The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt / Tropes A to C

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

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

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A

• Absurdly High Level Cap: 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 New Game Plus). The cap was raised to 100 with the release of Blood & Wine.
• Abuse Mistake: Downplayed 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.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Played with. The Bloody Baron is a horrible human being but prides himself on never touching his daughter with an angry hand. 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.
• Accent Adaptation: 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 the social status or region of the characters. For example:
  • British Accents 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, 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.
  • 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.
• Accidental Truth: 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 Empress Ciri ending you can actually do this yourself on a frozen lake.
• Actor Allusion: Charles Dance (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 Tywin Lannister or Lord Vetinari. The game contains a number of Shout Outs to Game of Thrones as well.
• Adaptation Name Change: The Druid Mousesack is renamed Ermion for reasons unknown.
• Adaptational Heroism: 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.
• Adapted Out: The witcher Coën, who was a Big Brother Mentor 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.
• Afterlife of Service: During the Viking Funeral 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.
• Aggressive Play Incentive: Aerondight, the definitive Infinity +1 Sword 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.
• A.I. Breaker: 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.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Discussed by Geralt in the 'Killing Monsters' trailer.
• All for Nothing: The events of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is revealed to have been this or lead to this. 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.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: 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 gives a bemused "Mhm."
• All Myths Are True:
  • Apparently, 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 Snow White.
• All Women Are Lustful: While the number of 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 Rescue Sex, there remain some examples; Ciri's friend Bea can shamelessly flirt with Geralt until she's apprised on his identity by Ciri... and then proceeds to continue flirting with him in front of Ciri until Ciri chides her again, invoking I'm Standing Right Here.
• Ambiguous Ending: 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.
• Ambiguous Innocence: 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.
• Ambiguous Situation: 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?
• And I Must Scream: 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.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: At key points in the story you switch from playing Geralt to playing Ciri who differentiates herself by being a Teleport Spamming Lightning Bruiser.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: 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. And he may even willfully take part in killing a king and ushering Nilfgaard into the North.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Averted for enemy archers, especially if they're on the far side of a large group as few enemies adhere to Mook Chivalry. 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 Scratch Damage 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.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • 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 (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 (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.
• Anyone Can Die: In full force. This game has plenty certain and possible casualties. 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.
• Apocalyptic Log: 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 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.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: 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. Turns out it was actually a doppler.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Bloody Baron's military forces. Given they're all Les Collaborateurs and Dangerous Deserter types, this is to be expected.
• Artistic License – Biology: 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 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.
• Ascended Glitch: 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 her actual image in the Gwent card game.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: 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: Appears in a contract as the way to break a werewolf's curse.
• Awesome, but Impractical: 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).), which results in toxicity-reducing skills taking the place of more useful skills.

B

• Babies Make Everything Better: At least, Philip Strenger hoped it would.
  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.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: The game contains nude character models of Yennefer, Triss, and Keira used for their respective sex scenes (even though Triss' 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.
• Bathhouse Blitz: 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!
• Batman Gambit: If you spare Letho in the second game, he returns in Wild Hunt and Geralt can help him fake his death - provided Geralt doesn't overreact by killing all the bad guys who are witnesses to said faked death. Later, the death faker points out that he wasn't actually sure whether the gambit would succeed, but that's part of the fun.
• Battle Couple: 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 Battle Couple 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, Keira Metz and Lambert become one. Geralt and Ciri form a "father/adopted daughter" variant.
• Bears Are Bad News: Bears are a fairly common enemy in the game, though their Mighty Glacier status makes them pretty easy to kill. Nevertheless, whenever one is involved in a quest, Geralt always has a notable This Is Gonna Suck reaction. Most notable case is of three bears crashing a feast at the Skellige castle. A bear is also one of your fistfight opponents in "Fists of Fury: Skellige".
• Be Careful What You Wish For: 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. Geralt can inform her, however, that he no longer loves her.
• Beef Gate: 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 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 Gameplay and Story Segregation. 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 heavily investing in the Axii sign to get high-level enemies to fight each other for you.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Played straight with Jutta, a swordmaiden on Faroe.
• Betty and Veronica: Yennefer is devious, duplicitous, amoral, and glamorous. Triss is all of these things too... to a lesser degree. It seems Geralt has a type.
• Big Damn Heroes: During the final battle, the Wild Hunt is about to capture Ciri when Clan an Craite shows up out of nowhere to save the day.
• Big Damn Reunion: When Geralt and Ciri reunite on the Isle of Mists. Complete with a sappy Meadow Run flashback.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Bloody Baron and his family. Where do we even begin? The Baron himself is a horribly abusive and violent drunk with a short temper 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.
• Bittersweet Ending: 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 - 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: The woman had the necessary qualities. From her father she'd inherited an empress's political instincts. From Geralt she had gained a sense of simple, human decency. Few monarchs boast both traits - which is quite a shame...
    • And it can be made more sweet than bitter, or vice versa depending on whether Geralt says that she'd be able to find and visit him easily, or that it needs to be goodbye.
    • 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 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. A girl who was Eaten Alive by rats has come back as a vengeful wraith and is haunting the island tower. By bringing her Old Flame 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 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.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The Nithing quest in Skellige where a child is cursed to die is caused by a Woman Scorned 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 calls the father out for his actions, but says that this isn't the comeuppance that he deserves.
• Black Comedy Rape: 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.
• Bloodier and Gorier: 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 not along skeletal joints).
• Boats into Buildings: A Downplayed example occurs when a 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 Insane Troll Logic, 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.
• Body Horror:
  • Uma is a horrifically deformed individual. 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.
• Book Burning: The Eternal Fire has instituted such a program in Novigrad. They burn people, too.
• Book Ends: As far as the main story goes, if you get the Witcher Ciri ending, the game begins, and ends, in White Orchard.
  • The Last Wish, 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.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • 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.
  • In-Universe, 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.
• Boring Return Journey: 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.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • 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 Monster Hunter: World 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.
• Bragging Rights Reward: 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.
• Breakable Weapons: 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.
• Breather Episode:
  • 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, which includes putting on Yennefer's dresses and drunk dialing a mage. Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
  • Just after the battle, including Vesemir's death, Geralt and Ciri engage in a snowball fight. The next quests are the much more serious fights with the Crones and Imlerith.
• Brick Joke: In one of the endings, Emhyr's chamberlain can be seen doing his exaggerated bow as Ciri approaches the Nilfgaardian escort.
• Brown Note: After 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.
• Bullying a Dragon: 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.
• Burn the Witch!: 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. It requires Radovid conquering the whole of the North to begin his full-scale purge of magic across the North.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • 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.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: 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. Geralt's reaction? "Eh, it's not the first time I've had to kill a griffin, nor will it be the last."
• But Thou Must!: Despite an increasingly frustrated Geralt’s protests, The Pellar will not perform a needed augery until you’ve found his pet goat, Princess.
• Butterfly of Doom: The ending where 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.

