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The Witcher IV
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| The Witcher IV | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | CD Projekt Red[a] |
| Publisher | CD Projekt |
| Director | Sebastian Kalemba |
| Writer | Philipp Weber |
| Composers |
|
| Series | The Witcher |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5 |
| Platforms | |
| Release | 2028 |
| Genre | Action role-playing |
| Mode | Single-player |
The Witcher IV[b] is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. It is the planned first installment of a new trilogy in The Witcher series, which is based on the book series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowski. The game is set after the events of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). Unlike the original trilogy, which featured book protagonist Geralt of Rivia as the playable character, The Witcher IV features his adoptive daughter, Ciri, as the protagonist. The Witcher IV is being developed for release on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. It is planned to release in 2028.
Gameplay
The Witcher IV is an action role-playing game set in the open world of The Witcher's Continent.[1][2] The player controls Ciri, a monster hunter, exploring the world on foot and may summon her horse, Kelpie, at will.[3][4] The game introduces new playable regions,[5] including the Kovir region, which was only mentioned in previous Witcher games and explored in the books.[6]
Development
In March 2022, CD Projekt Red (CDPR) announced that they were working on a new game in The Witcher series.[7] By October, the studio revealed that this entry, internally codenamed "Project Polaris", would initiate a new trilogy.[8] Following the release of Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), CDPR made structural changes to its production process, aimed at refining development phases and fostering cohesive designs for future projects, including the new Witcher game.[9] CD Projekt Red sought to address issues from Cyberpunk 2077's development during work on The Witcher IV by mandating the creation of more complete documentation that must be shared across the company.[10] It remained in pre-production from May 2022 until November 2024, when full production began.[11][12] During the pre-production period, CD Projekt Red began moving staff off of work on Cyberpunk 2077 following the release of its Phantom Liberty expansion with the "Polaris" team reaching 403 members in March 2024.[13] By March 2026, 499 employees were working on the project.[14] By May 2026, the development team on The Witcher IV had grown to 513 staff members, over double that of The Witcher 3's core 240 person team.[15] CD Projekt temporarily assigned a small team from Fool's Theory, the developer of The Witcher (2007) remake, to assist CDPR with The Witcher IV due to shared assets and technology.[16] Polish analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski claimed that the The Witcher IV's development will cost $390 million with another $390 million spent on marketing, making it one of the most expensive video games to develop.[17]
Game director Sebastian Kalemba stated that the developers intend to expand player agency by offering more narrative choices. Drawing on their experience with Cyberpunk 2077, the studio also seeks to enhance gameplay flexibility, including character builds and encounters, and create greater coherence across main story missions, side quests, and open world activities.[9]
Narrative
The developers aim to maintain established canon, ensuring player choices in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) do not create contradictions. Recognizing potential player unfamiliarity with previous titles, CDPR intends The Witcher IV to serve as both an accessible entry point and a continuation for veteran players.[9] The studio has long considered a game featuring Ciri as the main protagonist, describing her as a "very organic, logical choice". As an adoptive daughter of the original trilogy's protagonist Geralt of Rivia, she previously appeared as a supporting and occasionally playable character in Wild Hunt.[18][19] CDPR's franchise and lore designer, Cian Maher, stated that "The Witcher as a title refers to both Geralt and Ciri and always has", arguing that Ciri was "more important" to the plot than Geralt. Unlike Geralt, a seasoned monster hunter throughout the series, Ciri in The Witcher IV is depicted as an aspiring hunter who is "about to form her own codex on her own terms".[9]
Casting
In December 2024, it was announced that British actress Ciara Berkeley had been cast as Ciri, taking over the role from Jo Wyatt, who voiced the character in Wild Hunt.[20] Looking ahead, CD Projekt Red knew they would be creating future trilogy focused on Ciri so needed a younger actress to portray Ciri who had "a certain agility when recording the character in motion capture" according to Sebastian Kalemba.[21] Casting the new Ciri took over a year, looking at hundreds of actresses.[21] Doug Cockle will reprise his role as Geralt.[22]
Technology
Graphics
