Witcher 4 enters full production

Project Polaris, aka The Witcher 4, has now entered full principal development at CD Projekt RED's studios.

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CD Projekt is full steam ahead on the next Witcher game. Codenamed Polaris, the adventure will be the first chapter in an epic new trilogy of games. The company currently has 61% of its development workforce on Project Polaris, or 400 people.

"I'm pleased to announce that several weeks ago it moved to full-scale production. Of all our projects, this one is currently the most far along, and we're starting the most intensive phase of development," CD Projekt CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said in an earnings brief.

"Several weeks ago we announced that Project Polaris reached a very important milestone. We have completed pre-production. During this phase, we have been developing key aspects of the game including the storyline, the mechanics, the design among other elements, and then test them to see how they work in playable environment," CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said in a recent Q3 earnings call.

"Ahead of us lies the main and most intense stage of development, which is the production phase. We'll now scale the solutions we have developed and validated thus far the entire game."

Full details of Polaris remain unknown, however it's been inadvertently revealed that Geralt will show up in some form. The teaser image for the game shows a lynx medallion, referring to the School of the Lynx from franchise lore.

In a recent earnings call, CD Projekt's Nowakowski teased that The Witcher 4 would have "new gameplay mechanics that have never been seen before" in the company's games.

"I guess what I'm saying is that you should not be expecting 'The Witcher 3 in new clothing' of sorts. Of course we're building on the shoulders of what came before and on what we've learned, but we will be adding new gameplay elements and new mechanics that you have not seen in our previous games. Doing such things is always a risk, and it's not just repeating what was done before."

CD Projekt has said that it typically wants to release its games in a 4-5 year span, so the next Witcher game is years away.