Summary
- The Witcher 4 appeared at tonight’s Game Awards ceremony.
- The game’s first trailer showed off…
- CDPR has promised The Witcher 4 will exceed its previous titles.
The highly-anticipated Witcher 4 received an unexpected first trailer at tonight’s Game Awards. Though CD Projekt Red had previously announced that The Witcher 4 had entered full production, nobody expected development to have progressed to a trailer-worthy state.
This is especially surprising considering CDPR’s joint CEO Michal Nowakowski previously expressed a distaste for a lengthy marketing campaign, saying the studio wouldn’t fully announce a game until they were “really, really sure” they could hit a release date.
The Next Chapter Begins
Nonetheless, we got an exciting look at the next chapter of The Witcher series tonight. We see Ciri, now a fully-fledged witcher, save a woman being sacrificed by her village to an arachnid creature. After a lengthy fight, Ciri triumphs over the beast. Unfortunately for our new protagonist, the villagers still sacrifice the woman.
Unlike the studio’s previous games, The Witcher 4 is being developed using Unreal Engine 5, and not CDPR’s proprietary REDengine. The Witcher 4 is intended to be the first of a trilogy of games, mirroring the path of the original three games.
There’s already a considerable amount of hype surrounding The Witcher 4 (perhaps too much?), with lead engine programmer Charles Tremblay promising the title would be “better, bigger and greater” than anything that CD Projekt Red has released so far. Considering the roaring success of The Witcher 3 and the recent resurgence of Cyberpunk 2077, this is a bold statement to make.
Although Cyberpunk 2077 has been enjoying the spotlight recently, there’s no doubt that the success of The Witcher 3 is responsible for growing CD Projekt Red into the behemoth multi-studio outfit it has grown into. Returning to the series that catapulted CD Projekt into the heights of triple-A development is sure to be a tantalising prospect for the studio.
Geoff Keighley teased The Witcher 4 would be coming “beyond 2025,” suggesting we’re still a few years from release.
The Witcher 4
The Witcher 4 is an upcoming RPG from Polish developer CD Projekt Red, and codenamed Polaris. Other than it being in development, little is known as to the plot, although CDPR has said it will start a new, multi-game saga.