The Witcher 4: everything we know so far about Polaris

The Witcher 4 has been confirmed, though it’s just codenamed ‘Polaris’ for now. The next major entry in the beloved RPG franchise will usher in a new saga and will be the first in a brand new trilogy of games.

In March 2022, developer CD Projekt Red announced The Witcher 4 in a blog post. In addition to a number of other The Witcher projects, Polaris was revealed to be the next mainline The Witcher RPG. So far we’ve seen a brief teaser image, as well as some hints from the developers as to what The Witcher 4 might entail.

For now, it’s clear that this is the kick-off for a brand new story, one that probably isn’t directly related to Geralt. It’s still early days, after all, we don’t even have a full title, but we’re starting to get a sense of CD Projekt Red’s plans. As new information is revealed, you will find this page updated with the latest news and rumours.

Here’s what we know about The Witcher 4 so far, including all the latest news and rumours.

The Witcher 4: straight to the point

• What is it? The next mainline The Witcher game
• When can I play it? To be determined
• What can I play it on? To be determined

The Witcher 4: release date and platforms

Let’s start by tempering our excitement. CD Projekt RED announced that The Witcher 4 is in active development, but also made it clear in a blog post (opens in new tab) that “no further details on a release date” are available.

Now, to put that in some perspective, the original reveal trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab) was released seven years before the game actually came out. To give the situation a little hope again, CD Projekt RED published a Witcher 3: Wild Hunt title reveal trailer (opens in new tab) just two years before the release of The Witcher 3.

That is to say, we’re probably several years away from The Witcher 4’s release. Mark 2024 in your calendar at the earliest, though it will probably be longer.

No platforms for The Witcher 4 have been confirmed either, but that’s not surprising. We expect CD Projekt Red to use current-generation hardware, so releases on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC seem almost certain.

What we do know is that The Witcher 4 will be the first in a trilogy. This was revealed in October 2022 alongside a number of new The Witcher and Cyberpunk projects.

The Witcher 4: story and setting

Spoilers for The Witcher game series

As mentioned above, few details are available about The Witcher 4. The official blog post only confirms that it is in development and being built in Unreal Engine 5. But over the years, CD Projekt RED has said a lot about what a future Witcher game would involve.

For starters, it’s not really The Witcher 4.

“The first three ‘Witchers’ were a trilogy by definition, so we simply couldn’t call the next game ‘The Witcher 4,'” Kiciński said in a statement. interview. “Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ll be leaving the world of The Witcher.”

At the end of The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, monster hunter Geralt was alive and well. Well, at least he lived. But his storyline had ended, the wild hunt was over. That doesn’t mean he won’t return in this new Witcher game, although he probably won’t be the main character.

The developer said the same thing back in 2013: “We’re not killing the world or running away from it, but we’re definitely going to want to make this game the grand finale,” executive producer John Mamais told me. Polygon (opens in new tab). “Maybe we’ll even include Geralt in later games. We just need to talk about it and figure out what to do next.”

Perhaps we’ll see the reins passed to Ciri – if it’s decided that she canonically survived The Witcher 3. To avoid continuity problems, perhaps the team will determine the story of the events of Geralt’s adventures. After all, Netflix is ​​developing a series set long before the events of the books, Blood Origin is a prequel set 1,000 years before the events of The Witcher.

The confirmation that the medallion in the game’s announcement photo is a lynx certainly suggests that the game will take things in a new direction. That may introduce an entirely new Witcher school.

The author of the Witcher books, Andrzej Sapkowski, signed a new deal with the company to “further solidify their relationship.” So. the studio is free to take from any of its short stories or novels. (If you want to keep up, here’s how to read The Witcher books in order.)

The Witcher 4: News and Rumors

The Witcher 4 has its Game Director
Sebastian Kalemba, the former lead animator of The Witcher 3, has been announced as the Game Director for The Witcher 4. They announced this on Twitter, stating that they aim to “raise the bar.”

Polaris and a brand new trilogy
At the beginning of October 2022, CD Projekt RED announced a bunch of new titles through Twitter (opens in new tab), including a new The Witcher trilogy. Polaris (what we’ve dubbed Witcher 4) will kick off the new saga, set six years after its initial release. Of course, this is a huge undertaking, so we’ll have to wait and see if it pays off.

Reaffirmation of the beginning of a new saga
CD Projekt RED has reconfirmed that The Witcher 4 will launch a story. While it didn’t confirm how many games are involved, CEO Adam Kiciński made these comments during a recent earnings call (opens in new tab).

“We said there will be a new saga. Of course we are now pre-producing the first game of this saga. But we have more than one in mind. The first saga consisted of three games, so now we are thinking about more than one game. But we are in pre-production on the first game of the second Witcher saga.”

First mystery solved: the locket is a lynx
Following the detail-light announcement that The Witcher 4 is in development, CD Projekt Red has spoken out to address one point of fan speculation: the medallion shown in the announcement image. Turns out it’s a lynx, suggesting that CD Projekt Red created an all-new Witcher school for the new game.

“I can confirm that the medallion is in fact shaped like a lynx,” said Global Communications Director Robert Malinowski. Eurogamer (opens in new tab).

While the School of the Lynx does not appear in official Witcher fiction, there are stories about the school elsewhere on the internet – at a Witcher fanfiction wiki (opens in new tab). On the fanwiki, the School of the Lynx is formed after the School of the Wolf disbanded. Founded by the surviving members – including Geralt – the school eventually leaves its homeland and explores the western continent.

However, keep in mind that this is all fanfiction and therefore probably not comparable to the story CD Projekt is working out for its new RPG. For starters, Geralt may not even appear in the new game. Indeed, the announcement speaks of a “new saga” suggesting an intention to move forward.

The announcement
Since most game announcements come with fancy reveal trailers and big new websites, news about The Witcher 4 has been relatively muted. CD Projekt RED published a blog post (opens in new tab) featuring a single piece of key art and scant detail on one of the most anticipated RPGs in gaming history.

“We are pleased to announce that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development, kicking off a new saga for the franchise,” writes the developer.

While the post doesn’t go into detail about the game’s release date or even how far along the team is in development, it does include one important detail: CD Projekt RED ditched its own game engine.

The team has been using the RED engine for every game since The Witcher 2. The Polish developer can support beautiful open worlds and has been expanding its capabilities for years.

There was a huge leap in quality from The Witcher 2 to The Witcher 3, with the technology able to handle much larger, denser worlds. Technology jumped on again with Cyberpunk 2077. While the world may have felt more enclosed than The Witcher 3’s open plains and twisting forests, Night City was a bustling city with massive amounts of activity sprawling overhead over vertical blocks of flats.

Still, Cyberpunk suffered significant technical issues at launch, and perhaps that’s why CD Projekt RED abandoned its own engine in favor of an industry standard: Unreal Engine 5.

“We are moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5,” writes CD Projekt in the blog post, “starting a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. It includes not only licensing, but also the technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as possible future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. We will be working closely with the developers at Epic Games, with the main goal of adapting the engine for open world experiences.”

Before we’d seen games for the PlayStation 5, we’d seen a tech demo of Unreal Engine 5 running on the console. Epic Games was eager to push this new version of its engine as technology for the next generation of consoles. The fact that The Witcher 4 will be built in this technology is something Epic can shout about and Witcher fans burned by Cyberpunk take comfort in.

Of course, a game engine is just a set of tools, it doesn’t make a game good or bad. And while many people at CD Projekt RED will have used Unreal Engine technology throughout their careers, moving an entire studio to a different set of tools is a production challenge that may appear in the final game.