Light spoilers follow for a Cyberpunk 2077 ending – proceed at your own risk!As pointed out on the Nintendo Smash, the final mission of the game All Along the Watchtower (check out our Cyberpunk 2077 guide for how to reach it) starts with V waking up at the top of Badlands Dam and watching a bird land in the open car window.
This bird looks and sounds like a barn swallow – in the wizarding world, ‘Swallow’ is the Elvish-English translation of ‘Zireael’, from which the name Ciri is derived (and is the name of the silver sword given to her by Geralt in The Witcher 3).
It may seem like a coincidence, but Cyberpunk 2077 makes it very clear that there are no birds in or around Night City. A fragment (the name of the game for text records) entitled “Bird Extermination Law” makes clear why:
“In the face of outbreaks of increasingly frequent and deadly zoonotic diseases, the City Council decided that the most effective method to reduce the risk of infection among residents is by exterminating all avian life within 18 miles of the city limits. . “
This makes the appearance of a live bird in the game particularly remarkable, and someone so close to Ciri seems like a deliberate choice for some fans. There is still no sign of CD Projekt Red if that is really the case – it is much more of a fan theory at this point.
As for why players are looking specifically for Ciri in Night City – that comes down to a set of lines she talks about in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Ciri describes a world in which he hid to escape the titular Hunt, saying: “People there had metal in their heads, they fought wars at a distance, using things similar to megacopes. And there were no horses, everyone had their own flying ships.”
Many think this means that she arrived in Night City. Cyberpunk 2077 director Adam Badowski said earlier that he was against the idea of crossing the worlds, although many on the team hope to include Ciri in the game – it may well be that that reference was the middle ground.
Even though it is a total coincidence, Ciri makes another appearance in the game – albeit in the form of a star on the cover of a retro game magazine found in the Cyberpunk prologue for Corps players.Many wonder if Ciri will be the leader in the Witcher game due to the beginning of development after the release of Cyberpunk. It may take a while before we find out, however, as Cyberpunk itself clearly has a long way to go.
After the bad state of the game on the consoles at launch, CD Projekt committed to a series of updates to fix the game until February, after which it will receive free DLC and paid expansions and, eventually, a multiplayer mode. Considering that you can’t buy the game digitally on PlayStation right now, it will probably be a long way before we get a chance to see the version of the CD projekt about Ciri in person again.
Joe Skrebels is the Executive News Editor at IGN. Follow him on Twitter. Do you have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].