Heartbreaking Witcher 3 Easter Egg Found After Seven Years

CD Projekt RED's "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" is a massive game. Featuring an enormous campaign and dozens of hours of side content and expansive DLCs, there's no shortage of adventure awaiting players diving into the title for the first time. Even beyond what's on the surface, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" features tons of little mysteries and secrets for players to uncover as they spend time in Geralt's world. While players may feel they've already uncovered the vast majority of easter eggs hiding in the title, CD Projekt RED quest designer Philipp Weber has revealed that isn't the case.

Responding to a video posted by YouTuber xLetalis, who rounded up a series of small details spotted in the game, Weber tweeted, "It's awesome to still see people finding new things years after we released Witcher 3! I wonder when they will find Vivienne's last secret." 

Now, seven years after the release of "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," Weber is congratulating xLetalis on his detective work and has confirmed that the YouTuber found one of the few remaining secrets in the game. Making things even more interesting, this particular secret can only be experienced after seven years have passed in-game. In a serendipitous turn of events, the discovery of the last "Witcher 3" secret couldn't have been better timed. Here's the easter egg that's remained hidden in "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" for the last seven years.

xLetalis was intrigued when Weber responded to his video, specifically calling out that Vivienne had one final secret for players to uncover. In "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" DLC "Blood and Wine," players are introduced to this NPC and her peculiar predicament: Vivienne is cursed, progressively turning more and more into a bird — specifically an oriole — when Geralt makes her acquaintance. Despite her best efforts, the character isn't able to rid herself of the curse and turns to the player for help. One solution is to pass the curse on to an oriole egg, but Geralt warns that doing so could reduce Vivienne's lifespan to a mere seven years. If players heed Vivienne's wishes, the quest ends there and many may assume that's the end of things — but xLetalis found out what happens if players indeed wait the full seven years. 

Through the use of console commands, xLetalis fast-forwarded the game forward seven years and found that Vivienne did indeed meet her end like Geralt had expected. That said, it seems xLetalis wasn't the first to reach this discovery (per PC Gamer), but the YouTuber does seem to have reached the most fans with this video. It also is worth mentioning console commands and modding aren't required to see Vivienne's end, players can use the in-game meditation system to pass that much time if they're adamant on seeing one of the last secrets in "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt."