History VideoGame / TheWitcher3WildHunt

The game was released on May 19th, 2015 on PC, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 and UsefulNotes/XboxOne. A re-release on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch with all the DLC arrived on October 15, 2019. A version for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 and UsefulNotes/XboxSeriesXAndS was released on December 14, 2022, with a free upgrade for those who own previous generation versions.

* TheWitcher3WildHunt/HeartsOfStone
* TheWitcher3WildHunt/BloodAndWine

The game was released on May 19th, 2015 on PC, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 and UsefulNotes/XboxOne. A re-release on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch with all the DLC arrived on October 15, 2019. A version for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 and UsefulNotes/XboxSeriesXAndS has been released on December 14, 2022, with a free upgrade for those who own previous generation versions.

The game was released on May 19th, 2015 on PC, UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 and UsefulNotes/XboxOne. A re-release on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch with all the DLC arrived on October 15, 2019. A version for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 and UsefulNotes/XboxSeriesXAndS has also been announced, set to come out on December 14, 2022, and a free upgrade for those who own previous generation versions.

[[folder: Blood & Wine]]
* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The DLC raises the level cap to 100.
* AbusiveParents: Sylvia Anna's and Anna Henrietta's parents toward Sylvia Anna.
* AnachronismStew: In a sidequest where Geralt eating a mushroom causes Roach to be SuddenlyVoiced, one of her "stop working me to the bone during the chase" dialogues has her mention twerking. Another one of said dialogues has her ask Geralt to "do her a solid."
* {{Angrish}}: One of the random utterances by peasants as you pass by is this.
* AllPowerfulBystander: [[spoiler: The unseen Elder]], like Gaunter O'Dimm, is easily one of the most powerful characters in the setting, and one of the only characters Geralt ''cannot'' fight under any circumstance, and whenever Geralt pisses him off he gets killed in a cutscene. He mainly resides by the gate of the vampires' original homeworld, isolated from society, and all the other vampires are smart enough not to disturb him.
* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Higher vampires can kill humans and other monsters without a problem, but killing others of their own kind is a huge taboo -- mostly because doing so renders them DeaderThanDead, beyond the reach of their ResurrectiveImmortality. [[spoiler:After Regis breaks the rule to bring an end to the chaos, other vampires start going after him.]]
* AsideGlance: [[spoiler:What the expansion's main story, and likely by extension the whole series, ends with. As Regis tells Geralt how he believes they both deserve some rest after everything they've gone through, Geralt nods in agreement. Then he turns to the camera with a subtle smile on his face, silently thanking the player for coming this far and telling them it's time for them to rest too.]]
* AwfulWeddedLife: And ''afterlife'', for a couple that was interred together - their arguments are so loud that someone hired Geralt to investigate the source of the ruckus. They do have an AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther moment at the conclusion. Neither wanted to be together in death, but they also didn't want their former spouse to suffer in the process.
* BackForTheFinale:
** [[spoiler: Regis, who was killed by the BigBad in the final book of the saga, returns for the final DLC of the final game in the series]].
* BackFromTheDead: [[spoiler:Geralt's old vampire friend Regis shows up alive and well, thanks to another vampire who resurrected him.]]
* BagOfSpilling: Lampshaded at the end of ''There Can Only Be One'', when the Lady of the Lake, upon granting Geralt Aerondight, requests that he doesn't lose it this time.
* BeautyToBeast:
** [[spoiler:Lady Vivienne has been cursed for most of her life to turn into a bird-like creature every full moon night. The curse only got worse over the years, so that she needs to use magical ornaments so she looks like a normal human during daytime.]]
** Even more horribly, [[spoiler:the spoon-collecting wight, who turns out to have been a beautiful but haughty noblewoman who was cursed to become a monster after refusing to give food to a beggar. If Geralt breaks her curse, she becomes a wizened old woman, since her transformation happened over a century ago, and the curse had been keeping her alive, but not young.]]
* BelatedHappyEnding: If Geralt romanced Yennefer or Triss, they will come to Corvo Bianco during the post-game quest "Be It Ever So Humble..." In Yen's case, she's there to stay for good.
* TheBigBadWolf: Fittingly appears in the Land of a Thousand Fables, dressed not-so-convincingly as Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. [[spoiler:Due to magical entropy destabilizing the illusory world, he's grown tired of constantly re-enacting the story, getting cut open, stuffed with rocks, and thrown down a well, so he's killed the girl and taken to drinking instead. Also, in the Three Little Pigs' neighborhood, the White Wolf fittingly takes on the role when he uses the Aard sign to blow down the house of bricks.]]
* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: Regis's]] first appearance, appearing literally out of thin air to stop [[spoiler: Dettlaff]] from impaling Geralt.
* BilingualBonus: Some of the documents and books found in Toussaint include funny little bits written in French.
* BlingOfWar: Toussaint's knights are coated head to toe in opulent blue and gold armour. In [[RealIsBrown Velen]], they stick out especially.
* BloodyBowelsOfHell: [[spoiler:The final fight against Dettlaff is fought in an organic realm filled with gigantic beating hearts.]]
* BraggingRightsReward: Near the end of the DLC, choosing to [[spoiler:confront the Unseen Elder]] allows you to collect the Hen Gaidth armor set & steel sword. The armor provides substantial protection against every threat in the game except wraiths while the sword has excellent stats & is scaled to your level. Too bad there’s nothing left to use them on. Turns into InfinityMinusOneSword when used in NG+.
* BreatherEpisode: The entire DLC feels like this. After the oppressively bleak Velen and the harsh and violent Skellige, the burning dead bodies on pyres littering Novigrad and the high stakes missions of ''Hearts of Stone'' against an EldritchAbomination, playing knight on a tourney, renovating and decorating your new home, helping people with ThePowerOfLove, and running through beautiful green fields with water so blue it has a mirror sheen to it feels like an actual holiday for the old Witcher.
* BrickJoke: The armor that Fergus crafted, with the crudely-painted sun on the breastplate, makes an appearance as a FunnyBackgroundEvent during the tournament.
%%* TheBusCameBack:
%%Note that this trope only applies if the characters were properly written out of the story. If that's the case, add context to the examples below.
%%** The expansion sees the return of Duchess Anna Henrietta, Sir Palmerin de Launfal, and Sir Milton de Peyrac-Peyran.
%%** In the quest, "There Can Be Only One," [[spoiler:the Lady in the Lake]] from the first game makes an appearance to once again give Geralt [[spoiler:the silver sword Aerondight]].
* CallBack: Not in the expansion itself, but the digital comic released alongside it. The ''Killing Monsters'' comic takes place before the events of the trailer of the same name, going so far as to end right as the trailer begins. Similarly, the final quest of the expansion, "Be It Ever So Humble", is filled with these. If [[spoiler:Triss is the one to visit, Geralt playfully teases her about the possibility of installing a hedge-maze and nude statue in commemoration of the ball they attended together]]. If it's [[spoiler:Yennefer, she installs the unicorn]].
* ChastityDagger: Anna Henrietta's "undercover" outfit comes with one should she need to defend herself.
* CodeOfHonour: The knights of Toussaint have one: The Five Chivalric Virtues. [[spoiler:If Geralt exhibits all five and finds a certain location, he can gain [[InfinityPlusOneSword Aerondight]]. It also factors into the motives of the killer in the main plot.]]
* ConservationOfNinjutsu: The Adrenaline Rush mutation makes this a ''power''. The more enemies Geralt encounters in a fight, the greater his attack damage and sign intensity becomes, meaning he could cleave through a dozen foes faster than if he was just facing one.
* ContinuityCavalcade: One could simply call this expansion one lengthy nostalgia trip, given how many characters ([[spoiler:Regis]], Anna Henrietta, Sir Palmerin, Sir Milton) and monsters (archespores, barghests, kikimores, giant centipedes, alps, garkains, fleders) from both the books and the preceding games [[BackForTheFinale return for Geralt's final outing]] after a lengthy absence. The Land of the Thousand Fables also adds to the cavalcade, since it contains several nods to Andrzej Sapkowski's early short stories, which were often [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructions]] of various classic fairy tales.
* ContinuityNod: When asking for the specifics about the Manticore Witcher set diagrams, Geralt mentions having worn the set some years ago. Said set was the Excellent Leather Jacket armor from all the way back in the first game (The armor he's depicted using in that game's intro and outro). The New Game Plus version, however, actually has a different look and appears to be a combination of the jacket and the various versions of the Raven's Armor.
* CouldntFindAPen: You can come across a troll preparing a stew and a dead man inside a cage hanging from a tree. If you kill the troll and loot the man's corpse you'll find a letter he wrote on a piece of cloth he tore from his clothes, with a random piece of bone and his blood detailing how he was captured by the female troll who upon seeing him declared him to be her one true mate and captured him. Rather than give into her advances he starved himself to death.
* CountryMatters: In the governess's diary in the playroom, it details how young Anarietta learned some... colorful Nilfgaardian words; Regis translates it in a fancy way to say that Anarietta called the governess this in Nilfgaardian tongue.
* {{Curse}}: True to fairy tale form, the expansion has a few.
** [[spoiler:Vivienne was cursed before she was born by a creature who heard her mother wishing her child would be as beautiful as the birds in the wood the creature "owned". For delighting in something that wasn't hers, the creature cursed Vivienne to become more like a bird as she grew. Geralt knows of two ways to break the curse: either by transferring it over to a bird egg, which shortens her un-cursed lifespan to that of the bird (seven years), or a ritual which will transfer the curse to another person.]]
** [[spoiler:A spotted wight named Marlene was once a beautiful and proud heiress to an estate, but refused (vehemently at that) to give a beggar that came to her gate food and drink, despite it being an ancient right of hospitality. So the beggar broke his spoon and cast a curse upon her. To break it, Geralt had to share a meal with her of his own free will, eat without spoons, and make her look at her own reflection. The beggar in question may have been (from his treatment of spoons, the wording of his curse, that he was apparently a seller of mirrors, and the {{leitmotif}} that plays as Geralt describes what he did) Gaunter O'Dimm.]]
** [[spoiler:Girls born during the time of the Black Sun, such as Syanna, are believed to be cursed with horrible dreams that drive them insane. It's [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane never confirmed if the behaviour of these girls]] is due to the innate evil brought by the curse, [[ThenLetMeBeEvil or if it's just a natural reaction to being treated like monsters since childhood.]]]]
* CuteLittleFangs: The teeth that [[spoiler:Regis]] sports are noticeably sharp, but his otherwise gentle and civil disposition makes them weirdly endearing. They become ScaryTeeth when he gets his GameFace on, though.
* CuteMonsterGirl: At least [[spoiler:Guillaume seems to think this is the case with Vivienne's oriole-like form - she playfully chides him for the obvious flattery]].
* CutsceneIncompetence: There are days-long timeskips in this DLC where we're told Geralt's trails have gone cold, or he does very little to further the plot. For instance, after Dettlaff [[spoiler:declares war on Beauclair, Geralt and Regis do nothing to find him or bring Syanna to him until the vampire attacks actually start.]] Thus, the player gets yelled at by Anna Henrietta for failing to produce results and then, once gameplay resumes, Geralt and Regis find Syanna and/or Dettlaff via means they could have used before.
* CutscenePowerToTheMax: During his first chase of the Beast, Geralt is able to perform leaps that would be lethal in the gameplay, not to mention parkour more fitting for the ''Assassin's Creed'' series.
** During the fight with [[spoiler: Dettlaff]] using Aard Sign you throw him around ten feet into the sky, when usually it will make people stumble back a few feet at most.
* CycleOfHurting: Should you ever go against more than one bruxa or alp at the same time, expect to be BlownAcrossTheRoom repeatedly in rapid tandem by their shriek attacks.
* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:During Dettlaff's rampage in "The Night of Long Fangs," nearly every child in the orphanage is violently killed by an Alpha Garkain.]]
* DeconReconSwitch: Guillaume's story starts out as a {{Deconstruction}} of the KnightInShiningArmor and KnightErrant archetypes. In order to woo the lady of his dreams (whom he hardly knows, and who in turn doesn't know him), he repeatedly throws himself into dangerous situations pointlessly, gets in over his head, and is saved only by the timely interventions of Geralt and more experienced knights. However, he's shown to have a noble goal when he suspects that Vivienne is under a curse, and [[spoiler:by selflessly taking her curse unto himself, he reconstructs the archetypes by proving it takes more than battle prowess to truly be a knight.]]
* DegradedBoss: The first Bruxa you fight is a pretty tough boss fight. After that, they start to suffer more and more from CantCatchUp and serve as an uncommon EliteMook.
** The same applies to the Noonwraiths/Nightwraiths. In White Orchard, the former is used as a boss for the only contract there. However, one or the other could be found serving as a rare EliteMook guarding a chest on their own in Velen depending on the time of day.
* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Should Geralt keep Vivienne's condition secret from Guillaume, he will not only end up alone, but also disillusioned and bitter over the whole chivalry thing]].
* DifficultButAwesome: Completing one of the sidequests gets you this game's version of Aerondight. When wielding it, when you land a hit, it gains charges that buffs it's damage by 10% per charge. The catch is that it loses charges when you get damaged. Skillful use of dodging, and the Quen sign, will allow you to keep the buff, and gain it's benefits (namely, 100% crit chance while it lasts, and, if you kill something with a full charge, a permanent damage boost).
* DisproportionateRetribution: A woman expresses admiration for the birds in a forest owned by a magical creature and for this presumption the creature curses the woman's child.
* DoggedNiceGuy: Guillaume is smitten with the lady Vivienne, and refuses to take no for an answer. Vivienne's rejections and resistance are, essentially, obstacles to overcome during the quest. Abiding by her wishes leads to a NotQuiteTheRightThing result where she only has seven years to live and Guillaume is a bitter drunk, but ignoring her wishes leads to an ending where the two of them share true love and a much more ambiguous future.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: In a subversion, while on the main game people will throw slurs and make all sorts of FantasticRacism comments at Geralt just for being there, the people of Toussaint seem almost always happy to greet the Witcher (that is unless you royally screw things up during the main story quests).
* EasterEgg: In the Land of Thousand Fables, if one goes off the map into the mountains by exploiting a glitch, they can find [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heaev2XEzEE a picture of the dev team sitting in a clearing.]]
* EarnYourHappyEnding: After many adventures and trials before and during the game, even dying at one point, Geralt finally earns his happy ending if this is beaten after the rest of the game. Geralt gains a home, is able to retire in comfort as the wealthy owner of a vineyard, and, [[spoiler:depending on the events of the main game, has one of his loved ones visit (with Yen moving in, if she's romanced)]].
* EldritchLocation: The Unseen Elder's hidden lair [[GravityScrew pays lip service at best to the laws of physics]] and is crawling with an absurdly powerful vampire strain that can't be found anywhere else in the world, not to mention one of the most lethal beings in the whole Witcherverse. It's dark, oppressive and intensely creepy to traverse. Being the only mostly sealed gateway to another dimension that is still seeping through the rift in reality might've something to do with it. It's a real shame that it and the GoldenEnding are mutually exclusive.
* EvilIsPetty: YMMV on how evil you consider [[spoiler: Sylvia Anna]] to be. But [[spoiler:she]] will even admit that buying and smuggling Sangreal and trying to steal the Heart of Toussaint was stupid and had it not been for those two things they may have never found out who was the Mastermind behind it all, but [[spoiler:her pettiness got the best of her]]. Even worse [[spoiler:she flat out admits that even though it was quite stupid, she would do it all again because those things were her birthright.]]
* EvolvingWeapon: [[spoiler:Aerondight]], the CoolSword you get from [[spoiler:the Lady in the Lake]], becomes stronger as you kill more enemies with it when it's fully charged.
* {{Familiar}}: Witch living atop the Lynx Crag has a ''[[PantheraAwesome panther]]'' as one. First thing indicating something is off with the animal is how it doesn't try to attack Geralt when he's busy scaling the mountain.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The sunnier Mediterranean culture of Toussaint, with its vineyards and brightly coloured architecture, is seemingly based on Southern France. The capital city of Beauclair, with its ruling Duchess and wealthy inhabitants, is suggestive of the principality of Monaco.
* FateWorseThanDeath: Discussed briefly in "The Warble of a Smitten Knight", as part of the general deconstruction of chivalric romance cliches. It's easy for Guillaume to make bombastic declarations of all the ways he would be willing to die for Vivienne... But as Geralt muses, death is cheap to a knight whose bread and butter is drama. Whatever happens, he gets to bask in people's love and adoration, if only for his noble sacrifice. It's much harder to commit that way to what might be a ''life'' that's unpleasant and humiliating - say, being forced to eat bugs and look monstrous due to a curse. It's only by showing a willingness to accept even such a fate that Guillaume truly shows himself worthy of Vivienne's love.
* FinalBossPreview: The Beast of Beauclair is encountered early on as the fourth boss you face in the expansion.
* FirstEpisodeTwist: The revelation that [[spoiler:Regis was brought BackFromTheDead]] happens near the beginning of the story.
* FiveStagesOfGrief: In the BittersweetEnding, [[spoiler:Anna Henrietta is in ''deep'' denial her own sister could really consider her heartless, not to mention ordering a series of ironic murders.]] She goes as far as demanding all evidence of [[spoiler:her]] plot be destroyed.
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** While wandering around the wilds of Toussaint, Geralt can run into several Alps and Bruxae disguised as cloaked women (appropriately named "Hooded Woman"). While walking around Beauclair, [[spoiler:you can encounter many of the exact same Hooded Women. Sure enough, it turns out Beauclair is the Vampire capital of the world, and at one point during the main quest it is attacked by a horde of Vampires, and several of the aforementioned women transform before your very eyes.]]
** During the quest ''The Man from Cintra'', Orianna remarks "A hairpin may look like a mere ornament... but plunged into an eye, it can be as effective as a blade." This becomes far more relevant if Geralt fails to [[spoiler:convince Syanna of Duchess Anna Henrietta's innocence]], in which case [[spoiler: Syanna will murder Anna with her own hairpin.]]
* FracturedFairyTale: What happened to the Land of a Thousand Fables once the illusion that maintained it began to decay. [[spoiler:Now the Little Match Girl sells drugs; Thumbellina manages to out-drink the Big Bad Wolf, who murdered the Hunter and Little Red Riding Hood because he got tired of being thrown into the river; Goldilocks got eaten and mauled by the three bears; Prince Charming broke his neck in an accident; and Rapunzel hanged herself with her hair and became a wraith.]]
* FullFrontalAssault: Bruxae and alps cast off whatever clothes they might wear in their human disguise when they go on the offensive.
* GameBreakingBug:
** The Xbox One version suffered from a couple of these with the inability to save your game occurring after too long spent idle plus infinite loading screens. The latter could only be solved by not only restarting your Xbox but physically unplugging it and putting it back in. Other bugs included corrupted saves which could not be loaded without crashing your game. Made much worse by limited save slots (10 on consoles, i.e. not much for a game of this size), which make you juggle your saves like crazy in the fear of them ending up corrupted.
** During a horse race, you could easily end up spawning in a wall. Or facing the other way. Or in the middle of the racetrack, forcing you to track back to the very first checkpoint. Either way, it's up for a reload, as it means an almost certain loss either way. Fixed in the 1.0.5 patch.
** Finding your way to a plot-important area by complete accident can completely break the main quest.
** There are a few bugs that make several quests in the DLC impossible to finish:
*** The Warble of a Smitten Knight: Several users report Geralt no longer responding to input during the start of the practice race, making it impossible to proceed.
*** If a player leaves Toussaint while an upgrade to Corvo Bianco is in-progress, the upgrade will never finish, preventing the completion of the house.
* GameFace:
** When the Higher Vampires are overcome by rage or bloodlust, their faces warp into an animalistic shape. It's not really a "true form" because their real bodies are incorporeal, but it makes it clear when they've lost their faculties.
** Bruxae and alps also have distinct, if less impressively monstrous forms under their beautiful disguises.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation: If you get the good ending, Anna Henrietta rewards you with, among other things, several casks of Sangreal (the special wine normally only the ruling family is permitted to drink). However, the player will never see it because the vintage doesn't actually exist in gameplay, despite a ton of other wines being available. Including one named for Geralt which is delivered to his cellar on a regular basis.
* TheGhost: A criminal who's only ever called "the Cintrian" is hyped up as a major badass who you have spent two quests trying to track down. He's dead by the time you catch up to him, having been defenestrated by Orianna, meaning you don't even get to see him [[DevelopersForesight unless you go out of your way to find his body in the cliffs beneath the window]].
* TheGoodKingdom: Toussaint, all over. Lampshaded by Geralt when he first arrives.
* GoodPaysBetter: Pretty much all situations can be resolved [[LampshadeHanging by following the five chivalric virtues]]. Most of the quests not only have a GoldenEnding, but said ending can be achieved by simply being nice and reasonable, in stark contrast to the vanilla game. There are no hidden catches, no sudden twists or later reveals after doing something genuinely good. There are hidden checks on these actions as well; perform all five of the Virtues and you can acquire the highest-damage silver blade in the game: [[InfinityPlusOneSword Aerondight]].
* GoshdangItToHeck: Toussaintois don't cuss like Northerners do, instead using goofy euphemisms like "bum-diddler".[[note]]For whatever reason they curse just as much in original Polish script.[[/note]]
* GratuitousFrench: French is present through the DLC and peppers the speech of most of Toussaint's inhabitants.
* GravityScrew: Traversing the Unseen Elder's lair involves walking up walls and along the ceiling, which forms such a unique contrast to the rest of the game that more than a few players ended up utterly confused on how to proceed through the cave at various points.
* HellholePrison: Subverted with Bastoy Prison, which was abandoned after a failed experiment so terrible that the Duchy had to erase all records of its occurrence to avoid a scandal. What terrible horrors were inflicted on the Bastoy inmates? Treating the prisoners humanely, a radical idea in the Witcher-verse.
* AHomeownerIsYou: Corvo Bianco, the vineyard that Geralt receives, serves as a new home that players can pay to upgrade with various furnishings, including weapon and armor racks and other items that can grant you temporary buffs.
* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: [[spoiler:Regis]]. [[IOweYouMyLife Due to feeling that he owes Dettlaff his life]], he repeatedly insists that Dettlaff is not a monster and beseeches Geralt to spare him, even while [[spoiler:people die on the streets of Beauclair when Syanna is not brought before Dettlaff after her fake kidnapping is exposed.]] Even before that, Dettlaff has obviously failed to truly adapt to walking among humans. [[spoiler:It's implied that Regis is aware of this on some level, but too emotionally invested to admit it until he's forced to kill Dettlaff personally.]]
* HotWitch: The one from ''A Knight's Tale'' sidequest surely counts, directly combined with EvilIsSexy. And it's apparently her normal look, not just glamour spell or illusion. In fact, it's revealed that the reason Daphne's love never returned to her is because he spent a hot and sweaty weekend with the witch, who then indirectly killed him when he said he wanted to go back to Daphne.
* HumanoidAbomination: This is what the Higher Vampires essentially boil down to: all-but-immortal creatures from another dimension whose true bodies are completely immaterial, and whose physical forms can warp into horrible abominations when their emotions get the better of them. In ages past they considered humans essentially livestock and cultivated them with such finesse that people never even realised that their lives were manipulated by supernatural apex predators from birth to death.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Damien is an excellent crossbowmen, all right. But this trope is fully in place in the DownerEnding, where he [[spoiler:quickly grabs his crossbow and shoots while the weapon is still in swing motion. He still hits Syanna directly in the neck, the only body part not obscured by Anna Henrietta]].
* InfinityPlusOneSword: Aerondight makes final appearance in the trilogy. It's ''the'' most powerful weapon in the game, easily outclassing any other sword, including other [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Swords]]. Not only does it come with absurdly high raw damage and an even more powerful bonus, ''increased with each hit'', but it can also ''level up'', meaning it will never be overshadowed by any other weapon. It works just as well against monsters and humanoids. But to get it, Geralt needs to first prove he is worthy by a complex SecretTestOfCharacter while doing different quests and errands.
-->'''Lady of the Lake:''' And I trust this time [[LampshadeHanging you shall not lose it...]]
** On the armor side we have the Grandmaster Ursine Armor, regarded by many as the best armor in the game with the only drawback being its abysmal stamina recovery, and that can be nullified by having it enchanted with ''Levity'' which treats any equipped armor as Light Armor.
* InTheHood:
** The Grandmaster Feline Armor gives Geralt a hood unique to this set.
** Female [=NPCs=] can be seen walking around Beauclair wearing head to toe hoods and named "Hooded Woman", [[spoiler: they're all vampires.]]
* KarmaHoudini: The Witch of Lynx Crag in "A Knight's Tale". Speaking with her reveals that when a knight came to convince her to lift a drought and win the love of Daphne in the process, he instead wound up in bed with her for several nights. After the knight began to feel guilty about his infidelity, he tried to return to Daphne. The witch, being a WomanScorned, indirectly caused him to die soon afterwards, which led to a heartbroken Daphne turning into a tree where she remained trapped for eons. All this time the Witch has known exactly how to free Daphne, but never divulged the information out of spite. If Geralt tries to find a cure for Daphne by any means other than groveling and begging, the Witch dooms Daphne to become a wrathful spirit that kills the very man who hired Geralt to save her. Even if he does so, the Witch is so annoyed that she casts a spell on Geralt that makes the Witch an UnPerson to him.
* KingIncognito: Or Duchess Incognito. Her Grace joins you on a journey under hood to Casta Ravello winery, where someone's been stealing from a wine reserve meant only for the ducal family to serve at their table, as part of the mystery behind the Beast of Beauclair's motives. Her incognito outfit still screams "high-born" from the quality leather and cloth and precious metal fastenings. In the next quest, she blends in a bit better as just another noblewoman behind a fancy mask at Orianna's artiste soiree (though her voice is unmistakable to one of Orianna's bouncers who was a former palace guard).
* KnightErrant: They pretty much serve as Toussaint's primary police force, patrolling the lands to right wrongs and defend the people while abiding by a strict code of chivalry. Notably though, there's an office in Beauclair dedicated to paying them for their services. So unlike witchers, being a knight errant is actually a viable (if somewhat dangerous) profession.
* KnightInShiningArmor: The Duchy's [[PlanetOfHats collective hat]], as chivalry is ''very'' SeriousBusiness there.
** Geralt can get in on the act several times, such as embodying the Five Chivalric Virtues or competing in a tourney with a heraldic set of armor. The relic-level armor found in The Land of a Thousand Fables is so shiney is borders on BlingOfWar levels.
* LampshadeHanging: Twice in a row, once by Geralt and then by [[spoiler:Roach]].
--> '''Geralt''': "Your voice, it's, uh, very interesting. Gotta say I expected a young [[spoiler:mare]] to sound, uh, girlish."
-->'''[[spoiler:Roach]]''': "Based on what? Your vast experience with [[spoiler:talking animals]]? Far as I know, I'm your first."
--> '''Geralt''': ''beat'' "Good point."
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall:
** One of the earliest clues you can find is a handkerchief embroidered with the initials "d.l.C". See TakeThat below for more details.
** Right at the end of the DLC, [[spoiler:Geralt is told that he deserves a little rest. Geralt agrees, and then turns, smirking straight at the "camera", before the scene fades to black.]]
** ''Contract: Equine Phantom'' is basically all about this. [[spoiler:Geralt and Roach's dialogue are all jokes at the expanse of the horse mechanics in the game.]]
* LesbianVampire: One of the Guarded Treasures features a woman in a hooded cloak standing in front of a dead man. Looting the body will reveal the man went there to confront his wife's lover, and will cause the woman to turn into a bruxa. Looting the bruxa provides a letter from the wife talking about how she never could have imagined she would fall in love with a woman. Though it's unclear if the affair was of a sexual nature or merely [[KissOfTheVampire about the blood]].
* LethalChef:
** The spoon wight's brew is so hideous that it jacks Geralt's toxicity level up on the spot; possibly to very dangerous levels if certain Alchemy stats weren't buffed beforehand. Bring the White Honey.
** One bandit camp has a lootable letter in which the hanse leader complains that the kitchen crew cooked a meal so bad, it had everyone in the fortress spewing from both ends. As punishment, the kitchen crew is made to wash all of the fortress's diarrhea-soaked undergarments.
* LighterAndSofter: Toussaint is a much more pleasant place than the regions visited in the base game. The majority of the sidequests are lighthearted and many of them involve LeaningOnTheFourthWall. While the DLC's main quest has plenty of dark moments, it never reaches the feel of hopelessness that pervades Velen and Novigrad.
** The ''Big Game Hunter'' sidequest borders on OutOfGenreExperience. It reduces combat to a minimum ([[NeverTrustATitle not harming any animals is a big aspect of it]]), has a clear and unambiguous happy ending and is heavily into its story, making it longer than an average sidequest.
** It extends to the world. Toussaint is far more bright and colorful than anywhere in the main game. Its residents tend to be far friendlier, as opposed to those in Velen, who will throw racial slurs at Geralt, talk about how they hit their wives (the Toussaintois do this too, but not as much), or gleefully brag about burning mages and nonhumans. Even its poor and peasants lead seemingly richer lives; slums in Novigrad often leave the poor starving and hungry in the streets while vineyards have peasants singing merrily and there's at least one soup kitchen in Beauclaire. The contrast is perhaps best seen at the start of the DLC, when two knights of Toussaint protect a town in Velen from Bandits, insisting to give the bandits a chance to abandon their criminal ways, knowing the bandits will refuse, but doing this, the Knights know they did everything to avoid violence. When the bandits are defeated, Geralt notes the Velen citizens are now afraid of the knights who saved them, and will not thank them.
