CD Projekt Red employees shared details of the development of the hotly anticipated open-world fantasy RPG codenamed Polaris – aka The Witcher 4 – in an interview for Eurogamer’s October retrospective.
Image source: CD Projekt Red
According to CDPR Vice President of Engineering Charles Tremblay, the studio’s ambitions have not diminished from the transition from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5. The Witcher 4 will be released simultaneously on PC and consoles.
«The next game won’t be smaller or worse. It will be better, bigger, bigger than The Witcher 3, and better than Cyberpunk 2077 – because it is unacceptable for us [to release the game in this form]. We don’t want to take a step back,” Tremblay said.
The game was transferred to UE5 not because of the shortcomings of REDengine, but to allow the studio to deal with several projects at once and relieve employees
CD Projekt co-head Michał Nowakowski said that The Witcher 4’s marketing campaign will be longer than Phantom Liberty’s (six months), but will not stretch over two years.
At the same time, before the full announcement, CDPR plans to whet the interest of fans with small teasers. The editors of Eurogamer admit that the first such “breadcrumbs” may appear at The Game Awards 2024 ceremony in December.
CDPR will not repeat the mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077 when promoting the game
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Earlier it became known that Polaris had entered the active production stage. The project employs 400 of CD Projekt Red’s 650 employees. The game is positioned as the first Witcher in a new trilogy.