The Witcher 4 (for lack of an official name) has officially concluded its research phase and entered pre-production.
Confirmed in a CD Projekt Red blog post, the studio looked back on the first quarter of 2022 and revealed that, during this time, it completed its research for the new Witcher game.
Adding a little more detail in a developer update video (below), CD Projekt Red executive Piotr Nielubowicz said the game has now entered pre-production.
Q1 2022 - financial update from Piotr Nielubowicz, CD PROJEKT's CFOhttps://t.co/dKIChe4Wbo
— CD PROJEKT IR (@CDPROJEKTRED_IR) May 26, 2022
"We are very eager to revisit the universe which has shaped our history to such an extent," said president Adam Kiciński in the post. "We have recently concluded the research phase for the first game in the new Witcher saga, which means that from now on further development expenditures will be capitalized on our balance sheet."
Having only recently entered pre-production means that the new Witcher game is likely still years away, explaining why CD Projekt Red only revealed it with a single teaser image.
Something so small still spawned myriad fan theories, however, centred around the medallion which led some to believe that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Ciri would be the protagonist of the new game.
CD Projekt later confirmed the image to be that of a Lynx, but whether it's a new Witcher school or not is still up for debate.
We don't know too much else about the game, other than that CD Projekt Red has partnered with Epic Games to build it in Unreal Engine 5 and that its director has promised no crunch on his watch.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
