The past week has been full of announcements for upcoming games. Gamers have gotten a better look at highly anticipated titles like Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (2027), Silent Hill: Townfall (2026), Alien Isolation 2 (coming soon), Resident Evil: Veronica (2027), and so much more. There have also been a lot of surprise announcements, like the long-awaited sequel to The Wolf Among Us (2013), God of War: Laufey (2027) and Until Dawn 2 (2027).
One game fans have eagerly been waiting for is CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher IV, a direct sequel to one of the greatest action role-playing games (RPGs) ever made, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). The Witcher IV has been in development for a long time, and fans of the franchise are even more eager to get their hands on this game after the rapid and disappointing decline in quality of Netflix’s The Witcher (2019-Present). With The Witcher IV finally on the horizon, The Witcher franchise is about to enter a brand-new era.
The Witcher IV Will Be CD Projekt RED’s Biggest Game Ever
CD Projekt RED (CDPR) is part of CD Projekt, a Polish video game company that has brought the world of gaming some of the most iconic and recognizable games on the market. CD Projekt RED is best known for The Witcher series, based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s novel series of the same name. Alongside The Witcher, CDPR also developed Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), one of the first games to launch on the PlayStation 5, and really highlighted the power and capability of Next Gen consoles.
While Cyberpunk 2077 has spawned an entire franchise, including the Netflix original animated series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022-Present), and a sequel game in the works, CD Projekt RED is still best known for The Witcher franchise, and for good reason. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt became the gold standard for action RPGs, and over the last decade, gamers have seen many video game developers attempt to mimic Wild Hunt’s success.
Wild Hunt’s popularity and replayability are what has made The Witcher IV such a highly-anticipated video game. Fans have waited over a decade to get their hands on the next installment of this phenomenal fantasy game series. With so much anticipation, there isn’t much room for error on CDPR’s part, though, and they are taking the challenge very seriously.
Currently, the developer team for The Witcher IV has a headcount of over 500 developers, 513, to be exact. That is more than double the number of developers who worked on Wild Hunt, which was about 240. Wild Hunt sold over 65 million copies, a staggering success, so CDPR understands the importance of expectations weighing on the next installment. As mentioned, fans have waited for more than a decade for this game, and with so much praise and critical acclaim accompanying The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it’s all hands on deck to make The Witcher IV the best game it can be.
To put things into perspective, Cyberpunk 2077 also had a team about as big as the current Wild Hunt dev team. Although Cyberpunk is a huge success now, it did come with a shaky launch, especially since CDPR was forced to make the game compatible with the PlayStation 4 after a shortage of PS5s were available during the COVID-19 pandemic. Up until now, Cyberpunk 2077 was CDPR’s biggest project ever, but now The Witcher IV seems to be taking over that mantle. A sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is also in the works right now, allegedly with a similar-sized dev team, and CDPR is determined to avoid the same mistakes that plagued the game on launch.
The Next Few Years Are Going to Be Huge for CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher
By now, it’s common knowledge that The Witcher IV will be changing a lot of things, with the largest change coming in the form of the playable protagonist. The first three Witcher games all focused on Geralt of Rivia, a powerful Witcher who fights monsters for profit. The Witcher IV, following the events of Wild Hunt, will shift focus to Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, since Wild Hunt set the groundwork to shift Ciri to the forefront, so she could eventually take up the mantle.
The Witcher IV might be CDPR’s biggest project to date, but it’s not the only Witcher project in the works. Recently, CDPR confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be getting an expansion called “Songs of the Past”, which will be the first major expansion the game has seen since “Blood and Wine,” which came out in 2016. “Songs of the Past” will better help players prepare for The Witcher IV, and it is slated for a 2027 release window, though an exact release date hasn’t been confirmed yet.
A major expansion for a game that is more than a decade old is incredible news, but it’s not the only Witcher content to look forward to. CEO Michał Nowakowski and the rest of CD Projekt RED plan to release three Witcher games over the course of the next six years, which is extremely ambitious, since it’s taken more than 10 years between Wild Hunt and The Witcher IV. Needless to say, The Witcher IV is one of the three games, with a reported The Witcher 1 Remake coming in as the second of three projects. What the third project is has yet to be seen, but Witcher fans are in for a lot of new content over the next few years.
With so many Witcher projects in the works, it’s important to keep in mind that The Witcher IV will not be receiving massive expansions like “Blood and Wine” and “Songs of the Past.” CDPR has already confirmed that The Witcher IV will be a massive base game, but it will not receive major expansions after its initial release, so their developers can shift focus to the other upcoming Witcher projects. So, with all that in mind, The Witcher IV truly is setting the Witcher franchise up for a brand-new era, and it looks like it’ll be well worth the long wait.
- Developer(s)
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CD Projekt Red
- Publisher(s)
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CD Projekt Red
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5