CD Projekt Red has confirmed that the next entry in the beloved Witcher series is now in development. In a statement from the developer, the next instalment is set to start “a new saga for the franchise”.
“We’re happy to announce that the next instalment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development, kicking off a new saga for the franchise”.
The developer also revealed that the series is migrating from the REDengine over to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, as part of a “multi-year strategic partnership”. CD Projekt Red says that the deal will cover licensing and technical development of the popular game engine.
“This is an exciting moment as we’re moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, beginning a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant.”
“We’ll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.” The statement continued.
“At this point, no further details regarding the game — such as a development time frame or release date — are available.”
While few details were revealed, the developer did share a teaser image that shows what looks to be a new Witcher medallion partially buried in the snow.
Having formed a new partnership with Epic Games, some fans were left with concerns that the next Witcher game would be an Epic Games exclusive. CD Projekt Red were quick to put fans’ worries to rest, stating that they have no intention to restrict the game to one storefront.
How does this announcement affect CD Projekt Red’s other game, Cyberpunk 2077? With the developer having restructured to support multiple projects at once, todays news has no impact on the upcoming Cyberpunk expansion, nor will the game be swapping engines.
“REDengine, the technology which powers Cyberpunk 2077, is still being used for the development of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.”
Cyberpunk 2077’s long-awaited next generation versions for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S were released last month, with these new editions being fairly well received. Despite this, it seems as though CD Projekt Red’s shift to Unreal Engine is a move that perhaps aims to avoid as many technical issues as possible, a move that developers such as BioWare have also made recently.
[…] The next instalment, codenamed Nero, will reportedly be a prequel to the Mafia Trilogy, likely placing this game somewhere in the 1920’s. The report also claims that Hangar 13 plan to ditch the Mafia 3 engine in favour of Unreal Engine 5, a move recently made by CD Projekt Red for development on The Witcher 4. […]
[…] in March 2022, CD Projekt announced that they had begun development on the next entry in the Witcher franchise, codenamed Polaris. The developer said that the next game will commence “a new saga for the […]
[…] 2022, it was announced that development had begun on the next entry in The Witcher series. Codenamed […]