* LightFeminineAndDarkFeminine: The ducal sisters; Anna Henrietta is the light, and Sylvia Anna is the dark. The contrast is reflected in their attire as well as their demeanors.
* LooksLikeOrlok: The Higher Vampires bear varying degrees of resemblance to this trope when they get their GameFace on. Probably the one closest is [[spoiler:The Unseen Elder]], due to his baldness, pale skin, slender figure, and extremely long and sharp incisors.
* LoveRedeems: For one of the sidequests, [[spoiler:this is a key ingredient into how a curse is lifted. Geralt himself is surprised the method used worked, as true love between the one cursed and the person it's being transferred to is mentioned as being essential]].
* LoveRuinsTheRealm: [[spoiler:The murders that the main story centers around happen because Dettlaff falsely believes he's keeping his lover safe.]]
* LudicrousGibs: The "Bloodbath" mutation in the new Mutation level-up tree lives up to its name. If selected, drawing steel against human foes will inevitably end up with severed body parts everywhere from dynamic finishers pretty much for every felling.
* MadScientist: Professor Moreau, [[Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau like his namesake]], performed numerous cruel experiments in order to control artificial mutations in people. [[spoiler:Ironically, his goal was to "cure" witcher mutations, but he only learned how to make them stronger.]]
* TheMagicGoesAway: In the fairy tale book, the spell that brings the various fairy tales and its characters to life has begun to fade, leading to disastrous results. For example, the three bears got tired of Goldilocks' shenanigans and killed her, the Big Bad Wolf killed Red Riding Hood and the Huntsman as payback and spends most of his time getting drunk with Redbeard, and Rapunzel hanged herself with her own hair after getting tired of being locked up in her tower.
* MamaBear: Say what you want about Anna Henrietta, but she loves and protects her subjects like no other royal in the Witcher saga. And there's no faster way to spark her wrath than hurting them.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Did Geralt really drink a potion that let him understand Roach, or was he hallucinating?
* MilitariesAreUseless: The Knights and Ducal Guards can't/don't do anything against the hanse bases, and only after Geralt cleaned them out of the bandits they start occupying them.
* MoeGreeneSpecial: [[spoiler:The giant cyclops Golyat, the first boss enemy encountered in the DLC,]] can be killed instantly with a well-placed crossbow bolt to the eye.
* MonsterAndTheMaiden: The [[LastOfHisKind witcher]] [[PlayerCharacter Geralt]] works with the duchess [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Anna Henrietta]] and later on with her sister, [[DarkActionGirl Sylvia Anna]].
* MoodWhiplash: The "Equine Phantoms" contract starts out as the usual slightly creepy monster-hunting sidequest. About halfway through, it slides deeply into LeaningOnTheFourthWall silliness and SnarkToSnarkCombat once [[spoiler:Roach starts talking]].
* MookHorrorShow: When Detlaff and Regis show up during the siege of Dun Tynne, their onslaught is this to the defenders.
* MoralMyopia: In the sidequest ''Extreme Cosplay'' the man helping Geralt uncover what happened to a group of reinactors only scoffs at the "treachery" of Elves when he hears of the unused trap they had devised to assassinate the human King who had subjugated them--which the reinactors had accidentally triggered--despite the fact the only reason it failed was humans enacted a pogrom upon them before they could give it to the King as part what was supposed to be their first annual tribute. What makes this callousness so striking is, up until this point, he had otherwise been a kind GoodSamaritan, showing that even in [[TheGoodKingdom Toussaint]], some people's kindness is only reserved for their own kind.
* MrViceGuy: Even though De la Croix is described as being very greedy, to the point of being the subject of [[TakeThat a very unsubtle jab]] at paid-for DownloadableContent, flashbacks show he was also capable of kindness and generosity, [[spoiler:going so far as to befriend Dettlaff.]]
* MultipleEndings: Three endings for the main questline, four variants for the epilogue quest, and two dealing with [[spoiler:Regis]].
** Main questline:
*** [[spoiler:Both Anna Henrietta and Sylvia Anna die. Either get Orianna to help you find the Unseen Elder, or track down Syanna, get her ribbon from the Little Match Girl, and don't perform the investigation before the trial. Syanna kills Anna Henrietta with a hairpin during the trial, then Damien puts a crossbow bolt through Syanna in retaliation. Damien is crushed and the future of Touissant is left uncertain, but Geralt is regarded as a hero for ending Dettlaff's threat.]]
*** [[spoiler:Anna Henrietta lives, but Sylvia Anna dies. Track down Syanna, but don't get her ribbon back. Dettlaff kills her, after which Geralt can either let him leave peacefully or still kill him. Either way, Anna Henrietta has Geralt put in prison for Syanna's death, where he resides for nearly a month until Dandelion is able to talk the court into freeing him based on the Witcher contract. Even then, Geralt is forever marked as the man who allowed the Duchess' beloved sister to die a horrific death, which makes his postgame interactions with the people of Touissant pretty tense, to say the ''very'' least.]]
*** [[spoiler:Both Anna Henrietta and Sylvia Anna live. Track down Syanna, listen to all of her stories while wandering the Fablesphere, get her ribbon back, then go through with the investigation before her trial. Talk Syanna into forgiving her sister and argue for mercy during the trial. The sisters begin to reconcile, although Syanna is still sentenced to imprisonment.]]
** Vampiric aftermath: [[spoiler:Should you either have the Unseen Elder summon Dettlaff or you let Dettlaff go after he kills Syanna, then Regis will stay in Toussaint. If Syanna lives and Regis has to deal the killing blow to Dettlaff, then Regis has to leave Toussaint due to becoming ''persona non grata'' among the vampires of the region.]]
** ''Be It Ever So Humble'' guest: [[spoiler:Changes based on when the DLC is completed compared to the main game, Geralt's relationship with Yennefer or Triss, and whether Ciri is either the Empress of Nilfgaard or a witcher. Dandelion appears by default: either if you complete the DLC before the main game, or if Geralt has no romance and Ciri is dead. If Geralt romances either Yennefer or Triss they will show up; Yennefer permanently moves in, while Triss wants to use the vineyard as a vacation home. If Geralt has no romance and Ciri is alive, she appears either as a Witcheress visiting after a contract (and can then move in), or as the (future) Empress on a tour of the provinces.]]
* NationalStereotypes: [[FantasyCounterpartCulture The people of Toussaint]] share many of the traits often associated with the French: an obsession with wine and cooking, an emphasis on romance and romantic ideals, and intense (one might even say boastful) interest in art and culture.
* NiceGuy: The Knights of Toussaint are refreshingly chivalrous, honorable [[KnightErrant errant knights]], willing to do good for the sake of it. Special mention goes to Guillaume, likely the purest KnightInShiningArmor seen in the whole setting.
* NotQuiteTheRightThing: "The Warble of the Smitten Knight:" Choosing to [[spoiler:keep Vivienne's curse a secret from Guillaume (as per her wishes) results in the curse getting broken but she now has only seven years left to live and Guillaume doesn't get the girl.]] Choosing to [[spoiler:let Guillaume in on the secret results in a comparatively happier ending where the curse is transferred to Guillaume with only minor side-effects and she and Guillaume are deeply in love]]. The former is more of a BittersweetEnding (as Vivienne is very happy but doomed, and Guillaume is depressed but otherwise fine), while the latter is much closer to HappilyEverAfter.
* NotWhatItLooksLike:
** ''Big Game Hunter'' has Count Beledal, who apparently wants to organise a safari. He wants specifically [[FamedInStory Geralt]] as his guide, appears to be careless, has shades of MadArtist and openly invokes that maybe he's just [[RichBoredom a rich guy looking for new ways to spend his fortune]]. [[spoiler:Turns out [[GoodParents he's a loving father]], trying to get pictures of wildlife for his crippled daughter while being on an official tour in Toussaint. And the story makes it clear he saves no expenses for her to at least have a semblance of a normal life]].
** The conclusion of ''Father Knows Worst'' sidequest. [[spoiler:When Geralt finds the missing Hugo and they head back to the surface, the remaining brothers are apparently waiting with a band of thugs. Hugo is obviously scared they are just waiting to finish him off. If Geralt decides to talk first, fight maybe, it turns out the thugs are in fact local hunters, called to help cleaning the cave from monsters. The brothers decide to bury the hatchet [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone after realising they've almost killed]] [[ThickerThanWater Hugo]] over money]].
* OffhandBackhand: After thrashing the three goons harassing the bootblack kid, Geralt casually swats one aside when explaining the situation to the responding guardsmen.
* ObstructiveBureaucrat: "Paperchase" has Geralt face the most fearsome enemy of his life: finding the paperwork to prove to the bank that he is not dead so he can withdraw money from a bank account a client set up for him years ago as payment for a job. While [[spoiler:the bank is trying to cover up that it spent Geralt's money after he was reported dead]], another customer indicates that this kind of obstruction is commonplace at the bank.
** And the grand solution to the titular paperchase? Being NiceToTheWaiter. As the other bank patron notes, those people sit in their offices for 12 hours a day and never even hear so much as a "have a nice day" or just "good morning". Giving flowers or perfume to the clerk will be enough to bring the head of the bank to speak directly with Geralt. Talk about CuttingTheKnot!
* OneManArmy: Clearing out the bandit hanses sees Geralt ripping apart groups of enemies in their dozens without much effort.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: While vampires are around in the base game, ''Blood and Wine'' features them as a major presence in the plot. The mysterious and powerful Higher Vampires especially show a whole culture of their own, and the expansion goes to some lengths to establish the differences between them and their lesser brethren. [[spoiler:Regis]] is, as usual, a font of knowledge on the subject. They're unharmed by any of the traditional weaknesses; they're more closely affiliated with birds than with bats, despite the resemblance some lesser vampire species have for the latter; they don't spread their nature to humans (being a separate shape-shifting species that arrived during the Conjunction); they live even longer than elves, which means they're often highly learned and skilled in whatever they pursue; they're extremely strong, fast and magically powerful; they can give up drinking blood, but it's extremely difficult; they have their own fairly rigid rules and traditions; and each region of their territory is ruled by an Unseen Elder.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: An arguing ghostly couple exasperates Geralt so much that he breaks his normally muted expressiveness and low-key speech habits to yell at perhaps his loudest and highest pitch ever heard.
* OutWithABang: A sidequest has Geralt try to recover part of a statue (guess which part) rumored to increase the sexual prowess of any man who touches it. Geralt learns that the thief is an old man who is using the... piece to treat his erectile dysfunction. If Geralt lets the old man keep it, the old man pays Geralt and promises more coin if Geralt returns in a week. If Geralt returns after a week passes in-game, he finds that the old man died of sexual exhaustion. You get a hint of this fate that could have happened if you let him keep it a day longer; his next partner has such an insatiable lust that he nearly felt a heart attack come on while in the act and eagerly surrenders the bits to Geralt.
** The most bizarre part of the quest is that the magic properties of the statue's manhood ''actually work''. If you rub the... "orbs" of the restored statue you'll get a stamina bonus that'll let you run nonstop for 60 minutes.
* PaperThinDisguise: Unimaginative rather than inherently poor, it very quickly becomes clear that whenever you run into a lone woman wearing a cloak far in wilderness, she's going to be a hostile vampire in disguise. Unfortunately you can't attack her until she turns hostile on her own.
* PeopleFarms: Raising humans for their blood was common among higher vampires back in the day, and Geralt gets to visit some of the old "farms" and read the instruction manuals on the practice (which, just to hammer home the point, discuss Free-Range versus Battery, two categorizations usually applied to raising chickens for their eggs). [[spoiler:Orianna turned an orphanage into one, though she claims she never drank them to death and has taken them off the streets and let them live happily. Geralt makes it clear that he's going to come for her later on, but he has more pressing matters at the moment.]]
* PlatonicProstitution: Though Geralt can engage with prostitutes in Toussaint the normal way, he ''also'' has the opportunity to proposition one to play Gwent with him. He asks her very bashfully as well, as if he's embarrassed by what he's doing.
* PlayableEpilogue: Upon completing "Blood and Wine.", [[spoiler:Geralt gets one final "mission": Go home to Corvo Bianco, his vineyard estate in Toussaint. Upon arriving, his Majordomo informs him that "someone" has barged into the house unannounced. Depending on the player's relationship choices during the main game, Geralt finds a visitor / new resident in the form of either Triss, Yennefer, Ciri, or Dandelion (complete with context-specific dialogue options for each).]]
* PostFinalBoss: [[spoiler: Even after slaying Dettlaff in the final battle, the game makes you battle against a few more street thugs and bruxae during the denouement of the story]].
* ThePowerOfHate: One of the treasure hunt sidequests, ''But Other Than That, How Did You Enjoy the Play'', involves [[spoiler:a beann'shie. A century ago, she was an obnoxious actress with serious and mutual beef against her rival. Last entry in her journal has her promise to turn the theatre into "an earthly hellspace" if anything happens to her. Her hate was strong enough to not only [[CameBackWrong bring her back as a wraith]], but make good on her threat]].
* ThePowerOfLove: What breaks the curse on [[spoiler:Vivienne should Guillaume choose to shoulder it in her stead.]] Geralt lampshades it by saying how he didn't think it would work.
* PowerUpLetdown: The armor & swords you can find when you [[spoiler:choose to look for Syanna]] count as this if you’re planning to play on NG+. The armor set has only marginally better stats than the set you can pay an armorer to craft, in addition to having 0 resistance against monsters. The swords only have stats that are useful for mage builds, which are still worse than the swords the Griffin set (which is specialized for mage builds) offers. At least the armor set (which borders on BlingOfWar) looks cool when displayed in your house.
* PrecisionFStrike: From [[spoiler:Roach]] of all, um... people.
-->'''Geralt:''' Run, [[spoiler:Roach]]!\\
'''[[spoiler:Roach]]:''' ''(panting)'' WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I'M DOING?!
* PurpleProse: Goes hand-in-hand with the Tournament Herald's RhymesOnADime.
* RagsToRiches: Geralt goes from a wandering bounty hunter constantly cheated out of fair pay, before the [=DLC=], to owning a thriving vinyard and villa where he can comfortably hang his swords and retire, by the end.
* RedOniBlueOni: Regis and Dettlaff are color-coded blue and red respectively, especially in their mist forms. Their personalities reflect this as well, with Dettlaff being hot-headed and quick to anger, while Regis is calm and always looks for a diplomatic solution.
* RedRightHand: The Higher Vampires have longer, sharper teeth than normal people in their human form (not just their canines, as is typical for pop-culture vampires; all their teeth). It's not to the point where they look monstrous, but it's a clear sign for those who know to look.
* RhymesOnADime: The herald for the tournament engages in this when issuing proclamations, including a bit of LampshadeHanging when Geralt asks if he can explain something normally and receives a blunt "No" in response.
* RightForTheWrongReasons: Sangreal is made only for the ducal family of Toussaint and only they are allowed to drink it. As part of the investigation into the murders Geralt and Anna Henrietta discover Fabricio has been selling it to an unknown individual, this gets him sent to prison for high treason. As it turns out [[spoiler: the person buying and drinking the wine was Sylvia Anna, who is part of the Ducal family.]]
* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: When the safety of her subjects is at risk Anna Henrietta wastes no time to jump straight into the fray, manners or customs be damned. In her EstablishingCharacterMoment, once she and Geralt realize who the next target is, she wastes no time tearing off the skirt of her dress so she can run faster and lead Geralt to her gardens to try and save the next victim, much to the shock of her ladies and courtiers. After this, she never hesitates to put herself at risk to help with the investigation. A notable difference with her cousin Emhyr who never leaves his palace throughout the game, and also a stark contrast with both Emhyr and Radovid who see their subjects and soldiers as disposable.
* SacredHospitality: [[spoiler:Breaking this was the source of the spotted wight's curse]].
* ScavengerHunt: The DLC includes new Grandmaster tier Witcher equipment sets for the Wolf, Cat, Griffin, and Bear Schools, while adding armor and weapons for the new Manticore School. Although it should be said that the Cat, Griffin, and Bear School gear requires the Mastercrafted tier equivalent in order to upgrade them. The Manticore set is Grandmaster tier already, while the Wolf set doesn't require the Mastercrafted gear to be made.[[note]]WordOfGod indicates that Grandmaster-level Wolven armor not requiring lower tiers to complete was a developer gesture; one intended to offset the base game's Wolf School armor hunt being widely bugged and impossible to complete for a large number of players.[[/note]]
* SerialKillingsSpecificTarget: The story starts with a string of murders of prominent knights of the Duchy of Toussaint, with the murderer's motive seemingly to punish these knights for failing to live up to one of the five Knightly Virtues of Honor, Valor, Generosity, Wisdom and Compassion. If you decide to investigate further, you'll discover that the final target was Duchess Anna Henrietta. It turns out that [[spoiler:her sister Sylvia Anna was planning to kill Anna Henrietta to take vengeance for a tragic event during her childhood, which led to Sylvia's banishment.]] The murders of the previous victims were purposefully connected to the Five Knightly Virtues so people would assume these to be divine punishments and also assume the death of Anna Henrietta to be one, allowing [[spoiler:Sylvia Anna]] to be free of suspicion.
* SeriousBusiness:
** In an EstablishingCharacterMoment, Geralt can try to dissuade the bandits at the start of the DLC by pointing out that the knights he's with are from Toussaint and in service to Duchess Anna, who the bandits proceed to insult. [[BerserkButton The knights do not take this well]].
** Wine is sacred in Toussaint, and their obsession with it actually provides a vital clue towards the main villain's identity. Most notably, the Sangreal vintage is intended to only to be drunk by members of the Ducal family, and selling it to anyone else is considered high treason.
** The locals have a saying: "Tradition is sacred in Toussaint." The participants of the scavenger hunt react with shock and horror when Geralt cheats. A woman refuses to relinquish the "Phoenix Egg" even when being ordered to do so point blank by the Duchess.
** Gwent, as usual. A significant number of people in Toussaint hate the new Skellige faction and feel it ruins the game entirely, to the point of gate-crashing a tournament held by its creator.
* ShownTheirWork: In-universe, the presence of the false heraldic crest Geralt was using while [[Literature/TheLastWish visiting Cintrian court for the first time]]. [[LampshadeHanging Geralt is impressed someone was able to dig it out]].
* SilkHidingSteel: Anna Henrietta may be a proper lady, but she's still the ruler of her land and can be ruthless when necessary, and is no stranger to ordering executions or spear-hunting foxes.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: This expansion leans more toward Idealism compared to the main game. Many sidequests have a genuinely happy ending one can reach by going for the obvious nice choices.
* SpeaksFluentAnimal: Vampires (especially Bruxae) can speak to birds and use them to gather information. [[spoiler:Regis]] favors ravens.
* SpoilerCover: The cover image of the DLC spoils the true appearance of [[spoiler: Dettlaff.]]
* TheStinger: The true final quest, "Be It Ever So Humble...," is effectively one if you beat this after the main game. [[spoiler: The credits roll, Geralt retires to his home after many adventures, and, depending on what's done in the game proper, he chats with either Dandelion, Yennefer, Triss, or Ciri (whether it be as a Witcheress or as an Empress)]].
* SymmetricEffect: The in-game card game gwent has cards that trigger weather effects, which affect all soldiers of the same type regardless of which army they're in - frost affects both players' melee soldiers, fog affects archers and rain affects siege engines.
* TakeThat:
** One of the first murder victims you find is an old knight named De la Croix, identified by a handkerchief signed as [[{{DownloadableContent}} DlC]], and you find out that he was a pretty greedy fellow. Subtlety, thy name is not CD Projekt Red.
** The angry mob rallying to oppose the new Skellige Gwent faction is a jab at the kind of people who complain any change whatsoever to an established game has ''ruined it forever''.
* TakeThatUs:
** One of the prostitutes in Beauclair mentions a new trend - men wear leather jackets and two swords, come to brothels and ask the prostitutes to roleplay succubi or sirens. After sex, they [[VideoGame/TheWitcher ask for a card of some sort]]. Geralt remarks that he might know who came up with the idea. This references how the player receives a collectible card after every sexual encounter in the very first game.
** Again, the [[{{DownloadableContent}} DLC]] bit in the early quests. If you have not noticed the format yet, this quest takes place ''in'' a [=DLC=].
** Combined with LeaningOnTheFourthWall, after imbibing a "potion" that lets him talk to Roach, Geralt can finally ask her why she's always there when he whistles and how she can cross oceans, yet get stuck on the tiniest fences -- referencing some of the most often [[GameplayAndStorySegregation commented gameplay quirks]] by the fandom of game (leading WebVideo/HonestTrailers to call Roach a "teleporting demon horse"). In particular, the segment in the game when Geralt first sails to Skellige, gets shipwrecked, and finds Roach inexplicably waiting nearby when he wakes up. (Naturally, Roach offers no concrete explanation.)
* TakingTheBullet: Done nonfatally by [[spoiler: Regis]] in Geralt's first fight with the Beast, appearing out of thin air to block an attack that would have otherwise killed Geralt. The Beast's claws literally tear a giant hole in his torso, but thanks to his HealingFactor, [[spoiler: Regis]] is completely fine.
* TheTourney: Geralt can take part in one during ''The Warble of a Smitten Knight''.
* {{Tragedy}}: The main quest line has the makings of a classic tragedy, with the quest's PointOfNoReturn [[spoiler:doubling as the "peripeteia" (reversal of fortune). The fake DamselInDistress becomes a ''real'' one, and Dettlaff likewise becomes a true main antagonist. The {{denouement}} tugs at the player's feelings of both pity and fear, with several sympathetic characters robbed of a happy ending.]]
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The "A Night to Remember" trailer for Blood and Wine spoils that Orianna [[spoiler:is a Bruxa and [[ForegoneConclusion will survive the ''Night of Long Fangs''.]]]]
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: In the Land of a Thousand Fables, you'll encounter [[Literature/TheLittleMatchGirl the Little Flint Girl]]. [[spoiler:Since no one ever bought her flint, she's taken to selling drugs instead.]]
* UncannyValley:
** The halflings in the game are oddly creepy-looking due to their oversized heads, facial features that seem oddly stretched and with some rodent-like qualities to them, and their oversized hands and feet.
** The Aen Elle elves tend to be skeletally gaunt with pale eyes and some of them are enormously tall, rising head and shoulders above normal humanoids while retaining otherwise normal proportions, lending them a decidedly otherworldly look.
* UltimateBlacksmith: Lazare Lafargue, the only Grandmaster blacksmith in the game and the only one capable of making Grandmaster-tier Witcher gears.
* UndergroundMonkey: Spriggan (a race of monsters exclusive to Toussaint) is basically a PaletteSwap of the regular Leshen from the main game with a humanoid face instead of a stag skull. It does change things up a bit by being faster than regular Leshen and seems to favor living in caves instead of forests.
* VampireMonarch: [[spoiler:The higher vampires answer to the Unseen Elder, who guards the gate to the vampires' old world.]]
* WalkOnWater: Geralt can encounter a small pool with such properties, with a lone hermit sitting in the middle of it. The dialogue between them is one big LeaningOnTheFourthWall of how Geralt can't make a comparison to Christ, since it's Witcherverse.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Due to her curse, Marlene spent well over a century as a wight; immortal but not ageless. Not only did she endure all that time as a hideous, semi-sentient monster, but the curse made sure she could watch as her family and loved ones died, leaving her hopelessly alone.
* WideOpenSandbox: While ''Hearts of Stone'' added on to the Velen[=/=]Novigrad land area, ''Blood and Wine'' adds a whole new sandbox.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: Damien's strategies to defeat the beast basically boil down to this. When Geralt explains the Beast is actually [[spoiler: an intelligent, immortal, high vampire]], his strategy changes to hitting it '''extra hard'''.
* WolverineClaws: Enraged higher vampires gain them, and they can use them to dismember even people in full plate armor.
* WomanScorned: Gareth the knight learned [[DeathByWomanScorned the hard way]] how things end if you first fall for [[EvilIsSexy a witch]] you were supposed to slay, but then have second thoughts about your OneTrueLove.
* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: Orianna, who runs an orphanage that to her is more of a wine cellar. Whenever she wants to feed on blood, she goes to bite the children who are ostensibly under her care.]] She tries to justify it to Geralt by saying that she never drinks so much as to kill the children, just enough to slake her thirst.
* AWorldHalfFull: This expansion has a ''much'' more optimistic tone than the main game, right down to there being a GoldenEnding for certain sidequests.
* YouFightLikeACow: In the 'Fists of Fury' quest for Toussaint, you encounter an opponent (name of [[ShoutOut Mancomb]]) who starts to insult you in this manner. Geralt can respond in kind. [[spoiler:Do so properly, and you can skip the actual fight.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: S-Z]]
* SacredHospitality:
** A variant can be heard in Skellige NPC chatter. A raider said that he had to rescue a Nilfgaardian soldier whose ship was lost since it's every sailor's duty to rescue anyone that is lost at sea. However, nothing stopped him from [[LoopholeAbuse slitting the soldier's throat once they made it back to dry land]].
** The [[FakeAristocrat Bloody Baron]] may be an abusive drunk who allows his thugs to terrorize locals, but he [[EvenEvilHasStandards definitely values in this]] and treats Ciri and Gretka with surprising kindness and is very grateful for Geralt's help. [[spoiler:Should Geralt help him get his wife back, the Baron will try to become a genuinely good person by giving up drink, becoming less tyrannical, and leaving to take his wife to the best healer he can find.]]
* SadisticChoice:
** Invoked by the King of the Wild Hunt to threaten Geralt:
--->'''King:''' Every decision you make will bring devastation. Each choice will lead to a greater evil.
** This also happens to [=NPCs=] in Velen, since they're living in a literal war zone - do they [[spoiler:send some children off to "gather mushrooms" or "follow the trail of treats", or let the entire family starve because there are too many mouths to feed?]] As it turns out, unlike the player might have expected, the "trail of treats" does exist and there's food and shelter on the other side. [[spoiler:Unfortunately coupled with a very short life span, as the Crones simply fatten the children to be eaten.]]
** A malicious spirit [[spoiler:of a murdered druidess]] who has been killing people left and right promises to release a group of children set for sacrifice. Her price? Geralt has to release her. [[spoiler:There is no good choice. Killing her means the orphans die, but letting her escape means she kills every man, woman, and child in Downwarren, besides ending in Anna and Phillip's deaths.]] And even ''then'', [[spoiler:one of the in-game books implies that the "murdered druidess" spirit is the spirit of the being that created the Crones.]]
** Happens again in ''Reasons of State'' when Radovid [[spoiler:is assassinated. Roche celebrates with Thaler and Ves by revealing they've made a separate peace with Nilfgaard that cedes Lyria and Aedirn to the Emperor as well as makes Temeria a vassal state. Dijkstra reveals he has no intention of surrendering to the Empire and intends to fight on, based on recent information from Geralt, but this would result in a unified North with Temeria firmly under Redania's control. Geralt can either save Roche and condemn three nations of the North to Nilfgaard's rule--[[ScrewThisImOuttaHere or just leave them to sort it out themselves]], which he's fully aware leads to Dijkstra's victory. The third option is not to take the quest at all, which leads to an outcome far worse than the previous two by leaving [[TheCaligula a totally insane tyrant]] to rule the North and burn/impale everything non-human or magical.]]
** Ciri's ending is one for the player. [[spoiler: Do you let her become a Witcher and run away with you at the expense of sacrificing all of the North to fall under Nilfgaard/Radovid/Dijkstra's heel? Or do you push her into a role she's never wanted right in the middle of all the politicking she's avoided all her life for the sake of stopping the war for good?]] There's no right answer either way.
* SanitySlippage: Far from the [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]] [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] of the first two games, King Radovid is suffering this. He's begun making bizarre metaphors about chess, betraying everyone around him, and engaging in DisproportionateRetribution wherever possible. It's implied that he was driven to madness by his fear of Philippa Eilhart's revenge, so he started burning all mages and nonhumans out of a paranoid delusion that they're all secretly conspiring with Eilhart. It does ''NOT'' make him any less dangerous.
* SarcasmBlind: The chamberlain that helps prepare Geralt for his audience with Emhyr.
-->'''Geralt''': So what now? [[DeadpanSnarker Powder my nose?]]\\
'''Chamberlain''': (''studies Geralt for a few seconds'') No need. The gentleman's complexion is light enough.
* SaveScumming:
** Pointedly discouraged. In general, unless reloading the last save after death, you will have to sit through a lengthy narration every time you load your game. It gets old really fast.
** Backfired in the case of haggling. If you max out the annoyance meter and fail a contract negotiation, then reload the last save to try again, your first proposal will automatically be a CriticalFailure and you'll be forced to accept the minimum reward. This appears to be the only situation where this applies, as you can Save Scum the hell out of any other situation. Even the Gwent Tournament autosaves between rounds so you don't need to start the whole thing over if you fail.
* TheScapegoat:
** Members of the Church of the Eternal Fire take advantage of the chaos of the war to blame it on convenient scapegoats: mages, nonhumans, and, of course, ''witchers''.
--->'''[[MrExposition Ambassador var Attre]]''': How do men deal with fear? They seek reassurance... and scapegoats. The Church of the Eternal Fire understands this perfectly. And so it promises to improve the lives of its flock by pointing out the guilty. Who started the war? Who profits from it? Why, it's obvious - mages, elves, dwarves. In a word, [[FantasticRacism any and all deviants]].
