

But Dandelion has also gone missing-just our luck-and Geralt discovers that the only way to find him will be to rendezvous with and interrogate his most recent romantic interests.

In one particularly divergent quest tree, the monster-hunter protagonist Geralt comes across the path of an old friend, Dandelion, who was apparently the last to encounter Ciri. What begins as a simple rescue mission trickles down into pulpy sub-stories that flesh out everything from family dramas, to political intrigue, to military strife, and even some high romance. Give the game a few hours, though, and it quickly buries its “save the girl” throughline under a heaping mess of other plot points, branching off into a thousand different directions like the tendrils of a lightning bolt. Despite its complex lore and extensive source material, the premise of The Witcher 3 is strikingly simple: Find Ciri.
