The Witcher 4: New trilogy, narrative details and everything else we know CD Projekt REDNearly six years after the release of the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, CD Projekt RED revealed that they are ready to return to the fantasy RPG series. In an announcement on their website, the Polish developer explained that they were working on a new Witcher game and were using a new engine. The next Witcher game is codenamed \u2018Polaris\u2019 and will be the beginning of a new trilogy of games. The dawn of this new trilogy heralds a lot of change including Geralt taking a backseat for a new player character. Details are still sparse on Polaris but here\u2019s everything we currently know about the upcoming Witcher game. A new saga announced for The Witcher CD Projekt RED surprised fans on March 21 when they announced that a new Witcher game was in development. The team made the announcement on their social media and official website. \u201cWe\u2019re happy to announce that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development, kicking off a new saga for the franchise,\u201d they wrote. It was also recently announced that Sebastian Kalemba \u2013 the animation director for Cyberpunk 2077 \u2013 has been appointed as the game director for The Witcher 4. Career news: I\u2019m directing the new Witcher Saga. Since joining @CDPROJEKTRED I believe nothing is impossible and raising the bar, telling emotional stories & creating worlds is what we\u2019re here for. I\u2019m proud to be part of CDPR and work with such a talented and passionate team. \u2014 Sebastian Kalemba (@Skalemba) November 3, 2022 Kalemba tweeted out about the news and expressed how excited he is to be getting to help develop this new story. \u201cI believe nothing is impossible and raising the bar, telling emotional stories & creating worlds is what we\u2019re here for. I\u2019m proud to be part of CDPR and work with such a talented and passionate team.\u201d The developer also revealed that the new title would not be on their own REDengine and would instead be developed on Unreal Engine 5. According to a press release, the decision to change the game engine was part of a \u201cmulti-year\u201d partnership the studio has made with Epic Games. \u201cThis is an exciting moment as we\u2019re moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, beginning a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games,\u201d the blog post read. \u201cIt covers not only licensing but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. We\u2019ll closely collaborate with Epic Games\u2019 developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.\u201d The Witcher 4? New saga story Following its surprise announcement, fans have been speculating what the game\u2019s story could be about. Given that the studio put a heavy emphasis on it being a \u201cnew saga,\u201d it seems unlikely that it will be The Witcher 4. With the Wild Hunt largely serving as the end of Geralt of Rivia\u2019s trilogy, many theorized that the next game could star Ciri as the protagonist. This wouldn\u2019t be too far-fetched as the developer has discussed continuing the series with her in the past. In a 2020 interview with VG247, lead CD Projekt RED writer Jakub Szamalek teased a future game starring the ashen-haired Witcher. \u201cI regret we didn\u2019t get to explore Ciri\u2019s past a bit more, but maybe it\u2019s something we\u2019ll get to get back to in the future,\u201d he said, before asking the interviewer if he would like a game led by Ciri. Another major hint is the promotional image itself which features the School of the Lynx medallion covered in snow instead of Geralt\u2019s iconic Witcher medallion, which had become the logo for the original trilogy. The developers have now confirmed that the medallion is indeed a lynx, which implies the School of the Lynx will factor into the story somewhat. While exciting, this is also surprising, as the School of the Lynx technically originated in unofficial Witcher stories, rather than something either CD Projekt RED or author Andrzej Sapkowski came up with. In a September 2022 earnings call, the developers revealed that the next Witcher game will be the start of a \u201cnew Witcher saga\u201d. This implies that there could be more than one new game, even a potential trilogy set in the Witcher universe. Do we know anything about the The Witcher 4 release date? Although CD Projekt RED is finally ready to announce that they are working on the next Witcher game, the studio clarified in a press release that there is currently no release date or window for the upcoming title. \u201cAt this point, no further details regarding the game \u2014 such as a development time frame or release date \u2014 are available. Beyond this initial confirmation of a new saga in The Witcher franchise, we have no further details at this time,\u201d an excerpt from their blog post read. Good news has arisen in the time since that blog post, however. Ahead of Cyberpunk 2077\u2019s Phantom Liberty expansion, the studio announced that 250-plus devs had entered production on the next Witcher title. In November 2023, two months after Phantom Liberty\u2019s launch, CDPR noted in an earnings report that the Witcher 4 headcount had climbed to nearly 330 employees. This means approximately half of the Polish-based outfit is hard at work on producing the newest Witcher adventure. As all this early information trickled out, CDPR had still been tight-lipped on exactly where the next Witcher game sat in its development cycle. Things appear to be ramping up however as the company\u2019s CFO Piotr Nielubowicz revealed on August 28, 2024, that project Polaris was about to get well and truly underway. \u201cThe Polaris team \u2013 working on the next game in The Witcher saga \u2013 made substantial progress, which will soon enable us to wrap up pre-production and take this project to the full production phase,\u201d Nielubowicz announced in a YouTube video detailing the game\u2019s future. This does mean we\u2019re still quite a while away from a release date reveal or even a release window. We\u2019ll be keeping an ear out for news on both and will update readers as soon as the information becomes available. What platforms will The Witcher 4 be on? With details being scarce, it\u2019s impossible to know definitively what platforms the next Witcher trilogy will be on. Unless it ends up being a next-gen-only title, it\u2019s more than likely to land on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC at the very least. Speaking of platforms, the official Witcher Twitter account confirmed that the game would not be exclusive to the Epic Games Store despite its Unreal Engine 5 deal. \u201cWe are not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront,\u201d the social media post wrote in response to a fan. We are not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront. \u2014 The Witcher (@witchergame) March 21, 2022 A new engine Perhaps the most interesting tidbit from the announcement was that the new Witcher is being made from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5. Not only that, the developer stressed that they will be working closely with Epic Games to make sure the engine is optimized for their open-world release. This will likely come as a relief to many fans of the developer as Cyberpunk 2077\u2019s debut was filled with so many bugs that Sony pulled it from its PlayStation store for months. So, if nothing else, it appears that the studio is working hard to make sure the next Witcher game delivers right out of the gate. Given the high bar that 2015\u2019s Wild Hunt set for the industry, this sounds like a return to form for the critically acclaimed franchise. More Witcher games: Project Canis Majoris & Sirius CD Projekt Red has revealed that two other Witcher games are in development and are separate from the Polaris Trilogy. The first of these is called Canis Majoris and will be \u2018a full-fledged Witcher game, developed by an external studio headed by experienced developers who have worked on past Witcher games\u2019. Canis Majoris is a full-fledged Witcher game, separate to the new Witcher saga starting with Polaris. It will be developed by an external studio headed by experienced developers who have worked on past Witcher games. pic.twitter.com\/ucy7T073tm \u2014 CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 4, 2022 The next is codenamed Sirius and will also be set in The Witcher universe and created with support from CDPR. This Witcher entry will offer multiplayer gameplay on top of a single-player experience including a campaign with quests and a story. However, the announcement means that there is now a total of 5 Witcher games in development, including the Polaris trilogy and projects Canis Majoris and Sirius. So, that\u2019s everything we know so far about the next Witcher game. As the game moves further through its development cycle, we\u2019ll be sure to keep you posted on the pertinent information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Witcher 4: New trilogy, narrative details and everything else we know CD Projekt REDNearly six years after the release of the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, CD Projekt RED revealed that they are ready to return to the fantasy RPG series. In an announcement on their website, the Polish developer explained that they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}