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CD Projekt Red isn’t ruling out a sequel to ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’

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Yesterday, CD Projekt Red hosted a question and answer session as part of a live webcast focusing on financial results, and it didn’t take long before someone asked about a follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The company stopped short of confirming that The Witcher 4 was in the works, but the comments it made may be good news for fans of the series.

“The Witcher was designed as a trilogy, and a trilogy cannot have a fourth part, can it?” CD Projekt Red’s president and joint CEO, Adam Kicinski asked rhetorically. This might suggest that the studio is done with the property, and that it’s the end of the line for protagonist Geralt of Rivia. However, Kicinski said more.

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“We like this world a lot,” he continued, according to a report from Gamespot. “We invested fifteen years of our lives in it, and a lot of money, so we’ll think about this.”

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Kicinski went on to confirm that CD Projekt Red still owns the rights to games based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, and stressed that the studio had spent lots of money promoting the brand. After laying out this information, he suggested that the person who asked the question should be able to answer it for themselves, suggesting that CD Projekt Red isn’t done with The Witcher just yet.

This year, the studio will release Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, which might suggest that more spin-offs could follow. It’s easy to imagine CD Projekt Red creating an RPG that features a protagonist other than Geralt, perhaps even a supporting character from a previous Witcher game.

The reality is that CD Projekt Red is in an enviable position, having just launched a game that sold millions of copies and was highly praised by critics. Both Gwent and the long-gestating Cyberpunk 2077 stand to benefit from the success of The Witcher 3 — but even if those projects underperform, the company can fall back on a traditional sequel, given the strength of the brand following Wild Hunt.

Brad Jones
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…
The Witcher 3’s current-gen port has been delayed yet again
Geralt looks at a tower in the distance in The Witcher 3.

CD Projekt Red has announced that its current-gen port of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt will not be releasing any time soon. In a post on the game's Twitter account, the developer said that the game's port, which was supposed to come out during the second fiscal quarter of this year, has been postponed "until further notice." The game had earlier been delayed to this year.

https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/1514285274553008135

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The Witcher reveal repeats Cyberpunk 2077’s biggest mistake
A player points a gun at a cyborg in Cyberpunk 2077's reveal trailer.

On March 21, CD Projekt Red confirmed a new The Witcher game while revealing a new Unreal Engine 5 partnership with Epic Games. Shortly after that announcement, CD Projekt Red's Global PR Director Radek Grabowski had to clarify some crucial details about this new game and the Epic Games partnership in a tweet:
https://twitter.com/gamebowski/status/1506022957591797760
While this tweet clarifies the biggest misconceptions about CD Projekt Red's The Witcher announcement, it also highlights that the developer announced this game way too early and vaguely. CD Projekt Red is already losing control of some of the discourse around the game and risks repeating one of the biggest mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077's development and marketing: Overpromising.
Cyberpunk 2077's big mistake
CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk 2077 in May 2012 at a press conference. At the time, the developer promised features like a "gripping non-linear story filled with life and detail" and a variety of character classes, weapons, upgrades, implants, and more to choose from. It said the game would "set [a] new standard in the futuristic RPG genre with an exceptional gaming experience."
Cyberpunk 2077 would not release until December 2020, over eight years later. But in the meantime, CD Projekt Red continued to tease the title with trailers and interviews, highlighting the game's ambitious scope and vision. CD Projekt Red developers hyped up how the main story and sidequests intertwined, how the game would feature multiplayer, how cops would be very reactive, and more. Although the game looked and sounded very impressive prior to its release, many of these features and promises were either missing or half-baked in their implementation into Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk 2077 Teaser Trailer
For eight years, an RPG that was supposed to change the genre forever was promised, but in the end, all we got was a fairly standard open-world RPG with a bevy of technical problems at release. The massive backlash happened because people were so excited for Cyberpunk 2077, partly because CD Projekt Red hyped up all of these ambitious features over eight years.
The reality is that game development is an arduous journey that doesn't always go according to plan. Designs change, features are cut, and sometimes the finished product just doesn't come together. CD Projekt Red probably never meant to lie to its fans, but priorities and development timelines shifted and what the developer ultimately delivered with Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't up to snuff.
As CD Projekt Red made the mistake of announcing Cyberpunk 2077 too early and overpromising, I thought the studio would what to share more details on its next game until it was close to release. That was not the case. 
Initial Confirmation
CD Projekt Red was not willing to share a development time frame or release window as part of The Witcher announcement, so it's likely that this game is still several years away. Although the developer didn't reveal many details at this time, announcing the next The Witcher game so early gives s the Polish studio plenty of time to do so. For example, the game's director is already promising that there will be no crunch during the development of this game, something people may hold him accountable for as stories about the game's development emerge. CD Projekt Red must be cautious about what it shares about this new game before launch if it doesn't want another PR disaster, and it already seems to be getting a bit out of hand.  
Grabowski's tweet indicates that there are already some misconceptions about the game. That will likely exponentially worsen as CD Projekt Red continues to tease this title in job listings, interviews, and trailers. It's a dangerous approach, so why did the developer make this "initial confirmation" happen so early? There are several reasons why this could be the case. First off, most of this announcement was focused on CD Projekt Red's partnership with Epic Games and the use of Unreal Engine 5, and the developer wanted to confirm the first game that will be part of this partnership to make it more exciting for fans. 

Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red is still recovering from the backlash toward Cyberpunk 2077's rocky launch. Announcing a follow-up title to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt now not only restores a little bit of goodwill with fans and investors but will also attract some Unreal Engine-experienced developers who might be nervous to come to CD Projekt Red following Cyberpunk 2077. 2022 has been a year of anticlimatic and purposefully vague game announcements. CD Projekt Red's The Witcher announcement is simply the latest one to be part of this trend, but it's also one of the most worrying because this developer has made this mistake before.  
While CD Projekt Red felt pressured to confirm this game early, they need to be very careful if they don't want to repeat the mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077. The best course of action for CD Projekt Red to take now is to stay completely silent until it has a clear idea of what the finished game will entail. If that isn't the case, this could all be building to disappointment in the year 2030. 

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A new The Witcher game is in development at CD Projekt Red
A talisman depicting a dog with glowing red eyes lays in the snow.

In a surprise post on the franchise's website, CD Projekt Red announced that it is currently developing a new game based on The Witcher, one that isn't a spinoff focusing on Gwent.

https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/1505945110722326529

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