CD Projekt Announces New Trilogy of The Witcher
CD Projekt, a Polish video game development company, has announced the start of production for the first installment of a new trilogy of The Witcher. The production aims to expand the existing universe of the games and will be based on the Unreal Engine.
However, that’s not all that CD Projekt has in store. The company is already working on the continuation of the game Cyberpunk 2077, but in the early conceptual phase.
After concluding the story of Cyberpunk 2077 with the expansion pack Phantom Liberty, CD Projekt is finally ready to start production on their new game – “The Witcher 4,” which is officially titled Project Polaris. It will be a completely new adventure in the world of The Witcher.
According to a report from Reuters, CD Projekt CEO Adam Badowski expressed hope that the game’s development will be in full swing by mid-2024.
“We would like to have about 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year,” said Badowski, who assumed the position of co-CEO alongside Michal Nowakowski in January.
The new trilogy of The Witcher will be a separate series from the previous three games, which began with The Witcher in 2007 and culminated in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt in 2015 – considered by many as one of the best games of all time.
Overall, The Witcher series has sold over 75 million copies, transforming CD Projekt from an “eastern European second-tier developer” into a global AAA video game corporation. Characters such as Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer, created by Andrzej Sapkowski, have become iconic figures worldwide.
The new series of The Witcher with the project name “Polaris” will expand the medieval fantasy universe described in Sapkowski’s books and stories, as well as introduce a completely new storyline beyond Geralt of Rivia’s adventures. The first game of the trilogy is expected to be released in 2026 or 2027.
Furthermore, “The Witcher 4” will be the first CD Projekt game developed on an engine outside their internal REDengine and reportedly will utilize the latest Unreal Engine 5.
Currently, the main project of the studio is Cyberpunk 2077, which was released in 2020 in an incomplete form (especially unplayable on PlayStation 4). After three years of work, the game was ultimately declared finished in 2023, after the release of the Phantom Liberty expansion – a stellar conclusion to a challenging yet magnificent role-playing game.
According to Badowski, a sequel to Cyberpunk is in the plans and is currently in the conceptual phase. The project is named “Orion,” and it is estimated that around 80 programmers will be working on it by the end of the year.
According to Nowakowski, “Orion” may have multiplayer elements, but no further details have been revealed to Reuters.
The Polish studio has also signed an agreement with Anonymous Content for the production of a “reinterpretation” of Cyberpunk 2077 as a series or film.
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The source of the article is from the blog agogs.sk