So why didn't Eredin and Avellac'h just team up, go up to Geralt and say, "yo can we borrow your daughter, we need her help to end the apocalypse forever?" It seems to me like Eredin had no reason to want to kidnap Ciri and use her to escape when he could just ask her to help with destroying the white frost and saving every world.
Avellac'h says something along the lines of Eredin being driven by fear and I think the difference is simply in their character. Eredin is ruthless and for whatever reason doesn't trust or would not trust what Avellac'h intends with the Elder Blood and the White Frost, especially since Avellac'h seemed more interested in training her for using her power to that end while Eredin wished to control her. Politically Avellac'h and Eredin were absolute opposition, so there's no way they'd collaborate.
And ultimately both look down upon humans any way. Avellac'h has no interest in asking Geralt, neither does Eredin, because they probably don't feel it necessary to debate what they see as a higher purpose. Both basically have a plan and all parties are tools or obstacles, Avellac'h winning out by using the conflict with Eredin as a distraction.
Normally I'd agree with you, it's not a third person omniscient perspective so Geralt shouldn't know everything that happens, but you just can't leave such a supposedly pivotal scene offscreen. And it doubly stings because Geralt could've been in that scene - he could've not been forced to leave - but he's not, and therefore has no agency over the scene and ultimately the entire plot with Ciri. In an RPG that touts player choice as such an important feature, that's a scene that Geralt should've had some influence over.
I mean at the very least you would think his agency over the scene could've been:
a) did you take the gold from Emhyr? Then Ciri distances herself from you and becomes closer to her father
b) did you refuse the gold from Emhyr? Then Ciri distances herself even more from Emhyr and becomes closer to Geralt.
Even that would've seemed like a better execution imo than
a) did you take the gold from Emhry? Then Ciri has a higher chance of dying at the end of the game.
b) did you not take the gold? Then she has a higher chance of living, and following in her father's footsteps
Agree to disagree I suppose =]
We'll have to agree to disagree, as I simply disagree with that interpretation. Geralt's not entirely in control, he's simply an influence on Ciri. Ciri is, for most part, a wayward child who struggles with identity. She's royalty, who has run from royalty. She's a witcher, but not really a witcher. She's a sorceress, who was used by sorceresses. She's jumped from world to world on the run. She's been used and abused by Avellac'h, Eredin, and their folk. Through the books and the games she's really had no time to mature into a person able to make her own decisions.
Geralt as a father figure basically acts in a certain way, on your decisions, which influence Ciri's perception of you, her world, and her place in it. Taking the gold sends her a negative message that someone so important in her life would, to an extent, sell out like that. Here's a rock she relied on for guidance that now she can no longer trust. Taking to her Emhyr in the first place is teaching her to confront her identity and past, whatever choice she makes, rather than continue running from it.
So I guess I don't see Ciri as necessarily dead in any ending, another element intentionally left vague. In the Crone ending her survival of the White Frost is left unknown and Geralt left alone because that's what Ciri has done; she's abandoned him and he'll never know what happened.
