What looks to be one of The Witcher 3’s last remaining Easter Eggs has been uncovered, and it takes seven in-game years in order to be revealed.
YouTuber xLetalis discovered the secret following hints from Witcher 3 quest designer Philip Weber that there was more to reveal in regards to the Blood and Wine DLC character Vivienne de Tabris, who plays a central role in the expansion’s The Warble of a Smitten Knight quest.
In Blood and Wine, Vivienne is a woman cursed to look like a bird, specifically an oriole. Geralt can aid Vivienne in having the curse removed, of which one solution is to transfer the curse to an oriole egg. The downside of this method is that she would then have the same lifespan as the average oriole bird, seven years at the most.
When asked by fans on a recent charity livestream for Ukraine about the yet-to-be-uncovered Easter egg, Weber said it was “on Skellige” and that it “goes quite a bit further” than players might expect. He wasn’t exaggerating. As xLetalis points out, the Easter egg involves either meditating or using PC console commands to move the in-game clock forward seven years to discover Vivienne’s fate. Sure enough, Vivienne can be found dead at an inn in Skellige seven years later, bringing her storyline to a close.
xLetalis comments that the Easter egg seems unfinished, as Vivienne can still be greeted even after she collapses on the floor. Her death also causes her clothing to warp at an awkward angle, making the whole situation seem more like a mistake than an actual conclusion for her quest. In addition, no characters seem to notice Vivienne’s fate. Still, it’s cool to see this attention to detail in an NPC interaction that wouldn’t be seen by more than 99% of players.
In an interview with IGN, Weber (who is now campaign director for the new, in-development Witcher game that will run on Unreal Engine 5) said that he’s not sure “if it’s the last secret” to find in Witcher 3, but that “it for sure is pretty close.”
“Everyone hid so many details during the last months of development that people are probably still going to find something new one day,” Weber said.
Funnily enough, xLetalis apparently wasn’t actually the first person to discover the secret, just the first English-speaking person (and the first to make a video on the subject). As PC Gamer reports, the German-language site GameStar made mention of the Easter egg in 2020. The Witcher 3 is slated to come to current-generation consoles later this year.
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