CD Projekt Red starts The Witcher 4 in earnest, shifting two-thirds of its resources to preproduction

Cal Jeffrey

Cal Jeffrey

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Sharpen your swords: It's getting to be about that time. That time when The Witcher fans start saying, "I think I'm ready to play through The Witcher 3 again." I've been considering this myself. So maybe it's not a coincidence that CDPR just confirmed it has its Witcher 4 (or whatever they plan to call it) team in place several months ahead of schedule.

True to its word, CD Projekt Red has formed a production team of over 400 developers to begin work on The Witcher 4. It promised to do as much in January, adding that it would employ AI in the upcoming game's development. However, co-CEO Adam Badowski said that AI would not replace humans; it is just being used to make development more efficient and potentially avoid the mistakes made with Cyberpunk 2077.

"We think that AI is something that can help improve certain processes in game production but not replace people," explained Badowski. "We believe that in the future, we'll avoid a premiere like the one we faced with Cyberpunk 2077."

Indeed, the team working on "Polaris" (The Witcher 4's codename) has grown to 403 employees, about two-thirds of the entire CDPR staff. Many have gradually trickled in from the CP2077 update team. However, staffing has ramped up significantly, considering that in January, Badowski said they hoped to have 400 people working on Polaris by the end of summer.


Click to enlarge

Despite the large workforce, the game is still in the preproduction phase. However, since the team has reached management's staffing goal ahead of schedule, the project might enter full production before the second half of 2024 instead of after, as Badowski previously projected.

The Witcher 4 is just one of several projects CDPR outlined in a 2022 roadmap. According to those plans, Polaris is not just The Witcher 4 but the start of a new Witcher trilogy. The company also confirmed Project Orion (Cyberpunk 2077 sequel) and Project Hadar, which is supposed to be an entirely new IP. The studio will additionally oversee third-party development of The Witcher remake from Fool's Theory, and a vague Witcher RPG title from a TBA developer planned for a more distant future.

It is too early to speculate on a possible release date for Project Polaris, but CDPR has previously said it plans to launch the entire trilogy over six years. Assuming that each game takes two years and the first goes into full production by September, we could see the next Witcher game by the fall of 2026.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/102449-cd-projekt-red-starts-witcher-4-earnest-shifting.html

 
Keeping my finger's crossed that we'll see a significant time jump forward from TW3, leave Geralt and all of his cast and crew behind. His story is finished after Blood and Wine, he chilled out at Corvo Blanco and met a peaceful end with the Sorceress of his choice. Put a lid on that, its done, finished, and opening it up will only make it worse.

Give us a named but customizable Witcher (Like a Commander Shep or a V) who has an established personality and presence for strong story telling.
 
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It really doesn't means a lot: they can be "Ahead of schedule" all they want but if in say, 4 years they're like 40% done, an executive decides he will take Jensen's check to include DLSS 6 or whatever Nvidia is peddling at that point and once that deal is in place he'll go into a bunch of debt to launch a massive marketing campaign and then the dev team is *!@#* again they get 1 more year: No testing, no bug-patching, half the features don't get to be implemented at all it's all the same because the suits already decided again that the game is coming out by X date no matter what and the best they can get is to push it back to the next immediate holiday season (Likely November of whatever year they settle on) and they'll release another broken game just like Cyberpunk.

This is pretty much the cycle that we can expect of most modern games and until proven otherwise, ALL OF CDPR games in the future: nobody should forgive and forget just don't buy the *!@#*( game until it's been out for however long it takes it to be functional.
 
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Every Witcher game has been better than the previous one with TW3 being an absolute banger of a game overall. It is close to impossible TW4 will be as good or better. I just hope it doesn't suck like most new games to these years.
 
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WhiteLeaff said:
They abandoned their own Engine to embrace the facilities of the EU5, so don't expect anything good.
Click to expand...
Why not? The unreal engine 5 games so far have not disappointed and all the tech demos are just getting better and better.

