While waiting for the release of the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty expansion, CD Projekt gives reassuring news on the development of The Witcher 4.
CD Projekt has come a long way with Cyberpunk 2077, but the game is finally stable and will even improve enormously in the coming days. Before the release of the Phantom Liberty DLC, which will take place on September 26, 2023, the studio will indeed offer a huge free 2.0 update. A patch that will fix a number of things like AI, police force level immersion and more. In short, the title should once again transform, which will not hurt after its catastrophic launch. Certainly, especially on consoles. After this site, all the attention of the developers will be redirected to The Witcher 4.
Things are about to ramp up for The Witcher 4 Polaris
During a debrief on the health of the studio and on its current projects with its investors, CD Projekt Red spoke again about The Witcher 4 Polaris. An episode that could happen in 2025, even if you don’t have to get carried away. This is a minimum output window. Clearly, there is a good chance that it will be later, but you never know. The good news is that the numbers of the game will increase greatly very soon. “Once the Phantom Liberty DLC is complete, we will switch a large part of the team to The Witcher 4. Some members will switch to Cyberpunk 2 Orion or our new franchise, Project Hadar. But we will also support the Phantom Liberty expansion after its release.” (via GameRadar). The Polish studio teams will therefore not be bored.
This (re)confirmation of a larger workforce for the next The Witcher is excellent news. In March 2023, CD Projekt Red encountered difficulties because of the Unreal Engine 5. The engine under which The Witcher 4 will run in particular. The developers had to get their hands on these new tools in order to hope for greater efficiency . ” Certainly for our first project, it might not slow down the teams, but it won’t speed up the development processes. On the other hand, for the following projects, we believe that this transition should facilitate production. It was one of the reasons we said we wanted to release three great The Witcher games in six years. Starting with the release of Polaris, which is The Witcher 4 “.
CD Projekt Red set its sights on the Unreal Engine 5 for several reasons. First for the advances allowed by the engine with regard to open world games. Then, because Epic Games’ tools should allow the company to have a more stable work environment and limit bugs as much as possible. Basically, an ideal solution not to “remake a Cyberpunk 2077”.
A console version that will not be sacrificed
One of Cyberpunk 2077’s many problems was the abominable PS4 and Xbox One console version, though the PS5 and Xbox Series grind wasn’t flawless either. Should we fear the worst for The Witcher 4? One must be optimistic ! Given the distant release, the older generation of consoles will thankfully no longer be relevant. Secondo, the tests of the different versions should be more rigorous. “One of the main risks that can be faced during the development process is stability and performance on all platforms. We test the quality of gameplay on every entry platform, and we don’t just focus on the development platform, the PC” explained the studio some time ago.
As of this writing, there’s no need to worry about The Witcher 4 despite a slower-than-expected start to production. Apart from the release in 2025, this new episode has not yet revealed its secrets. But Philipp Weber, head of narrative, may have hinted at certain places in the title during an interview. “I would still like to go back to Temeria and Vizima, and see what it’s like right now. It’s also why I’m very happy that we’re doing The Witcher Remake”. The remake of The Witcher 1 should not be available before 2026 or even 2027. As for the franchise itself, we remind you that CD Projekt Red’s plans are to have a new The Witcher trilogy.