After years of waiting, The Witcher 4 is officially on its way. Or at least the next major game of The Witcher, as we don’t have an actual name for it.
In March 2022, developer CD Projekt Red announced The Witcher 4 in a blog post. It was stated that “the next installment of The Witcher video game series is currently in development”, and the title will start a “new saga”. This new saga is actually a new trilogy that will start with what Polaris is. This is, in every way, The Witcher 4, though it will probably have a completely different name. For now, we’re taking The Witcher 4 as the project codenamed Polaris reveals in the last game.
No wonder CD Projekt RED is finally talking about the new Witcher game. The developer was already open to another entry in his mega-success fantasy series. The CEO of CD Projekt RED, Adam Kiciński, said in March 2020 that there was a “relatively clear concept” another game about The Witcher. He also revealed that full production will begin “immediately” after Cyberpunk 2077 is released.
Do you want to know more? Read everything we know so far about The Witcher 4.
The Witcher 4: ready to chase
- What is this? Another main game of The Witcher
- When can I play it? TBC
- How can I play it? TBC
The Witcher 4: Release Date and Platforms
Let’s start by easing our excitement. CD Projekt RED announced that The Witcher 4 is in development, but also made its project clear blog post (opens in a new tab) that “no further details” on the “release date” are available.
Now, to put it in perspective, the original reveals the trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in a new tab) was released seven years before the game’s premiere. To restore some hope in this situation, CD Projekt RED has published Trailer revealing the title of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (opens in a new tab) just two years before the premiere of The Witcher 3.
That is all that can be said, we are probably many years away from the premiere of The Witcher 4. Mark 2024 in your calendars first, although it will probably take longer.
There are also no confirmed platforms for The Witcher 4, but that’s not surprising. We expect CD Projekt Red to use current-gen hardware, so PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC releases seem almost certain.
We know that The Witcher 4 will be the first in the trilogy. This was revealed in October 2022, along with several new projects for The Witcher and Cyberpunk.
Polaris is the codename of the next installment of the Witcher series, which we recently announced is in pre-production. This is the beginning of a new saga: we are going to release two more The Witcher games after Polaris, creating a new AAA RPG trilogy. pic.twitter.com/898Ez6Yk79October 4, 2022
The Witcher 4: plot and scenery
Spoilers for the Witcher series of games
As mentioned above, little detail is available about The Witcher 4. The official blog post only confirms that it is in development and that it is being built on Unreal Engine 5. But over the years CD Projekt RED has said a lot about what a future Witcher game would involve. myself.
For starters, it’s not really The Witcher 4.
“The first three” Witchers “were by definition a trilogy, so we simply could not call the next game” The Witcher 4 “- said Kiciński in interview. “This does not mean, of course, that we will leave the world of The Witcher.”
By the end of The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, the monster hunter Geralt was alive and well. Well, at least he was alive. But his story is over, the Wild Hunt is over. That doesn’t mean he won’t be back in this new The Witcher game, though he probably won’t be the main character.
The developer said the same thing in 2013: “We don’t kill the world or walk away from it, but we’ll definitely want this game to be the finale in a big way,” said executive producer John Mamais. Polygon (opens in a new tab). “We can even potentially include Geralt in later games. We just need to talk about it and find out what we’ll do next. “
Perhaps we will see that the reins will go to Ciri – if it is considered that she canonically survived The Witcher 3. To avoid problems with continuity, perhaps the team will focus on the story of Geralt’s adventures. After all, Netflix is developing a series set long before the events of the books, Blood Origin is a prequel set 1,000 years before the events of The Witcher.
Confirmation that the medallion shown in the game preview image is a lynx certainly suggests that the game will go in a new direction. This potentially introduces a completely new witcher school.
The author of books about The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski, has signed a new contract with the company to “further strengthen their relationship”. So. the studio is free to draw on any of his short stories or novels. (If you want to get hooked, here’s how to read The Witcher books in order.)
The Witcher 4: News and Rumors
Polaris and a brand new trilogy
At the beginning of October 2022, CD Projekt RED announced several new titles via Twitter (opens in a new tab), including the new The Witcher trilogy. Polaris (we call The Witcher 4) will start a new saga that will be played for over 6 years from its first release. This is obviously a huge undertaking, so we will have to wait and see if it pays off.
Confirming the beginning of a new saga
CD Projekt RED has once again confirmed that The Witcher 4 will release the saga. Although it did not confirm how many games this will be the case, president Adam Kiciński made these comments during one of the last talk about earnings (opens in a new tab).
“We said there would be a new saga. Of course, we are now pre-producing the first game in the saga. But we mean more than one. The first saga consisted of three games, so now we’re thinking of more than one game. But we’re in pre-production for the first game from the second The Witcher saga.
The first puzzle is solved: the medallion is a lynx
After announcing in detail that The Witcher 4 is in development, CD Projekt Red has spoken out to address one point of fan speculation: the medallion shown in the announcement image. It turns out to be a lynx, suggesting CD Projekt Red has created a brand new Witcher school for the new game.
“I can confirm that the medallion is in fact shaped like a lynx,” said Global Communications Director Robert Malinowski. Eurogamer (opens in a new tab).
However, while Lynx’s School does not appear in the official Witcher novel, there are stories about the school elsewhere on the Internet – on The Witcher fan fiction wiki (opens in a new tab). On a fan wiki, the Lynx School is established after the Wolf School is dissolved. Founded by surviving members – including Geralt – the school eventually leaves its homeland and explores the Western continent.
Remember, however, that this is all fanfiction, and therefore unlikely to be similar to the story that CD Projekt is working on with its new RPG. For starters, Geralt may not even appear in the new game. Indeed, the announcement speaks of a “new saga” that suggests an intention to move on.
Announcement
Given that most game teasers feature fancy trailers and big new websites, The Witcher 4 news is relatively muted. CD Projekt RED has published blog post (opens in a new tab) with one key art and sparse detail on one of the most anticipated RPGs in gaming history.
“We are happy to announce that the next installment of The Witcher video game series is currently in development, starting a new saga of the series,” writes the developer.
While the post doesn’t detail the game’s release date or even the team’s development, it does contain one important detail: CD Projekt RED dumped its own game engine.
The team has been using REDengine in every game since The Witcher 2. Capable of handling great open worlds, the Polish developer spent years developing its capabilities.
There was a huge qualitative leap from The Witcher 2 to The Witcher 3, and the technology was able to cope with much larger, denser worlds. Technology jumped into the game again with Cyberpunk 2077. While the world may have seemed more limited than the open plains and winding forests of The Witcher 3, Night City was a crowded city with enormous activity spreading over you in vertical apartment blocks.
Nevertheless, Cyberpunk had serious technical problems at the time of its release, and perhaps this is what prompted CD Projekt RED to abandon its own engine in favor of an industry standard: Unreal Engine 5.
“We’re moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5,” writes CD Projekt in a blog post, “embarking on a long-term strategic partnership with Epic Games. It covers not only the licensing but also the technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of the Unreal Engine, where applicable. We will be working closely with the developers of Epic Games with the primary goal of helping make the engine fit for the open world experience. ”
Before we saw any PlayStation 5 games, we saw the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo running on console. Epic Games is keen to promote this new version of its engine as a technology for the next generation of consoles. The fact that The Witcher 4 will be built with this technology is something Epic can scream about, and fans of The Witcher burned by Cyberpunk can find solace.
Of course, the game engine is just a toolkit, it doesn’t make the game good or bad. And although many people at CD Projekt RED have used Unreal Engine technology in their careers, moving the entire studio to a different set of tools is a production challenge that may arise in the final game.