The Witcher 4’s Biggest Mystery Was an Accident — and Andrzej Sapkowski Almost Scrapped It

Look, Andrzej Sapkowski has never been shy about telling you exactly what he thinks. During a Reddit AMA, the Witcher author basically said one of the biggest pillars of CD Projekt Red's games came from a throwaway line he regrets writing... and he might just yank it out of the books entirely.

The video games built a whole system off one sentence

If you only know The Witcher from the games: there are multiple witcher training schools. Geralt is from the School of the Wolf, and the games spin out others like the Bear and the Viper. CD Projekt is doubling down on that for The Witcher 4 — the very first teaser shows a mysterious medallion sigil for an as-yet-unnamed school. Where is it based? How do they operate? Does it change anything for Geralt or the Continent? The tease is doing its job.

Sapkowski: that 'school' idea? A mistake I never wanted to expand

Sapkowski says the entire 'witcher schools' framework comes from a single line in his short story collection The Last Wish — a line he now wishes he had not written. His words, not mine:

'A single sentence about some "school of the Wolf" mysteriously made its way into The Last Wish. I later deemed it unworthy of development and narratively incorrect, even detrimental to the plot.'

He added that after that, he deliberately never referenced Hogwarts-style houses for witchers again. He even joked about refusing to invent 'Witcher Gryffindors or Slytherins' — and then pointed out that adapters, especially the game folks, grabbed that one sentence and multiplied it into a whole taxonomy. He calls the whole obsession with schools 'completely unnecessary.' Classic Sapkowski: blunt, a little spiky, and absolutely clear about where canon ends for him.

So what happens now?

Here is where it gets a little inside baseball — and a bit spicy. The games are massive, and for a lot of people they are the Witcher. Sapkowski knows that gives the idea legs, but he is also mulling a surgical strike on his own text. He floated a few options during the AMA:

• Delete the 'school' sentence from future editions of The Last Wish.
• Alternatively, expand and clarify the whole matter in upcoming books.
• Possibly explain witcher medallions in detail — what they mean and how they tie to specific people.

'Perhaps, taking the path of least resistance, I will erase the sentence about the "school" from future editions of The Last Wish. Or maybe I will want to expand and clarify the matter somehow in subsequent books? Perhaps I will shed some light on the issue of Witcher medallions, their significance, and their connection to specific individuals? There are many possibilities, and the sky is the limit.'

What this means for The Witcher 4 and the next novel

Do not expect CD Projekt's next game to line up neatly with whatever Sapkowski writes next. The studio is clearly leaning into the school mythology; the author is openly considering cutting it out of the core books or reshaping it on his terms. Two different roads, same world. If nothing else, it is a great reminder that game canon and book canon are not the same — and in this case, they might drift even further apart.