THE WITCHER 4 TO ENTER PRODUCTION THIS YEAR AS TEAM GROWS TO OVER 400 PEOPLE
CD Projekt has shifted the majority of its staff to The Witcher 4’s development, as the studio prepares to kick off production on the sequel.
With only small updates planned for Cyberpunk 2077 following DLC expansion Phantom Liberty, CD Projekt has now shifted the bulk of its resources to The Witcher 4.
The next Witcher game, codenamed Polaris, was originally announced via a logo in 2022, which is set to be the first in a new trilogy of games. Little else is known about the next outing though, or whether it’ll even be called ‘The Witcher 4’.
While the project will likely be a few years away yet, CD Projekt has confirmed the title is now the main priority at the studio with the majority of staff now assigned to the sequel.
During an earnings call for the 2023 fiscal year, CD Projekt showed a graphic of how its staff has been split across its various upcoming projects – with 403 of its total 627 staff members working on Polaris.
The rest of the studio’s staff is working on Cyberpunk 2077, a follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077 codenamed Orion which is in the concept phase, a spin-off Witcher game titled Project Sirius, and a new IP codenamed Hadar.
Polaris is still billed as being in the pre-production phase, but CD Projekt reiterated that full production is scheduled to begin ‘in the second half of the year’.
The developer previously stated 250 people were working on Polaris in August last year, with many team members moving to the project following the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 DLC expansion Phantom Liberty.
In an interview with Lega Nerd last year about Polaris, game director Sebastian Kalemba said the studio wants to push the boundaries of what a role-playing game can be.
‘Our priority is to try to do something that always goes beyond the limits; we want to go further,’ he said. ‘We want to try to do something new compared to what we already see in RPGs. The idea is indeed to build something that goes beyond the previous The Witcher and that manages to tell something more intense, with also more intense gameplay.’
CD Projekt has not shared any release date or window for Polaris, and after the disastrous launch for Cyberpunk 2077, the studio might take as much time as it needs in order to avoid the same situation.
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2024-03-29T11:02:11Z dg43tfdfdgfd