** In a sidequest, it's mentioned that a witcher (from the Viper school, same as Letho) in the White Orchard area was blamed for the disappearance of a child, taken and tortured, then died attempting to clear a wraith from a ruin to prove his innocence. It later turns out that a drowner had killed the kid. Oops.
* SavedByCanon: In the books, Emperor Emhyr var Emreis dies many years after both the saga and the games, implying he survives the events of ''The Witcher 3''. [[spoiler:Subverted thanks to the game having MultipleEndings. If Nilfgaard's invasion fails, Emhyr gets assassinated by his fellow Nilfgaardians. If it succeeds, he lives as Emperor of the North and South.]]
* ScaryStingingSwarm: Bees will sting you. Bees will REALLY sting you if you thwack their hive with, say, the [[BlownAcrossTheRoom Aard sign]]. They will also really sting up foes. You can [[CombatPragmatist create your own hazard]] at a battle site with bandits set up near a beehive or two, and remember to clean up the swarm afterwards with Igni and help yourself to the honeycomb in the hive for a [[HyperactiveMetabolism healing snack]].
* ScavengerHunt: A number of the sidequests that you can start are this. Most lead to caches of treasure and/or equipment that you may or may not need. A series of four in particular, however, have rewards that are too good to pass up: the rewards are the missing diagrams for equipment from the Viper, Cat, Griffin, and Bear Witcher Schools. One of the bits of free DLC adds Wolf School equipment to the list.
* SceneryGorn: There are a ''lot'' of gruesome sites to be found, especially in No Man's Land, where dead bodies litter the earth and corpses hang from trees and gallows.
* SceneryPorn: If you can get away from the battlefields and execution sites, though, then you'll find many gorgeous vistas. Skellige in particular is a vibrant and beautiful place, with stunning views of boreal and alpine scenery. The Duchy of Toussaint stands in stark contrast to Velen's bleakness and Skellige's harsh, wintry environment by displaying a ''much'' richer color palette, suiting the area's WorldHalfFull nature.
* SecretRoom: There is one in [[spoiler:Margrave Henckel's house as well as on the top floor of the tower of Fyke Isle]].
* SelfDeprecation:
** One of the trailers has an occasionally mocked shot of Geralt saying he was "killing monsters" when he kills an evil human. Naturally, a bit of in-game dialogue is a sardonic poke towards it.
** Dijkstra is well aware he's been beaten with an ugly stick, and any attempts by Geralt to mock him over his looks will just cause him to cheerfully agree.
* SerialKiller: Geralt can end up hunting one down in Novigrad after the killer goes after one of his friends.
* SeriesContinuityError: ''Nobody'' in or out of the game can decide what counts as a higher vampire, with the situation made even worse with the ''Blood and Wine'' expansion. Geralt's dialogue outright contradicts itself on separate occasions, the target of a contract ''identifies'' themselves as a higher vampire but is permanently killed and drops the essence of katakan (which is a lower vampire according to one of Geralt's lines), the image used in the codex entry of a higher vampire is of a lower vampire, and so forth.
* SeriousBusiness: Gwent. People are willing to pay king's ransoms for the best cards of the game and even commit murders over them. Doubly so for dwarfs, who apparently invented the game. It's so sacred that when a man decides to host a tournament to promote the use of his newly invented fifth faction (Skellige) an armed mob attacks to prevent the "dissecration" of Gwent.
* SetBonus: In Gwent, this is the Northern Kingdom's major gimmick. The points of "Tight Bond" units multiply by the number of them on the field and NK's Tight Bond cards are much stronger and more numerous than their closest competitor. Of course, this make them incredibly susceptible to Scorch effect which can knock out the entire set.
* SexySurfacingShot
** One of the first cutscenes in the game is Geralt in a BathtubScene. When he stands out of the tub, he shows off his body which is CoveredWithScars.
** When Geralt finds Keira Metz bathing in her private magical cave in Velen, there's a shot of her getting out of her bath before [[GorgeousGarmentGeneration magically generating some clothes]].
* ShapeshifterModeLock:
** [[spoiler:Phillipa Eilhart got mode-locked into her owl form by a dimeritium shackle, and had to suffer being Zoltan's pet bird.]]
** There is a vampire prison with a special magic-nullifying crow cage that prevents higher vampires from polymorphing into their natural mist form, leaving them stuck in a humanoid form.
* ShipSinking:
** Geralt/Ciri has a large fanbase, but when the Crones bring up the possibility that Geralt would find Ciri sexually attractive instead of a daughter, Geralt becomes noticeably irritated and shoots it down.
** Avallac'h's interest in Ciri is so intense that several characters believe that his interests are personal. However, a woman met in Avallac'h's study (implied to be his lover) states that Avallac'h is ''disgusted'' by Ciri and has no interest in her whatsoever outside of her power (though there's some implication that she herself is [[UnreliableNarrator jealous]] of [[GreenEyedMonster how much time and attention Avallac'h is devoting to Ciri]]). Ciri is absolutely ''devastated'' when she hears this, which has sparked questions about whether or not she was hoping for a relationship.
** The game offers the player the option of doing this themselves by choosing dialogue and making questing decisions that thoroughly end any romance between [[spoiler: Geralt and Yennefer, or Geralt and Triss.]]
** If Geralt attempts to romance [[spoiler: both Triss and Yennefer]], the game automatically triggers an event that sinks ''both'' ships.
* ShipperOnDeck: Dijkstra is quite overt in trying to get Geralt and Triss to rekindle their romance.
* ShipTease:
** Geralt is teased with a ''lot'' of women, not all of whom he is able to take to bed.
*** Rosa var Attre flirts heavily with Geralt while the two are practice dueling, and she gives him an invitation that makes it seem as though something sexual is intended. But, [[ShipSinking when Geralt finds her later, it turns out sword lessons were all she wanted]] and her views on certain things are also a turn-off for him.
*** Margarita tells Phillipa at the end that Geralt has slept with all but three of the women currently on their boat. Phillipa says that, in Margarita's case, it's only a matter of time.
*** If Geralt breaks Vivienne's curse without Guillaume's help, he can find her again much later at Novigrad. She's very happy to be free of her curse and gives Geralt a feather that once belonged to her old self. As they part ways, she gives him a coy wink.
*** Geralt displays sexual chemistry with a number of characters who are never explicitly depicted as potential love interests, such as Tamira the herbalist in White Orchard and the aristocrat Ingrid Vegelbud.
*** Cerys is another; she and Geralt have great chemistry and asks him about his relationship with Yennefer a few too many times, but nothing comes of it.
** Ciri can give a young man named Skjall his first kiss, and show clear signs of interest in him. Unfortunately, Skjall dies later. However, it's ''also'' possible to instead say Ciri has an interest in Skjall's sister, who doesn't react negatively to that at all.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Quite a few quests have endings that are not just pointless, but horrifically cruel. For example, the quest "Wild at Heart" ends with [[spoiler:the reveal that the hunter's jealous sister-in-law is who caused his wife's death, by luring her to him while he was in werewolf form. The only way this doesn't end with more death is to end the quest by accepting the sister's bribe, thus never finding out what happened. Otherwise, the sister-in-law will confess to try and save her beloved's life, but he'll be so disgusted that he'll try to kill her. To stop him, Geralt must kill ''him'', but even if Geralt lets him take revenge, the werewolf asks Geralt to take his life anyway. So you have to choose between a ShaggyDogStory or two ShootTheShaggyDog stories.]]
* ShoutOut: See [[ShoutOut/TheWitcher3WildHunt its own subpage]].
* ShowDontTell: One of the things the game was praised for by [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]], citing the sequence where Geralt is properly trained for his meeting with Emperor Emhyr.
* ShownTheirWork:
** Geralt's in-conversation Axii Sign animation is actually him spelling Axii in American Sign Language.
** The "rest" animations between Geralt's attacks are actual German longsword fencing stances.
** Ciri's unusual open-pommeled sword is based on a very obscure medieval Irish design.
* TheSiege: The Battle of Kaer Morhen, where Geralt and [[GondorCallsForAid all the allies he's gathered over the game]] fight to protect Ciri from the Wild Hunt.
* SinisterWhistling: [[SatanicArchetype Gunter O'Dimm]], the mysterious, magical, and sneakily malevolent merchant in the DLC ''Heart of Stone'' has ominous-sounding theme music. You first hear CreepyChildrenSinging it as Geralt enters the town. Later Gunter himself whistle sit as he walks away tossing and catching a skull in his hand if he is able to collect Olgierd Van Everec's soul.
* SkyCell: An Ard Skellig island has prison cells clearly inspired by the sky cells from ''Series/GameOfThrones'', as proved by the corpse of a Tyrion lookalike and some lines of dialogue taken from the show.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism:
** Geralt is actually the ''[[KnightInSourArmor idealist]]'' in this case, with Lambert having a massive FreudianExcuse for being TheCynic.
** The game as a whole is fairly cynical, but the player has some control over ''how'' cynical. Which of the MultipleEndings you get is based on a handful of key interactions between Geralt and Ciri that basically amount to slight nudges toward idealism or cynicism.
* SnarkToSnarkCombat: Geralt and Dijkstra are ''relentless'' in this towards each other.
* SneakyDeparture: Ciri and Geralt sneak out of Kaer Morhen early in the morning to take revenge on Imlereth.
* SnowballLie: A little girl on Skellige tells her older brother [[FalseRapeAccusation that their uncle abused her]], because she didn't like said uncle because he smelled. Her older brother flew into a rage and killed the man, leaving him to face a painful execution by the rest of his village for his crime.
* SociallyUnacceptableCollection:
** Inverted near the start of the game, in the inn in White Orchard there's a Temerian crest as decoration, since the area is occupied by the Nilfgaardians the owner wants to take it down fearing they'll burn the inn down if they see it, later the locals notice and attack the innkeeper for her apparent lack of patriotism leading to a fight breaking out between Geralt and Vesemir against the locals.
** During the quest "A Dangerous Game", Geralt and Zoltan try to steal a rare Fringilla Vigo gwent card from a collector. Initially one might think the collector collects gwent cards, which wouldn't be unusual. It turns out he actually collects Nilfgaardian Empire memorabilia.
* SoLastSeason: Except for a few pieces of armor and [[InfinityPlusOneSword Aerondight]], all your equipment becomes this in New Game +.
* SocketedEquipment: Tons of it. Almost every rare, unique, and/or high-level sword comes with one, two, or three sockets into which [[GreenRocks runestones]] can be fitted in order to give the weapon incremental boosts, or special stats. Same with armor and [[GreenRocks glyphs]]. Taken to an extreme with the "Hearts of Stone" DLC, where [[spoiler:the visiting Ofieri "Runewright" can drill sockets into some items that don't come with them by default (then happily turn around sell you pricey stones or "enchantments" to fill them).]]
* SoftWater: While a sizable drop onto land can injure or even kill Geralt, a long drop into a deep enough body of water won't even scratch him. This makes the quickest way down from Kaer Trolde to jump off the bridge there and land in the channel below. Kaer Trolde by the way, is nearly at the summit of a mountain and the jump is listed in some walkthroughs as a "must-try".
* SoleSurvivor: Early on in the game, Geralt travels to a Velen village to meet a Nilfgaardian spy who has information on Ciri, who was seen in the area. [[spoiler: When he arrives however, he finds the village destroyed, its only inhabitant an old man being menaced by some feral dogs. After Geralt saves him, the man explains that the Wild Hunt attacked the village, [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured the information]] on Ciri out of the spy, [[LeaveNoWitnesses then killed the villagers to cover their tracks]]; the old man only survived because he barricaded himself in his house and stayed silent]].
* SpaceCompression: Downplayed in Velen where the encampments of the hostile armies are situated improbably close to each other, and although Novigrad is fairly reasonably sized for a realistic Medieval city, the countryside around it isn't remotely large enough to support its population. The trope comes more apparent in the Skellige Isles where each of the Isles is supposed to have its own, distinct cultural flavour and a semi-independent clan capable of sending out numerous longships full of warriors, but in-game all but the main isle are tiny and only contain small villages with a couple of dozen people at most.
* ASpyAtTheSpa: The bathhouse in Novigrad is run by Sigi Reuven, also known as Sigismund Dijkstra, former head of Redanian intelligence. Information is still his preferred currency to exchange for favors. He uses the bathhouse as a meeting ground for the heads of the big four crime syndicates in Novigrad. Before attending a meeting, [[NudityEqualsHonesty clothes and weapons are stowed in cubbies in a separate room]]. When Whoreson Junior breaks away from the syndicate and sends his men to attack the bathhouse during a meeting, Geralt and the other three are forced to fend off the attack in [[FullFrontalAssault nothing]] but {{Modesty Towel}}s and [[CantBatheWithoutAWeapon some clubs the paranoid Dijkstra kept for self defense]].
* StewedAlive: What awaits Hjalmar and Geralt on Undvik by the hands of some rock trolls.
* StolenGoodReturnedBetter: One early side quest involves fetching a frying pan for an old woman that some stranger borrowed and never bothered to return. When Geralt brings it to her, she is shocked to find it cleaned to a mirror shine when before it was covered in soot. Turns out the man was a spy who wanted to use the soot on the pan to make ink so he could write some letters detailing the movements of the Nilfgaardian forces.
* StoryDifficultySetting: The easy mode is called "Story Only".
* {{Stripperific}}: The DLC alternative costumes for Triss and Yennifer fall into this category; Keira's outfit is always like this.
* StrongEnemiesLowRewards: The guards and soldiers in various cities and strongholds, in addition to outleveling Geralt, won't drop anything more than token loot if killed. The effort to dispatch them for next to no reward means that it's always in the player's best interest to avoid angering them, or to run if they do, rather than stand and fight.
* SuccubiAndIncubi: The Succubi in this game are an unusual variation of the trope in that they are almost universally {{Non Malicious Monster}}s, only killing people in self-defense or by accident. They're ruled by lust, but they don't drain living energy through the act. One even takes the effort to give a proper burial to an old man who came to her repeatedly [[OutWithABang in spite of his chronic heart condition]].
* SummonARide: Geralt can call his horse, Roach, from anywhere in the world, and she will [[OffscreenTeleportation arrive in short order]], even if she had to cross rivers, mountains and oceans from the other side of the map. This, combined with her invulnerability, is all for the sake of convenient gameplay. This is lampshaded in-game during the quest "Equine Phantoms" in the Blood and Wine expansion where [[spoiler: Geralt now being able to understand Roach after taking a special concoction asks Roach about it, to which Roach simply states that she will simply go wherever Geralt is as long as he needs her.]]
* SuperDrowningSkills: Shooting down some flying enemies (such as basilisks or wyverns) over water can result in them falling in and instantly dying, at the expense of you not getting any loot.
* SwampsAreEvil: Velen is home to a large bog ruled by [[TheWeirdSisters the Ladies of the Wood]].
* SympathyForTheDevil:
** [[GrayAndGreyMorality Par for the course with the series]], as sentient monsters aren't typically presented as AlwaysChaoticEvil, but more as natural forces, non-malicious, and occasionally conflicted.
** Some of the human characters invoke this, as well. For example, the Bloody Baron, a drunken brute who oppresses the peasants under him [[spoiler:and beats his wife]], is a human wreck who is too terrified to face the world sober, and tries to make up for his bad deeds with little acts of kindness, like giving a home to an abandoned little girl and being a DotingParent, or giving [[SacredHospitality a much-needed respite]] to a young lady on the run from [[TheWildHunt otherworldly pursuers]]. He's a bad man, but one gets the impression that he knows it, sincerely wants to be better, and would if he weren't also a very weak person. [[spoiler:Geralt can help nudge him closer to this path by showing sympathy when he tells his side of the story, then helping to save his wife.]]
* TakeThat:
** During the 'The Tower Outta Nowhere' sidequest, the mage trapped in the tower that is disturbing the daily life of Urialla Harbor tells you that, in order for him to get the tower to move somewhere else, he must recover control of it. In order to do this, you must get him '''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion G]]'''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion ottfried's]] '''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion O]]'''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion mni opening]] '''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion G]]'''[[ShamelessSelfPromotion rimoire]], which contains among its pages the way to counteract the tower's '''[[FunWithAcronyms D]]'''[[FunWithAcronyms efensive]] '''[[FunWithAcronyms R]]'''[[FunWithAcronyms egulatory]] '''[[FunWithAcronyms M]]'''[[FunWithAcronyms agicon]] (in case you missed the reference, the grimoire's icon in inventory has "Website/GOGDotCom" written on its cover). Yeah... subtlety, thy name is ''absent''.
** When going over some of Dandelion's previous paramours, Zoltan mentions how one lass had strange tastes that involved them roleplaying as [[Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey people named Anastasia and Christian]]. Geralt describes this as perverse and says he'd rather not hear any more about their activities, and it's also notable that [[EveryoneHasStandards even Dandelion eventually bailed on her]].
* TakingTheHeat: [[spoiler:At the beginning of the Skellige arc, Yennefer takes full blame for the destruction of Freya's Garden, even convincing the outraged priestesses that Geralt actually tried to ''stop'' her. Whether or not this is actually true depends on dialogue choices. While it ''does'' exonerate Geralt of the people's anger, the Freya priestesses and some guards will still chew him out over it.]]
* TeethClenchedTeamwork:
** Emhyr and Geralt can develop this sort of relationship.
** Hell, any time Geralt works with the Nilfgaardians (and there are plenty of opportunities), every answer variation is nasty to some degree. It is literally impossible to be completely respectful and polite to the Nilfgaardian invaders.
** The Battle of Kaer Morhen brings together multiple allies of Geralt who don't exactly get along with one another. To note:
*** The other Wolf School witchers cannot stand Yen and put off the rather urgent tasks she has given them (seen as her bossing them around) until Geralt arrives to assist.
*** Roche is still angry that Letho killed Foltest in the previous game and the two will not speak if both are recruited to assist. However, they'll still aid Geralt during the siege.
*** You can practically hear Triss and Yennifer gritting their teeth as Geralt returns to Kaer Morhen. As soon as Ciri leaves earshot, they start sniping at each other.
* TeleportSpam: Employed liberally by the more high ranking Warriors of the Wild Hunt in battle. Ciri's FlashStep eventually develops close to this, as well.
* TemptingFate: During the quest 'An Eye for an Eye', in which Geralt and Roche need to save Ves from throwing her life away attacking a group of Nilfgaardians against orders. Roche notes that as rash and impetuous as Ves is, she's not stupid, and it's likely she'll try to attack the Nilfgaardians under cover of night. [[LeeroyJenkins Cue Ves charging the Nilfgaardians in broad daylight with no armor, screaming like a lunatic with only two others as backup]].
* ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks: [[spoiler:Geralt throws his silver sword to stop the last Crone escaping in the ending where Ciri dies]].
* ThunderboltIron: Or Thunderbolt Silver. Many silver blades require meteorite metals, or even alloyed meteorite silver.
* TimeAbyss:
** The Ladies of the Woods are said to have been in the swamp longer than its oldest tree, and that they were already there when the elves first came. And the elves were there long before the humans and monsters showed up during the Conjunction of the Spheres, an event that in-game lore states happened one and a half millennia ago.
** Even worse, according to the in-game book "She who knows" a being known simply as "The Mother" in the book came from "a faraway land" and was so lonely that she created herself three daughters out of dirt and water, and they lived together for many years until the mother lost her mind and the daughters killed her. It's implied the daughters are the Crones and the mother is the being trapped in the Whispering Hillock. And you may have just released it onto the unsuspecting people of Velen. NiceJobBreakingItHero!
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: A problem that Geralt runs into a lot of the times as those players who are used to acting righteously will often have trouble figuring out which option is the "Good" one. The legal system in the Witcher universe is Draconian, prejudiced, and classist while unforeseen consequences often follow good-intentioned deeds.
* TooDumbToFool: The reason why Dijkstra's vault guardian is Bart the Rock Troll. Like most trolls, they have an intelligence level about on par with a four-year-old, so he'd be highly unlikely to have notions of greed for the hoard he's guarding. According to Bart's character entry in the glossary, it's a fad for Novigrad's elite to have such monsters guard their vaults.
* TooDumbToLive:
** Ronvid of the Small Marsh, an incompetent wannabe knight seemingly stalking Geralt and challenging him to duels. Both times, Geralt kicks his ass and he surrenders after taking only a few blows. The third time he meets Geralt, he ambushes him with a pair of hired goons not much more skilled than him. At this point, either convince him to go home with a strong Axii, or he dies.
** In the Witcher Contract to take down the noonwraith known as the White Lady, you're told how a band of drunkards decided to go out into the field and try to get rid of the ghost by giving her sex. Now, do you ''really'' need to be told how badly this idea ends for them?
** While in the village of Arinbjorn in Skellige, a couple of the local youth, Kori and Kraki, [[BullyingADragon constantly harass Geralt]] for being [[FantasticRacism a foreigner]] whenever they encounter him. After one confrontation gets serious, the lads pull out swords... and get cut down in a matter of seconds.
* TooAwesomeToUse: An in-universe example comes in the form of the Mask Uroboros. It allows one to peer into the past, but unfortunately, it can only be used once. Worse, using it puts the Skellige Isles in danger of being flooded, which is all the more reason why Ermion keeps it under lock and key with the intention of only using it once the GodzillaThreshold has been crossed.
* TrainingFromHell: A part of the course for all Witchers, but in this game you can actually listen to a ghost of a witcher training young candidates and find the report of the Trial of Grasses. It says that from the group of five boys aged 8-10 three died during the trial (mostly due to stroke or multiple organ failure), one survived but had to be [[MercyKill put out of his misery]] due to severe brain damage and only one survived unscathed enough to continue training.
* TrialAndErrorGameplay: There is a bit of this with regard to using Axii in conversation, but fortunately it's seldom enough that it's not distracting. A number of conversations offer the option to JediMindTrick someone into doing what you want. The few times it doesn't work, it's because there's a group of people present, and one of them notices you casting the sign and calls you out. But it's unpredictable, because sometimes it ''does'' work on groups, with no explanation given as to what the difference is. You just have to know, either from a guide or a previous playthrough.
* TrojanPrisoner: In one quest you put Triss in shackles to infiltrate a heavily-guarded outpost.
* TwoRoadsBeforeYou: As in previous installments, the game is all about choice and consequences. For instance: Slay a monster and watch its worshippers be purged along with it, or allow them to all live, at the cost of the monster killing others? You may sometimes TakeAThirdOption, but it will carry its own consequences.
* {{Uberwald}}: While the whole universe could be considered an example, the region of Velen has this in spades. Velen is a war-torn agrarian region with lots of forests, [[SwampsAreEvil a creepy swamp]] ruled by [[TheWeirdSisters evil witches]], superstitious peasants, and all manner of eccentric magic users.
* UncertainDoom: If you spare Gaetan, a member of the Witcher Cat School, during a {{Sidequest}}, he will reveal a hideout full of gear, which also contains a letter from another member, named Joel. Joel mentions that the Cat School was captured and destroyed, and although other members were killed, the fate of one Witcher named Schrödinger is unknown, meaning he is either dead or alive.
* UltimateBlacksmith:
** Yoana is the only Armorer in the entire game that crafts master-level armor such as the Witcher armors. Hattori is the only master swordsmith that can forge master-level weaponry such as the Witcher blades. Both are only available after you complete the multi-point quests which can only be started when you've leveled your character up high enough.
** Both are outdone by the blacksmith of Beauclair in Toussaint in ''Blood and Wine'' who can craft ''grandmaster'' Witcher swords ''and'' armors.
* UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay:
** While Geralt can kill bandits and monsters in the wilderness to his heart's content, using his Witcher skills in urban areas results in him being labeled a monster. Even if someone is being attacked, they react in horror if someone gets cut down in front of them. This is doubly so when it's potentially someone's neighbor. There are several quests that end with Geralt receiving a WhatTheHellHero for this too.
** Think you can play Geralt like a suave ladies' man and romance both Yennefer and Triss at once? Go ahead, [[WomanScorned see what happens]] [[note]]You're still free to sleep with other women in sidequests, including prostitutes, as well as another sorceress in Kiera[[/note]]...
** Using Axii on someone in a crowd of people will not go unnoticed, due to the obvious hand gesture associated with it. Bystanders will also often notice the equally obvious change in mindset in whoever the Sign was used on.
* UndergroundMonkey: Just about every enemy has at least one [[EliteMook stronger]], renamed-and-reskinned version of itself encountered at higher levels. Even for some of the few who don't, there are entirely separate monsters that serve essentially this function. The Contract bosses are almost invariably of the KingMook variety (complete with separate Bestiary entries).
* UndergroundRailroad: Triss is managing one for mages trying to avoid being burned at a stake in Novigrad with the aid of King of Beggars and [[spoiler:Dijkstra.]]
* UngratefulBastard: Napp, a villager in White Orchard, who burned the village's forge (owned by a dwarf) down just because he served the Nilfgaardian garrison. Many of the villagers thought the dwarf was personally loyal to Nilfgaard and growing rich off their gold (neither is true). If Geralt brings Napp before the blacksmith, the dwarf yells that he served the man's mother for years and never charged her anything. He's actually angry enough that he calls soldiers over to punish him, not realizing that this means Napp will be hanged. [[note]]For interfering with the army's requirements, a capital offense in Nilfgaard.[[/note]] [[spoiler:Upon [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realizing how everyone else will react]], the smith opts to throw his lot in with Nilfgaard in truth.]]
* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: It's ''very'' easy to completely break the main quest by simply accidentally stumbling upon a plot-relevant destination. Performing story quests in the wrong order (with no indication given) often ends with prematurely stopping an entire questline, missing out on sections of the story and experience.
* VanHelsingHateCrimes: Thanks to the rise of Radovid, the Eternal Fire and their [[FantasticRacism magic-hating ways]] have gained major influence in the north, particularly in Novigrad. Their armies of Witch Hunters locate any mages or creatures of magical power (no matter how harmless they are) and burn them alive at the stake. At the end of the game, we learn that helping the mages escape Novigrad caused them to move on to non-humans like elves and dwarves. Thus far, Witchers are not their targets, but only because they're [[HunterOfHisOwnKind useful in helping round up]] ''other'' creatures of magic. It's very clear that it's only a matter of time until they start going after Witchers too.
* VictorySex: Most of Geralt's romance options (Keira, Yennifer, Triss, and Shani... with [[spoiler:Syanna]] being the only exception) offer themselves to him after whatever the main conflict of their story arc is has been resolved.
* VideoGameCaringPotential:
** Encouraged regarding Ciri, as getting the GoldenEnding of the game pretty much requires you to play Geralt as a good, supportive, encouraging father figure. This includes having fun daddy-daughter moments like a snowball fight in Kaer Morhen or trashing Avalac’h’s lab together after Ciri’s heart is broken by him.
** Exploited regarding Priscilla, whose status as a ComicRelief NiceGirl and one-half of the game’s BetaCouple with Dandelion makes her easy to like, and thus [[spoiler:when she’s assaulted and nearly killed by a local ChurchMilitant serial killer, you’re set to go after the bastard who did it. The quest gives you a pretty convincing RedHerring, and if you kill them the quest ends and the real killer will become a KarmaHoudini. It basically exploits how much the player wants to avenge Priscilla in order to bait them into making the wrong choice.]]
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Enemies will attack Roach, who cannot be killed. If you're facing a situation with a tough enemy or large group of enemies, you can ride Roach into the middle of the fray and then hop off. Some of the enemies will go after your invulnerable horse, making things easier. This method also works to lure powerful enemies away from "Guarded Treasure" sites, allowing you to loot them once they've chased Roach far enough away that Geralt leaves aggro.
* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: If you kill too many cows in White Orchard, a powerful and high level monster will spawn and make short work of you. This was added by the developers to put an end to an exploit that was gained from looting cows.
* VikingFuneral: Once Geralt arrives in Skellige he witnesses King Bran's funeral. For extra points, one of Bran's lovers throws herself onto the burning boat as it is sent off to sea. It's stated that only Kings and great heroes are cremated, everyone else is buried.
* VillainOfAnotherStory:
** Radovid pretty much serves as the BigBad for the political upheaval and rampant genocide of mages and non-humans in the North. This story runs parallel to the main plot of the game, and Geralt only gets involved with it when he absolutely has to. [[spoiler:And fittingly, things are much better when Radovid dies, regardless of who wins the war.]]
** Emperor Emhyr counts as one. He is responsible for starting a war that threatens everyone's way of life. Unlike Radovid, his role as a villain is more detached from the main story and, if anything, he spends more time helping the heroes than he does hindering them.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Lambert and Geralt, best encapsulated in an exchange made during an hours-long drink-fest near the end of the game.
* WarIsHell: The first part of the game includes visiting a massive battlefield, a ravaged village, and an occupied town. In White Orchard, Geralt also talks to a scholar who is going to the front lines in order to chronicle the war firsthand. Geralt suggests the book would be more historical if it focused on the rapes, horror, and despair. The scholar, of course, dismisses it as something no one would be interested in reading. Ironically, once you get to Velen you can find his corpse hanging from a tree and his manuscript can be looted and sold as vendor trash.
