To tell the story of Cyberpunk 2077 is to share a miracle, like turning water into wine or the Coney Island hot dog eating contest; the RPG had an embarrassing launch in 2020, but it eventually recovered almost completely. Now, developer CD Projekt Red is taking everything it learned from that experience and applying it to The Witcher 4.
“There were of course struggles right after Cyberpunk, but what defines us is the lesson you got through it,” game director Sebastian Kalemba tells Inverse in a new interview. “So with The Witcher and the new project we are working on right now — yeah, it’s a continuation of the evolution, improvement, and transformation we are going on.
“To make sure that the vision is there, everybody understands what we are doing,” Kalemba continues. “Not just on a project level, it’s a vision for the company level. It’s the strategy that we all understand how to participate, so we are all going in the same direction.”
This more unified approach to game development shakes every level of CD Projekt Red together like orange juice, in a healthy way the developer hasn’t experienced before. Kalemba notes that, teams like the one working on The Witcher 4, “when it comes to development, there are many changes. But among them, we do have much better and transparent communication, more honest communication within the teams, within the leadership, between the projects, with the board, so we all have the same goals.
“We talk a lot,” he says, “a bit making sure those people are the best possible people, there’s a healthy way that they work, and also they’re having fun with what they do, and don’t forget about that, right?”