CD Projekt RED has officially announced that a new Witcher video game is in development in partnership with Epic’s Unreal Engine 5!
The rumors have been going on for years. It’s finally official. The next video game in The Witcher series is currently in development as the press release from CD Projekt RED states.
Today’s announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015. The game has won 250 Game of the Year awards and received two major expansions whose content was praised by everyone and could have easily been marked as stand-alone games.
Both Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine were priced way below the actual value they provided in gameplay, content, changes and features.
The teaser image for the new game features a medallion, accompanied by the phrase A New Saga Begins. Beyond this initial confirmation of a new saga in The Witcher franchise, no further details — such as a development time frame or release date — were provided.
CD Projekt RED also announced that they will be moving to Unreal Engine 5 as part of what they call a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games.
Since The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, released in 2011, CD Project RED has used their own in-house developed REDengine technology to build their games.
This new relationship with Epic covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant.
Developers from CD Projekt RED will collaborate with those from Epic with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences, beginning with the development of the next game in The Witcher franchise.
Speaking on the use of Unreal Engine 5 for this, and future games, CTO of CD Projekt RED, Paweł Zawodny stated:
“One of the core aspects of our internal RED 2.0 Transformation is a much stronger focus on technology, and our cooperation with Epic Games is based on this principle. From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership.”
Paweł Zawodny also confirms that the studio has lost a considerable amount of time in the early stages of the development of their previous games preparing the REDEngine for the next title and its own requirements and needs.
“It is vital for CD PROJEKT RED to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as; in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can’t wait for the great games we’re going to create using Unreal Engine 5!”
Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games, also added:
“Epic has been building Unreal Engine 5 to enable teams to create dynamic open worlds at an unprecedented scale and level of fidelity. We are deeply honored by the opportunity to partner with CD PROJEKT RED to push the limits of interactive storytelling and gameplay together, and this effort will benefit the developer community for years to come.”
Simultaneously with these announcements, CD Projekt RED also provided confirmation that REDengine, the technology which powers Cyberpunk 2077, is still being used for the development of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.
An announcement that something is in development is not as exciting as an announcement with a release date targeted, but it’s still huge news. We knew that there will be a Witcher 4 game for over three years. When Witchercon became a thing, it was more than clear that there will be more Witcher content on the video games front.
CD Projekt RED confirmed more Witcher games back in 2018 and then once again in 2021 when the studio announcedtheir new strategy for future games development.
The teaser text on the image shared with the press release message features the line “A New Saga Begins”. This almost excludes Ciri. It could still be about her and her new adventures as a Witcher, which she becomes at the end of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I personally believe we are about to see new set of characters introduced, events happening in a new time frame.
My personal wish is for the new game to bring us in the early days and show us events when Witchers were plenty in numbers and epic monsters were roaming The Continent after the Conjunction of the Spheres.
A story or series of stories depicting the life of a young Vesemir would also be fantastic, despite the fact that we kind of saw this in the Netflix Anime Nightmare of the Wolf.
Update: Marcin Momot has confirmed that this is a Lynx medallion. This kind of points out to the School of the Lynx, which means that the game will be set sometime after the events from The Witcher 3. The School of the Lynx was founded shortly after the members of the School of the Wolf split up following Vesemir’s death. If this is the case, then we are deep into CD Projekt RED’s Witcher lore territory and the game may not draw much directly from the Sapkowski books as the previous games did.
If Netflix and CD Projekt RED follow the same time schedule of Witchercon 2021 we will eventually learn a lot more details about the new Witcher game in the 2022 edition of the Witchercon.
