On March 21st, 2022, CDPR announced that they have been working on a new Witcher game. After the major success of Witcher 3, a new game was to be expected. However, no one thought that it will be this soon.
In a post they have stated:
We’re happy to announce that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development, kicking off a new saga for the franchise.
This is an exciting moment as we’re moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, beginning a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. We’ll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.
At this point, no further details regarding the game — such as a development time frame or release date — are available.
From the photo that they posted, it’s evident that the new game will be about the school of the cat. This comes as no suprise since the development team confirmed long ago that everyone’s favorite protagonist, Geralt of Rivia, won’t be featured in future games.
Another interesting and new thing is that they are moving from REDengine. Since this has been a staple of CDPR through all these years, everyone is kind of uncertain of what the future brings. However, they will still be using RED for Cyberpunks expansion. Of course, there are only so many things that you can do in engine RED. So, it’s logical that they’ve moved on to something completely different.
Possible issues
The first concern many fans of the previous Witcher games have is the big change in the development team. After Witcher 3, a lot of staff members changed. With that in mind, the new game will probably look a lot different than its predecessor. Is it a good or a bad thing? Opinions are mixed.
And the second concern is the possibility of CDPR repeating their mistake. Cyberpunk was announced way too early. That resulted in the development team postponing the release date a lot of times. When the game finally came out, it was filled with bugs. Giving a lot of heavy promises didn’t end well for them either. Because so many players were furious about the game, Sony removed it completely from their store.
Conclusion
Will the game be multiplayer or singleplayer, will the main character be someone from the lore or will we be able to make our own, when’s the game to be expected… There are a lot of questions on our minds right now. So, all we can do is wait for more information from CDPR or a possible trailer.
