CD Projekt Red confirms new ‘The Witcher’ game is now in development
Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has announced that a new installment in the highly-acclaimed The Witcher franchise is now in development.
Details about the upcoming game remain under wraps as of this writing but the studio did confirm that the game is bringing a new saga in the franchise.
The announcement also came with a new teaser image for the newly announced game, which features a medallion similar to Geralt of Rivia’s wolf medallion and a phrase “A New Saga Begins.”
There is still no confirmation if the titular character, which is portrayed by Henry Cavill in the Netflix series adaptation, will return in the next installment.
However, some fans believe that the upcoming game’s main character might be Geralt’s adopted daughter, Ciri, as they pointed out that the medallion in the teaser appears to belong to the School of the Cat, one of the three schools mentioned in the Witcher books.
In the story, Ciri claimed a Feline witcher’s medallion from the lifeless body of infamous bounty hunter Leo Bonhart, who is said to have bested three witchers in combat.
“Today’s announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED’s previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons,” the studio said.
Other than the initial confirmation of the new game, CD Projekt Red remains mum on other details including storyline and release date.
Meanwhile, it also announced that instead of its proprietary REDengine technology, which the studio used to build games like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011, CD Projekt Red is moving the development of the new The Witcher game to Unreal Engine 5 as part of its multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games.
“This new relationship with Epic covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. Developers from CD PROJEKT RED will collaborate with those from Epic with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences, beginning with the development of the next game in The Witcher franchise,” the studio said.
Although the studio is utilizing Unreal Engine 5 for the new The Witcher installment, it confirmed that its REDengine is still being used for the development of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.
“One of the core aspects of our internal RED 2.0 Transformation is a much stronger focus on technology, and our cooperation with Epic Games is based on this principle,” CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said.
“From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. It is vital for CD PROJEKT RED to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as; in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools,” he added.
CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015, which also came with two expansions: Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.
In 2020, the studio released Cyberpunk 2077, which immediately garnered negative feedback from the gaming community over several issues including the game’s performance on last-gen consoles such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.