The Witcher 4 will be ‘bigger’ and ‘better’ than The Witcher 3 says CD Projekt-Adam Starkey-Entertainment – Metro

Polaris development kicked up a notch this week (CD Projekt)

CD Projekt has shared some insight into The Witcher 4’s development, describing the next entry as ‘bigger’ and ‘greater’ than its predecessor.

Development on The Witcher 4 officially ramped up this month, but we still know very little about the next game in the series, including who will be the protaganist.

Creator CD Projekt still hasn’t given the sequel an official title, beyond the codename Polaris. All we know is it will be the first game in a new trilogy, and will involve original lead Geralt – but not as the main focus.

CD Projekt has now shared more details about the game’s production in a new interview and, notably, how they’re hoping to avoid repeating the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077.

Polaris sees the studio switch from its in-house game engine to Unreal Engine 5 for the first time, a move which, according to CD Projekt, was not a result of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, but instead motivated by the need to juggle multiple projects at once.

‘The way we built stuff in the past was very one-sided, like one project at a time,’ CD Projekt’s vice president of technology, Charles Tremblay, told Eurogamer. ‘We pushed the limit – but also we saw that if we wanted to have a multi-project at the same time, building in parallel, sharing technology together, it is not easy.’

Tremblay goes onto explain how this new technology will not impact the ambitious nature of the studio’s games, describing Polaris as ‘better’ and ‘bigger’ than The Witcher 3.

Cyberpunk 2077 is in much better shape now (CD Projekt)

‘Again, I will not say it’s easy, but I think that we have some cool stuff going, and hopefully that will have some good showcase [of the technology],’ he added. ‘The only thing I will say is that changing the tech for us does not change the fact that we always will be ambitious.

‘And the next game we do will not be smaller, and it will not be worse. So it will be better, bigger, greater than The Witcher 3, it will be better than Cyberpunk – because for us, it’s unacceptable [to launch that way]. We don’t want to go back.

‘Even if there will be some ‘sweaty moments’ and maybe even some bad stuff happening, still, I think that we will try everything we can to make it even more than what we achieved in the past years. So the technology should not be a blocker for us, basically.’

In light of Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, which was particularly bad on last gen consoles, Tremblay suggests the studio might prioritise certain platforms at the outset for Polaris – just don’t expect a PC-only situation.

‘The strategy we want to do – I’m just trying not to say too much, bear with me – most likely, the launch, we will not have a PC-only launch, for example,’ he added. ‘I don’t think this is a strategy we want to adopt right now. That being said, will it mean that we will have – let’s say there were 20 platforms available – we’ll have 20 at launch? Maybe not.’

Along with Polaris, CD Projekt is working on a new IP codenamed Project Hadar, a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, and a new game set in the Witcher universe titled Project Sirius. A remake of the original The Witcher game is also in the works, although that’s being handled by external studio Fool’s Theory.

The Witcher 4 is likely still several years away, but it’s possible we could see some sort of update (an actual title, perhaps?) at The Game Awards on December 13.

Geralt will have some role in The Witcher 4 (CD Projekt)

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