C

• Call-Back: 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 the first game to taunt Geralt.
  • The titular short story The Last Wish 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 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 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.
• Candlelit Ritual: 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 Spell Construction 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.
• Can't Catch Up: Ciri in the flashback quests suffers hard from this in New Game Plus thanks to bad game design, specifically if the player begins the playthrough with Geralt at very high levels. Because of Level Scaling, 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 Scratch Damage, 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 Gameplay and Story Segregation 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.
• Captain Obvious: 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.
• Card Battle Game: Gwent, a newly introduced minigame and popular pastime in-universe. One that Geralt may or may not develop an addiction to. Later developed into its own spinoff game.
• Cash Gate: 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. 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.
• Chained to a Bed: 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.
• Characterization Marches On: Yennefer in the game is a cold, ruthless, pragmatic and remorseless Hollywood Atheist Mama Bear who is Necessarily Evil several times to get closer to recovering her daughter. In the books, Yennefer is a Lovable Alpha Bitch 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 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 Ice Queen route. Revealingly, after Ciri is found, Yennefer takes a drastic level in kindness.
• Chekhov's Gag: Zoltan bought an owl at an estate auction and is trying to teach it how to talk. Turns out it's Philippa Eilhart trapped in owl form.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Gaunter O'Dimm plays a bigger role in the first expansion Hearts of Stone.
  • Uma, if you completed the Velen story arc before the Skellige arc.
• Child Eater:
  • The Ladies of the Wood 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 Grave Hag from Contract: The Merry Widow in Lindenvale
• Citadel City: 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.
• City of Adventure: 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.
• Civil War vs. Armageddon:: 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.
• Classical Cyclops: Cyclopes are an Ogroid monster native to the Skellige isles (which is home to various other monsters inspired by Greek Mythology including Harpies, Sirens and Ekhidnas). They're Smash Mooks who fight with their fists and with Shockwave Stomps, 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 Shout-Out to Polyphemus from The Odyssey.
• Cleans Up Nicely:
  • After the initial meeting with Emhyr, Yen will say that Geralt looks good in black velvet.
  • Triss's assessment of Geralt after he's Pressed Into Formal Wear for a masquerade ball.
  • And echoed again by Anna Henrietta, Shani and Keira Metz in their respective quests.
• Collectible Card Game: Gwent is an in-universe example. Build decks out of cards with various strengths, powers, and effects then play against others with decks.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Gwent-playing Non Player Characters who have Hero cards in their decks always start the game with those cards in their hand.
• Conflict Ball: The Witchers have no reason to suspect Yennefer of ulterior motives, given everything she's gone 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.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Some to Season of Storms, 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 The Time of Contempt, 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 Lady of the Lake.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu:
  • 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.
• Corrupt Church: 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.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The White Frost wouldn't be out of place in one of 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. Becomes Lovecraft Lite should Ciri actually be able to destroy it.
• Cosmic Retcon: And a player-determinant one at that. Geralt and Yennefer are deeply in love and the Official Couple of the franchise, but "The Last Wish" quest in the third game ends with Yennefer severing the wish that originally bound them together. 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: But... how is that possible? I still feel the same, you should too, I don't understand... What does this mean?
  Geralt: Means the djinn granted your wish...
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: A Downplayed Trope 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. 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.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: 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.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: 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 aka Sigismund Dijkstra himself. It resembles the modern version of the trope more than a Thieves' Guild typical for European fantasy settings.
• Crapsack World: 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.
• Creepy Crows: 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.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • 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 Master of All.
  • 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.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Due to the Wide-Open Sandbox 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 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 New Game Plus. 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.
• Cutting Off the Branches: 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.

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