A new Witcher game is in development at CD Projekt Red, the studio responsible for The Witcher trilogy and spinoffs like Gwent, but details about the next entry in the fantasy video game series are scant. But we do know the game, which is being developed under the codename Polaris, will kick off a “new saga” for the Witcher brand.
“We aim to release two more Witcher games after Polaris, creating a new AAA RPG trilogy,” CD Projekt Red said in 2022.
CD Projekt Red is moving away from using its internal REDengine, the technology that powered The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and will instead use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5. CD Projekt and Epic announced a “multi-year strategic partnership” in March 2022, and as part of that arrangement, developers from CD Projekt Red will collaborate with Epic “with the primary goal being to help tailor [Unreal Engine] for open-world experiences.” Based on that language, the next Witcher game will be another open-world adventure.
CD Projekt hasn’t announced a final title, gameplay details, or a release date for the fourth mainline entry in The Witcher. We don’t know the story or what characters will be in it. Here’s everything we do know about the new Witcher saga.
The School of the Lynx
The one very visible clue that CD Projekt Red has offered about its new Witcher saga is artwork of a medallion buried in snow. Originally interpreted by some to be a reference to the School of the Cat from The Witcher lore, CD Projekt Red global communication director Robert Malinowski clarified to Eurogamer after the project’s reveal that the medallion is made to resemble a lynx. Granted, a lynx is a genus within the cat family, but The Witcher book series and games do not canonically feature a School of the Lynx. (Geralt is, of course, a witcher from the School of the Wolf.)
But a great deal of speculation has pointed toward Ciri from The Witcher series, who reclaimed a cat medallion from witcher-killing bounty hunter Leo Bonhart (and wore it herself), leading the new Witcher saga, thanks to this whole cat/lynx association.
It’s (probably) not an Epic Games Store exclusive
CD Projekt Red and Epic Games are enjoying a “multi-year strategic partnership,” the companies said, but that doesn’t mean that the next Witcher video game will be exclusive to Epic Games’ digital storefront. While Epic has invested many millions into securing Epic Games Store-exclusive games, that sort of arrangement doesn’t appear to be on the cards for the next Witcher. Or, at the very least, CD Projekt wants to downplay the possibility that there’s any sort of exclusivity going on. After all, CD Projekt has its own games storefront, GOG.com, and has enjoyed multiplatform success over the past decade.
It’s (probably) not named The Witcher 4
CD Projekt Red’s Marcin Iwinski told Polygon way back in 2013 that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (and its two expansions) marked the end of Geralt’s trilogy. And after the new Witcher game was announced, CD Projekt global PR director Radek Grabowski stressed on Twitter, “What we have NOT announced today [is a] game called The Witcher 4.”
Fans and members of the media will likely continue to refer to the new game as The Witcher 4 anyway, because that’s easy shorthand until CD Projekt Red gives us a proper title for the project. Even CDPR chief strategy officer Adam Kiciński casually referred to the game as The Witcher 4 in 2023 during an earnings call, which the developer later called a “slip of the tongue.”
It’s not just “The Witcher 3 in new clothing”
At least, that’s what CD Projekt Red says. In March 2024, when the new Witcher game was still in its pre-production phase, CDPR joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said during an earnings Q&A that the developer is “trying to push new boundaries and explore new fields.”
“I guess what I’m saying is that you should not be expecting ‘The Witcher 3 in new clothing’ of sorts,” Nowakowski said. “Of course we’re building on the shoulders of what came before, and on what we’ve learned, but we will be adding new gameplay elements and new mechanics that you have not seen in our previous games. I’d say — doing such things is always a risk; it’s not just repeating what was done before.”
The new Witcher game does not have a release date
Given CD Projekt Red’s development history, it’s pretty safe to predict we won’t get our hands on the new Witcher saga any time soon. The last game in the franchise, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, entered development in the summer of 2011, but it wasn’t officially announced until two years later. And the final game didn’t ship until May 2015. The studio’s most recent game, Cyberpunk 2077, was first teased back in 2012, and it took a grueling eight years to finally arrive (and in not-so-great shape either).
Suffice it to say, the next Witcher game is likely years away. CD Projekt Red will not only take ample time to build its new saga, but will almost assuredly spend extra time polishing and bug-squashing its follow-up to the Witcher trilogy, because it simply can’t repeat the mistakes it made with Cyberpunk 2077.
CDPR joint CEO Adam Badowski told Reuters in January 2024 that the company expected to have “around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year,” so development on the next Witcher game is definitely making progress.
What we think we know
Based on the events of The Witcher 3 and its many choice-based endings, good and bad, there’s plenty to speculate about the series’ new direction in the wake of Geralt’s story. If you want to read about the possibilities, here’s a peek at where The Witcher might go after Wild Hunt.
The post The Witcher 4: Everything we know about CD Projekt Red’s new Witcher saga appeared first on Polygon.
