CDPR Reveals News for The Witcher, Cyberpunk and New Project
| Tags: Features
| Author Timo Reinecke
We got some news regarding CD Project Red's upcoming projects. Here is a quick rundown of everything you need to know about the upcoming Witcher and Cyberpunk games as well as a completely new Project by CDPR.
CD Project Red recently posted about the current state of their development pipelines. They are currently working on 5 different projects, all of which are spread across their in-house team and other developers.
Here we get into what these projects are, who is working on them, and when you can expect these titles to launch. Warning, probably not anytime soon.
CD Project Red (CDPR)Reveals their Development Pipeline and Titles in Production
In the wake of GDC Polish publisher and development heavyweight CD Project Red (CDPR) shared some updates on the current state of their development pipelines. Now that Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty Expansion are finally wrapped, the team is now looking towards new projects with old IP's and new ones.
Summing up the Witchers
We've known for a while that they are working on a sequel to the critically acclaimed Witcher 3, which is undoubtedly the Project Polaris. As you can see in the graphic, that title is currently in Pre-Production and won't come out for a few years. The publisher has recently talked about switching from their in-house REDengine to Unreal Engine 5 to streamline development.
If Project Polaris is The Witcher 4, the game will either focus on Ciri's exploits going forward or potentially introduce an all-new original character into the canon of the games.
Then there is Project Sirius which is helmed by The Molasses Flood a smaller studio under CDPR's wings with experience in smaller, visually striking titles. If you want to check out their previous work Drakes Hollow and The Flame in the Flood are both available on Steam and worth a try.
Lastly, there is The Witcher Remake which is currently in its concept phase developed by Fool's Theory who are behind the recently released The Thaumaturge. The studio is comprised of former members of CDPR, some of whom have even worked on the original Witcher release. since Thaumaturge just wrapped development, we won't expect to see a release window for that title for at least 3-4 years.
Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel
The project Orion promises to be a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 or at least part of that same canon spin-off of the popular Roleplaying game. It's no mystery that Cyberpunk 2077 had a troubled development, troubled release, and a long cycle of patches and frustrations until the game became what it wanted to be back in 2020.
A sequel is now in the works and the early concept phases, but given that CP2077 was also developed alongside The Witcher 3, we expect this one to take a backseat until development on The Witcher 4 has reached its final stage. That is unless they have significantly changed up their in-house workflow and have the team now work on 2 big projects at the time on top of managing the other side projects.
Just for reference, Cyberpunk 2077 was originally announced back in 2077 but didn't start development until after The Witcher 3 came out in 2015. This title is probably still years and years from release. 2028/2029 is probably the earliest we expect to see any more info on that one.
A New IP Among Heavy Hitters
And then there's the big one in the room, project Hadar is a new original IP developed by CD Project Red. After the studio made its name adapting The Witcher novels or the Cyberpunk TTRPG it seems like they're finally ready to leave a mark of their own. There is little known about this project and it might take a long, long time until we see it manifest.
But we can at least try and decode the name Hadar and get some hints. Hadar refers to a star also known as Beta Centauri. It is a solar system with 3 stars. This could mean a lot of things. Since most of the code names for CDPR's names make references to the starts of constellations, we doubt that this is a hint at a sci-fi-themed RPG.
But that's all we got for now. CDPR has a lot on its plate for the next decade or so, despite its less-than-fortunate launch, CP2077 was still extremely successful and we hope that the management has learned its lesson about stretching its teams so thin across multiple projects.
As always, we'll of course keep you posted as soon as there is any more info available here on ESTNN