* WarmUpBoss: Nithral, the boss of the “Wandering in the Dark” quest is by far the earliest named Wild Hunt soldier Geralt (and Keira) defeats and kills if the game’s played in the intended order. He is difficult to defeat but not much more so than other high-leveled enemies in Velen, with his only unique abilities being casting a protective shield whilst summoning Hounds (which Geralt and Keira will already have dispatched in great numbers in the previous section.)
* WeirdnessMagnet: Geralt's line of work leads him into some situations that are bizarre even by in-universe standards. Examples include finding a cranky vampire who tells Geralt to just let him sleep, a village that worships a "god" who is upset at their offerings [[spoiler:and is actually just a sylvan living in the basement]], and a cartoonish attempt on Geralt's life by revenge-hungry sapient monsters.
* WhamLine: Ciri delivers an important one to Geralt.
-->[[spoiler: This is ''my'' story. You have to let me tell it.]]
* WhatYearIsIt: The [[https://youtu.be/-NxWHYO87MM?t=1m51s official gameplay trailer]] features a scene where Geralt and another person open a sarcophagus and find a non-decomposed, apparently living guy inside it -- a vampire, who then asks whether it's 1358 yet. Geralt replies it is not (the in-game year is 1272). The vampire then tells the two of them in [[PrecisionFStrike no uncertain terms]] to leave him alone.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** Letho becomes this to both Geralt and Nilfgaard both if you spared his life. He chose to disappear rather than continue his service to the Nilfgaard Emperor or rebuild the Viper school. [[spoiler:When you encounter him in a possible sidequest, he states that the Emperor eventually [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness decided to have him killed as a loose end]] and he's been hiding ever since.]]
** There's an ''extremely'' literal example when Keira Metz transforms 3 mice into a pair of white horses for herself and Geralt. When Geralt invokes this trope, she replies that the spell has a literal 2/3 chance of success on each subject, so she always uses one more than necessary. [[spoiler:She never actually explains what happened to it]].
** Priscilla is last seen [[spoiler:recovering in a hospital, with Dandelion declaring they start a double act with him singing and her playing the lute. She goes unmentioned until the epilogue (where she's recovered with only a slight decrease in her vocal pitch, which Dandelion doesn't mind, and looks set for a HappilyEverAfter)]].
** [[spoiler:The third Crone, Weavess, manages to escape Ciri's assault in the endgame, but never makes a comeback if you complete the game with Ciri still alive. Should Ciri die during the second to last quest, Geralt himself will journey back to finish the job.]]
** It's possible to [[spoiler:kill Sigi Reuven aka Dijkstra during "Reasons of State"]], which means that his friend Bart the rock troll has no one to feed him or guard treasure for anymore. That is, unless [[spoiler: you already killed Bart while chasing after Philippa.]]
* WhatMeasureIsAMook: When trying to pursue Phillipa through [[spoiler:Dijkstra's bath house as she's wrecking the place, you cut your way through several of Dijkstra's henchmen, charmed by the fleeing blind sorceress. You ''can'' cut down the also-charmed Bart the Rock Troll Vault Guard (met previously in the quest about Dijkstra's raided vault)... or because he's a named character, you can talk your way past the ultimately benign troll.]]
* WhatTheHellHero:
** Geralt can do this constantly to Yennefer, who makes many morally ambiguous decisions [[spoiler:such as joining Nilfgaard, robbing a close friend of the family, reanimating a corpse, and desecrating a holy shrine]] in the pursuit of Ciri. Yennefer's response is always some variant of IDidWhatIHadToDo.
** Geralt can [[spoiler:abandon Roche, Thaler, and Ves]] to be killed after finding out they've signed a treaty with Nilfgaard.
** Yennefer gives Geralt one of these for his relationship with Triss while amnesiac.
** This is the reason Triss and Geralt broke up [[DowntimeDowngrade between games]]; when Geralt got his full memory back, he realized she had been hiding things from him (such as Yennefer) so that they could be together. He didn't appreciate it, and broke it off. You can choose to reignite the romance during the game, though.
** Geralt will sometimes hear this from [=NPCs=] if he kills someone in front of them, even if he has to in order to save lives. Early in the game, he loses access to a shopkeeper if he chooses to fight and kill a group of thugs who are harassing her; much later [[spoiler:the same shopkeeper suddenly turns up to denounce Geralt in front of a group of people, though nothing comes of it.]]
** Roche and Ves are decidedly angry at Geralt and question his judgement if [[spoiler: he invites Letho to fight the Wild Hunt]].
** Ciri can give Geralt this if he accepts the coin for bringing her to Emhyr.
* WhiteAndGreyMorality: Present in the "King's Gambit" quest. Both Hjalmar and Cerys are good people who become effective rulers if either of them is elected king. If the quest is not completed, though, then Svanrige Tuirseach becomes king, albeit as a puppet for his scheming mother. [[spoiler:Except that it turns out he's not quite as spineless as believed, and becomes a strong ruler in his own right, albeit one who forcefully turns Skellige into an absolute monarchy.]]
* WholePlotReference:
** TheBardOnBoard: "A Towerful of Mice" is basically Romeo and Juliet with curse and monster. It even complete with fake poison and TogetherInDeath. It also fits closely with the legend of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popiel Prince Popiel the Second]] who locked himself in a tower to get away from his angry subjects and was eaten by mice.
** The sidequest "Allfathers Eve" is based on the poem [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziady_(poem) Dziady part 2]] with the quest reenacting the ritual from the story and quoting the lines almost word for word.
** Film/Se7en : "Carnal Sin" is one, as it features a religious zealot ritualistically murdering people he sees as sinners in order to wake society up into being more righteous.
** FracturedFairyTale: The play to draw out Dudu is one to Princess and the Frog. InUniverse, it's a retelling of how Ciri's parent met which in turn was making nods toward Rumpelstiltskin; Gretka (the little girl Ciri met in Velen) was clearly following the story of Hansel and Gretel, on her way to the house of child-eating witches following a trail of treat; Ciri herself played Literature/SnowWhite with seven dwarfs as her guardians during a magically induced sleep.
* WholesomeCrossdresser: Elihal enjoys dressing up like a woman, among other types of people, to pretend to be something that he isn't. He's also a NiceGuy, a skilled tailor, and a good friend of Dandelion's. He also makes it very clear he's not gay, which is also the case for many crossdressers in real life.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes:
** Portals and doublets for Geralt. He hates the feeling of teleporting, often having the portal exit him far from the target destination, and formal wear makes him itch. Of course, [[RunningGag he constantly has to travel by portal and both Yennefer and Triss request him to wear a proper tunic several times]]. One sidequest can add another thing to the list: [[spoiler:extremely smelly cheeses]].
** Keira Metz abhors rats. Her sidequest is titled "Tower Full of Mice". Because of course it is. In fact, this is why she needs Geralt to go to the island and tower to retrieve the items she needs.
* WideOpenSandbox:
** You are free to wander throughout the multiple regions that serve as the setting of ''Wild Hunt'' beginning early on, unlike previous games, where you were limited to specific areas depending on your point in the story, sometimes not until much later. Your only limitation is that particular missions or monsters encountered may be scaled beyond your current level, making certain locations and activities risky. Even then, however, smart use of weapons, potions and signs may make it possible to emerge victorious and, on easier difficulty settings, you often get plenty of warning if you're coming up to a fight you might not be able to win.
** There are five distinct regions: the farmlands of White Orchard, the combined Velen-Novigrad countryside, the Nordic-style Skellige Islands, and the mountain pass containing Kaer Morhen. There are also a few smaller areas that are separate from the main regions. Installing the "Blood and Wine" DLC adds another massive region to the map: the duchy of Toussaint, a geographical and cultural pastiche of France and Italy. All of these areas can be freely traveled among via the game map's fast-travel system.
** Most of the regions in the game world are ''massive'', including Novigrad, one of the larger cities depicted in a game of this nature.
* WifeBasherBasher:
** When Geralt finds out that [[spoiler:the Bloody Baron beat his wife]], he does not hesitate to give the man a severe beating himself, and makes it clear afterward that he's utterly disgusted with what he's done.
** Similarly, one of the few times Geralt legitimately snaps in the game is when [[spoiler:finding out that Whoreson Junior [[DisposableSexWorker more than lives up to his moniker]]]]. While not a "wife", necessarily, it's clear that harming women is a major BerserkButton for Geralt.
* WifeHusbandry: The Crones suggest Geralt has unwittingly done this with Ciri and that she and he would make a good couple. Geralt's reaction? [[ShipSinking He gets a look of visceral disgust and says, in no uncertain terms, 'No.']] It's worth noting that, unless a certain mission has been completed prior to this in which Geralt actually sees an actual image of the beautiful woman Ciri has grown into, his last memory of her was as a child (discounting a few glimpses at some artistic portraits of adult Ciri). That said, it is possible to play the game in such a way that Geralt eschews romantic entanglements with others, leaving Ciri the only female shown giving him affection, and several sequences ([[spoiler: such as the snowball fight]]) could be interpreted different ways. The developers, however, appear to have designed a notwithstanding clause; even if you get the ending [[spoiler: in which Ciri and Geralt end up together as partners in witchery, the closing summary indicates that they eventually go their separate ways, cancelling out any romantic HappilyEverAfter]].
* WorkingWithTheEx: Geralt with have to do this with Yennefer, Triss, or both depending on choice, as well as with Fringilla and Shani from Geralt's past. While Shani can be pursued during her quest, Fringilla wants nothing to do with Geralt.
* WorthyOpponent: Folan of Clan Tuirseach has a low opinion of most of the other clans on Skellige, and can find a reason to be dismissive of most of them. The only clan he'll confess to thinking of as "alright" is Clan Drummond, who he and his clan are supposed to be feuding with.
* WomanScorned:
** There's not one but two sidequests involving a woman who decides to get vengeance on their old flame by trying to harm the man's child with the other woman. Jonna from the "Nithing" Sub-quest was mad Lothar left her for a new family after ten years of being together, so she used a curse to try and kill his newborn son.
** Another quest involves a woman [[spoiler:in love with a Werewolf who secludes himself during the full moon. She tricks her sister (the werewolf's wife) into stumbling upon him during a full moon, which winds up getting her killed because, well, he's a werewolf. She'd hoped he'd scare her into leaving and she could take her place at his side. Upon learning this, the Werewolf wants to kill her and then commit suicide by witcher. You can save her if you're so inclined]].
** A minor version of this happens to Geralt himself if [[spoiler:you try to chase a romance with both Triss and Yennefer at once - they offer him a threesome, but instead they team up to humiliate him and effectively dump him]].
* WorldOfSnark:
** A good majority of the major characters of the game are almost as inclined towards deadpan snarking as Geralt, if not more so. This is especially true for Novigrad, where it seems that nearly every character is well-educated and vents their frustrations through incessant sarcasm. Even the ''loading screen'' gets in on the act.
--->'''LoadingScreen''': When the time of the White Frost comes, don't eat the yellow snow.
** SnarkToSnarkCombat: In overdrive when Geralt talks with Sigismund Dijkstra. It goes to the point where both have slight problems figuring out when the other is being sarcastic or not.
--->'''Dijkstra''': Oh, that famous sarcasm. I've missed it.\\
'''Geralt''': Really?\\
'''Dijkstra''': Mhm. About as much as I'd miss a knife in my knickers.
* WorstNewsJudgementEver: A historical version where Geralt confronts a scholar about a planned book on war. Geralt points out that a book about it should reflect it without tales of glory, adventure, or otherwise prettying it up and instead focus on the day-to-day atrocities of war. The scholar says that such details are insignificant from a researcher's standpoint.
* WretchedHive: Novigrad to the full extent, it is a city polluted with [[FantasticRacism extreme hatred for anything non-human]], serial killers, thieves, crime lords, bandits, corrupt guards, and generally the worst of humanity. Anyone that has anything to do with magic gets burnt at the stake for everyone's amusement, the city is run rampant with beggars and poor folk who must resort to thieving in order to survive, and the [[CorruptChurch church of the Eternal Fire]] could very well be seen as the core-evil of Novigrad since their belief and hatred of magic users runs wild in the city and is solely responsible for all the sorceresses/witches/alchemists/mages/[[ShapeShifter dopplers]] being burned at the stake, anyone who has a problem with this gets bullied and beaten or straight up butchered. Not to mention the church has the support of Radovid and his Witch-Hunters so the priests are untouchable.
* {{Yandere}}: [[spoiler:Jonna]] in "The Nithing", who decides that [[spoiler:cursing Lothar's son to a cruel, agonizing death is a ''perfectly'' reasonable response to Lothar marrying another woman.]]
* ZergRush: The general strategy for the Monster deck in Gwent, since nearly every monster card has the Muster ability that puts a lot of cards straight from the player's deck into the field at once. Scoia'tael cards can do this as well, though to a much lesser degree.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Hearts of Stone]]
* AlmightyJanitor: Gaunter O'Dimm presents himself as "a mangy vagrant" and a traveling merchant, but is the most powerful being ever to appear in the series.
* AnimalisticAbomination: The Black Dog and Cat. They ''look'' like their animal namesakes, save for the GlowingEyesOfDoom and the fact that they can talk, but are instead magical beings bound in animal shapes, their thought processes and desires are completely alien to humans.
* ArcWords: "I curse the day..."
* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: Pursuing the Fire-eater at the wedding and asking him what the trick to his trade is can lead to this gem.
-->'''[[spoiler:Vlodimir!Geralt]]''': You dare toy with me this way?! Very well! Refuse to tell me, and I shall leave you here as a morsel for any passing boars, bears, or bloodthirsty fawns!
* AssholeVictim:
** Olgierd von Everec appears to be one - reports and demonstrations of his depravity are frequent, early in the piece. [[spoiler:The truth is more complicated. He was never exactly a ''saint'', but it was Gaunter O'Dimm who removed his capacity for empathy, remorse and pleasure. This caused the cascade of atrocities he committed against others, particularly his wife.]]
--->'''The Black Dog''': At least, he still loved his wife.\\
'''The Black Cat''': No, he only remembered that he was supposed to love her.
** Horst Borsodi, potentially, depending on your choices during the heist. [[spoiler:His brother Ewald and your remaining criminal companions may fall victim as well.]]
* TheBadGuyWins: The "default" ending, unless you decide to talk to Shani and the professor in the final quest. If you do not, Master Mirror outwits Olgierd, claims his soul, and walks off happily. On the other hand, Geralt completes the task O'Dimm asks of him, and O'Dimm grants him a boon of his choosing. In other words, the bad guy wins, but you can profit from it or at least you don't get screwed for your efforts, if you decide [[OnlyInItForTheMoney you don't care about Olgierd's fate.]]
* BaitAndSwitch: While hunting the Frog Prince in the sewers, Geralt comes across an ominous sight: a shadow of some humanoid mass moving up and down while a woman tearfully cries, "Please, don't do this to me." Thinking he's seeing an AttemptedRape in action, Geralt rushes forward, only to see... [[spoiler:that it's Shani performing CPR on a dying man, and she's begging him to stay alive.]]
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: The complete version (i.e. "...because you just might get it,") get said and paraphrased several times during the expansion to the point it becomes the entire expansion's ArcWords.
-->'''Geralt''': "You're clearly not human. What are you? A demon? A djinn?"
-->'''O'Dimm''': "Do you truly wish to know?"
-->'''Geralt''': "Yes."
-->'''O'Dimm''': "No, Geralt, you don't. This one time I will spare you and not grant your wish."
* BerserkButton: The only time Gaunter loses his cool calm and collected voice is when he gets interrupted while trying to talk to Geralt. The results are [[EyeScream unpleasant for the poor fool.]]
* BewitchedAmphibians: The monstrous Toad "Prince" that Geralt fights at the beginning of the DLC turns out to ''actually be'' a cursed Ofieri prince, and the men that swore to bring the prince back to his homeland are mighty upset that Geralt killed him.
* BigBad: Gaunter O'Dimm is the villain of the piece.
* TheBlank: The Caretaker. Whatever face it may have had has been scooped out and replaced with a smooth expanse of flesh and a gash in the vague shape of a mouth.
* BlowYouAway: The Ofieri Mage uses many wind spells against you.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Something of a recurring problem for Olgierd and his summoned servants. [[spoiler:The Caretaker, for instance, was supposed to protect his house and its grounds. It did, partly by maintaining the gardens and doing housework, but also by killing any visitors and burying them regardless of their intentions. Similarly, the Black Cat and Dog were intended to be companions for Iris specifically because Olgierd was no longer capable of loving her, but they couldn't love her either - it was not within their natures. At best all they could do was silently watch over her.]]
* BookEnds: In Olgierd’s EstablishingCharacterMoment, he is seen studying a statue of a beautiful woman. Unable to find any beauty in it, he topples the statue and smashes it. [[spoiler:After Geralt saves him and his heart is restored, Olgierd takes a moment to admire the head of a smashed statue of a woman, able to admire the art once again.]]
* TheBusCameBack:
** Shani, a love interest from the original Witcher game, returns as a new (but brief) romantic option.
** The Order of the Flaming Rose also makes a return. [[spoiler:Albeit disbanded and with its remnants reduced to selling Fisstech and banditry to finance themselves.]]
** The Sentry, the Golem Geralt defeated in the Vizima swamp during events of the first game, guards a treasure North of Novigrad.
* CainAndAbel:
** [[spoiler:The Borsodi brothers. Horst denied Ewald his fortune out of fear that he'd squander it and left him in poverty, and is hostile to Geralt immediately. Ewald is far more reasonable to Geralt and willing to work with him, but has a reputation as a violent and ruthless thug. Either will kill the other when they have them at their mercy.]]
** Played with later [[spoiler:in regards to the von Everec brothers. They adored each other, but when it came down to it Olgierd bargained away his brother Vlodimir's life to be with the love of his life, Iris.]] Notably though, Gaunter gave him the choice to [[spoiler: forfeit the life of one of the two people he loved the most, so that means he still loved Vlodimir more than anyone else, except for Iris of course.]]
* TheCaper: Geralt must assemble a team to break into the Borsodi Vault and take the House of Max Borsodi. There's even a cutscene introducing every character and their role in the caper.
* CaperCrew: For the aforementioned heist Geralt must choose between multiple candidates to recruit, very similar to [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV the fifth GTA]].
* ChekhovsGag: The expansion starts out with Geralt reading off a few silly notices on a board, including one about a girl looking for a beau to attend a wedding with her. Geralt eventually has to attend that very same wedding in order to fulfill one of Olgierd's {{Impossible Task}}s, and goes as the beau for Shani.
* ChekhovsGunman: In the "Open Sesame" quest, Geralt has the opportunity to purchase a painting by an artist named van Rogh. [[spoiler:You later find out that van Rogh was the alias of Iris von Everec, Olgierd's late wife, and a key figure in both his backstory and the "Scenes From a Marriage" quest.]]
* CoolShades: In a CallBack to the [[VideoGame/TheWitcher first game]], it's possible to acquire, and wear, the Professor's tinted spectacles.
* CouldntFindAPen: During the "Dead Man's Party" quest, Geralt (whose body is possessed by Vlodimir's ghost) slices his palm open so he can write a note to the latter's brother in his blood.
* CreepyChildrenSinging: Early in the story, you'll come across a group of children singing an eerie song about a [[DealWithTheDevil devilish granter of wishes]] outside the Von Everec manor. [[spoiler:You'll hear it again in the background music should you meet Gaunter O'Dimm when he comes to collect his due, and should Geralt go to his realm.]]
* CutscenePowerToTheMax: During the ''Hearts of Stone'' addon Geralt throws a short through an attacker's chest when fighting off being dragged off. The player cannot throw swords during gameplay.
* DealWithTheDevil: A very traditional one as the basis for the expansion.
* DeathByDespair: Iris von Everec simply allowed herself to die when her last gift from her husband - a purple rose - withered in front of her eyes.
* TheDevil: Gaunter O'Dimm is either a thematic stand-in for or actually, literally, Satan.
* DevilButNoGod: Master Mirror is the most powerful being ever encountered in the entire Witcher Saga, but while he has many common traits to the Judeo-Christian Devil, there is no known equivalent to God. As a whole, the ''Witcher''-verse operates under HaveYouSeenMyGod, where there is no proof that a God or gods even exist. As such, if there is any sentient force that keeps O'Dimm in check and enforces his limitations, we are never told what it is.
* DidYouJustScamCthulhu: [[spoiler:Geralt can opt to challenge Gaunter to a BattleOfWits wagering the souls of himself and Olgierd, and win, saving them both and banishing the demon from the world.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: Someone interrupts Gaunter O'Dimm while he's trying to speak to Geralt. [[spoiler:So he casually stops time, finishes his conversation with Geralt, and then [[EyeScream lobotomises the poor fucker]] with a goddamn ''wooden spoon'']].
--> '''Gaunter O'Dimm:''' That was the last time you interrupted me while I was talking to someone.
* DwindlingParty: The heist goes like this. [[spoiler: Evaline inevitably hightails it out when things start to go sideways, and the party's other members can be killed by Geralt when the Borsodi brothers confront each other and when it comes to dealing with the house of what's inside; Geralt can end up being the only one who walks out of the vault alive]].
* DrivenToSuicide: Geralt finds Casimir about to blow himself up after his wife leaves him.
* EvilPaysBetter: Helping Gaunter O’Dimm & choosing the Bottomless Carafe becomes this with the addition of the Blood & Wine DLC, where mutations become available. The best builds are extremely dependent on the Euphoria mutation, combat & alchemy, which is limited by the amount of alcohol in your inventory. The carafe provides you with UNLIMITED ALCOHOL, which means you can activate your build whenever you want without ever having to worry about your alcohol stocks running out. Its usefulness really shines in NG+, especially on harder difficulties. Meanwhile, helping Olgierd nets you a silver sword that is outclassed in the B&W expansion, although the steel sword he gives you remains one of the best in the entire game.
* ExactWords:
** How Gaunter O'Dimm snares his opponents. [[spoiler:For example, Olgierd asked to "live every day like there's no tomorrow", so Gaunter removed his capacity for remorse as well as empathy.]]
** Geralt is able to exploit this as well. [[spoiler:Through giving the House of Max Borsodi but leaving behind its valuable contents. Or by bringing a picture of the violet rose rather than the rose itself.]]
** When Geralt finds [[spoiler: Iris' corpse still in her bed,]] he asks the Black Cat and Dog why [[spoiler: she was never buried.]] They explain that they can't do it (whether this is because they're stuck in animal bodies or because they're spirits is not explained as they never interact with physical objects), and Iris once ordered the Caretaker ''never to touch her'', so he can't do it either.
* EyeScream: What [[spoiler:O'Dimm]] does to some poor, random schmuck in the tavern during the [[spoiler:TimeStandsStill.]] He casually walks over to him, takes a wooden spoon, and ''jams it handle-first into his eye'', right up to the head of the spoon. It gets even worse once you see the guy's reaction [[spoiler:when Gaunter unfreezes time again.]] His arm stays raised like he's about to keep talking, but he just keels over with blood spurting from his eye.
* TheFairFolk: Though never stated to be a fairy or such, Gaunter O'Dimm's personality and love of fine print fit the trope nicely.
* {{Familiar}}: The Black Dog and Cat are spirits from another dimension bound by Olgierd to serve Iris von Everec. [[spoiler:Her being a ghost doesn't release them from their duty.]]
* FanDisservice: If Shani has a little too much to drink at the wedding, then Geralt's OptionalSexualEncounter with her will be ruined when a sudden bout of nausea makes her vomit during the act.
* FauxAffablyEvil: Gaunter O'Dimm appears ordinary, reasonable and amiable (if curiously prone to turning up in places he should not logically be able to reach) but the horrifying effects of his wishes prove that he is ''not'' your friend. [[spoiler:For instance, killing Olgierd's brother and viciously tormenting his spirit, as well as condemning Iris to a FateWorseThanDeath.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Should you go for the optional romance encounter with Shani, she tells Geralt to row her to the moon, pointing out its reflection on the water. [[spoiler: This foreshadows the ending, where Gaunter O'Dimm fulfills the terms of his pact with Olgierd, which states that he can take his soul when he grants three wishes and they stand on the moon. They meet at the Temple of Lilvani, which has a mosaic of the moon on the floor.]]
--->'''Shani''': Row me to the moon!
--->'''Geralt''': Have to fly to get to the moon.
--->'''Shani''': You're dead wrong. It's right there!
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Professor Shakeslock lost both his sight and his sanity from his research into Gaunter, and especially after he met the man.
* TheHeartless:
** Olgierd is completely devoid of anything resembling human emotion. [[spoiler:That's because he lost all of his emotions due to his pact with Gaunter O'Dimm.]]
** The black cat and dog, due to them not being from this world and their BlueAndOrangeMorality have very little sympathy for what happened to Iris, simply stating what happened as facts. They mainly help Geralt because he can help release them from their servitude not because they care for Iris' plight.
* HellishHorse: [[spoiler:Should you end the game in Gaunter's favor and wish to be as swift as the wind]], then you'll acquire a saddle that makes Roach look considerably more ghoulish when equipped.
* HostageSituation: During the heist the alarm is sounded, and several customers are held up by the crew. Geralt can negotiate with the guards outside to stall for time when the safe is opened. If the wrong dialogue option is chosen (or Casimir was recruited as the safecracker) the guards will attempt to storm the place and Geralt will need to fight them off.
* HumanoidAbomination: The Caretaker. It ''looks'' human, save for the fact that [[TheBlank it has no face]], but it's implied to be some kind of otherworldly being summoned to serve Iris. [[spoiler:This trope also applies to Gaunter O'Dimm, who has nearly godlike abilities despite looking like an ordinary man.]]
* IdTellYouButThenIdHaveToKillYou: O'Dimm straight-up tells Geralt this when he asks about O'Dimm's true nature during their encounter at the Alchemy Inn. Worse yet, O'Dimm only spares Geralt because there is still one more thing Geralt needs to do in order to complete Olgierd's pact. Meaning O'Dimm would have told Geralt the truth and [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness killed him anyway had O'Dimm got no use for Geralt anymore]].
-->'''Geralt''': "You're not human, that's clear. So what are you? A demon? A djinn?"
-->'''O'Dimm''': "Do you really wish to know?"
-->'''Geralt''': "Yes."
-->'''O'Dimm''': "No, Geralt, you don't. This one time I shall spare you and not grant your wish."
-->'''O'Dimm''': "All who have learned my true name are now either dead or have met an even worse fate. Yet I still need you."
* IAmSpartacus: Geralt has a bit of trouble speaking with Olgierd at the beginning. Largely because Olgierd's brigands are a bunch of {{Troll}}s who decide to prank the witcher by each claiming to be their leader.
* IHaveManyNames: Gaunter O'Dimm is known by many names in many cultures.
* ImpossibleTask: As part of his contract with Gaunter, Olgierd must have three wishes fulfilled, all of which he's devised in such a way that no one could possibly complete them.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: The Caretaker packs a mean punch with its shovel. Geralt can wield it himself after killing the creature, and it has the ability to restore health each time it deals damage.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The expansion includes the two most powerful swords in the game: the Venomous Viper Silver Sword for monsters, and Iris for humans, the latter of which can unleash a more powerful attack CastFromHitPoints.
* IronicHell: What Olgierd von Everac is condemned to. [[spoiler:He has great wealth and immortality, things most men crave, but he can't take any pleasure in them because he gave up everything and everyone he treasured most to get it. Furthermore, those things were incidental to what he really wanted, which was to remain with his beloved wife, but the effects of his wish mean he is no longer capable of loving her.]]
* LampshadeHanging: When Geralt goes to pick up [[spoiler:Max Borsodi's house]], it starts a cutscene where he puts out the candles surrounding it before picking it up, saying "Damn candles." Anyone who's played the game will empathize with that sentiment.
* LeParkour: During the heist, Eveline the she-elf circus acrobat scales the watch tower wall like a pro.
* LifeDrain: The main part of the challenge presented by the Caretaker is in it sucking health out of other things to add to its own life bar. It even summons enemies solely to kill them and restore itself.
* ManipulativeBastard: Gaunter O'Dimm seems to prefer trapping his victims with words and vows over using brute magical force.
* MultipleEndings: Only two this time.
** [[spoiler:You let O'Dimm collect his due. He proceeds to age Olgierd into dust, taking his skull as a trophy, and can grant Geralt one of five wishes (an enchanted saddle for Roach, a horn of plenty that provides endless food, a bottle of strong alcohol that never runs out, 5000 crowns, or information about Ciri). Or if this whole expansion taught you anything, you can also say you really don't want him to grant you any wish.]]
** [[spoiler:If you decide to talk to Professor Shakeslock, then you can challenge O'Dimm for Olgierd's soul. After solving O'Dimm's riddle, Olgierd is rendered completely mortal again, vows to turn his life around, and gifts Geralt his personal sabre, Iris.]]
* NonStandardGameOver: If you run out of time before finding the answer to O'Dimm's riddle, [[spoiler:you get a brief cutscene depicting him grabbing Geralt from behind and reducing him to dust.]]
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: If you side with [[spoiler:O'Dimm in the ending]] and you ask him [[spoiler:where Ciri is,]] he won't give you the answer, but instead [[spoiler:gives you advice on how to EarnYourHappyEnding with her.]] He's uncharacteristically solemn and even sympathetic, which means that you really have to pay attention.
* PaintingTheMedium: Every time Geralt speaks while Vlodimir is possessing his body, the subtitles are purple instead of white.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: If you talk to Gaunter O'Dimm during the wedding ceremony as Vlodi!Geralt, Gaunter mercilessly deconstructs Vlodimir's motivations.
