Image: CD Projekt
Now the question becomes: will The Witcher 4 bring Geralt back?
CD Projekt tends to have very eventful financial calls, and its year-end call this week was no exception. In response to a question about the company’s shift to developing games on Unreal Engine 5, CEO Adam Kicinski confirmed that the company is already hard at work making The Witcher 4.
CD Projekt had previously announced a slate of upcoming games it has in development, including a title codenamed ‘Project Polaris’, which was planned to be the start of an all-new Witcher trilogy. Aside from circulating rumours and theories however, we had no actual confirmation that this trilogy would be a direct follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt… until now.
During this week’s financial call, CEO Adam Kicinski said of the company’s shift to Unreal Engine 5:
… And definitely for the first project, Polaris, it will maybe not slow down, but it won't accelerate the process. But for the next project, we assume that it should smooth the production. That was one of the reasons behind the strategy, that we want to release three big Witcher games within six years, starting from the release of Polaris, which is Witcher 4.
If the CEO is outright calling Project Polaris ‘The Witcher 4’, that’s as close to confirmation as we’re going to get: the next mainline Witcher game is a sequel to Geralt’s trilogy, even if it doesn't actually have him as a main character anymore. CD Projekt had previously confirmed that this new trilogy would explore new characters and stories, but now we know that it will likely take place right after The Witcher 3, and feature returning characters from the previous trilogy as well.
In an email sent to PC Gamer however, the company claims that its CEO’s statement was simply, “a slip of the tongue,” and that, “The official name of this project is Polaris.” The team is sticking to its codenames for now, and not even its CEO can change that. Still, we now know that even the head of the company is referring to Polaris by its true name: The Witcher 4.
CD Projekt's next release will be an expansion to Cyberpunk 2077 starring Idris Elba, titled Phantom Liberty.