I'm more worried about the story. The games so far were largely/loosely based on the books. Will have to see how they manage without.

I've seen some rumours of possibly having a Ciri focused game which could be interesting.
 
Axeia said:
Why not? The unreal engine 5 games so far have not disappointed and all the tech demos are just getting better and better.

I'm more worried about the story. The games so far were largely/loosely based on the books. Will have to see how they manage without.

I've seen some rumours of possibly having a Ciri focused game which could be interesting.
Click to expand...

-I'd like for Ciri to be a link to the prior game, but not the main character. IMO her story has been told.

It would be fun for her to be an "old woman" and essentially act as our character's Vesimir. Would be a fun way to tie the two games together.
 
Axeia said:
Why not? The unreal engine 5 games so far have not disappointed and all the tech demos are just getting better and better.

I'm more worried about the story. The games so far were largely/loosely based on the books. Will have to see how they manage without.

I've seen some rumours of possibly having a Ciri focused game which could be interesting.
Click to expand...
Which game developed at UE5 is an example of graphic quality combined with good optimization? What I've seen so far is a festival of poorly finished games, dependent on upscaling to run as they should.

For me, the only reason for companies with the capital to maintain their own engines to migrate to UE5 is to cut costs by using the poorly optimized shortcuts that the engine offers.
 
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WhiteLeaff said:
They abandoned their own Engine to embrace the facilities of the EU5, so don't expect anything good.
Click to expand...
I agree with you. I just played Robocop on Unreal engine 5 and still playing Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom liberty.

Robocop at 4k maximum settings with dlaa and lumen reflections I get around 60 fps. The game looks amazing imo.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/umiMtiHBzjsrfUPS9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eemqvPxdHK2Kz13QA


Phantom liberty with dlaa at 4k with pathtracing gets around 25fps.
Patching off but RT on with Ray reconstruction with 4k dlss set to quality I am getting around 60 fps.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZggAnw6Qoojgjhb57

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8r2eLwVe9utkeM5z8

While this is like comparing apples to oranges because the complexity of cyberpunk is definitely higher than Robocop.


If they can make the Witcher 4 run as good as Robocop while being as complex as Cyberpunk 2.0 and maybe even more visually pleasing especially with the newer 5.4 version or better then there is hope.

While Cyberpunk with pathtracing or rt without pathtracing will probably require a 5090 to play at 4k dlaa 60 fps games like Robocop with Unreal engine which look great can run on today's hardware at 4k dlaa 60 fps.
 
godrilla said:
I agree with you. I just played Robocop on Unreal engine 5 and still playing Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom liberty.

Robocop at 4k maximum settings with dlaa and lumen reflections I get around 60 fps. The game looks amazing imo.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/umiMtiHBzjsrfUPS9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eemqvPxdHK2Kz13QA


Phantom liberty with dlaa at 4k with pathtracing gets around 25fps.
Patching off but RT on with Ray reconstruction with 4k dlss set to quality I am getting around 60 fps.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZggAnw6Qoojgjhb57

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8r2eLwVe9utkeM5z8

While this is like comparing apples to oranges because the complexity of cyberpunk is definitely higher than Robocop.


If they can make the Witcher 4 run as good as Robocop while being as complex as Cyberpunk 2.0 and maybe even more visually pleasing especially with the newer 5.4 version or better then there is hope.

While Cyberpunk with pathtracing or rt without pathtracing will probably require a 5090 to play at 4k dlaa 60 fps games like Robocop with Unreal engine which look great can run on today's hardware at 4k dlaa 60 fps.
Click to expand...
Yeah, It's not a fair comparison; open-world RPGs with dynamic elements, intricate logic, and countless polygons in motion are a different kind of challenge. However, CP2077 without ray tracing is quite light on system requirements.

A great example of a beautifully optimized game is RDR 2.
 
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Please make it shorter and less padded than 3. Half as long with twice the interactivity with whats there would be fine with me.
 
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