The Witcher 4 is in the 'most advanced' state of development among all the games currently underway at CD Projekt, ahead of The Witcher remake and Cyberpunk 2
Don't start holding your breath just yet, though.
CD Projekt associate game director Pawel Sasko says Polaris, better known as The Witcher 4—that's not an official title, but that's what we call it—is the "most advanced" project currently in the works at the studio. But don't get too excited thinking about returning to the world of The Witcher anytime soon, because all of the studio's games are still a long way off.
Speaking in a Flow Games interview, Sasko rattled off a list of CD Projekt's current major projects: Canis Majoris, the remake of The Witcher currently underway at Polish studio Fool's Theory; Orion, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 being led by CD Projekt's Boston studio; Polaris, the all-new Witcher game that's being developed primarily by CD Projekt's home studio in Warsaw; and Sirius, a Witcher spinoff game in the works at Molasses Flood, also based in Boston.
"Most of those are in early stages," Sasko said. "The only difference is the Polaris project—so, the new Witcher saga—that will enter production this year. It's the most advanced of all of those."
Sasko said graphs CD Projekt released as part of its Q1 2024 earnings presentation also showed that Polaris had far and away the largest number of developers working on it, with Orion a very distant second. But, he added, the Orion team "is growing."
It's not terribly surprising that The Witcher 4 is further ahead of other projects, given that it's where CD Projekt is focusing its resources, but it also shouldn't be taken as a sign that it's time to start holding your breath waiting for all new screencaps of Geralt doing his thing: As Sasko said, full production on the new game won't even begin until sometime later this year.
As for CD Projekt's other games, the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel is still in the very early stages—CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski said it was "on the conceptual design level" in October 2023—while Sirius went through a full reboot in early 2023. Canis Majoris, the Witcher remake, we really haven't heard much about since it was announced in 2022; the studio is also working on something brand new codenamed Hadar, announced in late 2022 as "a third, entirely distinct IP, created from scratch within CDPR."
CD Projekt also warned in 2021 that after the harsh lesson of Cyberpunk 2077, which was announced in 2012 but not released until 2020, that it won't start showing off its future games until they're "much closer" to release.