CD Projekt Red is developing The Witcher IV with a "console-first" approach, breaking with their traditional approach of targeting PC first before scaling down to consoles. CD Projekt Red said they wanted to avoid the same issues with Cyberpunk 2077 that had been developed with PC in mind first as it suffered from serious performance issues at launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. With The Witcher IV, CDPR vice president Jakub Knapik explained that "it's easier to scale up than down" after the studio had been able to set a visual and technical foundation on weaker consoles.[23] The game is being developed using Unreal Engine 5, which CDPR adopted after transitioning away from their proprietary REDengine—the technology previously used for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) and Wild Hunt.[7] The decision to move to Unreal Engine 5 was informed by CD Projekt Red seeking to have multiple titles in production simultaneously. REDengine was less flexible as it had to be adapted for each new title. REDengine was built for single-player games exclusively so it could not support any future multiplayer development without major updates.[24] For The Witcher IV, CD Project Red partnered with Epic Games to collaborate on Unreal Engine technology, including the engine's open-world capabilities, improving open-world asset streaming and optimizing performance.[25] The Witcher IV will feature the higher quality hardware-accelerated Lumen ray tracing engine in Unreal Engine 5 rather than software Lumen.[24] The Witcher IV will incorporate Nvidia's RTX Mega Geometry system on PC to accelerate the building of bounding volume hierarchies (BVHs) during ray tracing in scenes with high levels of geometry.[26] An RTX Mega Geometry and path tracing demo from Nvidia was shown at GDC 2026, using assets for The Witcher IV provided by CD Projekt Red, featuring 60 million plants and one million trees across a 5km×5km area totalling more than 10 million polygons.[27]
The Witcher IV uses Nanite Foliage, introduced in Unreal Engine 5.6, to represent distant foliage using voxel primitives over traditional triangles.[28] This is faster to render as every leaf and pine needle in foliage can be represented as a cube the size of a pixel.[29] Michał Janiszewski, environment art director, explained that "95% of our screen is often foliage" which needs to be rendered quickly and felt that the studio could not achieve the same forest density without Nanite Foliage.[30] Nanite Foliage's LOD transitions are handled via voxelization and Hierachical LOD (HLOD) blending that groups objects together, reducing memory calls and visable pop-in.[30] Nanite Foliage was first demonstrated with The Witcher IV's tech demo at Unreal Fest 2025.
Animation
In February 2026, it was reported that Lucie Hennet had been hired by CD Projekt Red as a cinematic animator. Hennet had previously worked on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 refining raw motion capture footage into facial and body animations.[31] The Witcher IV will feature a new horse animation system that simulates horse muscles moving under the skin, similar to that found in Red Dead Redemption 2.[32] CD Projekt Red are using Unreal Engine's multi-character Motion Matching so the animations when Ciri mounts her horse Kelpie are synchronised.[33] Ciri's face model is a "direct copy" from The Witcher 3 except for two subtle changes to give her slightly raised eyebrows and a more relaxed eye area.[34] These changes were made in order to give animators more detailed control over the character's facial animations through the MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine 5.[35]
Marketing and release
The Witcher IV was announced with a cinematic trailer at the Game Awards in December 2024.[36] The trailer was created in collaboration with Platige Image, an animation studio responsible for producing the intro cinematics for the previous Witcher games.[37] It was pre-rendered in-engine on a then-unannounced GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, rather than displaying real-time rendered scenes.[38][39] During the State of Unreal presentation in June 2025, a tech demo for The Witcher IV was showcased, running on PlayStation 5.[40]
According to Piotr Nielubowicz, CD Projekt's chief financial officer, The Witcher IV will not be released before 2027.[41] The game is scheduled to release in 2028 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.[42][43][44] CD Projekt's joint CEO Michał Nowakowski stated that the studio will "most likely not release expansions" for the planned trilogy as it did for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, explaining that doing so would be difficult due to their goal of releasing the titles within a six-year timeframe, focusing instead on core game releases.[45][46]
Notes
References