* RedBaron: The Man of Glass and Master Mirror are other names for Gaunter O'Dimm.
* TheRemnant: The Order of the Flaming Rose is now a shadow of its former self, having been used as cannon fodder by King Radovid in order to slow down the Nilfgaardians.
* ScavengerHunt: ''Hearts of Stone'' adds more Viper equipment: diagrams for a full suit of armor and the steel sword, while the silver sword can be found in [[spoiler:O'Dimm's nightmare world]]. Unlike the other Witcher gear hunts, there is no associated quest with finding them, so it's possible to completely miss them.
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: A rare self-deprecating form of this trope comes from Mignole, an old lover of Vesemir's.
-->'''Mignole''': I thank you for tolerating a decrepit madwoman so elegantly. \\
'''Geralt''': [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre Please don't say that]]. \\
'''Mignole''': I am old and I am wealthy. I may say what I please.
* TimeStandsStill: One of the many tricks that Gaunter O'Dimm has up his sleeve.
* UriahGambit: The Order of the Flaming Rose was subject to one. They were used to slow down the Nilfgaardian invasion and when they were all but destroyed, Radovid confiscated all of their lands to finance his war and exiled or executed any protesters. The remainder joined his army as Witch Hunters.
* WholePlotReference: The situation between Olgierd and [[spoiler:O'Dimm]] mirrors that of [[spoiler:''Faust'', specifically the Polish version of the legend, ''Pan Twardowski''.]]
* WilliamTelling: A quest involves shooting apples off of an elf's head, hands, and foot with a crossbow as part of a circus act. If Geralt hits him however, [[AnnoyingArrows he's angrier than injured in the cutscene following it]] regardless of where the player was aiming. If you shoot all of the apples without hitting the elf one of the children even say that [[BreakingTheFourthWall it would have been funnier if you had shot the elf.]]
* WinHerAPrize: The ghost of Vlodimir von Elrec spends the one night he's given to [[MakesSenseInContext possess Witcher Geralt]] at a wedding. The celebration includes different competitions, all of which Vlodimir attempts to win in order to impress Geralt's date, Shani. If Vlodimir-as-Geralt is able to win the hog wrangling competition, Shani receives a stuffed animal as a prize.
* YourSoulIsMine: What [[spoiler:Gaunter O'Dimm]] is motivated by.
[[/folder]]

* ICallItVera: And not affectionately. The nickname at Kaer Morhen for the operating table used for administering the torturous Trial of the Grasses is "Sad Albert."
* IconicOutfit: The Kaer Morhen armor that Geralt starts out with is what he's depicted as wearing in most of the game's official art and promotional material.
* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: "[[EasierThanEasy Just the Story!]]", "Story and Sword!", "[[NintendoHard Blood and Broken Bones!]]", and "[[HarderThanHard Death March!]]"
* IdiotBall: Dijkstra's [[spoiler: betrayal of Roche, Ves, and Thaler]] relies on Geralt's supposed code of neutrality as a Witcher to not interfere. While Dijkstra actually believing this in the first place is rather dubious, considering [[spoiler: Geralt just participated in a regicide]], the true IdiotBall moment here is Dijkstra choosing to reveal [[spoiler: his betrayal]] with Geralt present. While Geralt is given the option to allow it to happen, Dijkstra was extremely foolish in allowing there to be a variable like Geralt present at all. If Dijkstra had simply waited for Geralt to leave the area, he could have [[spoiler: eliminated the Temerians]] without any possibility of interference.
* IKnowWhatYouFear: In the sidequest "Cave of Dreams," Geralt accompanies Blueboy Lugos and his crew, who take hallucinogens in order to confront their deepest fears. Geralt's fear is the final one they face, which is [[spoiler:Eredin, the King of the Wild Hunt, who wants to take Ciri away for his own ends.]]
* ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder: [[ReallyGetsAround Gigolo]], when Keira wants Geralt to act as her "prince" for the evening.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: Scoia'tel's Gwent gimmick Agile allows their units to switch between Melee or Ranged mode, thus potentially dodging negative weather cards.
* ImprobablePowerDiscrepancy:
** Enemies are occasionally buffed to serve as a BeefGate to high-end quests. This can result in absurdities such as a swarm of ghouls, usually considered bread-and-butter work for a Witcher, being roughly as powerful as a vampire or a stone golem.
** "Fists of Fury" fighters at higher levels hit as hard as monsters and weapon-wielding mooks.
** The expansions give massive level and toughness upgrades to otherwise mundane creatures. Wolves suddenly jump to level ''35'', higher than some bosses at the end of the main campaign, and packs of them can overwhelm Geralt even after he just averted the end of the world.
* ImStandingRightHere: Said word-for-word by Ciri when one of her friends in Novigrad openly flirts with Geralt.
* INever: Geralt, Eskel, and Lambert can engage in a round of "I Never" during their drunken night in. The "I Never"s are predictably saucy, including sleeping with a succubus and taking fisstech as one of Geralt's possible choices, to both of which [[NiceGuy Eskel]] drinks, prompting [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Lambert]] to quip that still waters run deep. If Geralt chooses the other possible dialogue option in the game, Lambert reveals himself as having slept with his best friend's wife.
* InsaneTrollLogic: Appropriately enough, trolls are prone to... interesting leaps of logic, such as one making a fence out of boats he was asked to protect so that no one could steal them. He would have made a regular fence, but the boats were the only source of wood.
* InterfaceScrew:
** There are certain enemies that have attacks that will obscure the screen and break lock-on. For example: if you get hit with a mud ball thrown by a Water Hag, then the screen will appropriately be splattered with mud.
** Several quests require Geralt to get drunk, which makes the interface blurry and wavy. The witcher contract "The Oxenfurt Drunk" requires this immediately before fighting a tough monster as it only preys on the intoxicated.
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** "Following the Thread" starts like a standard monster hunting contract before turning out to be longer and more complex than that after killing the ekimma target, [[spoiler:once Geralt and Lambert got to the questgiver to get their reward and Lambert antagonizes then murders him]]. Checking the quests' journal immediately reveals "Following the Thread" isn't what it initially seemed, because the quest appears under "Side Quests - Multiple Regions" instead of "Contracts - Novigrad".
** During "King's Gambit"'s Kaer Trolde massacre scene, the bears are quickly discovered to actually be "berserkers", which in the settings are human warriors able to turn into bears. If you play with the auto sword draw feature enabled, the reveal they weren't mundane bears isn't much of a surprise, because Geralt automatically drew the ''silver'' sword instead of the steel sword. Even if you don't play with this feature enabled, the supernatural nature of the "bears" is obvious because of their life meter's color.
* InvasionOfTheBabySnatchers: 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.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: The Xenovox, which is essentially a magical version of a walkie-talkie. While Geralt brings up the possibility, the reason ''why'' it would never catch on is because according to Keira Metz a xenovox is ''very'' hard to build, rather than "I don't care for it" being the excuse.
* InvulnerableHorses: Zig-zagged. You'll find plenty of horse corpses scattered around the world, and a lot of horses get killed in the introduction, but no living horse can actually be harmed by you or the enemies.
* IResembleThatRemark: When dwarven banker Vimme Vivaldi is asked if he plays Gwent by Geralt, he takes offense that Geralt automatically assumed that because he's a dwarf that he takes part in the favorite dwarven pastime. When Geralt asks again after the banker is done with his indignation, he candidly admits that he does.
* IronicNurseryTune: The vampire lady in the cinematic "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-l29HlKkXU A Night to Remember]]" trailer sings a low-key nursery tune that begins fairly normally, but ends with a witcher chopping up and eating the recipient of the song. From the context, it may actually be a scary nursery tune for ''vampire children''.
* KarmaHoudini:
** The people responsible for the deaths of the Noonwraiths/Nightwraiths that Geralt has to hunt down in contracts are usually long gone without any consequences for their actions, particularly for the Devil by the Well and Jenny o' the Woods.
** Depending on the decisions made during them, several quests can also end this way. GrayAndGrayMorality quests will invariably end up with one person winning over the other, even if both can be considered bad people.
* KarmicDeath:
** In the course of the Novigrad storyline, [[spoiler:Triss burns down the witch hunters' headquarters with many hunters still alive inside, giving them the same fate they meted on many innocent mages.]]
** [[spoiler:Margrit]] can suffer one at the end of the "Wild at Heart" sidequest, if you choose to let it happen.
** [[spoiler:Jonna,]] in one possible ending for "The Nithing" quest, [[spoiler:is killed by the very curse she had inflicted on Lothar's son out of petty spite.]]
** If you choose to participate in [[spoiler: the assassination of King Radovid]], he meets his end by the blade of [[spoiler: Philippa Eilhart, the person most responsible for his hatred and resulting persecution of mages.]]
* KingOfTheHomeless: The King of Beggars in Novigrad rules over an alleyway known as the Putrid Grove, the location of which is kept a careful secret from outsiders, and extorts "taxes" from the beggars and petty thieves of the city. He is also a man of vision, planning to one day rise to true power and turn the city into a haven of liberty. Meanwhile he's helping the city's dwindling mage population stay hidden from the witch hunters -- amusingly ensuring that the city's beggars now have access to better health care than its rich and powerful.
* KinkyRolePlaying: Geralt can encounter a guard threatening a strumpet while wandering around Novigrad. Geralt can leave them alone and this will continue, or he can intervene by threatening the guard or using Axii on him. In any case, the strumpet angrily informs Geralt that this was intimate role-play purely to get them both in the mood, [[YouJustRuinedTheShot which Geralt has now thoroughly ruined]].
* LateArrivalSpoiler: The true nature of the Wild Hunt is presented as a mystery in the trailers, but the readers of the books and the people who paid close attention in the previous game already know who and what they are.
* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: Sigi Reuven's bathhouse in Novigrad is the gathering place for the city's Big Four crime bosses and the base of operations for Reuven [[spoiler:aka Sigismund Dijkstra]] himself. It resembles the modern version of the trope more than a ThievesGuild typical for European fantasy settings.
* ALighterShadeOfBlack: One opinion about the Nilfgaardians from the peasant class. The other popular opinion is that they prefer Radovid because he is [[BetterTheDevilYouKnow from the North.]]
* LesCollaborateurs: The Bloody Baron's army is made of deserters from the Temerian army who have taken to gathering supplies from the local villages for them and administrating in Nilfgaard's name. They're ''even worse'' to the peasantry than the Nilfgaardians are.
* LighthousePoint:
** One quest has Geralt look for a dwarf at a lighthouse on the Isle of Mists.
** A witcher contract has Geralt investigate and resolve a haunting that has caused one of Skellige's lighthouses to become engulfed in fog.
* LookBehindYou: Used a few times:
** An early quest-giver tries to do this to Geralt when [[spoiler:Geralt discovers that he's responsible for the death of the cart driver he sent Geralt to look for.]]
---> '''Geralt:''' There's nothing behind me. [[SuperSenses I'm a Witcher, I'd have heard it.]] Just like I can hear your heart. Which is pounding... like a liar's.
** Geralt can encounter a group of soldiers looting an abandoned quarry. The classic "Look behind you!" "I'm not falling for that old trick!" version, and of course there actually is a pack of alghouls behind the soldiers.
** Dijkstra says this to Geralt (who doesn't believe him at first) if [[spoiler:Triss decides to come back after all.]]
* LostHimInACardGame: Seems to happen to significant characters all the time.
** The Bloody Baron came into ownership of Uma by winning him from a desperate merchant in Novigrad[[note]]This “desperate merchant” may well have been Gaunter O’Dimm, based on his description and the Baron citing his own ‘devil’s luck’[[/note]].
** Zoltan lost his pet owl in a game of cards without ever realizing that [[spoiler:it was Philippa the whole time.]]
** Sigi Reuven won Bart the Rock Troll in a card game with a camel merchant from Zerrikania.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: M-R]]
* MadeOfPlasticine: Some of the synced kill animations on humanoids look like this. Most make sense, dismembering across bone joints (elbows, knees, [[OffWithHisHead necks]]), but the most egregious case is slashing diagonally across the torso, across the entire rib cage like the victim's body was made of plasticine.
* MagiBabble: Oftentimes in the presence of certain sorceresses. One particular instance is the "Potestaquisitor", a doohickey that looks like a clockpunk dowsing rod/electrode that Yen has you use to find out what's screwing up her megascope.
* MagikarpPower: It really takes a while for an Alchemy-heavy skill build to begin paying off due to spending time hunting recipes and ingredients for various items, but between the vast bonuses given by potions, decoctions and oils, along with huge boosts to survivability, it's alarmingly potent and many [[HarderThanHard Death March]] players swear by it. Potion of Clearance greatly assists the transition from a DiskOneNuke game to a MagikarpPower build.
* MaleGaze: The camera has a tendency to linger on female rears during cutscenes, like [[https://youtu.be/aJIeaZJn80U?list=PL2DTtWf1hYVShaz5YP47PpRh6omdJrDfS&t=6488 here]].
* MassiveMultiplayerScam: In the "Blood and Wine" expansion, the killer of the knights turns out to be a Higher Vampire acting under the understanding that someone had his former lover and was going to torture her to death, the blackmailer in question being an exiled noble with a grudge. Of course, the blackmailer and his lover turn out to be one and the same.
* MeaningfulFuneral:
** The survivors of the Battle of Kaer Morhen hold one for [[spoiler:Vesemir]].
** Upon arriving in Ard Skellig, Geralt bears witness to the VikingFuneral of King Bran, signaling that a SuccessionCrisis is about to unfold.
* MercyKill: If Síle de Tansarville was allowed to survive the end of ''VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings'', she is found with some of her fellow sorceresses in a Novigrad prison in really bad shape. Geralt can offer her one final mercy.
* MirrorMatch: Janne, a doppler a merchant puts a contract on, will transform into Geralt and will use his techniques, sign and all, at one point during his fight.
* MistakenForGay: [[spoiler:Elihal, one of Dandelion's acquaintances, mostly due to his penchant for cross dressing. In fact, Dandelion once tried to hit on him when he was drunk, and writes about him with an intriguingly wistful fondness]].
* MomentOfSilence: When Geralt finally finds [[spoiler:Ciri on the Isle of Mists, she appears dead, and Geralt breaks down in grief without a sound]]. Note that in a digitally generated medium, this isn't a case of removing sound but of deliberately adding none except for music.
* MonsterClown: Whoreson Junior's henchmen, one of the nastiest gangs in Novigrad, have clown costumes for uniforms.
* MoodWhiplash:
** The lighthearted quest of helping Dandelion start up a cabaret turns dark when [[spoiler:his friend and first serious love interest Priscilla is brutally assaulted and forced to drink pure formaldehyde. Although she survives at the temporary cost of her voice, it turns out that the attacker is a serial killer who has brutally tortured and murdered a large number of people over the years, and it's up to Geralt to stop the killing spree. Made worse for the player by having Priscilla being a vivacious, engaging character in several previous quests, triggering VideogameCaringPotential in the player. This may be intentional as the mission to solve the attack has one of two endings, the lesser of which is triggered by Geralt/the player slaying the wrong suspect.]]
** A standard treasure-quest side mission, "Black Pearl", sees Geralt helping a middle-aged man apparently try to save his love life by finding a rare pearl for his beloved. The mission ends when Geralt catches up to the man later, only for the man to [[spoiler: sadly explain that the pearl gambit failed, due to his wife experiencing what the real world calls Alzheimer disease.]]
** Due to the game's WideOpenSandbox nature, it's possible to go straight from a dark and serious quest to a comical one - or even interrupt one quest for the other.
* MoralMyopia:
** Defied by Geralt, in keeping with his previous characterization. In the first game, when asked why he's missing his silver blade by Shani, who says that "One (is) for monsters and one (is) for humans", Geralt corrects her. ''Both'' are for monsters.
** In the 'Killing Monsters' trailer, he beheads a supernatural beast for slaying the innocent for food, and then murders his human employers for trying to murder an innocent woman themselves.
** Uncommonly presented in 'Carnal Sins' quest, which introduces a serial killer who commits elaborate murders to [[spoiler:show people the errors of sinful life and make them accept the Eternal Fire]]. As it turns out, the killer is [[spoiler:a vampire, a supernatural creature, whose mere existence is an abomination in the eyes of the Church of Eternal Fire]].
** One of the scavenger sidequests involves the aftermath of a group of knights who chased a Witcher around Skellige to make him answer for his crimes. During the course of their pursuit, they burn entire villages to the ground, kill anyone who gets in their way, and overall punish anyone who aided him in the slightest. The Witcher's crime? A duchess asked him to assassinate her father, and he politely refused.
** Zigzagged by vampires. On more than one occasion, vampires [[BrutalHonesty flatly state they that they do not care for human suffering or lives]], and ask if a human cares about the suffering of insects, rats or livestock. If Geralt or other human states that there's a difference, the vampire denies this. Regis and Dettlaff greatly abhor killing mortals themselves, but Regis admits they both had to ''learn'' how to come to this viewpoint. On the other hand, though, they consider the deaths or murder of their own kind to be heinous offenses. While they're typically just annoyed or amused if a mortal destroys a higher vampire, due to their ResurrectiveImmortality, they become ''furious'' when the death is permanent. Dettlaff admonishes Geralt for killing a bruxa he was friends with, and [[spoiler:Regis is driven out of Toussaint if he permanently killed Dettlaff]].
* MoralSociopathy: When Geralt asks Regis how he feels about living in their world, Regis's answer sounds very much along the lines of this trope. Regis asks Geralt to think of the most uncomfortable (not painful or traumatic) experience he's ever had to do, and Geralt mentions banquets and formal occasions where he has to look and act like someone he's not. Regis nods and says that living in the world of humans is like that, except when you scratch your ass, burp, or otherwise act like yourself, people scream and call you a monster.
* MortonsFork: In White Orchard you come across a woman that had been attacked by the griffin. She will die unless you give her a Swallow potion to give her a chance to live. Geralt explicitly says that she might die a slow painful death if he gives it to her and the journal says so as well. [[spoiler:While she does live if you give her the potion, her mind was destroyed by it.]]
* MundaneUtility: Signs can have some non-combat uses. Aard can be used to batter down a flimsy door or boarded up passage, or snuff a candle. Igni can be used to torch a bee swarm to get at its hive, or set alight a corpse pile, or light a candle or brazier. Axii can be used to calm a spooked horse, or as a JediMindTrick. You simply need to from a candle or brazier for Geralt to make the sign gesture without even expending stamina to cast to light or snuff it.
* MultipleEndings: There are three major endings which determine the shape of your final quest, ''Something Ends, Something Begins.'' The three major endings are as follows:
** [[spoiler:Ciri dies (as far as Geralt knows), causing Geralt to become a DeathSeeker and go for one final quest to retrieve Ciri's wolf medallion, dying himself in the process (probably).]]
** [[spoiler:Ciri becomes the Empress of Nilfgaard, planning to change things for the better, but potentially never seeing Geralt again.]]
** [[spoiler:Or Ciri becomes a Witcher, finding happiness in walking the Witcher's Path. Geralt passes on every skill he knows and she becomes famous through the land.]]
** Added to that, the ending differs based on your choices during major political questlines of the game. Variables include [[spoiler:who rules over the North, whether Emhyr is alive, who reigns in Skellige, and whether Geralt settled down with Triss, Yennefer, or walked alone.]]
* MurderIntoMalevolence:
** One quest takes protagonist Geralt to a cursed and haunted island, where he finds the ghost of a young woman pleading to help her spirit leave the island. It turns out that she's a nobleman's daughter and, during a peasant uprising, her entire family was slaughtered and the invaders had planned to rape and murder her. [[spoiler:Instead, she drank a sleeping potion which [[PlayingPossum put her in a death-like state that fooled everyone]]... including her boyfriend, who ran away and wished that everyone would die. Eventually, everyone DID die and she was stuck in her fake death, unable to move as the rats in the tower ate her warm body alive. The combination of the boyfriend's curses, her CruelAndUnusualDeath, and the plague the rats carried (which is a long story in itself) turned the young woman's spirit into a Pesta--a Plague Maiden that cursed the entire island.]]
** A Baron and his wife were in an unhappy marriage [[spoiler:where he beat her constantly and she found herself pregnant with a child she didn't want. The wife was eventually visited by three evil witch spirits who offered to get rid of the unborn child if the wife agreed to serve them for a year. She agreed, and not long afterwards, her husband beat her so badly that she miscarried. The wife and her other daughter decided to escape from the Baron that night and left the dead fetus on the bed. The Baron found his dead child and, in his grief, buried it in an unmarked grave without giving it a name]]. The dead child transformed into a Botchling--a malevolent and murderous spirit created from babies that died unwanted or unloved.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: In the quest "Wild at Heart", you learn that a hunter's wife, Hanna, was murdered by [[spoiler:her own sister, who had been secretly in love with her brother-in-law. She did this by discovering said brother-in-law was a werewolf and leading Hanna into his lair. The sister swears that this was only meant to scare Hanna off so that she could take her husband, but the hunter doesn't care and will kill the sister if Geralt doesn't step in. To boot, even if it was an accident, the sister showed no remorse or mourning for her sister's death and had every intention of {{Romancing the Widow}}er now that she had the chance.]]
* MustacheVandalism: Yen does this to a painting of Avallac'h in his secret lab should you choose to trash the room with Ciri.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: White Orchard's smith has one if you visit him after completing his quest in his favor. [[spoiler:He realizes the villagers were distrustful of him before, but because of his open support of Nilfgaard and handing over one of them to be hanged they now despise him. Geralt advises him to leave with the Nilfgaardians if they depart.]]
* NavelDeepNeckline: A number of female characters wear outfits with plunging necklines, such as Keira Metz and Corinne Tilly.
* NeckLift: Imlerith does this to Vesemir during the Battle of Kaer Morhen before [[spoiler:killing him with a NeckSnap]].
* {{Nerf}}:
** The Combat Ability "Whirl" causes Geralt to slash in every direction for as long as he has stamina and adrenaline. The Ekhidna decoction heals Geralt every time he uses up stamina. These 2 unfortunately don't work together.
** The Alchemy skill "Acquired Tolerance" increases your toxicity by 1 for every known alchemical formula. For some reason, the devs saw fit to exclude dye formulas (12 in total) from being counted.
* NeutralNoLonger: Averted. The game restores the option for Geralt to remain apolitical in the struggle between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms. Notably, Vesemir doesn't agree and is thoroughly Northern.
* NeverBringAKnifeToAGunFight: In the aftermath of Radovid's murder when Roche, Ves, and Thaler reveal their secret agreement with Emhyr, after the fight is over you can loot the bodies of everyone who died in the brawl and everyone will be carrying a weapon of some kind. If you loot Dijkstra's corpse you'll see that the only thing in his pockets he could have used to defend himself with was a chicken leg. Even more egregious since ''he'' is the one that called the attack.
* NewGamePlus: Which imports the player level (increased to 30 if it's below that), along with almost all the items accrued, the exceptions being Gwent cards, crafting diagrams (different from alchemy recipes, which ARE imported), quest items, books and trophies. Additionally, the levels of items and enemies are scaled according to the imported player level.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: While berating Geralt about how disappointed he is in the witcher's performance, Emhyr slips a detail about how internal dissent in Nilfgaard is slowing down his offensive push into the North. [[spoiler:Later, Geralt has the option to pass this information on to Dijkstra, which gives the former spymaster incentive to call off the arrangement he's made with the emperor and prolong the war against Nilfgaard. This leads to the eventual defeat of the empire and Emhyr's assassination.]]
* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished:
** Skjall saves a cute girl he found while fishing on his boat and later [[spoiler:heroically tries to defend her from the Wild Hunt, and leads them away from his village]]. His reward? His clan believes he fled the battle and left his people to die, so he is [[UnPerson dishonored, banished from his home, and stripped of his name, only refered to as "Craven" by everyone who knew him]]. Later, trying to clear his name, [[spoiler:he ends up mauled by a werewolf and left to rot; he's found by Geralt and Yennefer, who proceed to use necromancy to get the full story of what happened out of him (causing him excruciating pain in the process).]] To add insult to injury, if you agree to Ciri's wish and [[spoiler: visit his grave, you'll find that when the priestesses found his body in Freya's garden, they dumped it into a ditch with no proper burial.]] It's not until Ciri and Geralt set the record straight on what happened that he finally gets some respect back.
** If, during King's Gambit, [[spoiler:you help Cerys and expose Birna, she'll only be arrested because her son Svanrige realizes the truth and exposes her. But because of the dishonor Birna brought upon the family name, he'll either have to be killed or exiled.]]
** If you choose to help Triss get all the mages to escape Novigrad, the witch hunters will target the non-humans to be burned at the stake instead.
** In the Bloody Baron story arc, if you free the forest spirit, [[spoiler:it will make sure the orphans get saved from the Crones. However, the Crones will transform Anna into a hideous monster. When Geralt tries to undo the curse, Anna will die whether or not he succeeds. The Baron is then DrivenToSuicide afterwards. And on top of all of that, the village of Downwarren is wiped out to a person by the forest spirit, revealing the dead people around the tree weren't killed by accident at all]]. Conversely, not freeing the forest spirit [[spoiler:dooms the orphans to be eaten by the Crones, but it will save Anna and also prevent the Baron from killing himself, although both leave the game world as a result. The village also gets spared]].
* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Very few things have made Geralt snap. Seeing [[spoiler:what Whoreson Junior had done to the whores that were brought to him, on top of roughing up his friend Dudu the doppler, ''and'' trying to kill Ciri,]] pushes him over the edge, and he makes the target of his rage feel it before calming down.
* NostalgiaLevel: The Royal Palace of Vizima and Kaer Morhen appear almost exactly as they did in the first game.
* TheNothingAfterDeath:
** Several quests that deal with ghosts, corpses or spirits brought back to the living world indicate that this may be how death works. Several times, they express little or no knowledge of what transpires outside of their tombs or graves, and often refer to resurrection as "waking up". Aside from Ulle the Unlucky hearing cheers and voices calling to him as he fades away, no hints or details of any sort of afterlife are ever given.
** Mind you, Yennefer believes this [[ArbitrarySkepticism but also believes ghosts are merely echoes of the dead despite being obviously wrong.]]
* NoticeThis: Lootable objects can be highlighted using the witcher sense.
* NotInThisForYourRevolution:
** See NeutralNoLonger. Geralt has numerous dialogue opportunities to express his indifference about whoever wins the war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms. This would be OutOfCharacter if not for the thoroughly reprehensible behavior of the Northern monarchs during the second game. Can be {{Averted}} if Geralt aids either the Rebels or Nilfgaard. [[TeethClenchedTeamwork The latter, however, comes with heavy sarcasm.]] His helping of [[spoiler:Dijkstra and the Temerian Resistance plot the assassination of Radovid comes down to the fact that Radovid's anti-magic campaign threatens Yennefer and Triss, people Geralt cares for immensely as Dijkstra flatly points out when laying out his plans. His optional abandonment of Vernon Roche's partisans to his fate, is also understandable because Geralt no longer has any stake in Temerian independence. Him sticking to that cause is solely to defend his friends, rather than fight for their cause]].
** If Keira is convinced to move to Kaer Morhen, she helps during the attack of the Wild Hunt, however when Geralt goes to thank her during [[spoiler: Vesemir's funeral]] for her help she flat out states that she did it out of pure self preservation and some gratitude over Geralt's help in the past, but unlike everyone else there she never agreed to any of it and is leaving with [[spoiler: Lambert]] as soon as he's ready for travel.
* NotQuiteTheRightThing:
** One scenario has Geralt offered a bribe by an arsonist not to turn him in. [[spoiler:The arsonist committed the act while drunk out of the belief the dwarf was willingly aiding the Nifgaardians. If you turn down the bribe, the dwarf hands him over to the Nilfgaardians to be hanged and then says he'll be supporting them for real now.]]
** It happens again when Geralt tries to rescue the White Orchard barkeep from having the crap beaten out of her. [[spoiler:It ends up killing several of her neighbors and souring her view of him forever.]] As both of these events happen in the prologue/tutorial area, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools it serves to highlight how certain "heroic" decisions may seem easy]], but carry unforeseen consequences.
** Once again in White Orchard, a minor sidequest has you brewing a Swallow potion as a last-ditch attempt to heal a girl injured by the griffin. If you look at the journal afterwards you find out that [[spoiler:she recovered physically, but the pain from the potion's toxins caused the girl to lose her mind.]] You even run into her beau in the Nilfgaard Base Camp in the southeastern-most point in Velen, who's unsure whether to thank Geralt for saving her life, [[spoiler:or punch him for condemning her to a FateWorseThanDeath]].
** When encountering a ghost, you hear a horrific tale about how she was EatenAlive by rats while her lover was helpless to prevent her death. [[spoiler:If you choose the option to reunite them by taking her bones to him, she kills him and goes to spread disease across the land.]]
** Also somewhat downplayed in most of these cases. While the consequences of many quests can be bad, they arguably aren't really your problem, or even your fault. The barkeep's neighbors were out for your blood, so they dug their own graves. Both the arsonist and the injured girl are cases of you putting the more important choices in the hands of others, in this case the smith and the girl's physician. Many quests are like that with you ''enabling others'' to choose, but not making the actual choice yourself.
