Talk:The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Guide to Romance/@comment-213.222.149.78-20170830200506/@comment-94.248.224.194-20170831093657

"if only we could f*cking marry Shani :/"

That's life, the best things are always what you cannot have. :) And it fits with the theme of the Witcher series that all choices that you're given are flawed in some way.

But seriously, it would have been a lot more work to keep Shani in Witcher 2 than just a new model and some (actually several hundred in each of 7 languages) lines of voice acting, CDPR would've had to fit her into the story somehow. And more importantly, Witcher 3 would have been even more difficult with 3 romance choices, and interactions with all of them having to take into account both the Shani and the Triss path from AoK, instead of just assuming that you've been with Triss in the second game and parted ways after its ending. That's 6 possible scenarios in WH instead of only 2.

It must have been a difficult decision for CDPR to end the Shani romance path, and they knew it won't be received well, just like it was not that you're unconditionally broken up with Triss after TW2. There's no point hating Triss because of this, however (BTW she did not tell false information to Geralt, only incomplete, and the reasons behind that are not as simple as some seem to assume). It was CDPR's creative decision to introduce Yennefer in the final game of the trilogy and to focus on only one of the romances from Witcher 1 as the alternative. Which was hard enough to do already, and it has always been their approach to choose quality over quantity. Hearts of Stone might be seen as a kind of apology letter to Shani fans, at least it gives some closure, rather than just having her disappear and not be mentioned again.