CD Projekt’s much-anticipated RPG follow-up, The Witcher 4, might still be quite a ways off, but that’s not stopping the studio from outlining an ambitious plan to launch a trilogy of new Ciri-led titles, all within a six-year time period.
Speaking during a recent financial call, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said that future games in the franchise “should be delivered in a shorter period of time”, owing to the studio’s shift to Unreal Engine 5 for its next three titles.
“We’ve been using UE5 for The Witcher 4 for almost four years now, and we’re very happy with what we’ve achieved… and we’re happy with how the engine is evolving through the Epic team’s efforts, and how we are learning how to make it work within a huge open-world game,” he explained. “In a way, yes, I do believe that further games should be delivered in a shorter period of time — as we had stated before, our plan still is to launch the whole trilogy within a six-year period, so yes, that would mean we would plan to have a shorter development time between [the games].”
The idea that CD Projekt will release three major triple-A RPG experiences within such a short period of time is certainly an ambitious one, especially considering it took four years for 2011’s The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings to receive a sequel, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The studio’s current plan only leaves a maximum of three years in between each entry in the trilogy, and with games getting bigger and more expansive with each year, it’s certainly a tough hurdle to overcome.
And that’s not factoring in the other major projects the studio has on its slate, too, as apart from the mainline Witcher entries, a remake of the original 2007 game is also in the works, alongside the follow-up to its other massive RPG IP, Cyberpunk 2077, and with all these titles supposedly coming out within the next few years, CD Projekt certainly has a lot on its plate.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
