CD Projekt RED has made it a habit out of crafting massive, highly detailed open world experiences, and as you’d expect, the developer doesn’t intend to buck the trend with its next game, The Witcher 4, which has now entered full production. In fact, if anything, you can expect it to be an even bigger and more ambitious title than the studio’s previous open world megatons.
Speaking in a recent interview with Eurogamer, CD Projekt RED’s vice president of technology Charles Tremblay touched on the same, explaining that the studio’s current tech foundations – after having adopted Unreal Engine 5 as its main production toolset – will enable it to ensure that its next project is “better, bigger, greater” than The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. And of course, as you’d imagine, the studio also wants to ensure it avoids another disastrous launch like Cyberpunk 2077.
“I will not say it’s easy, but I think that we have some cool stuff going, and hopefully that will have some good showcase [of the technology],” Tremblay said. “The only thing I will say is that changing the tech for us does not change the fact that we always will be ambitious. And the next game we do will not be smaller, and it will not be worse. So it will be better, bigger, greater than The Witcher 3, it will be better than Cyberpunk – because for us, it’s unacceptable [to launch that way]. We don’t want to go back.
“Even if there will be some ‘sweaty moments’ and maybe even some bad stuff happening, still, I think that we will try everything we can to make it even more than what we achieved in the past years. So the technology should not be a blocker for us, basically.”
In terms of size, Cyberpunk 2077’s world was decidedly smaller than The Witcher 3’s, though with both games, CD Projekt RED crafted massive and dense play spaces that were packed full of enough content to keep players occupied for dozens upon dozens of hours, even without their expansions included. That the studio intends to do something similar with its next project doesn’t come as a massive surprise.
It will, however, be a while before we learn much more about The Witcher 4. Though CDPR might drop the odd crumb here and there, don’t expect it to be fully unveiled until it’s about a year or so away from release.