Don’t slap yourself silly, this isn’t a dream. It was just earlier this October that CD Projekt Red, the developers and publishers of the acclaimed The Witcher video game IP…and Cyberpunk 2077, revealed that they had quite the stacked development pipeline over the next half a dozen years or so. Today, one small part, a title formerly known as Canis Majoris, which was to be developed by a third party has been unveiled, to be a full remake of the game that kicked off a world-shaking trilogy, and forged the path that eventually lead to CD Projekt Red being known as one of the most talented studios in the business – The Witcher.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the company shared the news via social media platforms such as Twitter, saying “We’re thrilled to reveal that, together with @Fools_Theory, we’re working on remaking The Witcher using Unreal Engine 5 (codename: Canis Majoris)! We want to do this right, so please be patient — it’s gonna be a while until we can share more details.” before linking to their own website. Upon clicking through to the website, we get a larger comment, one that shares a snapshot of what the studio is aiming to achieve.
That comment reads,
We are thrilled to announce that The Witcher Remake is being worked on! That’s right, the game that started it all is being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5.
The game is currently in the early stages of development at the Polish studio Fool’s Theory, where veteran Witcher series staff are involved. We, as CD PROJEKT RED, are providing full creative supervision.
The Witcher Remake is what you might know by the codename “Canis Majoris”. It’s still early and we want to ensure that the game is created with the utmost care and attention to detail, therefore, while we’re excited to share the news with you, we want to ask you for patience as it will be a while until we start talking about this project in detail.
“The Witcher is where it all started for us, for CD PROJEKT RED. It was the first game we made, ever, and it was a big moment for us then. Going back to this place and remaking the game for the next generation of gamers to experience it feels just as big, if not bigger,” said Adam Badowski, Head of Studio, CD PROJEKT RED. “Collaborating with Fool’s Theory on the project is just as exciting, as some of the people there have been previously involved in The Witcher games. They know the source material well, they know how much gamers have been looking forward to seeing the remake happen, and they know how to make incredible and ambitious games. And although it will take some time before we’re ready to share more about and from the game, I know it’ll be worth the wait.“
As rumours continue to swirl that the developer/publisher/distributor might be on the shopping list of a major console player, some online are concluding that this announcement, alongside the others pertaining to both The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 of early October is designed to fatten up the price that anyone must pay to bring the company on board, not to make the sale impossible, but to simply lace their pockets further – and you would have to imagine that if this is true, then it’s absolutely working.
