We finally have our first taste of The Witcher 4 and it looks stunning in a new cinematic trailer that aired at The Game Awards 2024. The cinematic tease showed monster hunter Ciri stepping into mentor Geralt of Rivia’s shoes to take on a gnarly-looking beast in proper witcher fashion.
The game’s reveal gave us the perfect mix of what fans love about CD Projekt Red’s adaptation of the Polish fantasy series, with people making grim choices in a cruel world and the titular witcher forced to try and bring some semblance of empathy, truth, and justice to the chaos. We still don’t know much about what the sequel’s story, and the game is likely still years out, but it’s a great first impression.
CDPR recently announced that The Witcher 4 has entered full production following the end of post-launch development on Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a sequel to the 2015 open-world RPG The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, which is still considered by many to be one of the best story-driven RPGs ever. It will be a tall order for The Witcher 4 to live up to, but after Cyberpunk 2077‘s triumphant redemption arc, CDPR has proven it takes those expectations seriously.
The Witcher 4 is far from the only witcher-based project the studio has in development. It’s also working on a remake of the first game in the series, as well as a spin-off. Author Andrzej Sapkowski is also still writing more Witcher books, and the Netflix adaptation of the fantasy universe has two more seasons to wrap up before it’s finished.
There’s still no release window for The Witcher 4, but if all goes well it might still come out for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S before the current console generation ends. The trailer ended with a smidge of voice-over from Doug Cockle, Geralt’s voice actor. Hopefully that means the grizzled veteran still has a role to play in the sequel.
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