** {{Inverted|Trope}} in one case of Skellige's crown plotline. [[spoiler:In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at An Craite's castle you get the choice between helping Hjalmar or helping Cerys. There is also the third obviously bad choice of not helping at all. Choosing the last one will result in Svanrige being crowned king. While at first it seems that he will be a puppet king under his mother, Birna Bran, and Nilfgaard; instead, in a single move, he unites all the clans under his leadership and casts aside his mother's own domineering aspirations becoming a capable ruler on his own terms. On the other hand he reforms Skellige into an absolute monarchy and both Cerys and Hjalmar die offscreen.]] So not quite as terrible as you were expecting but still pretty bad for all the named characters you met on Skellige.
* NotSoDifferentRemark: [[spoiler:Geralt is understandably disgusted when he learn that Orianna uses the orphanage as a farm to raise her favorite source of blood, but she points out that witchers are responsible for the deaths of more young boys than she is.]]
%% ** Avallac'h points that out to Geralt about humans and elves on each other's worlds.
* NotSoStoic:
** When embarking to hunt the griffin in White Orchard, Vesemir tweaks Geralt's nose about [[NeverLiveItDown that one time they had to hunt a monster in a trash heap]], and Geralt spent ''half the next day'' bathing.
** In a much more serious example, when Geralt [[spoiler:finds Ciri apparently dead, he completely breaks down and cradles her body.]]
** And on the opposite side of the spectrum, even [[SeenItAll Geralt]] is caught flat-footed when [[spoiler:he meets Elihal and [[WholesomeCrossdresser all his accessories]]]] while searching for Dandelion.
** Geralt's encounter with [[spoiler:Whoreson Junior]]. Having pushed not one, but ''two'' of Geralt's [[BerserkButton Berserk Buttons]]: [[spoiler:harming his friends, and murdering women]] Geralt relentlessly beats him within an inch of his life over the course of a minute long scene, while frantically pacing the room in between blows. Even after he's calmed down and begun his interrogation, Geralt can menacingly explain to him that one more lie will very well likely be the final straw to make Geralt ''really'' boil over. It's up to you to decide if he gets to walk out of the room alive or not.
* NoWomansLand: ''Everywhere'' to some degree or another.
** Beyond the struggles present in any worn-torn hellhole, both the Baron's men and Nilfgaardian soldiers raid villages and are mentioned to take women. In the latter case, it is explicitly stated that they are sent to "serve" in taverns and possibly brothels. Those taken in Skelliger raids are implied to meet similar fates.
** DoubleSubverted in regards to Skellige, which seems to be the most egalitarian society since women can be warriors and leaders (even though they've never had a female ruler before, there's nothing outright saying they can't rule, and any complaints raised against Cerys' bid for power are because she's Crach's daughter, not because she's a woman), but even they have a habit of raiding villages and taking women as slaves and comfort women.
** Toussaint is an interesting compromise. With a female in power, women are far more respected than in Velen or Novigrad, but still their focus on chivalry as one of their main cultural tenets make women into something that can be ''earned'' via heroic deeds. Granted the lady in question does have some say in the matter, and they're not seen as property like they do in the North, but it's still a far cry from an egalitarian society.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:Ciri facing down the White Frost and surviving occurs entirely offscreen, left to the player's imagination.]]
* OhCrap: If you follow the "Reasons of State" storyline [[spoiler:Radovid finds himself at the mercy of Roche and his men at the end. He bangs on a random door, demanding to be let in, when it suddenly opens -- revealing Philippa Eilhart behind it. Radovid's expression looks like he's just lived his worst nightmare in the waking world, which probably isn't far from the truth.]]
* OlderThanTheyLook:
** Hubert Rejk, the Novigrad coroner, appears to be in his mid-thirties to early forties, but he's old enough to have taught a fifty-three year old man medicine twenty years ago. He credits the time he spends breathing in the chemicals used to preserve corpses with his youthful appearance. [[spoiler:The real reason is that he's a vampire.]]
** Pretty much all magic users qualify. Geralt and Yennefer both have about a century on them, just for starters.
* OnceDoneNeverForgotten: [[invoked]]
** Yennefer still gives Geralt a bit of grief over the "incantation" he'd recited in "The Last Wish." [[spoiler:"How was I to know it meant 'begone and go plough yourself'?"]]
** Lambert is quite eager to make fun of Geralt for various things, including the "Killing Monsters" line from the announcement trailer after Geralt makes fun of the "tough guy act".
* OneSteveLimit:
** Averted. There are two important characters who go by the name Anna: Anna Strenger, the Bloody Baron's wife, and Anna Henrietta, the Duchess of Toussaint.
** A lesser example, since they aren't in the same piece of media, but Mikula the orphan shares her name with a blacksmith from ''Something Ends, Something Begins.''
* OpeningTheSandbox: After a tutorial in Geralt's dream, the player starts in White Orchard, which is open but still a relatively small map. The Lilac and Gooseberries quest and a short scene in the Vizima Royal Palace need to be completed before the player has access to the larger main areas that the bulk of the game is set in. Once White Orchard is complete, the player can take on any of the three main regions in any order, so long as they can get past the respective {{Beef Gate}}s and {{Cash Gate}}s.
* OptionalSexualEncounter: Including the [=DLCs=], Geralt can bed at least 15 women. Only Yennefer and Triss have any effect on the story, and you can even have one encounter with Yen without locking in her romance path.
* OutWithABang:
** The reason why [[spoiler:Dudu, Geralt and Dandelion's [[{{Doppelganger}} Doppler friend]]]], was able to [[spoiler:break into Dijkstra's vault]]. He [[DeadPersonImpersonation impersonated Margrave Henckel]], who'd died in a brothel "clad in leather lingerie", meaning his family kept the funeral hush-hush so word of his death wasn't widely known.
** Geralt encounters a situation where villagers accuse a local succubus of murdering an old man. [[spoiler:He actually died in the act with her despite her recommendations against it because his old heart gave out. She gives the old man a [[DueToTheDead proper burial]]]].
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions:
** The Nilfgaardians have this attitude towards the gods aside from their own. They interpret it as a license to rape, pillage, and plunder temples as well as abbeys. Given the amount of supernatural weirdness going on around the Witcher world, it may qualify them as {{Hollywood Atheist}}s as well, and they aren't alone. In Novigrad, the practice of ''any'' religion other than that of the Eternal Fire is banned on the pain of burning at the stake. [[KnightTemplar And they're very eager to follow through on those threats.]]
** The King of Beggars in Novigrad scoffs at religion, viewing it as just another way for the rich to control the poor. Considering that the city is in the middle of a witch-burning craze, he may have a point.
* OutOfCharacterMoment: A minor one which would only be relevant to book readers. Geralt has the opportunity to turn down payment several times for slaying monsters. Being a hero who is 'poor in dollars, rich in sense', Geralt would never do this in the books. He even puts down the idea of it in the first game, saying only rich people can afford to slay monsters for free. However, sometimes refusing to take payment leads to a different reward altogether (something worth more than the monetary reward or a discount).
* OutOfFocus: Given how much emphasis was placed on Geralt's relationship with Triss in the previous game, it can be a tad jarring to see her sidelined romantically even after rekindling things. Due to fan feedback, an update was announced to expand both Triss's and Yennefer's romance dialogue options.
* OldSaveBonus: Save games from Witcher 2 can be imported upon starting a new game, automatically applying all decisions made from that game that affect the story. However it's worth noting that while Witcher 2 can import from Witcher 1, nothing persists from Witcher 1 all the way to Witcher 3. For example, it is possible to fail to save Thaler in Witcher 1, but he will always be alive in Witcher 3.
* OverlyLongName:
** Sir Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde of Rivia, a.k.a., White Wolf, Gwynbleidd, Butcher of Blaviken, and Ravix of Fourhorn.
** Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge, Duchess of Sodden, heiress to Inis Ard Skellig and Inis An Skellig, and suzeraine of Attre and Abb Yarra, a.k.a. The Lady of Time and Space, Zireael, Lion Cub of Cintra, and Child of the Elder Blood. Ciri for short.
** Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy.
** Emperor Emhyr var Emreis, Lord of Metinna, Ebbing, and Gemmera, Sovereign of Nazair and Vicovaro, Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd, The White Flame Dancing on the Graves of His Foes.
** The Continent is lousy with them. Many also obviously cross over into [[NameThatUnfoldsLikeLotusBlossom Lotus Blossom]] territory.
* PermanentlyMissableContent: Following Cerys' path during "King's Gambit" brings you in a tunnel under Kaer Trolde which contains a place of power, but the area is inaccessible otherwise. Following Hjalmar's path or refusing to do the quest will deprive you of a free ability point (not to mention "King's Gambit" is one of the many sidequests which are automatically failed past one of the points of no return).
* PlayableEpilogue: Downplayed. After completing the Epilogue quest, you get dropped into a Free Roam version of the game world set before the final chapter where all of the storyline characters are despawned.
* PlotTunnel: You're locked into the main story from when you enter the Isle of Mists until after defeating Imrelith, taking up a few hours of game time.
* PointOfNoReturn: There are a few moments in the game where sidequests get marked as failed if you proceed with the main quest. Fortunately the game gives you a warning to create a manual save during moments where the player might risk failing the more important sidequests. Such a point is [[spoiler: the return trip to Kaer Morhen where Geralt and the allies he's made up to that point organize for a final battle against the Wild Hunt]].
* PostFinalBoss: [[spoiler:If you get the bad ending, you'll end up fighting the Weavess and taking back the amulet she stole from Ciri. Pyrrhic "victory" though, since it's heavily implied by the cutscene that Geralt doesn't survive an onslaught by a giant swarm of monsters that proceeds to convene on his position in the wake of the fight.]]
* PowerEchoes: Several supernatural entities. Most noticeably, the King of the Wild Hunt's voice has a creepy reverb effect caused by his headgear. He speaks normally whenever he removes the faceplate on his helm.
* ThePowerOfLove: Downplayed but present at the game's end. [[spoiler:Geralt's love gives Ciri the strength to stop the White Frost and survive - she remembers a number of major interactions with Geralt near the end of the game where he supports her or cheers her up]].
* PowerStrainBlackout: Happens to multiple characters with powers, notably including both Ciri and Yen near the end of the main quest as they overexert.
* PrankCall: No, you don't need a telephone for this, megascopes (and a sufficient amount of alcohol) do the job just fine.
--> ''"Lambert... you're a genius."''
* PreferableImpersonator: If Geralt kills [[spoiler: Whoreson Junior]], Dudu (a [[VoluntaryShapeshifting doppleganger]]) will [[DeadPersonImpersonation take over his identity]]. A depraved SerialKiller who has no concept of HonorAmongThieves, compared to Dudu who is a naturally non-violent and friendly individual, who disbands Wily's criminal empire and reinvests his assets in a legitimate trading company. Everyone benefits from this replacement, including his gang who now make more money thanks to Dudu's head for business.
* PreviouslyOn: When continuing a saved game, you are given a brief rundown of what happened the last time you played, narrated by [[spoiler:an elderly Dandelion]]. Unusually, it goes by where you are located when you last saved and can result in an "update" from many hours ago.
* ProductionForeshadowing: The world where [[spoiler:Ciri hid from Eredin]] is described thusly: "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." [[VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077 Where have we heard that before...?]]
* TheProphecy: Ithlinne's Prophecy plays a fairly significant part in the backstory of the game, especially when it comes to Ciri's role in the future of the world:
--> ''The era of the sword and axe is nigh, the era of the wolf's blizzard. The Time of the White Frost and the White Light is nigh, the Time of Madness and the Time of Contempt: Tedd Deireádh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown. A seed which will not sprout but burst into flame!''
* RainbowPimpGear: In full effect. There's no way to customize armor appearance (until the ''Blood and Wine'' DLC), and though armor part of the same set looks cohesive, it's fully possible to wear black plate mail as a top, with denim blue pants and brown shoes - making Geralt look like a Renaissance fair re-enactor who's only put on half his costume. More colorful and garish combinations are also possible, thanks to many of the light armor tops and trousers that tend to favor bright colors.
* ReallyGetsAround:
** Averted for once with Geralt. While he can sleep with either Yennefer, Triss, or both ([[spoiler:which isn't recommended]]) plus a couple of others, it's a far cry from previous games. Plus, both Yennefer and Triss are women he has long-standing relationships with. Played straight if you decide Geralt should indulge the services of Novigrad's brothels or if you agree to the multiple sidequests offered by other ladies from Geralt's past like Keira Metz and Shani.
** Dandelion. You are sent on a quest which consists of interviewing his romantic conquests in the city. They include bards, a washerwoman ([[Literature/SwordOfDestiny who he's slept with before]]), an elven tailor, housemaids, a school teacher, and a pair of Nilfgaard identical twins ([[spoiler:neither slept with him]]). What's crazier? This is only ''half'' the list of ''his most recent girlfriends'', and even then you'll find more. Granted he didn't sleep with all of them (at the very least he didn't sleep with the tailor) but he still easily racks up an incredible body count.
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Seems to be a running theme among Nilfgaardian nobility.
** One quest features a Nilfgaardian commander requisitioning food from the local alderman, who is overawed by the commander and essentially groveling instead of giving a straight answer. The commander stands up, points out the calluses on his hands, and demands they speak "peasant to peasant". The alderman replies there are 40 bushels; there would have been more, but Temerian forces had requisitioned some of it already. The commander only asks for 30 bushels out of the 40. This is intentionally played with, as the same commander, upon receiving the 30 bushels and finding some to be rotten, has the alderman whipped for giving the army defective goods. It is a running theme in the game how the same authority figures can be both magnanimous and tyrannical, depending on their personal standards, or even just their present mood, underlining how unchecked power is inherently arbitrary to those who live under it, whether well-intentioned or not.
** A Nilfgaardian general who comes to order a special armor for himself quickly admonishes Fergus for allowing his subordinates to interject and argue, but when he gets proof that Yoana is the real master, he orders the forge to be transferred to her and grants her a large military commission without batting an eye.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: See HellishHorse. Also, Fiends when performing hypnosis.
* RedLightDistrict: Curiously for a city practically ruled by religious fundamentalists, Novigrad has a number of taverns, whorehouses, and gambling halls. Probably [[{{Hypocrite}} so they know which buildings to avoid]].
* RedHerring: [[spoiler:Reverend Nathaniel Pastodi]] during the quest ''Carnal Sins''. [[spoiler:As a sadistic torturer and a Priest of the Eternal Fire, Pastodi can immediately be suspected of committing the series of religiously-motivated killings around Novigrad, up to the point where Geralt finds him about to mutilate who he believes to be the next would-be victim. Yet if questioned, Nathaniel reveals that he's been framed by the real killer: the city's coroner, Hubert Rejik. Geralt can, of course, kill him anyway.]]
* RedRidingHoodReplica: Geralt can take a quest to protect a village from a bandit leader named Little Red, who wears a hood and [[spoiler:transforms into a werewolf if Geralt chooses to fight her]]. It's worth noting she's named Little Red only in the English release and her hood isn't red, either - in the original Polish version, she's simply called Wilczyca, meaning a she-wolf, which makes a fitting nickname in Polish for a bandit leader, but not so much in English.
* TheRemnant:
** Geralt, Vesemir, Letho, and a handful of others are the only witchers left in the world. Most people are unaware of this fact and there may be even less left based on your decisions. [[spoiler:One of the possible ending has Ciri finish her training to become the first new witcher in decades.]]
** Similarly, with the destruction and outlawing of the Lodge of Sorceresses, the remnants seen in game number only a few more than the remaining witchers are actively hunted by every major power on the continent.
** The bestiary category "Relicts" lists several monsters which are at risk of extinction, such [[TheFairFolk Godlings]] and [[ShapeShifter Dopplers]]. Additionally one Skellige quest involves slaying a [[OurGiantsAreBigger frost giant]]; even Geralt was shocked to learn there was one still alive.
* LaResistance:
** Subverted. It's definitely a case of TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized. With the death of Foltest, the Temerian forces were disorganized and ineffective. They were easy prey for Nilfgaard, which defeated them on the battlefield and scattered their ranks. While some continue the fight, most have turned to banditry, deserted, [[LesCollaborateurs or joined the Bloody Baron's forces]]. Indeed, many of the deserters and bandits Geralt encounters yell "For Temeria" as if they were still in the army fighting Nilfgaard. [[ShownTheirWork Which is not uncommon with some "resistance" groups throughout history.]]
** However, there ''is'' an actual Temerian resistance group, made up of actual remnants of the Temerian army... and commanded by none other than [[spoiler:Vernon Roche.]] However, they subvert this trope too, since [[spoiler:Roche is actually in league with Nilfgaard against Radovid]].
* {{Revenge}}:
** The griffin in White Orchard. While it did have a nest and otherwise acts like a regular griffin, its relations with the town weren't improved by the Nilfgaardian soldiers killing its mate, smashing its eggs, and burning its nest. The griffin is understandably pissed and a much greater threat than before.
** Geralt can find his witcher comrade Lambert in the middle of a brutal manhunt for the people who assassinated his friend from the Cat School.
** King Radovid hands Geralt the location for [[spoiler:Whoreson Junior]] for a favor. Said favor? [[spoiler:Bring him Phillipa alive so he can torture her to death.]]
** [[spoiler:Philippa, during "Reasons of State." She ambushes Radovid as he tries to escape the conspirators, blinds him, and stabs him in the back.]]
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge:
** You meet Lambert in the middle of one, hunting down and killing the members of a hit squad who killed his friend Aiden. Geralt can help him finish his vengeance, or persuade him to back out of it.
** This is pretty much how King Radovid perceives his purge of mages.
** Geralt discovers the aftermath of one when doing the "Beast of Honorton" contract. [[spoiler:A witcher from the School of the Cat was betrayed by the clients who hired him, and after killing his attackers he proceeded to go through the entire town and kill everyone else, save for one little girl.]]
* RRatedOpening: A double whammy. The game's opening sequence features Yennefer caught in a battle between two opposing armies, which forces her to employ a number of spells to escape, killing dozens of soldiers and horses in the process, with the goriest in particular involving sending a raven [[EyeScream directly into one man's eye]] and out the other end of his skull. When that's over, the game moves on to a dream sequence, where Geralt is taking a bath, treating us to some very suggestive shots between his legs, and Yennefer is lounging around casually in the nude.
* RunningGag:
** Ronvid of the Small Marsh is persistent in wanting to defend the honor of the Maid Bilberry, even though Geralt has never met either of them before in his life and has no interest to spare for the honor, or lack thereof, of anybody.
** Gwent being treated as SeriousBusiness whenever it comes up.
** Geralt hates portals, and makes sure to mention it whenever the opportunity arises. Which is often.
[[/folder]]

* DamnYouMuscleMemory: 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.
* DangerousDeserter:
** 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 [[SadisticChoice decide]] if the family should leave him behind, or take him in and risk incurring the wrath of the Nilfgaardian army.
* DarkerAndEdgier: Both this and LighterAndSofter are [[ZigZaggingTrope 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 DownloadableContent ''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.[[/note]], it is much richer in tone compare to its predecessors and thus defied categorization. While ''VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings'' is a straight-up CrapsackWorld tour and all choices are SadisticChoice, ''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[[/note]], storyline [[note]]Radovid's victory is straight up AlternateHistoryNaziVictory level of horror[[/note]] and the inevitability of the White Frost push it toward CosmicHorrorStory. At its best, Geralt can actively make the world a better place both by being a SmallStepsHero or making Ciri an enlightened [[spoiler: Queen of the North ''and South'']] and [[spoiler: Savior of the Multiverse]] by defeating the White Frost.
* DarkestHour: Occurs during the Battle of Kaer Morhen when all seems lost after [[spoiler: Vesemir's death and the enemies breaking through the front gate. But then Ciri undergoes a TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening and saves the day for the heroes.]]
* DeadpanSnarker: 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.
* DeathGlare: Triss gives a pretty good one to Menge [[spoiler:if she kills him]].
* DeathSeeker:
** [[spoiler: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 [[UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay 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 [[spoiler: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 PowerOfLove? This game has a quest called "Wild at Heart," where it turns out [[spoiler: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 [[LoveMakesYouCrazy not always]] [[LoveMakesYouEvil a good]] [[LoveMakesYouDumb 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 ReallyGetsAround. Try to seduce both Triss and Yennefer, and they propose a threesome, [[spoiler:handcuff Geralt to the bed, and mutually dump him]].
* DeliberateValuesDissonance:
** 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 ReasonableAuthorityFigure 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, [[spoiler:as Svanrige Bran can attest to in the HeroicSacrifice entry below.]]
*** In many taverns and feasts in Skellige, the player will often find a scantily-clad dancer with the "name" [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep 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.
* DemBones: You never fight actual skeletons in the game, but the Wild Hunt itself has its armor styled to look like skeletons.
* DemotedToExtra: 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.
* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Geralt]] crosses it in [[spoiler:the Ciri dies ending. He becomes a DeathSeeker and there is no PlayableEpilogue]].
* DevelopersForesight:
** 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 [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler: 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 [[https://www.youtube.com/@xLetalis [=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.
* DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu: 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? [[spoiler:He turns out to be a soul-stealing evil sharing a number of characteristics with the Biblical Satan.]]
* DiscOneFinalDungeon: 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. [[spoiler:Naturally, things don't go entirely as planned and the journey continues.]]
* DiscOneNuke:
** 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 BoringButPractical.
* DisposableSexWorker:
** King Radovid bribes [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler: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.]]
* DisproportionateRetribution: 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.
* DistaffCounterpart: 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 FlashStep, despite her enormous degree of power.
* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: 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.[[/note]], 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.
* DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: 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...
* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale:
** 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 InUniverse 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.
* DownerEnding:
** On a personal level, if Geralt made choices that caused [[spoiler: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 BitterSweetEnding 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, [[spoiler: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.]]
* DownloadableContent: 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 NewGamePlus mode to the game
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: 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.
* DroneOfDread: Fittingly, the music in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiFoUR98oA Crookback Bog]].
* DroppedABridgeOnHim:
** If he survived the previous game, then Henselt is unceremoniously killed in a surprising betrayal by Radovid.
** [[spoiler:Crach an Craite]] gets an unexpected and violent death just before the FinalBoss, 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 GladiatorSubquest of both previous games is found murdered by thugs outside Whoreson' arena.
* DubNameChange: 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".
* DudeNotFunny: 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 [[LoveTriangle Geralt's and Yennefer's]] presence.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: 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.
* DumpStat: Also doubles as PowerUpLetDown, 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 GameBreaker 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.
* DumpThemAll: One way of resolving the LoveTriangle is for Geralt to break it off with both Triss and Yennefer.
* TheDungAges: 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 WretchedHive controlled by a CorruptChurch 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.
* EarlyGameHell: 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.
* EarnYourBadEnding: 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 ([[spoiler:rescuing them leads to Anna's torture and death, the Baron's suicide, and the murder of ''everyone'' in Downwarren]]).
* EarnYourHappyEnding:
** 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:
** [[spoiler: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.]]
** [[spoiler: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 AfterActionPatchup to Geralt.]]
** [[spoiler: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 [[TheGoodQueen proves to be a good ruler]] because she possesses both her father's political instincts and Geralt's simple human decency.]]
* EasilyForgiven: If you [[spoiler:spared Aryan]] in ''2'', then [[spoiler: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.]]
* ElaborateEqualsEffective: The Witcher gear upgrades not only get more effective as they go up, [[https://witcherhour.com/ezoimgfmt/i1.wp.com/witcherhour.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/witcher-school-gear-progression.jpg?w=898&ssl=1&ezimgfmt=ng:webp/ngcb2 they also get more elaborate]].
* EndlessWinter: 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.
* EnemyMine:
** Over the course of the game, Geralt will have to team up with many former enemies and adversaries, including Emhyr, Dijkstra, [[spoiler: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.
** [[spoiler: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]].
* TheEmpire: 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.
* EndOfAnAge: No matter how the game ends, the political landscape for the Northern Kingdoms is irreversibly changed. [[spoiler:Either Nilfgaard conquers them fully, or they're absorbed by Redania, which becomes an empire in its own right.]]
* EngineeredHeroics: In one sidequest, Geralt lets himself be defeated by Dandelion in combat in order to convince a love interest of Dandelion's prowess.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes:
** {{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.
* EvilDetectingCat: Played with. Cats tend to hiss at Geralt whenever he gets close to one, and [[HeroWithBadPublicity considering the general consensus regarding Witchers]], it fits.
* EvilVsEvil: 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 [[HereWeGoAgain 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 ReasonableAuthorityFigure types, they mostly turn out to be too eager for DisproportionateRetribution.
** 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 ChurchMilitant Witch Hunters rounding up sorceresses and non-humans to be burnt alive due to FantasticRacism and paranoia, and the soldiers under his command tend to be equally racist and abusive.
** [[spoiler: Even if the player would ''like'' to TakeAThirdOption 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.]]
* ExplainExplainOhCrap: 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.
* EyeDentityGiveaway: 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.
* EyeScream:
** [[SerialKiller 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.
* FaceHeelTurn: 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.
* FactionCalculus: The four Gwent decks, including:
** Northern Kingdoms (Cannon): Strong offence, weak defence. Strongest [[SetBonus 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''[[/note]] (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.
* FakeLongevity: 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 ShopFodder, 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.
* FalseInnocenceTrick: 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." [[spoiler:If Geralt frees him, he goes on to be a ruthless bandit. In a rare aversion of UngratefulBastard, he offers to share his plunder.]]
* FanDisservice:
** 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 BodyHorror. [[spoiler: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 [[HotSpringsEpisode 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 ModestyTowel 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.
* FantasyCounterpartCulture:
** Skellige is basically an Ireland-Scandanavia analogue with Highlander Vikings, veering close to CultureChopSuey 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.
* FantasyKitchenSink: 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.
* FantasyMetals: 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.
* FantasticRacism:
** 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 [[ArmorPiercingQuestion 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. [[spoiler:Of course, Radovid will order Geralt's death after he's supposedly outlived his usefulness.]]
** Eredin's people are one of the most [[OurElvesAreDifferent 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. [[ScrewYouElves Geralt can call Avallac'h out on this]] only for him to point out, rightly, [[ShutUpKirk that humans are every bit as genocidal and racist against other intelligent species on Geralt's world. Particularly elves.]]
* FathersQuest: Uniquely, the main plot is this for ''both'' Ciri's adoptive father, Geralt, and her biological father, [[spoiler: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.
* FeetOfClay: Fergus is presented as the only master armorer in the game, with Yoana as his apprentice. In reality, [[spoiler: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.]]
* FetusTerrible: 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.
* TheFellowshipHasEnded: After [[spoiler: The Battle of Kaer Morhen and Vesemir's death]] almost everyone present for the battle goes their own way. Only Geralt's closest friends [[spoiler: [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and Avallac'h]]]] return with Geralt to Novigrad.
* FightingAcrossTimeAndSpace: [[spoiler: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.]]
* FinalBossPreview: The BigBad, Eredin, and his CoDragons, Imlerith and Caranthir, are shown cutting Ciri down at the end of the idyllic-dream-turned-nightmare that is the prologue.
* FireForgedFriends: Despite being former adversaries, Ciri and the Mysterious Elf bond through all their trials and tribulations against the Wild Hunt. [[spoiler: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 BrokenPedestal once Ciri finds out (though there's reason to believe that the person who gave this account [[UnreliableNarrator lied about it]] [[GreenEyedMonster out of jealousy]] just to spite Ciri).]]
* FlatEarthAtheist: 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.
* ForWantOfANail: The ending where [[spoiler: Radovid wins the war against Nilfgaard and things go really, really, ''really'' bad for a lot of people, countries and species is triggered by... Geralt breaking Dijkstra's leg]]. Even if it has no effect on the main arc story of the saga and the game's trilogy, it does have a profound effect on what the world looks like in the end.
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: 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.
* FreudianExcuse: 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. [[spoiler: 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 [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler:the ending sequence of the game in Skellige, prior to the PlayableEpilogue]].
** 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 [[spoiler: 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. [[spoiler:It turns out that not only is he the serial killer in question but a ''vampire''.]]
** Gaunter O'Dimm from the Hearts of Stone expansion 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, [[spoiler: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.
* FriendlyFireproof: Played straight with allies but averted for enemies. If you [[CombatPragmatist 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.
* FriendsWithBenefits: 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.
* FromBadToWorse: As bad as it was in previous games, it's much, much worse now with the literal end of the world bearing down.
* FunnyBackgroundEvent:
** During the quest "Hunting a Witch," when Geralt visits [[spoiler: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.
* FunWithAcronyms: Some of the game's quests and text has a bunch of amusing acronyms:
** '''U'''gliest '''M'''an '''A'''live
** '''D'''efensive '''R'''egulatory '''M'''agicon, defeated by '''G'''ottfried's '''O'''mni-opening '''G'''rimoire
** '''G'''aunter '''O'''''''D'''imm

[[folder: G-L]]
* GameBreakingBug: 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.
* GameplayAndStoryIntegration:
** InUniverse 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[[/note]] 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 ObviouslyEvil 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 HidingInPlainSight 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 [[spoiler: Avallac'h]] (0 points, Hero Card so the enemy can't recycle it) is a massive RedHerring. [[spoiler: 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 BigBad. 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 [[MoneySink 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.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation:
** 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 KleptomaniacHero 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 [[spoiler: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 "[[BlatantLies 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 GameplayAndStoryIntegration 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 BeefGate method mentioned before of just raising the level of enemies to keep you away from certain areas, it can be pretty jarring to find [[ImprobablePowerDiscrepancy 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 BonusBoss 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.
