During The Game Awards, CD Projekt Red finally showed the first look at The Witcher 4, the long-awaited follow up to 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In the nine years since that game’s release, CD Projekt Red’s subsequent game, Cyberpunk 2077, was launched with a number of bugs and issues that took years to fully address. And that’s not a mistake that the developer intends to make again with The Witcher 4.
The Witcher 4 director Sebastian Kalemba told IGN that the company’s Cyberpunk 2077 ordeal has changed the way it structures its game development.
“The way we produce right now has changed in a very good way,” explained Kalemba. “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. 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.”
Kalemba and executive producer Małgorzata Mitręga stressed that the development team now has greater communication between its subgroups and that CD Projekt Red is trying to create a better working environment to avoid the crunch-time stress that occurred during the production of both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.
The Witcher 4 was in pre-development for at least two years before it recently ramped up its team to over 400 developers and began full production. The developer also promised not to use AI to replace people as work on the project ramps up. The team has teased that The Witcher 4 will be “bigger and better” than both Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3.