CD Projekt is working on three major projects at the same time in the future, but the biggest focus is still on the next The Witcher.
CD Projekt Red is actually trying to avoid calling it The Witcher 4. Most of the time we're talking about Project Polaris or The Witcher: A New Saga Begins – both of which are, of course, purely working titles. But you don't want to give the impression that the next Witcher role-playing game will continue the events of The Witcher 3.
It will be the beginning of a completely new trilogyin which Geralt only appears peripherally. But one could also assume that CD Projekt is possibly regulating expectations and that the next The Witcher has different demands than The Witcher 3. Especially since CD Projekt Red is known to have changed its way of working after the release of Cyberpunk 2077. Games are now being built in Unreal Engine 5, and instead of using the in-house Red Engine, the studio is working on several large projects at the same time.
The focus used to be almost entirely on one project, first on The Witcher 3 and then on Cyberpunk 2077 – although side projects like Gwent: The Witcher Card Game or Thronebreaker were also possible.
In a report conducted by Eurogamer earlier this year and now published interview but with Charles Tremblay, CD Projects Vice President of Technology announced that that the new The Witcher should, despite everything, be bigger and better than the games of the past.
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At the moment, Tremblay certainly doesn't know how big or good The Witcher 4 will actually be in the end. Or at least it can't be said seriously. After all, the development of Projetc Polaris has only recently been in full swing. Until now, the team was still in pre-production; CD Projekt Red recently announced the start of the real production phase.
But apparently the team has enormous ambitions and Tremblay's statements make it clear: The next CD Projekt role-playing game will not be a smaller spin-off. At best, it should outperform games like The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. In detail, Eurogamer quotes Tremblay as follows:
»I don't want to say it's easy, but I think we've done some cool things and hopefully we will [die Technologie] be able to present well. The only thing I want to say is that the change in technology for us does not change the fact that we will always be ambitious. And the next game we make will be no smaller and no worse. So it will be better, bigger and more comprehensive than The Witcher 3, it will be better than Cyberpunk – because for us it is unacceptable [so zu launchen]. We don’t want to go back.”
– Charles Tremblay, Vice President of Technology
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In the interview, Charles Tremblay also emphasizes again, that the switch to Unreal Engine is not justified by the technical chaos of Cyberpunk 2077. The team wants to handle several projects at the same time and so that the quality does not suffer, more hands should actively work on the games and less on optimizing the engine.
This explains why Tremblay assumes that the next Witcher 4 will not be slowed down by internal processes. There are still more people working on this game than on The Witcher 3. Especially since this is where the biggest focus is currently, despite other projects. In a posting on X on May 28th CD Projekt revealed that of the approximately 600 internal developers, over 400 are working on the new The Witcher alone. The other major projects Orion (a cyberpunk successor) and Hadar (a new brand) are currently being worked on by significantly fewer people.
There are no release dates for any of these new projects yet. If we were unreasonably optimistic, one could hope for the release of The Witcher 4 in 2026. But especially after the problems with Cyberpunk, the team will think twice about an early release. It has already been announced that CD Projekt wants to set less hard deadlines in the future in order to avoid rushed development and overtime.
