CCRB RECORD No. 0047
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Determination: Explicit — Corruption 3
A church runs Novigrad, fields its own armed orders, and burns mages at the stake through the city's main storyline.
The Church of the Eternal Fire is not background colour in The Witcher 3; it is the governing power of Novigrad and the engine of the game's longest act. Its doctrine centres on an undying flame said to lead followers out of darkness, and it forbids magic on the grounds that magic sullies that flame. In practice the player meets it as bigotry, greed, hypocrisy and violence: witch hunts against mages and non-humans, public burnings, a hierarch at the head of the institution, three separate armed wings including the Temple Guard and the Order of the Flaming Rose, and street preachers who denounce Geralt to crowds as a mutant. King Radovid backs the purge. Sheltering and smuggling mages out of the city is the player's work for much of that act.