Patient fans of The Witcher have been rewarded – codename ‘Polaris’, the latest phase of the Witcher franchise, looks set to move from its conceptual phase to production sooner than anticipated.
Per Reuters, CD Projekt Red joint CEO Adam Badowski has confirmed the team is aiming to start production of project ‘Polaris’ this year. Badowski outlined plans to increase the size of the team, saying, “We’d like to have around 400 people working on the project by the middle of the year.”
He also made it clear that while a newly formed team has been looking into AI across the board, it will not be as a replacement for team members. “We think that AI is something that can help improve certain processes in game production, but not replace people,” Badowski said.
Read: CD Projekt Red confirms new Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077, and mystery title
‘Polaris’ was first confirmed in a blog post from CD Projekt Red in March 2022, with an investor strategy update outlining a proposed timeline of six years between the release of the first and final game in the new trilogy.
While details are scant, ‘Polaris’ has been confirmed to expand on The Witcher universe in a new way – so although it colloquially gets referred to as Witcher 4, that’s not necessarily correct.
The game will also be one of the first CD Projekt Red projects to be released on Unreal Engine 5, rather than the proprietary RED engine which was used for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, and Cyberpunk 2077.
With the game only now entering production, we likely won’t see any further information or release information for quite some time – but naturally that hasn’t stopped eager fans from speculating.
