The Witcher 4 is on the way
The Witcher 4 is on the way, and it just got a brand-new trailer. Polish developer CD Projekt Red found massive success with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which received great reviews and sold more than 60 million copies, becoming one of the best-selling video games in history.
The developer didn’t jump into The Witcher 4 right after, though, as it made Cyberpunk 2077 and released it in 2020, also to great success (following a dismal launch, it’s worth noting). But now, CD Projekt Red is returning to the fantasy series it’s best known for with The Witcher 4. It’s all part of a plan to build a new trilogy that will include The Witcher 5 and 6.
The Witcher 4 is still a ways off, but CD Projekt Red management and staffers have shared insight into the project over the years. We’re rounding up everything we know about the highly anticipated fantasy-RPG (and a few morsels on the sequels), and we’ll continue to update this piece as more information comes to light–or we finally get those CDPR ducks to quack under pressure.
Beyond The Witcher 4, CD Projekt is working on a series of other games as part of the company’s new strategy of working on multiple large-scale projects simultaneously. The others include a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, a remake of the original Witcher, a new IP in the works under the codename Hadar, and a new Witcher title from The Molasses Flood.
For now, here’s all the essential information to know about The Witcher 4.
The Witcher 4 gameplay footage
The first gameplay footage for The Witcher 4 debuted during Epic’s State of Unreal event. The game was shown running on a standard PS5 at 60 fps. The footage looked mighty impressive.
Check it out here.
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Does The Witcher 4 have a release date?
CD Projekt management said during a recent investor briefing that it has historically not shared release date information early in the development process, and that stance is not changing with The Witcher 4. It’s still going to be a while before it’s out, but for now, CDPR has penciled in a 2028 release window for The Witcher 4.
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Unreal Engine 5 and a mysterious Nvidia GPU
The Witcher 4 is CD Projekt’s first to be made using Epic’s Unreal Engine 5, and getting up to speed with the technology means development is going to take some time, the company has said.
As announced previously, CD Projekt and Epic signed a multi-year, multi-game deal for the Polish studio to use Epic’s technology to create The Witcher 4 and other games. Before this, The Witcher 3 and CD Projekt’s other titles were made using the company’s own game engine, the RedEngine.
The Witcher 4 is the first entry in a new trilogy, and CD Projekt management said development on The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 should be smoother because the foundation will already be in place. CD Projekt management also mentioned how The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 should take about three years each to develop, so fans can expect this newest Witcher trilogy to span into the 2030s.
The first Witcher 4 trailer at The Game Awards also revealed that the game’s trailer was made using a custom version of Unreal Engine 5 running on an “unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU.”
The Witcher 4 will also use path tracing, Nvidia’s evolution of ray tracing lighting. The tech provides better global illumination and lighting to games that support it, like CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 on PC, where it looks especially impressive.
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The Witcher 4 platforms
Given that CD Projekt has only recently confirmed The Witcher 4’s existence, the company has not yet committed to any platforms for the game. However, it’s a safe bet to assume The Witcher 4 will come to PC, specifically the company’s own DRM-free digital store, GOG. In terms of consoles, by the time The Witcher 4 releases, it’s possible there will be new, more powerful home-hardware platforms on the market from Sony and Microsoft. The Switch 2 has also proven to be a portable powerhouse, as it currently runs visually taxing games like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
CD Projekt has not confirmed The Witcher 4 for release on any platform–PC, console, or otherwise–but given the current components crisis that has seen console prices increase several times and potentially delayed the release of next-gen hardware, it’s not hard to imagine it having a current-gen launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The company has historically supported PC and console, and even the relatively less-powerful Nintendo Switch got a port of The Witcher 3 from Saber Interactive. CD Projekt also supports streaming services, like Luna.
CDPR is adopting a console-first approach to development. This decision stems from the disastrous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in December 2020, and CDPR says it doesn’t want to make the same mistakes. The studio says that focusing on consoles first will make scaling up to PC easier than scaling down from PC to console.
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The Witcher 4 rumored story, setting, and characters
The Witcher games (and the Netflix series) are based on the Witcher novels by author Andrzej Sapkowski. CD Projekt’s first trilogy focused on Geralt’s journey, and many are wondering where the story could go in The Witcher 4 and beyond, or if it will adapt any elements of the Witcher books.
The Witcher is told from Ciri’s perspective. Game director Sebastian Kalemba told PC Gamer that it was a “natural choice” for The Witcher 4 to tell its story from Ciri’s perspective, building off the narrative in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
“There’s plenty of room for her and for us, also, to build on top of [her]. There’s so much room for exploration, and because she’s such a nuanced character, the beginning of her journey gives us freedom and so many opportunities to be able to dig in and use [that] for good,” he said.
