CD Projekt RED CEO Michał Nowakowski revealed that the studio is really trying to do something new with their next The Witcher game.
As reported by GameSpot, Michal shared this statement when asked about the game in the company’s latest financial call:
“Making a new game is always a creative risk, especially since we’re trying to push new boundaries and explore new fields; that’s something we haven’t actually done before. This is a pretty broad paint brush stroke, for sure, but I cannot go into too much detail without actually talking about the game per se.
I guess what I’m saying is that you should not be expecting ‘The Witcher 3 in new clothing’ of sorts; of course we’re building on the shoulders of what came before, and on what we’ve learned, but we will be adding new gameplay elements and new mechanics that you have not seen in our previous games. I’d say doing such things is always a risk; it’s not just repeating what was done before.”
A lot of skepticism now surrounds CD Projekt RED, as they may have to win over the fans that they originally made when making the original The Witcher games. That’s partly still fallout from how they botched their production and release of Cyberpunk 2077.
So, without relitigating everything that happened for that title, CD Projekt RED was able to fix the game to the point that they were satisfied with it, and along the way, they did win many of their fans back. Cyberpunk 2077 is now considered a great game by many of those fans.
But there are also other gamers who are skeptical about that revival, since they weren’t able to really deliver on what they promised with the first marketing materials. These are genuinely fair criticisms and causes to be skeptical.
So CD Projekt RED really can’t just bring back their old games and hope they can coast on those fans who came back. If they can’t win everyone back, they should be looking to make new fans, who are open minded enough to give them a chance.
Of course, Michal’s statement also shared no indication of what they have in mind. Are they thinking of making the next The Witcher game a maso-core, Soulslike difficult game? Are they looking to incorporate the ‘physics engines’ ideas from the recent The Legend of Zelda games, bringing in an element of emergent gameplay?
Or do they have some genuine original ideas that we have yet to see? It’s certainly something that could be worth waiting for.
