CD Projekt, the company behind the hotly anticipated Witcher 4 (codename Polaris), has revealed work on the game is gathering speed and the title will “soon” enter full production.
“Work on Polaris is progressing – its development team is nearing a major milestone which will mark the end of the preproduction phase” said Michał Nowakowski, Joint CEO of CD Projekt, said in a news release.
CD Projekt is the parent company of CD Projekt Red, the studio responsible for The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, among others. CD Projekt also owns the distribution company Good Old Games, known as GOG.com.
The earnings call also revealed that over half of the Polish studio’s development staff are now working on the highly anticipated sequel, with 410 out of 639 developers engaged with the project, growing from 330 late last year. The studio “feel[s] the team is kind of complete,” and while it will “probably grow a bit,” they are satisfied that the current team will be enough to deliver the game, with no more “significant increases” planned.
“The Polaris team is maintaining the right scale to enter the production phase very soon, while our work on both announced and unannounced projects is steadily progressing,” Nowakowski reiterated during the call.
CD Projekt is pleased with engagement on The Witcher 3 after the launch of modding tools
As well as discussing upcoming projects such as Polaris and Orion (a new game in the Cyberpunk universe), Nowakowski also took a moment to mention the success of the Witcher 3 dev tools, which were released in May of this year.
“It’s been several months since our dev tools were released to gamers, and there’s already a slew of interesting modding projects out there. We are happy to see the engagement of the gaming community, which is eager to share its ideas, bringing new strength to The Witcher 3 – a game set to celebrate its 10th anniversary next year,” he said in the press release.
The modding tools have been used to create lore-friendly mods like reputation systems and bug fixes, as well as more out-there ones like a skateboarding mode or replacing Geralt’s bow and arrow with a gun.
Modding The Witcher 3 will help keep gamers occupied, but make sure to look out for news and updates about The Witcher 4, AKA Polaris, as we get them.
Featured image credit: CD Projekt
