The Witcher 3 is lauded by many as one of the best RPGs of the last generation. However, for an immersive fantasy game, there’s one element of The Witcher’s world which feels totally out of place in the main quest.
The journal entry for the Crones and the quest Reason of State both heavy-handedly reference Shakespeare’s Macbeth, going as far to directly quote the play in the game’s main plot despite Shakespeare not existing in The Witcher’s universe. While this may seem like an immersion-breaking reference, it’s actual a stroke of genius that makes perfect sense in the world of The Witcher 3.
Aside from the Ladies of Crookback Bog themselves, there are two main direct textual references to Macbeth in The Witcher 3. The first can be found in the journal entry for the Crones, which reads:
“Sister crones, hand in hand, terrors of the sea and land, thus do go about, about: thrice to thine and thrice to mine, and thrice again, to make up nine. Macveth, Act 1, Scene 3”
This is an almost word-for-word reference to Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth and an incantation spoken by the three witches, which goes:
“The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine and thrice to mine And thrice again, to make up nine.”
Macbeth is directly referenced far later in the game as well, during the quest Reasons of State. Here, Dijkstra quotes Macbeth himself, revealing his presence with “if it were done when ‘tis done, t’were well it were done quickly,” a part of Macbeth’s famous monologue as he commits fully to the murder of King Duncan. Dijkstra explains that this is a quote from “Vakmeth, Act 1, Scene 7,” which is also where the line can be found in Macbeth. It’s unclear why there’s a discrepancy between “Macveth” as referenced in the Crone journal entry and “Vakmeth,” but the different placement of the letter V could likely be explained in the same way that Shakespeare was spelled multiple ways at the time. Spelling of proper nouns at the time was hardly ever consistent, with Shakespeare also reportedly spelling his own name 6 different ways.
The bigger question is why CD Projekt Red included such an on-the-nose reference in The Witcher 3. Many players could find such a direct reference immersion breaking; it implies that someone came up with an almost identical play to Macbeth in The Witcher universe, and reminds the player of the real world when they’re trying to immerse themselves in a fantasy one. However, there’s a reason The Witcher 3’s Macbeth parody is a stroke of genius that actually makes perfect sense in-universe, as well as other similarities to reality.
1500 years before the events of The Witcher was an event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres. It shook up the entire multiverse, trapping creatures from different dimensions across all sorts of different realities. It’s the reason there are monsters in the world of The Witcher at all, as well as non-humans like elves and dwarves.
According to the elves, humans themselves did not originate in the universe in which The Witcher takes place, but arrived their after the Conjunction of the Spheres destroyed their own reality. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the humans in The Witcher came from this reality in-canon, but the Conjunction of the Spheres does explain some aspects from our reality like Macbeth being found in The Witcher’s world – elements from all universes were displaced.
As such, one of the most straight-forward and potentially immersion-breaking references in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt actually adds up in the specific lore of the series. Perhaps this is just a victory for the nitpickers of the world, but either way, the Conjunction of the Spheres provides a unique backstory behind some of the franchises’ references, including many of the fairy tales seen in the Blood and Wine expansion’s Land of a Thousand Fables.
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is playable on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One with PS5 and Xbox Series X ports set to release in 2021.
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