are covered in tattoos.
• Gargle Blaster: White Gull is enough of one, being a mixture of Mandrake Cordial, Cherry Cordial, Redanian Herbal, and Arenaria normally used as a base for powerful alchemical concoctions. However, special mention goes to The Gauntlet, a cocktail Lambert mixes up during the Witchers' reunion at Kaer Morhen, which contains equal portions White Gull and Dwarven Spirit (another alchemical base). Witchers have higher alcohol tolerance than normal humans, but after knocking back just a few these monsters all three of them soon become thoroughly sloshed. Needless to say, it's hilarious.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Rose and Edda var Attre.
  Edda: Rose, I had the best of intentions, you know that! I felt you needed help taking the first step... You blushed every time [Dandelion] sang a ballad.
  Rose: He'll next sing at your funeral if you don't stop it right now!
• God Guise: One sidequest has Geralt encounter a Sylvan (basically a Satyr) who has convinced the local villagers he's a god. They give excessive sacrifices of food to placate him. Geralt can kill him, convince him to tone down the demands (since the villagers are starving due to the war), or show them the man behind the curtain. In the Sylvan's defense, he says that he gives valuable advice in exchange for worship and the villagers are deeply stupid.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Sir Ronvid of the Small Marsh challenges Geralt to a duel numerous times to defend the honor of Maid Bilberry. Geralt is rather annoyed by Ronvid but accepts his challenges to humor him.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Leading up to the Battle of Kaer Morhen, Geralt can visit his allies throughout Novigrad, Velen, and Skellige to request their aid. If you've completed their quests, they'll either join him, send someone in their place if they cannot go themselves (such as the new ruler of Skellige), or provide him with items.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Keira Metz assumes King Radovid would be willing to overlook her membership in the Lodge of Sorceresses in exchange for her aid in helping cure a virulent plague. Triss Merigold assumes that King Radovid has begun his witch hunts because he is trying to loot the wealth of the mages (i.e. a purely pragmatic motivation). They genuinely can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that, no, King Radovid just hates magic in general and sorceresses in particular.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Geralt and Dandelion have such a team-up when convincing the obstinate fiancé of the prospective choreographer for Dandelion's new cabaret that it's not a whorehouse anymore. Dandelion showers him with fancy words and verbal appeals, while Geralt gives him a glare and tells him to shut up and listen when the man decides to revert to being rudely obstinate.
• Good Old Fisticuffs:
  • Geralt gets involved in several fist fights even when fully armed, both barroom brawls where no one wants to kill each other as well as arranged boxing matches.
• Good Running Evil: If Ciri opts to become Empress of Nilfgaard, she inherits the throne to a realm that is known for Disproportionate Retribution codified into law, slavery, and unprovoked wars of aggression. She has her work cut out for her if reformation is her goal.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • When the player completes a contract and loots the trophy off of the monster's corpse, a cutscene plays where the screen goes black as Geralt is about to sever the head of whatever monster the contract was on, leaving only the sounds of flesh being torn.
  • The bad ending has the camera cutting away as Geralt kills the last Crone.
  • At the end of the "Wild at Heart" sidequest, if you choose to let Niellen take his revenge on Margrit for the death of his wife, the screen cuts to black just as he attacks her.
  • Otherwise mostly averted, as Geralt has a chance (which can be increased with equipment) to dismember enemies on a killing blow. Several bodies found during quests are gorily torn apart to various degrees, including one that was ripped in half and missing a leg due to being thrown hard enough at a wall.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Getting all the Gwent cards is the object of the fittingly named "Collect Them All" quest.
• Grand Finale: This entry serves as the climax of Geralt's story in the video games.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: The Nilfgaardian invaders are ruthless and oppressive but, as an innkeeper says at the beginning of the game, the Northern Kingdoms weren't particularly good to the common folk beforehand. This is actually a softer portrayal of the Nilfgaardian Empire in the novels, which leaned towards using them as Nazi stand-ins toward the end. Becomes Black-and-Gray Morality when dealing with the many war criminals the war has produced as well as the Wild Hunt.
• The Great Exterminator: While most Witchers in the franchise (including Geralt) do not consider Dragons to be true "monsters" and do not hunt them on principle, those of the School of the Griffin (located in the Northern Kingdoms where the Nordlings consider dragons "to be the single greatest enemy of the human race") became renowned dragon hunters. One of their order, known only as George, earned the title "Dragonslayer" for his success and the tomb in which he was put to rest became known as the "Dragonslayer's Grotto". Notably, the north has fewer remaining dragons than any other area.
• Green Hill Zone: White Orchard. It's a relatively small map that largely consists of easily-traversed flat plains, a few scattered groups of enemies that aren't too tough to kill, and a generally reasonable population kept in nervous but persisting order, all to "prepare" the player for the No Man's Land.

