Per a recent , 330 developers — or — is now working on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 4. Many more are in transition, moving off 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and onto the Polish studio’s next big game. About a year ago, CDPR’s CEO said that The Witcher 4 was still 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:at least three years away (and could be longer), so we won’t be seeing Geralt’s next (or Ciri’s first) adve🔴nture for quite some time.
That rough timeline has me thinking about how RPGs will have changed by 2025 (or beyond) and how the White Wolf will need to change to keep up. This would be on my mind if a fourth Witcher game had arrived three, five, or even seven years after the third. Before 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 showed up this year, I expected it to deliver more of what the first two games did well, but with improvements to open-world quest des💃ign that would take it above and beyond what the fir🧸st game could achieve. It did exactly what I expected and it’s still a great game.
Those expectations go out the door when the timetable is this long. With 2025 as the The Witcher 4’s target, Geralt and/or Ciri will be returning to PC and consoles a decade or more after The Witcher 3 first redefined open-world RPGs in 2015. With Cyberpunk 2077’s 2020 launch in the middle, CDPR’s schedule resembles Rockstar’s for GTA 6. The studio took five years to make Red Dead Redemption 2 after GTA 5, and if GTA 6 launches next year (which so many indicators point to it’s hard to believe it won’t),ജ six years will have passed between the studio’s releases. In both cases, I’m wondering: where do they go from here?
I've written about how GTA 6 may respond to the last ten years of innovation in open-world design 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:elsewhere (short an♚swer: it probably won't), so for this article, I want to focus on how The Witcher 4 could learn from the last decade of forward movement in RPGs.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend of Zelda: T🐎ears of the Kingꦚdom is the one game that could be a major influence on both GTA 6 and The Witcher 4, with its freeform approach to open-world storytelling. I expect The Witcher 4 will have a more traditional story, as CDPR has proven that it can do main quest missions better than just about any RPG developer working today. But, a greater freedom to tackle missions in any order or a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3-style ability to just walk by huge swa🐟ths of content if you choose could make The Witcher 4 feel more modern.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of two incredible CRPGs that I imagine could have an impact on the next Witcher. Four years after its release, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Disco Elysium’s Thought Cabinet system hasn’t been nearly as influential as I would have expected in 2019. That mechanic gave each idea the player encountered the potential to blossom into a full-blown voice in their head that piped up to offer dialogue responses, eventually becoming part of your character. Thinking about fascism could lead to fascist choices, and pondering communism could offer a similar, but ideologically distinct, progression. But many of the thoughts were less important, like speccing into being an insufferable art critic. It would be co🍸ol to see The Witcher 4 borrow from this mechanic, allowing players greater freedom to shape who their Witcher is by molding their thoughts.
Baldur’s Gate 3 could also be an influence, though the game does so many things well, without many of them being entirely novel, that it’s difficult to know what CDPR could build on. My best bet? Companions. Though Geralt had friends and lovers, he fundamentally worked alone. If 🅘the next game does, indeed, star Ciri that could mean a pivot toward a party, with recruitable companions that Ciri can build relationships with across the game. If CD Projekt Red needs ideas on how to integrate that into an action game, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a helpful primer, with its hybrid real-time/turn-based combat that allows players to queue up moves and swap between all the members of their party.
But, the most important consideration is what effect Cyberpunk 2077 — its initial response, and eventual redemption — will have on The Witcher 4. Over the course of Cyberpunk 2077's life cycle, CDPR took the game's interface (specifically its in-menu systems like the skill tree) and refined it significantly, making the way weapons and abilities and crafting wor🅘ked much easier to understand. I never found the comparable systems in The Witcher 3 to be especially intuitive, and I wouldn't👍 be surprised if CDPR brings a more streamlined approach to The Witcher 4.
CDPR reworked Cy♔berpunk 2077's skill system so significantly that returning players who had reached a certain po✱int in the game had to reassign all of their skill points when they booted up the DLC.
But, the more important lesson that CDPR could learn from Cyberpunk 2077 is how to handle hype. Despite the studio knowing that the game was underbaked as it approached its 2020 launch, it received several Night City Wire directs, desꦰigned to build the hype for the game to a fever pitch. For Phantom Liberty, the studio pared this back, with just one 38 minute presentation close to the expansion's launch. Regardless of how good The Witcher 4 is, I hope CDPR takes a similarly low key approach to marketing.
Whatever happens, The Witcher 4 will be its own thing. No matter how much it evolves from The Witcher 3, it won’t time travel to Cyberpunk’s future. I can only hope its changes bring it into the 2025 pres🔥ent.
