CD Projekt RED president Adam Kiciski has revealed that the company isn’t going to start work on The Witcher 1 Remake until after The Witcher 4.
Does this all sound familiar? That’s because it comes from the same investor call where Adam revealed that CD Projekt RED would not be starting work on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 until 2023, and only after they are finished with Phantom Liberty.
This time, the reason for staggering development is different, but the intent is very similar. CD Projekt RED plans to use the same technology that they will be developing when working on The Witcher 4 on the remake.
If you think about it, it does stand to reason that CD Projekt RED will be spending the time and effort making The Witcher 4 to familiarizing themselves to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series hardware, their ability to immediately load games, and the requirement to use SSD to make the most out of their performance potential.
We do have some idea of how much CD Projekt RED has committed to relearning with this move to the new consoles. They had already revealed last April that they are shifting engines, from their proprietary RED Engine to Unreal Engine 5, for The Witcher 4. Part of the reasons they cited was the toolbox like quality of the new engine, and also Epic’s focus on open worlds with the new engine. It certainly doesn’t hurt that CD Projekt RED is partnering with Epic as a retailer for their games as well. But of course, CD Projekt RED has demonstrated a willingness to work with their erstwhile competitors like Epic and Steam.
The company is surprisingly busy with multiple projects, busier than you may think. Alongside the Witcher and Cyberpunk games named above, the company is committed to updating GWENT: The Witcher Card Game, and making it a real viable competitive online game. Alongside this, they are also managing workon a Witcher mobile game. There is also an upgrade for The Witcher 3 coming up for release on PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series consoles.
On top of all that, CD Projekt RED has another smaller studio called The Molasses Flood. The Molasses Flood is currently working on a smaller budget game that is also based on one of the company’s existing IPs, but hasn’t been announced yet. Given the popularity of mid-sized budget games from indie developers, as well as bigger companies, CD Projekt RED may be something like an isometric game, a tactical turn based game, a Metroidvania, or any number of popular smaller scale games off of The Witcher or Cyberpunk 2077.
Whatever the case may be, CD Projekt RED does seem intent to avoid the mistakes they made with Cyberpunk 2077 by setting expectations this far.
Source: GameRant