H

• Hand Wave: Yennefer suffered the same memory loss as Geralt but recovered rather quickly due to magical treatment. When asked why she did not search for him afterwards, she responds that she figured he would recover on his own and find her first, despite the fact that Geralt did not receive the same treatment. This seems to be an attempt at justifying why Yennefer was absent in the previous games when she'd had over a year to find him.
• Harmless Freezing: In the Battle of Kaer Morhen, all the defenders of the keep save for Vesemir and Ciri are covered with ice and become immobile when the King of the Wild Hunt enters the battlefield in person. After the scene, the ice melts away, leaving the characters unharmed, which is rather amazing considering that the freezing caused by the Wild Hunt's portals is anything but harmless in gameplay. It's implied to be a result of the witcher mutations, as something similar happens to Geralt and a number of soldiers at the final battle. In this case, he's the only survivor.
• Harpoon Gun: The crossbow is actually more effective underwater than it is on land, usually being able to kill swimming monsters in a single hit.
• Hate Crimes Are a Special Kind of Evil:
  • Rosa van Attre is a Nilfgaardian noblewoman who starts a flirtatious interest in the protagonist Geralt and challenges him to a series of duels hoping to improve her swordfighting. At the end of her quest, she is accosted by a group of northern citizens with a grudge against the Nilfgaardian invaders. Though Geralt puts a stop to it (either talking the men down or killing), Rosa quickly demonstrates a seething hatred for "Nordlings" and cruelly states her intentions to have all such "dregs" killed. Afterwards, Geralt, who has helped, befriended and even slept with people who have committed mass murder, rape, and other crimes, completely washes his hands of Rosa and goes his separate way.
  • King Radovid is a human supremacist who shows complete contempt for not only monsters and nonhumans species, but also mages and any other humans with even a whiff of anything unnatural about them.^note One of his standard tactics being to "tolerate" some people like Dwarves or Witchers, only to eventually turn against them too once they've eliminated the more pressing targets. He is portrayed as one of the vilest and most despicable characters in the entire story, with the ending in which he wins the war against Nilfgaard being considered an unofficial "bad end" as the city of Novigrad becomes a hellscape of witch hunts, torture, and mass executions. By contrast, the side mission in which he is dealt with is swimming in catharsis, wherein several characters whom he has crossed, betrayed, or maimed (including Geralt and the sorceress Philippa) trap and assassinate him.
• Heel–Face Turn: Letho, the Big Bad of the second game, can be recruited to help Geralt for a crucial battle. If Geralt doesn't induce a Heel–Face Door-Slam, anyway.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Svanrige Bran, son of the late king Bran and Birna performs one in the climax of the "King's Gambit" quest when he exposes his mother as a mastermind behind the murder of several contenders to the throne as well as their multiple retainers and servants and the attempted murder of Geralt and Cerys. He does this completely aware that according to Skelliger laws, the crimes of the parents are carried over the children or even the whole clan and thus he will lose his wealth and rank (and possibly life) for his trouble.
• Held Gaze: Geralt and Yen share one should you woo her in the questline after taking care of the djinn during "The Last Wish."
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: No witcher armour contains helmets and none can be found or purchased.
• Hell Hound: The Hounds of the Wild Hunt come from the world of the White Frost and are made out of living ice. The Hunt uses them to pursue their prey, as well as to act as emergency shock troops.
• Hellish Horse: One possible ending of the Whispering Hillock quest has Geralt binding an imprisoned spirit to a black mare, causing the mare to develop glowing red eyes and go on murderous rampage through the countryside.
• Horny Vikings:
  • Skellige is pretty much inhabited by the stereotypical fantasy Vikings — a Rape, Pillage, and Burn Proud Warrior Race with a fondness for axes, pillaging, battle and boats. They've also got some Irish influences in their language, with names like Bran and such, ^note It can get confusing when "Bran" and "Sigrdrifa" are both words of the same language. as well as their clothes, which often feature Celtic knots as well as stud patterns similar to those on Irish shields. The Skelligs/Na Scealaga are a group of real-life Irish islands, the word itself meaning "steep rock", and one of the isles of Skellige is called "Faroe".
  • Another instance, though far more subtle — the opening cinematic involves a one-eyed, long-bearded, grey-cloaked man talking about "an age of axe, an age of sword".
• House Fey: Two examples:
  • The Lubberkin, a particularly gruesome take on the trope.
  • Second is Sarah, who starts out living in a house secretly and causing trouble for the woman who lives there. Geralt has the option of revealing Sarah to the owner, and if he does the two become best friends.
• Hub City: Novigrad serves as the biggest city in the main game and is where many of the quests take place.
• Hufflepuff House: Novigrad's criminal underworld is ruled by four gangs led by Sigi Reuven, Whoreson Junior, the King of Beggars, and Cleaver. However, only the first two play any real role in the plot. Geralt only interacts with the King of Beggars' gang once in order to make contact with Triss, and Cleaver and his goons show up in a few sidequests, but both are otherwise of little importance.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • A constant, ever-present theme of the series. Sure, Drowners, ghouls, and other monsters are threats to the populace, but it's the war with Nilfgaard which is really devastating the land. It's telling that Geralt, a professional monster hunter, even makes comments in this vein several times in the game when witnessing the worst of humanity.
  • "In the Heart of the Woods" is a Witcher contract quest where Geralt is asked to slay a Leshen. As it turns out, the village elders have made a pact with the Leshen to protect the village. The younger villagers want it killed so they can hunt and timber its forest. Geralt can either kill the creature, as the younger villagers want, or renew the pact, siding with the elders. If he chooses the latter, the younger villagers slaughter the elders and Geralt remarks how, in line with the trope, by doing so, they've killed more people in a day than the creature had in years.
• Hurricane of Puns: An Easter Egg while investigating Freya's Garden in Skellige with Yennefer has Geralt set aside the investigation to briefly chat with her about how a werewolf "must lead a dog's life", after which the pair exchange a number of these before Yennefer comments that they need to focus on the task at hand.

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