Thanks for the memories

Seven years on from its original release date, it would appear The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s final secret has been unearthed.

CD Projekt RED’s sprawling open-world RPG is packed with all manner of things to see and do. And for the better part of the last decade, fans have gleefully been uncovering new Easter eggs, hidden quests, and other fun details snuck into the game by the developers.

This latest discovery, however, might just be the game’s last major one. YouTuber xLetalis (via PC Gamer) has been searching for one specific Easter egg in The Witcher 3 ever since one of the game’s quest designers, Philipp Weber, hinted that there was one more to find.

xLetalis had previously made a video about Vivienne de Tabris, one of the characters in the Blood And Wine expansion. Weber responded to the upload, asking when players might finally find “Vivienne’s last secret”.

Predictably, this whipped fans up into a maelstrom of excitement and re-energised the community’s desire to hunt down the game’s elusive – and possibly final – secret.

With the search narrowed down, xLetalis was finally able to find it. But to explain it, we do need to briefly dip into some vaguely spoilery Witcher lore. Consider this you’re warning if you’ve never played The Witcher 3!

Geralt first meets Vivienne in a Blood And Wine quest called The Warble of a Smitten Knight. He discovers that the lady-in-waiting has been the victim of a terrible curse since birth, one that is slowly turning her into a bird.

As with many of The Witcher 3‘s quests, there are multiple endings and outcomes based on the player’s choices. In one of the quests endings, the curse can essentially be moved from Vivienne to a bird’s egg – with the tragic catch being that Vivienne could very well be dead in seven years as a result. Magic is full of strange rules.

Assuming this is the option you pursue, Vivienne will choose to spend her remaining years exploring the world. With the Skellige hint now at their disposal, xLetalis used The Witcher 3‘s console commands to move Vivienne to Skellige and speed up time to pass seven full years in-game. And sure enough, poor old Vivienne does, in fact, drop down dead.

Granted, it’s not quite as a dramatic a moment as we might have hoped for. But given the utterly bizarre circumstances needed to ever have seen this play out, it’s pretty impressive that CDPR ever bothered in the first place.