In 2020, CD Projekt writer Jakub Szamałek was asked by VG247 if the studio had considered making Ciri the main character of a new Witcher game. Szamałek replied, “Interesting question. Would you like to play a game with Ciri as a lead character?”
“I regret we didn’t get to explore Ciri’s past a bit more,” he explained about Ciri’s story in The Witcher 3. “She’s such an amazingly rich and complex character. Due to obvious reasons–well, she’s pretty much gone for two-thirds of the game–she didn’t get quite as much screen time as we writers would have liked. But hey, maybe it’s something we’ll get back to in the future.”
While The Witcher 4’s story will focus on Ciri, Geralt will also appear.
For The Witcher 4, expect CDPR to continue building its own Witcher universe, something that Sapkowski is fine with as he said that the developers don’t ask him many questions anymore. “The contracts between me and the game people are excellent right now,” Sapokowski said. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
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Will there be Witcher 4 expansions?
While The Witcher 3 is getting a big expansion 12 years after it was first released, it doesn’t look like The Witcher 4 will be fleshing out its story with extra content. Instead, CDPR will focus on full games like The Witcher 5 and 6 instead of developing expansions.
“The plans are pretty ambitious–specifically, it’s to release three Witcher games within a six-year period,” joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said during an earnings call Q&A. “It would be difficult, to be very honest, for us to add an expansion to the upcoming trilogy. This is where we are here and now with this particular issue.”
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Who’s making The Witcher 4?
The Witcher 4 is in development at CD Projekt Red, the studio that made the previous trilogy spanning The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. As of November 2024, the game had entered full production, with more than 400 people now working on it.
The Witcher 4’s game director is Sebastian Kalemba, a CD Projekt veteran who started at the company in 2014 on The Witcher 3 and its expansions, before moving on to Cyberpunk 2077. In November 2022, Kalemba said, “I believe nothing is impossible and raising the bar, telling emotional stories, and creating worlds is what we’re here for. I’m proud to be part of CDPR and work with such a talented and passionate team.”
What are the new features in The Witcher 4?
As part of CD Projekt’s latest earnings briefing, joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski said The Witcher 4 is not going to be “The Witcher 3 in new clothing.” It aims to break new ground and stand apart from the games that came before it.
“When it comes to the risks of innovative elements–making a new game is always a creative risk, especially since we’re trying to push new boundaries and explore new fields; that’s something we haven’t actually done before. This is a pretty broad paintbrush stroke, for sure, but I cannot go into too much detail without actually talking about the game per se,” he said. “I guess what I’m saying is that you should not be expecting ‘The Witcher 3 in new clothing’ of sorts.”
The Witcher 4 builds on The Witcher 3 and other games that came before it. But Nowakowski said The Witcher 4 will add “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,” he said.
CD Projekt has not shown any gameplay footage or screenshots from the game so far, nor has the company discussed any “new gameplay elements” or mechanics just yet. Given that the sequel will be coming 10+ years after The Witcher 3, fans will no doubt expect a lot in terms of updates and improvements, while also retaining the essence of what they have come to expect.
One big–and welcome–gameplay choice is that CDPR won’t ask players to embark on fetch quests. Instead, the developers want each quest to feel interesting, and narrative director Philipp Webber said that CDPR’s philosophy is “to let people care about what they’re doing.”
Responding to Cyberpunk 2077’s issues
Cyberpunk 2077 infamously launched with a litany of bugs and issues that were so severe that Sony removed the game from its digital marketplace for a period of time. Thousands of people got refunds. CD Projekt steadily supported the game after launch with many updates and improvements, and the game is in a far better place today after its much-heralded 2.0 release and the launch of its Phantom Liberty expansion.
For The Witcher 4, CD Projekt engineering director Colin Walder said the company made several key changes. He told Inven Global that the company made it a priority to focus on console support from the beginning of development. To that end, he said in October 2023 that the company was running internal demos of The Witcher 4 “from the very beginning.” He said this was a step that CD Projekt took on Cyberpunk only “later” in development.
The Witcher 4 director Sebastian Kalemba told IGN that the way the studio produces games these days “has changed in very good ways.”
“We are very mindfully defining the stages of the production. We are very mindfully trying to scope it, making sure that the foundation is there,” he said. “I already see that it’s helping us to make sure that whatever we create right now is super coherent across the board. This way makes us feel that we control this super complex environment more than we used to, and that also makes everyone feel more secure when it comes to developing generally on a daily basis.”
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