- ↑ Middler, Jordan (19 December 2024). "INTERVIEW: CD Projekt Red wants The Witcher 4 to be a 'deeper' open world, not just a larger one". Video Games Chronicle. Archived from the original on 4 June 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- ↑ Kalemba, Sebastian (3 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo on PS5 revealed". PlayStation.Blog. Archived from the original on 4 June 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- ↑ Diaz, Ana (13 December 2024). "Witcher 4 trailer reveals Ciri as its playable protagonist". Polygon. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Williams, Demi (3 June 2025). "Five things we learned from The Witcher 4's technical demo". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 4 June 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- ↑ Coleman, Jack (17 December 2024). "The Witcher 4's Map Will Be "More Or Less" The Same Size As The Witcher 3". TheGamer. Archived from the original on 31 January 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- ↑ Koselke, Anna (3 June 2025). "Where is The Witcher 4 setting Kovir? Everything we know about the little-known kingdom that got a minor shout-out in The Witcher 3". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 4 June 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- 1 2 Sarkar, Samit (21 March 2022). "The next Witcher game is in development". Polygon. Archived from the original on 14 September 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Jones, Ali (4 October 2022). "Everything announced at the CD Projekt Red investor call". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 11 August 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- 1 2 3 4 Purslow, Matt (13 December 2024). "Inside The Witcher 4: CD Projekt Red's Plans For Its Next Big RPG". IGN. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Serin, Kaan (19 May 2026). ""We learned our lesson": The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 won't repeat the development mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red says". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Dinsdale, Ryan (26 May 2022). "The Witcher 4 Has Entered Pre-Production". IGN. Archived from the original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Broadwell, Josh (26 November 2024). "CDPR's Project Polaris, aka The Witcher 4, is finally in full production, as Cyberpunk 2077 sales hit new milestone". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on 10 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Scullion, Chris (28 March 2024). "Two thirds of CD Projekt developers are now working on The Witcher 4, reaching its target staff size". Video Games Chronicle. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Bailey, Dustin (19 March 2026). "The Witcher 4 is "steaming ahead" as CD Projekt rapidly expands with 220 new developers in the past year, and nearly 500 in total working on the RPG". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 19 March 2026. Retrieved 19 March 2026.
- ↑ Evans-Thirwell, Edwin (29 May 2026). "The Witcher 4 is the work of over twice as many CD Projekt staff as The Witcher 3, in a fresh display of how blockbluster team sizes have ballooned". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Wales, Matt (26 March 2025). "CD Projekt shares Witcher and Cyberpunk project updates, announces partnership with mobile studio Scopely". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 26 March 2025. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
- ↑ Williams, Isaiah (23 January 2026). "CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 4 may be up there with GTA 6 in rumored production costs". TechRadar. Retrieved 20 April 2026.
- ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley (13 December 2024). "The Witcher 4 Developer CD Projekt Explains Why It Went With Ciri Over Continuing With Geralt as Protagonist". IGN. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Karmali, Luke (15 December 2014). "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Will Let You Play as Ciri". IGN. Archived from the original on 2 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Bevan, Rhiannon (13 December 2024). "[Updated] The Witcher 4 Trailer Recasts Ciri". TheGamer. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- 1 2 Mańka, Michał (20 December 2024). ""Chcemy dokręcić gameplay i samo doświadczenie polowania na potwory" - rozmawiamy z twórcami Wiedźmina 4" ["We want to tighten up the gameplay and the monster hunting experience itself" - we talk to the creators of The Witcher 4]. GRYOnline.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 20 April 2026.
- ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley (13 December 2024). "Geralt Is in The Witcher 4 and That Is Indeed Doug Cockle's Voice in the Trailer, CD Projekt Confirms". IGN. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Lewis, Claire (16 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 is being developed with a 'console-first' mindset, CDPR devs say". Polygon. Retrieved 30 March 2026.
- 1 2 Battaglia, Alex; Judd, Will (16 June 2025). "Inside The Witcher 4 tech demo: the CD Projekt Red and Epic interview". Digital Foundry. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
- ↑ Laird, Jeremy (4 June 2025). "CD Projekt Red and Epic claim Witcher 4 development 'ramped up dramatically' Unreal Engine's open world game capabilities". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2 February 2025.
