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Something to look forward to: Good news for those of us who see every passing day as another one closer to The Witcher 4's arrival. CD Projekt has confirmed that pre-production of the game is nearly completed, meaning that full production will begin "soon."
In a press release from CD Projekt's joint CEO, Michal Nowakowski, it's revealed that the development team working on Polaris – the codename for The Witcher 4 – is nearing a major milestone that will mark the end of the pre-production phase.
Back in March, CD Projekt said it had formed a production team of over 400 developers to begin pre-production work on The Witcher 4.
May brought another step in the process when, more than three years after its release, CDPR finally ended all work on Cyberpunk 2077. The team moved onto other titles, including The Witcher 4. It's worth noting that while CD Projekt has confirmed Polaris is the next game in The Witcher saga, we can only assume it will be called The Witcher 4.
In July, Pawel Sasko, associate game director on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, confirmed that The Witcher 4 is "the most advanced" of all the games CDPR is working on – that's in terms of how far along the development is, not its tech.
Nowakowski also mentioned in the latest post that the first half of the year had been a busy one for CD Projekt's Boston studio, which is laying the groundwork for Project Orion – a new game set in the Cyberpunk universe.
The prospect of stepping back into the world of CP2077 is an exciting one, especially given the improvements made to the game since launch, not to mention the fantastic Phantom Liberty expansion. CDPR will no doubt go to extreme lengths to ensure that the sequel launches without the problems that CP2077 experienced in 2020. Sadly, we can expect to be waiting many, many years before finding out: it took eight years for Cyberpunk 2077 to arrive after being announced, and the company's major focus for the foreseeable future is The Witcher 4.
The latest graphic from CD Projekt showing the number of developers working on each title has changed little from April, with the majority of devs (410) working on Polaris/Witcher 4.
CD Projekt refuses to give a rough timeline for when The Witcher 4 might arrive. Nowakowski said that the company's games usually take about four to five years from the moment work starts until they release, so there's a long wait yet.