Adam Badowski, joint CEO of CD Projekt Red, doesn't look back fondly on the collectible-card romance options in The Witcher 1. "It was childish in the beginning," he says when the topic comes up. He's much more pleased with how things turned out in The Witcher 3, which did justice to what he calls "the emotional aspects of the characters from the books."
After two games in which Yennefer is barely mentioned and relegated to flashbacks, she drops into The Witcher 3 like a bomb to upset the cozy relationship you probably built with Triss in the second game. The ex Geralt never properly ended things with, and the canon love interest as book readers will tell you (it's me, I'm book readers), she complicates Geralt's love life and forces him to belatedly grow up—which feels thematically appropriate, as he retakes his place as Ciri's father figure over the course of the game.