* GangOfHats: In addition to countless generic bandits, the Novigrad underworld is run by the Big Four, four [[TheDon mob bosses]] whose gangs have hats of ranging gimmicks.
** [[TheFagin Francis Bedlam]] is a self-styled [[KingoftheHomeless King of Beggars]] who leads a conventional ThievesGuild (though that term isn't used) common in fantasy works.
** [[FakeAristocrat Count Sigi Reuven]] is the former [[TheSpymaster Redanian Spymaster]] who used his massive network of contacts and informants to build a new life as [[TheDon a mob boss]], he runs a [[PublicBathhouseScene bathhouse]] which caters to Novigrad's wealthy and doubles as a [[LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub meeting place]] for the Big Four.
** [[TheButcher Cleaver]] is a [[OurDwarvesAreAlltheSame dwarf]] who says his main business is "entertainment," all members of his gang are [[GenericEthnicCrimeGang fellow dwarves]] who wear [[CoolMask bandanas with the gang's symbol on them]]. It's possible they were inspired by Dragon Age's Carta.
** [[InSeriesNickname Whoreson Junior]]'s gang is by far the most gimmick filled, most of his mooks dress like [[MonsterClown jesters and harlequins]] and are covered in {{tattoo|edCrook}}s.
* GargleBlaster: 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.
* TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry: [[TomboyAndGirlyGirl Rose and Edda]] var Attre.
-->'''Edda''': Rose, [[BlatantLies 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!
* GodGuise: 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), [[HoistByHisOwnPetard or show them the man behind the curtain.]] In the Sylvan's defense, he says that he gives valuable advice in exchange for worship [[VillainHasAPoint and the villagers are deeply stupid.]]
* GoldfishPoopGang: 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.
* GondorCallsForAid: 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 [[spoiler:the new ruler of Skellige]]), or provide him with items.
* GoodCannotComprehendEvil: 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.
* GoodCopBadCop: 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.
* GoodOldFisticuffs:
** 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.
* GoodRunningEvil: If Ciri opts to become [[spoiler:Empress of Nilfgaard]], she inherits [[spoiler:the throne to a realm that is known for DisproportionateRetribution codified into law, slavery, and unprovoked wars of aggression.]] She has her work cut out for her if reformation is her goal.
* GoryDiscretionShot:
** 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 [[spoiler:Geralt kills the last Crone.]]
** At the end of the "Wild at Heart" sidequest, [[spoiler: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.
* GottaCatchEmAll: Getting all the Gwent cards is the object of the fittingly named "Collect Them All" quest.
* GrandFinale: This entry serves as the climax of Geralt's story in the video games.
* GrayAndGrayMorality: 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 [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Nazi stand-ins]] toward the end. Becomes BlackAndGrayMorality when dealing with the many war criminals the war has produced as well as the Wild Hunt.
* GreenHillZone: 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.
* HandWave: 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.
* HarmlessFreezing: In [[spoiler: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.]]
* HarpoonGun: The crossbow is actually more effective underwater than it is on land, usually being able to kill swimming monsters in a single hit.
* HateCrimesAreASpecialKindOfEvil:
** Rosa van Attre is a Nilfgaardian noblewoman who [[TheTease 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 [[FantasticRacism human supremacist]] who shows complete contempt for not only monsters and nonhumans species, but also [[MageKiller 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 [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness they've eliminated the more pressing targets]].[[/note]] 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.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler:Letho, the BigBad of the second game,]] can be recruited to help Geralt for a crucial battle. If Geralt doesn't induce a HeelFaceDoorSlam, anyway.
* HeroicSacrifice: Svanrige Bran, son of the late king Bran and Birna performs one in the climax of the "King's Gambit" quest when he [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler: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]].
* HeldGaze: Geralt and Yen share one [[spoiler: should you woo her in the questline]] after taking care of the djinn during "The Last Wish."
* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: No witcher armour contains helmets and none can be found or purchased.
* HellHound: 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.
* HellishHorse: One possible ending of the Whispering Hillock quest has Geralt binding an imprisoned spirit to a black mare, causing the mare to develop [[RedEyesTakeWarning glowing red eyes]] [[spoiler:and go on murderous rampage through the countryside]].
* HornyVikings:
** Skellige is pretty much inhabited by the stereotypical fantasy Vikings -- a RapePillageAndBurn [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy 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.[[/note]] 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 "[[UsefulNotes/FaroeIslands 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".
* HouseFey: Two examples:
** The Lubberkin, a [[DarkerandEdgier particularly gruesome take on the trope]].
** Second is Sarah, who starts out living in a house secretly and [[TheFairFolk 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.
* HubCity: Novigrad serves as the biggest city in the main game and is where many of the quests take place.
* HufflepuffHouse: 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.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters:
** 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''.
* HurricaneOfPuns: An EasterEgg 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.
* ICallItVera: And not affectionately. The nickname at Kaer Morhen for the operating table used for administering the torturous Trial of the Grasses is "Sad Albert."
* IconicOutfit: The Kaer Morhen armor that Geralt starts out with is what he's depicted as wearing in most of the game's official art and promotional material.
* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: "[[EasierThanEasy Just the Story!]]", "Story and Sword!", "[[NintendoHard Blood and Broken Bones!]]", and "[[HarderThanHard Death March!]]"
* IdiotBall: Dijkstra's [[spoiler: betrayal of Roche, Ves, and Thaler]] relies on Geralt's supposed code of neutrality as a Witcher to not interfere. While Dijkstra actually believing this in the first place is rather dubious, considering [[spoiler: Geralt just participated in a regicide]], the true IdiotBall moment here is Dijkstra choosing to reveal [[spoiler: his betrayal]] with Geralt present. While Geralt is given the option to allow it to happen, Dijkstra was extremely foolish in allowing there to be a variable like Geralt present at all. If Dijkstra had simply waited for Geralt to leave the area, he could have [[spoiler: eliminated the Temerians]] without any possibility of interference.
* IKnowWhatYouFear: In the sidequest "Cave of Dreams," Geralt accompanies Blueboy Lugos and his crew, who take hallucinogens in order to confront their deepest fears. Geralt's fear is the final one they face, which is [[spoiler:Eredin, the King of the Wild Hunt, who wants to take Ciri away for his own ends.]]
* ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder: [[ReallyGetsAround Gigolo]], when Keira wants Geralt to act as her "prince" for the evening.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: Scoia'tel's Gwent gimmick Agile allows their units to switch between Melee or Ranged mode, thus potentially dodging negative weather cards.
* ImprobablePowerDiscrepancy:
** Enemies are occasionally buffed to serve as a BeefGate to high-end quests. This can result in absurdities such as a swarm of ghouls, usually considered bread-and-butter work for a Witcher, being roughly as powerful as a vampire or a stone golem.
** "Fists of Fury" fighters at higher levels hit as hard as monsters and weapon-wielding mooks.
** The expansions give massive level and toughness upgrades to otherwise mundane creatures. Wolves suddenly jump to level ''35'', higher than some bosses at the end of the main campaign, and packs of them can overwhelm Geralt even after he just averted the end of the world.
* ImStandingRightHere: Said word-for-word by Ciri when one of her friends in Novigrad openly flirts with Geralt.
* INever: Geralt, Eskel, and Lambert can engage in a round of "I Never" during their drunken night in. The "I Never"s are predictably saucy, including sleeping with a succubus and taking fisstech as one of Geralt's possible choices, to both of which [[NiceGuy Eskel]] drinks, prompting [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Lambert]] to quip that still waters run deep. If Geralt chooses the other possible dialogue option in the game, Lambert reveals himself as having slept with his best friend's wife.
* InsaneTrollLogic: Appropriately enough, trolls are prone to... interesting leaps of logic, such as one making a fence out of boats he was asked to protect so that no one could steal them. He would have made a regular fence, but the boats were the only source of wood.
* InterfaceScrew:
** There are certain enemies that have attacks that will obscure the screen and break lock-on. For example: if you get hit with a mud ball thrown by a Water Hag, then the screen will appropriately be splattered with mud.
** Several quests require Geralt to get drunk, which makes the interface blurry and wavy. The witcher contract "The Oxenfurt Drunk" requires this immediately before fighting a tough monster as it only preys on the intoxicated.
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** "Following the Thread" starts like a standard monster hunting contract before turning out to be longer and more complex than that after killing the ekimma target, [[spoiler:once Geralt and Lambert got to the questgiver to get their reward and Lambert antagonizes then murders him]]. Checking the quests' journal immediately reveals "Following the Thread" isn't what it initially seemed, because the quest appears under "Side Quests - Multiple Regions" instead of "Contracts - Novigrad".
** During "King's Gambit"'s Kaer Trolde massacre scene, the bears are quickly discovered to actually be "berserkers", which in the settings are human warriors able to turn into bears. If you play with the auto sword draw feature enabled, the reveal they weren't mundane bears isn't much of a surprise, because Geralt automatically drew the ''silver'' sword instead of the steel sword. Even if you don't play with this feature enabled, the supernatural nature of the "bears" is obvious because of their life meter's color.
* InvasionOfTheBabySnatchers: 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.
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: The Xenovox, which is essentially a magical version of a walkie-talkie. While Geralt brings up the possibility, the reason ''why'' it would never catch on is because according to Keira Metz a xenovox is ''very'' hard to build, rather than "I don't care for it" being the excuse.
* InvulnerableHorses: Zig-zagged. You'll find plenty of horse corpses scattered around the world, and a lot of horses get killed in the introduction, but no living horse can actually be harmed by you or the enemies.
* IResembleThatRemark: When dwarven banker Vimme Vivaldi is asked if he plays Gwent by Geralt, he takes offense that Geralt automatically assumed that because he's a dwarf that he takes part in the favorite dwarven pastime. When Geralt asks again after the banker is done with his indignation, he candidly admits that he does.
* IronicNurseryTune: The vampire lady in the cinematic "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-l29HlKkXU A Night to Remember]]" trailer sings a low-key nursery tune that begins fairly normally, but ends with a witcher chopping up and eating the recipient of the song. From the context, it may actually be a scary nursery tune for ''vampire children''.
* KarmaHoudini:
** The people responsible for the deaths of the Noonwraiths/Nightwraiths that Geralt has to hunt down in contracts are usually long gone without any consequences for their actions, particularly for the Devil by the Well and Jenny o' the Woods.
** Depending on the decisions made during them, several quests can also end this way. GrayAndGrayMorality quests will invariably end up with one person winning over the other, even if both can be considered bad people.
* KarmicDeath:
** In the course of the Novigrad storyline, [[spoiler:Triss burns down the witch hunters' headquarters with many hunters still alive inside, giving them the same fate they meted on many innocent mages.]]
** [[spoiler:Margrit]] can suffer one at the end of the "Wild at Heart" sidequest, if you choose to let it happen.
** [[spoiler:Jonna,]] in one possible ending for "The Nithing" quest, [[spoiler:is killed by the very curse she had inflicted on Lothar's son out of petty spite.]]
** If you choose to participate in [[spoiler: the assassination of King Radovid]], he meets his end by the blade of [[spoiler: Philippa Eilhart, the person most responsible for his hatred and resulting persecution of mages.]]
* KingOfTheHomeless: The King of Beggars in Novigrad rules over an alleyway known as the Putrid Grove, the location of which is kept a careful secret from outsiders, and extorts "taxes" from the beggars and petty thieves of the city. He is also a man of vision, planning to one day rise to true power and turn the city into a haven of liberty. Meanwhile he's helping the city's dwindling mage population stay hidden from the witch hunters -- amusingly ensuring that the city's beggars now have access to better health care than its rich and powerful.
* KinkyRolePlaying: Geralt can encounter a guard threatening a strumpet while wandering around Novigrad. Geralt can leave them alone and this will continue, or he can intervene by threatening the guard or using Axii on him. In any case, the strumpet angrily informs Geralt that this was intimate role-play purely to get them both in the mood, [[YouJustRuinedTheShot which Geralt has now thoroughly ruined]].
* LateArrivalSpoiler: The true nature of the Wild Hunt is presented as a mystery in the trailers, but the readers of the books and the people who paid close attention in the previous game already know who and what they are.
* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: Sigi Reuven's bathhouse in Novigrad is the gathering place for the city's Big Four crime bosses and the base of operations for Reuven [[spoiler:aka Sigismund Dijkstra]] himself. It resembles the modern version of the trope more than a ThievesGuild typical for European fantasy settings.
* ALighterShadeOfBlack: One opinion about the Nilfgaardians from the peasant class. The other popular opinion is that they prefer Radovid because he is [[BetterTheDevilYouKnow from the North.]]
* LesCollaborateurs: The Bloody Baron's army is made of deserters from the Temerian army who have taken to gathering supplies from the local villages for them and administrating in Nilfgaard's name. They're ''even worse'' to the peasantry than the Nilfgaardians are.
* LighthousePoint:
** One quest has Geralt look for a dwarf at a lighthouse on the Isle of Mists.
** A witcher contract has Geralt investigate and resolve a haunting that has caused one of Skellige's lighthouses to become engulfed in fog.
* LookBehindYou: Used a few times:
** An early quest-giver tries to do this to Geralt when [[spoiler:Geralt discovers that he's responsible for the death of the cart driver he sent Geralt to look for.]]
---> '''Geralt:''' There's nothing behind me. [[SuperSenses I'm a Witcher, I'd have heard it.]] Just like I can hear your heart. Which is pounding... like a liar's.
** Geralt can encounter a group of soldiers looting an abandoned quarry. The classic "Look behind you!" "I'm not falling for that old trick!" version, and of course there actually is a pack of alghouls behind the soldiers.
** Dijkstra says this to Geralt (who doesn't believe him at first) if [[spoiler:Triss decides to come back after all.]]
* LostHimInACardGame: Seems to happen to significant characters all the time.
** The Bloody Baron came into ownership of Uma by winning him from a desperate merchant in Novigrad[[note]]This “desperate merchant” may well have been Gaunter O’Dimm, based on his description and the Baron citing his own ‘devil’s luck’[[/note]].
** Zoltan lost his pet owl in a game of cards without ever realizing that [[spoiler:it was Philippa the whole time.]]
** Sigi Reuven won Bart the Rock Troll in a card game with a camel merchant from Zerrikania.
[[/folder]]

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: A-F]]
* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The base game's level cap was 70, though it was unlikely a player would get even halfway there through normal gameplay (though it was possible through NewGamePlus). The cap was raised to 100 with the release of Blood & Wine.
* AbuseMistake: {{Downplayed|Trope}} during a random encounter in Novigrad. Geralt comes across a man verbally berating a strumpet, who threatens to shank the man in turn if he doesn't step off. If Geralt intervenes trying to help the woman, the two of them reveal they were just engaging in a bit of... "intimate roleplaying" as foreplay.
* AbusiveParents:
** Played with. The Bloody Baron is a horrible human being but prides himself on never touching his daughter with an angry hand. [[spoiler:His daughter, by contrast, points out that his years of black-out drunkenness and threats to her mother were a form of abuse by itself.]]
** Lambert reveals that his father would beat both him and his mother.
** Madman Lugos' son is called Blueboy is because as a child he's often seen covered in bruises, possibly "from his father's belt, rod and fists", as stated on his character sheet.
* AccentAdaptation: The game follows voice-acting conventions typical to most modern RPG series, and displays a variety of different real-world accents, which are used to denote [[RichLanguagePoorLanguage the social status]] or region of the characters. For example:
** UsefulNotes/BritishAccents are frequently encountered; Refined RP is assigned to the higher status, sophisticated characters such as Yennefer and Emhyr var Emreis, SE London/Cockney accents for thuggish, disruptive characters, West Country and Welsh accents for rustic locals, an amusingly bluff Brummie accent for the crude, boorish Bloody Baron, and the now prerequisite Scottish accent for the dwarven characters, such as the blacksmith Willis.
** The Crones of Crookback Bog, [[spoiler:and their "mother", the Lady of the Wood]], are voiced with (at times unintelligible) Welsh accents, Succubi and Sylvans have similar-sounding but slightly different accents, as they are members of the old races though they may not be so old themselves.
** Ciri has an Estuary accent that veers towards RP at times, despite the fact she grew up amongst Witchers, Dryads, and a group of low-class thieves. However, she also lived in a royal castle until she was twelve, and spent a good time after that in a temple school for young ladies; she also spent time under Yennefer's personal tutelage, and presumably picked up her accent. As Estuary is essentially the middle-ground between Cockney and RP, given Ciri's divergent upbringing, this accent is actually a cleverly suitable choice.
** Similarly, Emhyr speaking in RP makes sense, as he spent most of his youth in the North and after marrying Pavetta, he lived in Cintra. He didn't return to his homeland until he was much older, and thus doesn't speak in the Russian/Germanic accent of Nilfgaard.
** The Nilfgaardians mostly speak with an approximate Russian/Germanic accent, which provides good contrast with the mostly British-accented Temerians, and marks them out as an invading foreign power. Their language, Elder Speech, however is somewhat reminiscent of Welsh.[[note]]It only ''looks'' like Welsh though, many words are derived from other European languages such as German and Dutch.[[/note]]
** Skellige is inhabited by the game's resident Vikings analogue, but they have some Celtic influences in their dress and naming conventions, speaking with Irish accents.
** Geralt himself and other Witchers, along with Triss and Dandelion, adopted a "Rivian" accent in-universe, which is approximate to an American accent. Given the lack of American General accent being used in traditional fantasy milieu, the accent choice makes the Witchers come across as 'otherly' even more than other creatures which helps further emphasize the line the Witchers straddle between men and monsters.
** The ''Blood and Wine'' expansion is primarily set in the distant land of Toussaint, the game's (southern) France/Italy analogue, but the locals' accent is instead lightly based on Danish. The developers' explanation for the choice was that French and German accents have been parodied in media to the point that they were hesitant to use them for Toussaint.
* AccidentalTruth: When chatting with Zoltan and another dwarf about fishing, Geralt can joke that the Witcher's method of doing so is using bombs. Turns out that Lambert was actually doing that. In the [[spoiler: Empress Ciri ending]] you can actually do this yourself on a frozen lake.
* ActorAllusion: Creator/CharlesDance (Emperor Emhyr) described his character as "the most powerful man in the land, who speaks very little but his word speaks volumes". This description also perfectly captures [[Series/GameOfThrones Tywin Lannister]] or [[Literature/GoingPostal Lord Vetinari]]. The game contains a number of {{Shout Out}}s to ''Series/GameOfThrones'' as well.
* AdaptationNameChange: The Druid Mousesack is renamed Ermion for reasons unknown.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Downplayed. While the Nilfgaardians are still portrayed as a villainous faction, their usage of slavery and other Nazi-like tendencies aren't present in the game, and they are instead just very oppressive.
* AdaptedOut: The witcher Coën, who was a BigBrotherMentor for Ciri in the books and whose blade you got from a little side-quest in the first game, isn't present in Geralt's dream at the beginning and doesn't get a single mention in the entire game period.
* AfterlifeOfService: During the VikingFuneral of King Bran of the Skellige Isles, his unnamed younger wife offers herself to join the king's corpse on his funerary longship as it burns, so she can join her king in death. In contrast, his older wife Birna refuses to do so because she believes that most Skellige traditions are outdated and should be changed.
* AggressivePlayIncentive: Aerondight, the definitive InfinityPlusOneSword of the game, rewards the player for aggressive-but-perfect combat by increasing its damage by 10% for every hit you land on an enemy. Those hits build up a charge, up to a maximum of 10 charges for a total of 100% bonus damage. At that point, the sword lands a guaranteed critical hit, and any enemy killed with that critical hit results in the sword's base stats ''permanently'' increasing. It rewards an aggressive player by making them more capable of being increasingly aggressive.
* AIBreaker: Gwent has a number of exploits, though the AI doesn't always fall for them. One of the most common is if you go first and start with a spy card (which goes on your opponent's side). Sometimes the AI will pass, thinking it has an easy victory, which pretty much hands you the round.
* AllCrimesAreEqual: Discussed by Geralt in the 'Killing Monsters' trailer.
* AllForNothing: The events of ''The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings'' is revealed to have been this or lead to this. [[spoiler:Nilfgaard has reached the Pontar River, taking over Temeria and Aedirn in the process. The Temerian Army is a shell of its former self, having turned to going underground and trying to fight the Nilfgaardian army with guerrilla tactics. Upper Aedirn folded quickly, regardless of whether Saskia is alive or dead. Redania is the only Northern Kingdom still intact, having absorbed Kaedwen during the winter. The reinstatement of the Council and Chapter is a moot point, as Radovid's hatred of magic, sorceresses, and Philippa Eilhart has led to him catering to the whims of the Church of the Eternal Fire, allowing pogroms and witch hunts to run rampant.]]
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Specifically brought up in the quest "Cabaret", in which an overly-protective and possessive fiance isn't allowing his betrothed to work for Dandelion because he thinks Dandelion's establishment is still a brothel. Dandelion specifically asks at one point, "Why do all the nice girls always go for pricks", to which Geralt [[HypocriticalHumor gives a bemused "Mhm."]]
* AllMythsAreTrue:
** Apparently, ''{{Literature/Cinderella}}'' is based on a Princess Cendrilla's unfortunate end at the hands of a zeugl that swallowed her whole, leaving behind only a slipper.
** While Zoltan is drinking with another Dwarf, his drinking companion exclaims how humans will even blame Dwarves for deflowering Literature/SnowWhite.
* AllWomenAreLustful: While the number of [[OptionalSexualEncounter Optional Sexual Encounters]] Geralt can engage in (Ciri is limited to a First Kiss) is somewhat reduced from the second game (and ''vastly'' reduced from the first one) and numerous women in side quests will mock the concept of RescueSex, there remain some examples; Ciri's friend Bea can shamelessly flirt with Geralt until she's apprised on his identity by Ciri... [[RefugeInAudacity and then proceeds to continue flirting with him in front of Ciri]] until Ciri chides her ''again'', invoking ImStandingRightHere.
* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:If Ciri dies, then the game ends with Geralt sitting forlornly in the hut of Crookback Bog after killing the final Crone, clutching his daughter's medallion as a horde of monsters close in on him. He is given no epilogue.]]
* AmbiguousInnocence: Most trolls don't understand the human concept of morality nor have the capacity for long-term thinking. For example, one troll just outside of Oxenfurt was "recruited" by soldiers to guard boats they stole from peasants. The troll proudly agreed, but when the peasants came to reclaim their boats and started fighting the guards, the troll accidentally killed ''everyone'' simply trying to break up the fight and then ate them in a stew since otherwise all that meat would go to waste. The same troll then tore apart the boats he was guarding ''to make a fence to guard the boats''.
* AmbiguousSituation: Countless. In just one example early in the game, a Nilfgaardian officer is collecting supplies from the peasantry and goes out of his way to treat the man giving him wheat with leniency - up until he finds some of the wheat is rotten. Did the alderman deliberately bring the Nilfgaardians bad goods or was it just an oversight? Did the peasantry underneath him give up rotten food to the Nilfgaardians without telling him?
* AndIMustScream: The fate of Lord Vserad's daughter Annabelle on the Cursed Fyke Isle during the quest ''A Towerful of Mice''. Paralyzed by a sleeping potion, she was eaten alive by rats, unable to even scream.
* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: At key points in the story you switch from playing Geralt to playing Ciri who differentiates herself by being a {{Teleport Spam}}ming LightningBruiser.
* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: After spending the entirety of the second game trying to stop a Witcher who was working under the employ of Emhyr, Geralt very quickly becomes a Witcher working under the employ of Emhyr himself in this game. [[spoiler:And he may even willfully take part in killing a king and ushering Nilfgaard into the North.]]
* AnnoyingArrows:
** Averted for enemy archers, especially if they're on the far side of a large group as few enemies adhere to MookChivalry. One ability allows Geralt to parry bolts and arrows if he's blocking, which eases things somewhat. You can upgrade this to let you send projectiles back at the attacker. Killing an archer with their own arrow is ''incredibly'' satisfying.
** Played with in different instances when it comes to Geralt's crossbow:
*** Played straight the majority of the time. The thing is small but should still be able to kill a human with a well-placed shot, yet even the most advanced models deal ScratchDamage at best. It's more of a utility than a weapon, primarily meant for knocking flying monsters out of the sky so they can be shredded in close combat. The crossbow's uselessness as a damage dealer is what makes unlocking one specific achievement so frustrating - it requires Geralt to kill fifty enemies with crossbow headshots.
*** Inverted underwater. The crossbow is the ''only'' weapon that works underwater and in lower difficulties will one shot anything. Sirens in particular are much easier to fight underwater (specially large groups of them) than on ground thanks to this.
* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** Potions, Decoctions, Bombs, and Blade Oils work ''very'' differently compared to the previous games. Once they are made, they permanently stay in your inventory. Blade oils have infinite uses, the only limit being how many attacks you can land before the oil rubs off. Even then, if you max the Fixative skill then blade oils last indefinitely while you have the skill active. Potions, decoctions, and bombs all have limited uses, but the level 2 and level 3 recipes for potions and bombs increase the number of uses you have. One of the decoctions that can be brewed, the Cockatrice Decoction, increases the uses of all your bombs and potions by 1 for the duration. Having a max rank Efficiency skill increases the number of bombs you carry by 5 while active. When you meditate while having strong alcohol such as alcohest in your inventory, then all of your spent potions, decoctions, and bombs are restocked.
** Killing monsters now fully counts as researching them, though this was creeping in from the previous game.
** It is possible for some characters to die or otherwise leave the game before Geralt has had an opportunity to challenge them to a game of Gwent (in order to fulfill the various Gwent quests). In some - but not all - cases, the needed card can be found near where the character was located.
** Most characters who you have to escort/follow will actually accelerate up to the pace you set, allowing you to complete these segments at full running speed and removing much of the frustration usually associated with them. This doesn't apply to all cases though. Sometimes it's justified because they're forced to walk slowly [[spoiler:(Yen or Keira maintaining a force field in ''Wandering In The Dark'' and ''Ted Deireath, End Of An Age'', respectively)]], others it's because they're running away from danger [[spoiler:(Thaler in ''A Deadly Plot'', or Ermion during ''The Sunstone'')]].
** If you don't carry each of the crafting ingredients you need for a recipe, the ones you lack can be directly bought from the NPC's crafting menu if they are available in their shopping menu, instead of requiring to quit the crafting menu to open the shop.
* AnyoneCanDie: In full force. This game has plenty certain and possible casualties. [[spoiler:Philip Strenger, Anna Strenger, Whoreson Junior, Keira Metz, Vernon Roche, Ves, Thaler, Dijkstra, Vesemir, Lambert, Radovid, Emhyr, Crach an Craite, Ciri, and even ''Geralt himself'' in one ending may bite the dust, depending on what you do.]]
* ApocalypticLog: Several quests include journals, diaries, ship logs, etc. Sometimes the author is even killed mid-sentence. Of note, during one quest near the end of the main game, Geralt travels through [[spoiler:a world consumed by the White Frost]]. While there, you can find notes left by the inhabitants of that world describing how everyone slowly froze and starved to death.
* ArbitrarySkepticism: Geralt teases a merchant who put out a contract for an imp. This is despite the fact that there are creatures in the setting, such as godlings, who are known to behave like imps. [[spoiler:Turns out it was actually a doppler.]]
* ArmyOfThievesAndWhores: The Bloody Baron's military forces. Given they're all LesCollaborateurs and DangerousDeserter types, this is to be expected.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: One of the Hidden Treasure missions in Hearts of Stone involves a letter found on a corpse who was locked up before his captors were killed by drowners (the letter was [[CouldntFindAPen written in blood]], naturally). In the letter, the writer says that he drank his own urine for a few days, but he stopped producing it eventually. In reality, whether or not it's a good idea to drink urine (depends on the circumstance), a living human body will continue to urinate, even when a person has gone a full week without water.
* AscendedGlitch: Roach's strange habits when summoned are referenced in one of the quest of ''Blood and Wine''. Roach's ability to spawn in unreachable places (like atop houses), has been acknowledged to the point where it's [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gwent/images/c/cd/Roach_3x9.png/revision/latest?cb=20181220221753 her actual image in the Gwent card game]].
* AskAStupidQuestion: In Skellige...
-->'''Geralt''': Are you the silent druid? (''{{beat}}'') Oh yeah. Dumb question.
** Another one in Skellige:
--->'''Geralt''': Why do they call you Madman?
---> '''"Madman" Lugos''': YEEEARGHHH! That's why.
* {{Autocannibalism}}: [[spoiler:Appears in a contract as the way to break a werewolf's curse.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: Decoctions are potions with powerful effects and a long duration (30 minutes in real time), but their toxicity is so high using a single decoction prevents drinking any other potion, unless you spend skill points in the alchemy skills to raise the toxicity cap. Even then, the game's specific skill system (skills must be equipped in slots to be active, they're unlocked by gaining levels, and there's a very limited number of them[[note]]two slots at game's start, capping at either six slots at level 12 (without ''Blood and Wine'') or twelve slots at level 30 (with ''Blood and Wine'').[[/note]]), which results in toxicity-reducing skills taking the place of more useful skills.
* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: At least, [[spoiler:Philip Strenger hoped it would]].
-->[[spoiler:'''Bloody Baron''': That child had been my dream. I told Anna, "A little one, ''our'' little one, to make things right." Yet she died before she could be born.]]
