Cue the Charlie Day memes. The next-gen upgrade for CD Projekt Red’s smash-hit RPG The Witcher 3 not only contains a slew of gorgeous new graphical options, but also appears to introduce new connections to a mystery that has puzzled fans of CDPR’s other massive game, Cyberpunk 2077, for years. This mystery, which centres on a set of six alphanumeric characters, has led fans of CDPR games down endless rabbit holes of speculation and investigation. Yup, it’s once again time to dive into the world of FF 06 B5.
Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are both mega-sized RPGs from developer CD Projekt Red. Their vast worlds are home to a genuine mystery or two, but perhaps none is more cryptic or more fascinating than this one. For two years now, a strange statue and a set of six characters, FF 06 B5, in Cyberpunk’s Night City have been a siren song for mystery hunters. Despite thorough dives into many rabbit holes of theorycrafting and investigative work, the mystery of their true meaning or significance has remained unsolved. Confirmed to be a genuine riddle meant for players to unpack, a new twist has now emerged, this time in a different game. The latest update to 2015’s The Witcher 3 has been found to contain iconography associated with the FF 06 B5 mystery.
Read More: Two Years Later, Cyberpunk 2077 Are Still Trying To Solve The Game’s Biggest Mystery
If you fire up the latest version of The Witcher 3 and head on over to Destroyed Bastion in Velen, you’ll discover a new symbol added to the game via the recent update. But it’s hidden behind a bit of a secret. It looks like this:
Finding the symbol itself requires the manipulation of switches on walls in the area. Each of the three ruined buildings here has a switch. Right now it’s not confirmed if these switches were in the game before the new update (though it’s safe to assume they likely weren’t). Activating all these switches spawns an earth elemental for you to fight. Defeating it will open up a portal resembling a stone archway on a nearby hill. Spooky stuff so far. But it goes further.
Said portal will take you to a tower. Descending the tower will send you through rooms containing seemingly invincible specters. To get out, you’ll need to activate some crystals using the Aard spell sign (if you’ve played through The Witcher 3’s campaign, you’ll recognise these enemies from various quests). That portal will kick you back out into the main world. But hidden in that dark and deadly final chamber is the mysterious symbol in question.
If you want to see this in action, check out xLetalis’ video documenting the new Witcher mystery puzzle here:
So what does this symbol mean? Well, right off the bat, the forked pattern in the centre of the red triangle is largely what clued fans into the FF 06 B5 connection. It perfectly matches the symbol found on the very Cyberpunk 2077 statue that started this whole mess of theories and mystery hunting.
The meaning of this symbol has been the subject of intense speculation itself. Many believe it relates to the different branching plot threads of Cyberpunk; others have been scouring the game for matching iconography elsewhere in its world and potential connections to other works of pop culture. Some suspect there’s a connection to ancient numbering systems. But if anyone had any doubt that the connection to Cyberpunk was intentional, the sleuths of Reddit have unearthed more. Translating the symbols that circle the triangle reveals the following: FF VQ BZ, as well as some other characters.
What does any of this mean? Well, if you think you have the answer then head on over to r/FF06B5 and make sure your theory hasn’t already been documented or dismissed. The folks there have been at this for two years and there’s a ton of rabbit holes to fall into. The Witcher connection is already the subject of some intense theorycrafting on that subreddit.
There’s no doubt that mysteries like this are fun. But with something as elusive as FF 06 B5, which two years of collective mystery-hunting hasn’t been able to crack, it’s hard to tell if getting hints in an entirely other game is going to make things clearer, or hopelessly more convoluted.
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