The Witcher 4's development is now starting to really gain some momentum. CD Projekt Red is one of the most renowned developers out there, largely thanks to its work on The Witcher series. The Polish developer earned a lot of acclaim with that trilogy of games and Gwent, a card game inspired by the franchise. They quickly became recognized as one of the best RPG developers out there with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt being arguably the studio's best game to date. The third game was intended to be the last game for quite a while as CD Projekt Red wanted to branch out and do something new with Cyberpunk 2077. Five years after The Witcher 3, it was released and it was a huge commercial success... but also one of the company's greatest failures in some ways given the state it released in. Although it was a great story, the game was filled with bugs and broken promises, leading the studio to spend years fixing it and improving it

Next month, CD Projekt Red will release its one and only expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, and then move on to new projects. Already, the team has announced new Witcher and Cyberpunk games are on the way and it seems like The Witcher 4 will take precedent. As spotted by VGC, CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński has confirmed that it already has almost 260 people working on The Witcher 4 and plans to move a large portion of the Phantom Liberty team to that title once it ships the expansion. There are roughly 300 people working on the expansion right now, so that likely means at least 300 – 400 people could be working on The Witcher 4 by the end of this year.

"At the end of July, the Phantom Liberty team working on the pre-release phase consisted of 300 people," he said during an earnings call. "That's fewer than at the end of 2022, but it still it remains our biggest team. On the other hand, the Polaris team has grown to almost 260 developers at the end of July."

The Witcher 4 Release Date
As of right now, we have no idea when The Witcher 4 will release, but it's not expected to release before 2025. The game started pre-production last summer and has been in the works ever since. It will have been at least a decade since The Witcher 3 once it releases. CD Projekt Red intends for it to start a new trilogy of games and plans for all three of them to release within a six year period of the first game's release.

What is The Witcher 4 About?
We also have no idea what The Witcher 4 will be about. The third game left Geralt very much alive, but it seemed like CD Projekt Red wanted to move on from the character. However, the success of the Netflix series and the continued success of the third game may cause CD Projekt to return to Geralt since it's such a beloved character. Fans have also speculated that Ciri could take over, but it's really anyone's guess right now.



Posted: Sep 03, 2023 12:11 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-witcher-4-major-update-cd-projekt-red/