* BarbieDollAnatomy: The game contains nude character models of [[spoiler:Yennefer, Triss, and Keira]] used for their respective sex scenes (even though Triss' [[spoiler: takes place with Triss mostly off-camera]]). These models can be viewed using hacks. While they have realistic-looking breasts, they have no visible genitalia.
* BathhouseBlitz: Dijkstra conducts all his business in his bathhouse. Entrance requires Geralt to exchange his clothing and weapons for a bath towel in order to meet with Dijkstra. Geralt ends up caught in the middle of an assassination attempt when a group of street toughs overrun the bathhouse looking to kill Whoreson Jr. Geralt, Dijkstra, and a small group defend the bathhouse with Dijkstra's secret stash of weapons.
--> '''Cleaver:''' First ever barney with my prick hangin' out. Harggh!
* BatmanGambit: If you spare [[spoiler:Letho]] in the second game, he returns in ''Wild Hunt'' and Geralt can help him [[spoiler:fake his death]] - provided Geralt doesn't overreact by killing all the bad guys [[spoiler:who are witnesses to said faked death]]. Later, [[spoiler:the death faker]] points out that he wasn't actually sure whether the gambit would succeed, but that's [[NotAfraidToDie part of the fun]].
* BattleCouple: [[spoiler:Dijkstra]] thinks Geralt and Triss would make an excellent example. The players can make it true or go with Geralt and Yennefer, which is a BattleCouple tried and proven by the books. It's also possible for Keira Metz and Geralt to briefly be one of these in some elven ruins, though this is retroactive. And should you play your cards right, [[spoiler:Keira Metz and Lambert]] become one. Geralt and Ciri form a "father/adopted daughter" variant.
* BearsAreBadNews: Bears are a fairly common enemy in the game, though their MightyGlacier status makes them pretty easy to kill. Nevertheless, whenever one is involved in a quest, Geralt always has a notable ThisIsGonnaSuck reaction. Most notable case is of three bears crashing a feast at the Skellige castle. A bear is also [[spoiler:one of your fistfight opponents in "Fists of Fury: Skellige"]].
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Yennefer, potentially, in "The Last Wish." She's determined to break the magical bond between her and Geralt to find out if their feelings for each other are true or not. After she breaks it, she feels no differently about him. [[AllLoveIsUnrequited Geralt can inform her, however, that he no longer loves her.]]
* BeefGate: Played with. While you can go anywhere, the monsters don't level up with the player, so go somewhere you're not appropriately leveled for and you'll be slaughtered. The game will [[AntiFrustrationFeatures helpfully point these out]] with red skull marks on their health bars so you don't have to get curb-stomped to find out if you're under-level, however. See GameplayAndStorySegregation. With that said, because the combat system is so heavily skill-based, there's ''technically'' nothing preventing a very good player from taking on enemies ten times their level right from the get-go. They'd just have to be ready for a lengthy fight as their puny attacks chip away at the monster's stupendously massive health pool one bit at a time, and restart it if the slightest mistake causes them to get hit and killed in an instant. Finally, you can also avert it by [[SetAMookToKillAMook heavily investing in the Axii sign]] to get high-level enemies to fight ''each other'' for you.
* BestHerToBedHer: Played straight with Jutta, a swordmaiden on Faroe.
* BettyAndVeronica: Yennefer is devious, duplicitous, amoral, and glamorous. Triss is all of these things too... to a lesser degree. It seems Geralt has a type.
* BigDamnHeroes: During the final battle, [[spoiler:the Wild Hunt is about to capture Ciri when Clan an Craite shows up out of nowhere to save the day.]]
* BigDamnReunion: When Geralt and Ciri reunite on the Isle of Mists. Complete with a sappy MeadowRun [[https://youtu.be/EcY-_I2Q38w?t=173 flashback]].
* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Bloody Baron and his family. Where do we even begin? [[spoiler:The Baron himself is a horribly abusive and violent drunk with a short temper [[ShellShockedVeteran due to his career on the front lines]], and his wife has fallen out of love with him and cuckolded him while he was in the war. Once he came back and she tried to leave him, he proceeded to brutally murder her beau in front of her which caused an irreparable rift between them. Once she discovered she was pregnant again, she then struck a very ill-advised bargain to get rid of the baby that contributed to her deteriorating mental state - complete with suicidal fits and verbal outbursts. And his daughter, while probably the least dysfunctional of the three, grew up surrounded by hatred and violence, having been dragged to calm down her father whenever he went on a drunken rampage even as a child, and now despises her father completely. You can help patch things up a bit depending on your choices.]]
* BittersweetEnding: Many of the secondary quests end only as well as might be expected. The three main endings are also quite bitter, even the ones that are seemingly not so.
** One of the three endings - [[spoiler:Ciri accepts Emhyr's proposal for her to succeed him, having to leave Geralt and the life of freedom she loves behind for a chance to make the world a ''truly'' better place]] But, as Dandelion's ending narration points out...
--->'''Dandelion''': [[spoiler:The woman had the necessary qualities. From her father she'd inherited [[TheChessmaster an empress's political instincts]]. From Geralt she had gained [[TheGoodKing a sense of simple, human decency]]. [[TheCaligula Few monarchs]] boast [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen both traits]] - which is quite a shame...]]
*** And it can be made more sweet than bitter, or vice versa depending on whether [[spoiler:Geralt says that she'd be able to find and visit him easily, or that it needs to be goodbye]].
*** [[spoiler: Empress Ciri's visit in Blood and Wine also push this toward sweet even further: Emhyr has mellowed out considerably and their relationship improved to the point that she accidentally call him papa.]]
** The only ending that doesn't [[spoiler:have either Emhyr or Radovid winning, is the one where you side with Sigismund Dijkstra when he confronts Vernon Roche and the Temerian patriots. The catch is it requires Geralt to stand by and let Dijkstra kill his comrades from ''The Witcher 2'' and sees Temeria lose its independence forever but at the same time, you get to see Radovid die, Emhyr assassinated and the end of Nilfgaardian expansion, the end of Radovid's genocide against non-magic people, while Dijkstra builds a new Redania as Chancellor that pushes forth a campaign of development in favor of cities over towns, modernizing Redania on Nilfgaardian lines. Likewise, Ciri is free to roam the land as a Witcheress without her father and Nilfgaard tracking to her to force her to live a life she doesn't want]].
** The quest "Towerful of Mice" ends on a sadly bittersweet note if the player makes the right choices. [[spoiler:A girl who was EatenAlive by rats has come back as a vengeful wraith and is haunting the island tower. By bringing her OldFlame back to explain he never willfully abandoned her and make amends, the curse is lifted with a kiss of true love, and the man dies. The girl's last appearance suggests she can [[TogetherInDeath finally move on with him]].]]
** A meta example: once the game is complete, the player may continue exploring the world and even take on some unfinished secondary quests and contracts, but all the major story-related characters in the game are removed, so you can't go around and say hi to Zoltan, for example. Kaer Morhen and the Rosemary and Thyme pub become particularly depressing places post-game.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: The Nithing quest in Skellige where a child is cursed to die is caused by [[spoiler:a WomanScorned whom the victim's father used for a decade to take care of him before running off with another woman]]. If choosing to save the child, Geralt [[spoiler:calls the father out for his actions, but says that this isn't the comeuppance that he deserves]].
* BlackComedyRape: In-universe, a group of drunken soldiers will share a story about how one of them chanced upon a farmer whose son was exceptionally pretty. The other soldiers speculate the farmer was trying to pass his daughter off as a son. The "punchline" is that the soldier didn't care and raped them anyway. You can practically hear the disgust in Geralt's head.
* BloodierAndGorier: The first two games had their fair share, but this game takes it up to eleven with enemies frequently being decapitated, bloodily impaled, losing limbs, or even being cut in half in combat (and ''[[AbsurdlySharpBlade not]]'' along skeletal joints).
* BoatsIntoBuildings: A Downplayed example occurs when a [[AllTrollsAreDifferent rock troll]] is accidentally recruited by the Redanian army and joins up with a unit who are trying to protect a fleet of boats that have been "requisitioned" from some peasants. In an unusually literal case of InsaneTrollLogic, the troll decides "boats guard boats!" and rips some of the boats apart to use the timber to build a crude fence to protect the rest of fleet.
* BodyHorror:
** Uma is a horrifically deformed individual. [[spoiler: In reality, he's a statuesque elf who has been cursed. The game does not shy away from indicating that undoing the curse causes major physical damage to the already-damaged individual.]]
** Wraiths and other specters are particularly horrific to look at with their dislocated jaws and other physical maladies.
* BookBurning: The Eternal Fire has instituted such a program in Novigrad. They burn people, too.
* BookEnds: As far as the main story goes, [[spoiler: if you get the Witcher Ciri ending, the game begins, and ends, in White Orchard]].
** [[spoiler: ''Literature/TheLastWish'', the first book with Geralt, involves failing to save a woman under the (supposed) Curse of the Black Sun. The good ending of “Blood and Wine” involves Geralt saving and redeeming a woman under the same curse.]]
* BoringButPractical:
** Quen isn't the most exciting sign, but its ability to protect Geralt from attacks that could potentially kill him in one hit makes it indispensable, even if no points are invested into it. It becomes even more useful when wearing armor with high resistances, due to how damage is calculated.
** InUniverse, this the point of Signs in general. While not as powerful or flashy as the spells mages and sorceresses can do, they are quick and can be cast with one hand, making them very useful in the middle of combat.
** ''Heart of Stone'' adds Enchanting which provide all kind of unique effects to weapons and armor. The most popular of those however are the Preservation and Deflection both of which are level 1.
** Gwent standard hero card (i.e. without special effects) is this later on: They are just solid attack cards that are not affected by scorch and weather. They can't be boosted by Commander's horn and don't bring anything extra to the table, but their attack power is normally so high they are good enough on their own.
* BoringReturnJourney: To go to Skellige the first time, Geralt needs to charter a ship and most captains outright refuse for how dangerous it is. (Skellige being a land of Viking-esque sea raiders, tiny rocky islands that smash ships, and plenty of monsters.) When he finally finds one willing to take him, the ship wrecks in a storm partway there and he's immediately beset by sirens upon waking up on the shore. Later, he can fast travel back and forth (and has to for story reasons) without the dangers of the trip ever mentioned again.
* BossInMookClothing:
** Leshen wander the forests of Velen, often in close proximity to areas related to quests of much lower level. It's almost considered a rite of passage by players to get shredded to pieces in a couple of hits by accidentally engaging a Leshen 10 levels above you (and let's remember that levels in this game are exponential). The fact that it likes to attack from a distance, that attacking his pack of wolves (usually lvl 5 that you'll have no trouble taking care of) inadvertently engages the Leshen, the overall creepiness factor and his natural camouflage, it all works to its advantage to make it one of the scariest random enemies you'll find and often leave players wondering what the hell just happened or what exactly killed them, specially since Leshen attack by making roots pop out of the ground, so it's quite possible to die without ever even seeing the Leshen (and you don't get a Bestiary entry for them until ''after'' you've killed one). Some players seek then out to fight them again just because of how memorable the fights with them usually are. It's one of the reasons why Leshen were chosen to be included in the ''Videogame/MonsterHunterWorld'' crossover event.
** A few of the random Gwent players have end-game level decks with the corresponding AI to know how to use them. There's no way to tell which players have these decks until after you play them. A prime example is the unnamed merchant in Novigrad who sells Aeramas' artifacts, who has a perfect Nilfgaard deck full of spies, decoys and scorch cards. He, like the other random Gwent players, needs to be defeated to complete your deck. In a similar vein, Fergus has an abysmal deck that he can't play, while Yoana will be probably the first character to beat Geralt without any hassle. This can be seen as a hint toward the outcome of their "Master Armorer" sidequest.
* BraggingRightsReward: The leader cards you win in the Passiflora Gwent tournament amount to this. You need to beat almost all available players in order to assemble a good enough deck to win the tournament. By the time you win the leader cards, however, there will be very few opponents left to play with. Worse, the tournament in Toussaint forces you to play with the new Skellige deck.
* BreakableWeapons: Subverted. Weapons degrade over time, decreasing their damage by a set percentage according to its durability, but remain functional and perfectly usable even at 0% durability.
* BreatherEpisode:
** Just before the Battle of Kaer Morhen, Geralt catches up with Eskel and Lambert, getting drunk and going on a hilarious non-combat sidequest together, [[spoiler: which includes putting on Yennefer's dresses and drunk dialing a mage. MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext]].
** Just after the battle, including [[spoiler:Vesemir's death]], Geralt and Ciri engage in a snowball fight. The next quests are the much more serious [[spoiler: fights with [[WolfPackBoss the Crones]] and [[TheDragon Imlerith]].]]
* BrickJoke: In one of the endings, [[spoiler:Emhyr's chamberlain can be seen doing his exaggerated bow as Ciri approaches the Nilfgaardian escort]].
* BrownNote: After [[spoiler:Vesemir sacrifices himself]] at the Battle of Kaer Morhen, Ciri lets out a death wail that unleashes much of her power and slaughters many members of the Wild Hunt. Even Indrilith, Caranthir and ''Eredin'' are affected by it and are forced to flee.
* BullyingADragon: People will attempt to rob, extort, and not pay Geralt at points throughout the game. Him being a heavily armed and armored professional monster hunter doesn't seem matter.
* BurnTheWitch: King Radovid is supporting witch hunters and religious fanatics to find and kill his treacherous adviser, Philippa Eilhart. Resultantly, anti-magic pogroms are going at full force in the city of Novigrad and its surrounding area. Officially, this is the actions of the Eternal Fire rather than Redania itself. [[spoiler:It requires Radovid conquering the whole of the North to begin his full-scale purge of magic across the North.]]
* TheBusCameBack:
** ''The Witcher 3'' sees the return of many characters from both the books and the first game, including Ciri, Yennefer, Lambert, Eskel, Vesemir, Keira, Emhyr, Dijkstra, Thaler, and Mousesack.
** The ''Hearts of Stone'' expansion brings Shani back into the limelight.
** And in turn ''Blood and Wine'' brings Duchess Anna Henrietta back from the books.
** Drogodar returns from Nilfgaard-occupied Cintra to sing for Skellige once again, many years after his first appearance in ''The Last Wish.'' Unfortunately, he's soon among the victims of the berserker massacre.
* ButForMeItWasTuesday: The countryside around White Orchard is living in mortal terror of a griffin that has been killing and destroying the locals with impunity. Even the local army commander is terrified Geralt will turn down the contract so he does a little extortion to make sure the deal goes through. [[BadassBoast Geralt's reaction? "Eh, it's not the first time I've had to kill a griffin, nor will it be the last."]]
* ButThouMust: Despite an increasingly frustrated Geralt’s protests, The Pellar will not perform a needed augery until you’ve found his pet goat, Princess.
* CallBack: The sheer number of call backs and continuity nods to not only the previous games, but the books, would take pages to list every single one of them.
** The King of the Wild Hunt uses almost the same words in "The Sword of Destiny"-trailer as he did in the finale of [[VideoGame/TheWitcher the first game]] to taunt Geralt.
** The titular short story ''Literature/TheLastWish'' appears as an in-game book, appropriately penned by Dandelion. Also appropriate, a secondary quest involving Yennefer is also named ''The Last Wish''.
** The "Sword of Destiny" trailer is named after the [[Literature/SwordOfDestiny short story collection of the same name]].
** The epilogue mission is named ''Something Ends, Something Begins'' after both the non-canon short story and the collection it appears in.
** In the play written by Priscilla, Geralt is not only playing himself, he's also reenacting one of his adventures from ''The Last Wish''. It's the story of [[spoiler:Ciri's parents]], with the cursed suitor being replaced by a doppler.
** Like in ''Eternal Flame'', the short story that introduces Dudu, Geralt finds himself face-to-face with a Doppler that takes on his appearance. In both instances he makes a comment on his looks.
** Geralt can come across a man trying to pass off a young, ill-fed wyvern as a basilisk, which also happened to Ciri in the books.
* CandlelitRitual: One quest requires that the player recreate a person's memory by making things exactly as they were when it actually happened. One such memory involves a person trying to summon a demonic entity and the player is given chalk and some candles. By reading a nearby book, the player learns that the proper SpellConstruction is to draw a pentagram outlined by a circle and then place candles around the circle since the circle summons the creature and the candles form a barrier that imprisons it.
* CantCatchUp: Ciri in the flashback quests suffers hard from this in NewGamePlus thanks to bad game design, specifically if the player begins the playthrough with Geralt at very high levels. Because of LevelScaling, all the enemies she'll encounter are capable of taking her down in two or three hits while the best she can muster are pathetic ScratchDamage, even with the "Blink" skill. This is because unlike Geralt, Ciri lacks access to better equipment, nor does her defense, health and attack damage scale up. The problem is especially noticeable during "Breakneck Speed", which also leads to GameplayAndStorySegregation by having Ciri, a powerful one-woman army, being heavily outmatched by common thugs. The player's only hope during these segments is to spam Ciri's dodge button while slowly poking at the enemies surrounding her from all sides, which leaves very little room for error.
* CaptainObvious: An encounter in Velen with a bandit band's bridge toll racket can be thwarted by pointing out that their current mark is a Witcher and could hack them all to pieces if they continue pressing him. As they are walking away, one of the more dull-witted ones was trying to point out this obvious fact that the ringleader already figured out.
* CardBattleGame: Gwent, a newly introduced minigame and popular pastime in-universe. One that Geralt may or may not develop an addiction to. Later developed into [[VideoGame/GwentTheWitcherCardGame its own spinoff game]].
* CashGate: You need to pay 1000 crowns to sail to Skellige for the first time, which is a big amount of money at the time you receive this objective (right when you arrive in Velen), although if progressing through the plot in the intended order, it'll be a much more trivial sum once you sail there. [[spoiler:Geralt's arrives on Skellige for the first time while a storm sinks his boat, and you can get your money back from the captain's corpse lying in the wreck.]]
* ChainedToABed: If Geralt tries to propose a threesome with both Yennefer and Triss, they will chain him to the bed, under the guise of sexy fun times, then leave with Geralt still restrained.
* CharacterizationMarchesOn: Yennefer in the game is a cold, ruthless, pragmatic and remorseless HollywoodAtheist MamaBear who is NecessarilyEvil several times to get closer to recovering her daughter. In the books, Yennefer is a LovableAlphaBitch with a soft spot for mothers, children, nonhumans, and the less fortunate. One of her defining moments is refusing to slay a dragon for her own interests. She's also extremely polite, with great respect for the Sisters of Melitele. This has not sat well with a lot of book Yennefer fans, but she could be regarded as being in [[KnightInSourArmor the same camp]] as Geralt: completely and utterly tired of all the political games and wanting everyone to leave Ciri alone. Geralt copes with it by being snarkier than usual, while Yen went the IceQueen route. Revealingly, after Ciri is found, Yennefer takes a drastic level in kindness.
* ChekhovsGag: Zoltan bought an owl at an estate auction and is trying to teach it how to talk. [[spoiler:Turns out it's Philippa Eilhart trapped in owl form.]]
* ChekhovsGunman:
** Gaunter O'Dimm plays a bigger role in the first expansion ''Hearts of Stone''.
** [[spoiler:Uma, if you completed the Velen story arc before the Skellige arc.]]
* ChildEater:
** The Ladies of the Wood [[spoiler: fatten up the children that live at the orphanage in order to eat them. This can happen to the kids met by Geralt depending on his choices]]
** This is also encountered through other forms in the game, usually by various monsters in the game, namely the [[spoiler:Grave Hag from Contract: The Merry Widow in Lindenvale]]
* CitadelCity: Novigrad and Oxenfurt are both very well fortified. Novigrad has the extra security of being too valuable a target for either Nilfgaard or Redania to risk assaulting.
* CityOfAdventure: The city of Novigrad and the surrounding countryside north of the Pontar River is nearly half of the Velen-Novigrad region. Oxenfurt is a lesser city and a lesser example.
* CivilWarVersusArmageddon:: The conflict between the Nilfgaardian Empire and Northern Kingdoms is a nasty conflict, where no side has clean hands and where horrible atrocities are committed every day under the orders of feudal lords. Even the titular Wild Hunt is presented as not so different to the humans that they fight. However the greatest threat of the game is not the Wild Hunt but the White Frost that accompanies them, an apocalyptic phenomenon that would cover the entire world in ice and end all life.
* ClassicalCyclops: Cyclopes are an Ogroid monster native to the Skellige isles (which is home to various other monsters inspired by [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek Mythology]] including [[HarpingOnAboutHarpies Harpies]], [[SirensAreMermaids Sirens]] and Ekhidnas). They're {{Smash Mook}}s who fight with their fists and with {{Shockwave Stomp}}s, hitting hard but telegraphing their attacks. Their entry in the bestiary includes a quote from a traveller names Odess Thaka who was killed while trying to blind a cyclops with a sharpened stake, as a ShoutOut to Polyphemus from ''Literature/TheOdyssey''.
* CleansUpNicely:
** After the initial meeting with Emhyr, Yen will say that Geralt looks good in black velvet.
** Triss's assessment of Geralt after he's PressedIntoFormalWear for a masquerade ball.
** And echoed ''again'' by Anna Henrietta, Shani and Keira Metz in their respective quests.
* CollectibleCardGame: Gwent is an in-universe example. Build decks out of cards with various strengths, powers, and effects then play against others with decks.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Gwent-playing {{Non Player Character}}s who have Hero cards in their decks always start the game with those cards in their hand.
* ConflictBall: The Witchers have no reason to suspect Yennefer of ulterior motives, given [[ColdBloodedTorture everything]] [[HeroicSacrifice she's gone]] [[DisneyDeath through]] to protect Geralt and Ciri in the past, and every reason to help her (despite her abrasiveness) given Ciri's life is on the line. Nevertheless, they spend weeks being unhelpful merely to spite her. The reason for this is, of course, so that nothing will be accomplished until the main character shows up.
* ContinuityNod:
** Some to ''Literature/SeasonOfStorms'', mentioning that Cat school witchers tend to be psychopaths and that Lytta Neyd was very vindictive.
** The fight between Eskel and Caranthir at Kaer Morhen mirrors Geralt's duel with Vilgefortz in ''Literature/TheTimeOfContempt'', with both fights ending with a staff-wielding mage besting a Witcher in melee. However, Vilgefortz explicitly forwent the use of magic while Caranthir employs it to defeat Eskel.
** A sidequest in Velen can have Geralt intervene to protect a Nilfgaardian deserter from a mob of peasants wanting to lynch him for the actions of his countrymen. If asked afterwards why he intervened, Geralt replies that nothing good comes of lynch mobs, referring to the one that mortally injured him at the end of ''Literature/LadyOfTheLake''.
* ConservationOfNinjutsu:
** The generic Warriors of the Wild Hunt die awfully easily in a fight, considering what immense threat they represent in the context of the story and how much combat experience every single one of them must have. But it would be a pretty long, difficult game otherwise.
** Conversely, if you're fighting explicitly fighting ''one'' of them, it's a mini boss battle.
* CorruptChurch: The Church of Eternal Fire is pretty much rotten to the core, freely hiring former torturers and other assorted scum to their clergy and having gangs on their payroll to terrorize the unbelievers, or just people suspected of being heretical in some way, while spending the church's money on whoring and other vices. And that's not even getting to the witch-burning spree they are patronizing, which extends to the murder of all magical and non-human folk if Radovid wins. It's implied that the message of the Church is not evil in itself, being one of kindness and compassion, but it's been twisted into evil by the clergy, or abused to provide a very flimsy justification for their corrupt behavior.
* CosmicHorrorStory: The White Frost wouldn't be out of place in one of [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft]]'s stories. It's unknown if it's sentient, self-aware, or even ''alive''. All we do know is that it's an indescribably powerful force that has ended life on countless worlds all across the {{Multiverse}}, and it will eventually do the same to ''The Witcher'''s. It has been the driving force of nearly every major conflict in the franchise. [[spoiler:Becomes LovecraftLite should Ciri actually be able to destroy it.]]
* CosmicRetcon: And a player-determinant one at that. Geralt and Yennefer are deeply in love and the OfficialCouple of the franchise, but "The Last Wish" quest in the third game ends with Yennefer severing the wish that originally bound them together. [[spoiler: If Geralt ends up rejecting Yennefer, it is heavily implied that Geralt's feelings for her had either always been false or had been entirely erased.]]
-->'''Yennefer:''' [[spoiler: But... how is that possible? I still feel the same, you should too, I don't understand... What does this mean?]]\\
'''Geralt:''' [[spoiler: Means the djinn granted your wish...]]
* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: A DownplayedTrope example. The Nilfgaardian commander extorts Geralt's need to know about Yennefer's whereabouts in order to get him to slay the griffin terrorizing the land. [[spoiler:She's less than a day's ride away in Vizima.]] After Geralt slays the monster, he's justifiably angry at the deception. His reaction appears to be because slaying monsters ''is his job'' and he resents the implication he wouldn't have killed the creature had he not been compelled.
* CouldntFindAPen: During a small quest you find an abandoned house where a guard was kidnapped and stuck in the cellar, however his captors were apparently killed by drowners so he writes a note in his blood explaining what happened to him and his soldiers before he dies of thirst.
* CrapsackWorld: It almost goes without saying in this setting but ''The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'' is significantly darker than both the original game and its sequel, which is no mean feat. The country is ravaged by war, poverty, famine, disease, social injustice, racism, and worse. It's telling when a professional monster hunter admits at a few points in the game that humans are just a different type of monster and sometimes ''worse'' than the things a Witcher hunts.
* CreepyCrows: Carrion birds are often seen representing ancient and sinister powers. They serve the Crones of the Crookback Bog, as well as Leshens, and these creatures can turn into flocks of ravens at will. Yennefer's magical exertions at the game's beginning also involve a black-feathered bird.
* CripplingOverspecialization:
** Nearly all of a Witcher's gear is specialized for maximum effectiveness in specific scenarios. Outside of those scenarios, they bring very little to the table. Steel and Silver swords are not at all effective against monsters and humans, respectively. The Crossbow is exceptional for bringing down flying enemies and underwater combat but rubbish on land. Moon Dust bombs are the best tool for making Wraiths corporeal - better than Yrden - but the damage is otherwise pitiful. Decoctions can make a Witcher devastatingly effective against the monster they're designed for, but otherwise add little. Picking which tool to use for each situation is what makes the Witcher MasterOfAll.
** Armor works the same way. Witcher armor is effective against monsters but less so against humans, while regular armor that works well against humans are nearly useless against monsters.
* CurbStompBattle:
** Due to the WideOpenSandbox nature of the game, it's possible to level up well beyond the level requirements of even major quests rather quickly, just by completing side quests and contracts. As such, curb stomping becomes commonplace when you approach a mission in which the "level-ending monster" is at Level 15 and you're already at Level 25. Intentionally lampshaded when a character afterwards talks to Geralt about how difficult the just-completed fight was, even if in reality the monster was dispatched with only a few strikes by Geralt. The game actually penalizes the player for this by scaling down the number of experience points awarded if one waits too long before completing a mission; a Level 10 quest that might award 500 points to a Level 10 player gives a mere 1 or 2 points for a Level 20 who takes it on.
** Due to being somewhat overpowered, Ciri's fights are usually this, at least in Act 1 and 2 of the game. It's not until [[spoiler: she has to fight three powerful witch-crones at once]] in Act 3 that a major challenge is presented to her. One reason for this is that since nearly all of Ciri's Act 1 playable appearances are presented as flashbacks, it would break continuity (not to mention render the game's main arc moot) to have her killed off. Averted, however, in NewGamePlus. The enemies, even in the flashbacks, scale to ''Geralt''[='s=] level, meaning Ciri is well behind the curve and her battles are much more challenging.
* CuttingOffTheBranches: Both averted and played straight. Geralt's actions in previous games have been rendered mostly moot by the fact the Nilfgaard army has steamrolled over almost half of the North. There are several changes to specific events, however, and a few different quests if you did things a certain way.

* AllWomenAreLustful: While the number of [[OptionalSexualEncounter Optional Sexual Encounters]] Geralt can engage in (Ciri is limited to a First Kiss) is somewhat reduced from the second game (and ''vastly'' reduced from the first one) and numerous women in side quests will mock the concept of RescueSex, there remain some examples; Ciri's friend Bea can shamelessly flirt with Geralt until she's apprised on his identity by Ciri... [[RefugeInAudacity and then proceeds to continue flirting witt Geralt in front of Ciri]] until Ciri chides her ''again''.

**

* [[ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder I'm A Witcher, Not A]]: [[ReallyGetsAround Gigolo]], when Keira wants Geralt to act as her "prince" for the evening.

* SeriesContinuityError: ''Nobody'' in or out of the game can decide what counts as a higher vampire, with the situation made even worse with the ''Blood and Wine'' expansion. Geralt's dialogue outright contradicts itself on separate occasions, the target of a contract ''identifies'' themselves as a higher vampire but is permanently killed and drops the essence of katakan (which is a lower vampire according to one of Geralt's lines), the image used in the codex entry of a higher vampire is of a lower vampire, and so forth.

* ContinuitySnarl: ''Nobody'' in or out of the game can decide what counts as a higher vampire, with the situation made even worse with the ''Blood and Wine'' expansion. Geralt's dialogue outright contradicts itself on separate occasions, the target of a contract ''identifies'' themselves as a higher vampire but is permanently killed and drops the essence of katakan (which is a lower vampire according to one of Geralt's lines), the image used in the codex entry of a higher vampire is of a lower vampire, and so forth.