- ↑ Edser, Andy (10 March 2026). "Nvidia's RTX Mega Geometry system will be sprucing up the forests of The Witcher 4, making for some lush-looking ray traced trees to go Witcher-ing within". PC Gamer. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
- ↑ Sinha, Ravi (3 April 2026). "The Witcher 4's RTX Mega Geometry Demo Features 60 Million Plants, Runs at 4K/80 FPS With DLSS". GamingBolt. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Evanson, Nick (3 June 2025). "The Witcher 4's leafy glory is all down to Epic's Nanite Foliage, and largely so is the fact it can run ray-traced at 60 fps on a lowly PS5". PC Gamer. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ LeBlanc, Wesley (3 June 2025). "Get A New Look At The Witcher IV In Unreal Engine Technical Showcase". Game Informer. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- 1 2 Dean, Ian (4 June 2025). "How The Witcher 4's "infinite forest" is being built one branch at a time using Unreal Engine 5.6". Creative Bloq. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Scullion, Chris (24 February 2026). "Clair Obscur cinematic animator joins The Witcher 4 studio CD Projekt Red". Video Games Chronicle. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
- ↑ Bea, Robin (3 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 Shows Off Its New Setting In An Impressive Tech Demo". Inverse. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
- ↑ Koselke, Anna (3 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 sees Red Dead Redemption 2's horse anatomy and submits "realistic muscles moving and stretching" under the skin of Ciri's horse Kelpie". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
- ↑ Gerblick, Jordan (3 June 2025). "CDPR says Ciri's face in the new Witcher 4 trailer is "a direct copy of The Witcher 3 model" despite "two subtle changes"". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Daniels, Joelle (4 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 – CD Projekt RED Says Ciri's Face is Copied From The Witcher 3". GamingBolt. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley (13 December 2024). "The Witcher 4 Revealed With Debut Trailer, CD Projekt Confirms Single-Player Open-World Action RPG — The Game Awards 2024". IGN. Archived from the original on 17 April 2025. Retrieved 7 June 2025.
- ↑ "The Witcher IV Revealed at The Game Awards". CD Projekt Red. 13 December 2024. Archived from the original on 18 December 2024. Retrieved 19 December 2024.
- ↑ Edser, Andy (13 December 2024). "The Witcher 4 reveal trailer has been 'pre-rendered on an unannounced Nvidia GeForce GPU' which tells us... not much actually". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 13 December 2024. Retrieved 13 December 2024.
- ↑ Bailey, Dustin (7 January 2025). "The Witcher 4's gorgeous reveal trailer was "pre-rendered" on Nvidia's $2,000 RTX 5090". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 8 January 2025. Retrieved 8 January 2025.
- ↑ McEvoy, Sophie (4 June 2025). "CD Projekt Red clarifies Unreal showcase of Witcher 4 was tech demo, not gameplay". GamesIndustry.biz. Archived from the original on 10 June 2025. Retrieved 7 December 2025.
- ↑ Chalk, Andy (25 March 2025). "The Witcher 4 won't be out until sometime in 2027 at the soonest, CD Projekt says". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 26 March 2025. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
- ↑ Yin-Poole, Wesley (24 August 2026). "The Witcher 4 Confirmed for 2028 Release in Official CD Projekt Gamescom 2026 Announcement". IGN. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
- ↑ Barker, Sammy (15 June 2025). "The Witcher 4 Being Built for PS5 First and Foremost, Will Target 60fps". Push Square. Archived from the original on 15 June 2025. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
- ↑ Middler, Jordan (15 June 2025). "Getting The Witcher 4 to run at 60FPS on Xbox Series S will be 'extremely challenging' says CDPR". Video Games Chronicle. Archived from the original on 15 June 2025. Retrieved 15 June 2025.
- ↑ McEvoy, Sophie (1 June 2026). "CD Projekt begins "most intensive phase" of Witcher 4, expands team to over 500 devs". GamesIndustry.biz. Archived from the original on 2 June 2026. Retrieved 6 June 2026.
- ↑ Williams, Demi (29 May 2026). "'It would be difficult, to be very honest, for us to add an expansion to the upcoming trilogy' — CD Projekt Red says the studio's 'ambitious' plans could mean no The Witcher 4 DLC". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 31 May 2026. Retrieved 6 June 2026.
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