The Witcher 4 will begin full production soon - "work on Polaris is progressing" says CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red has provided an update on the development of The Witcher 4 and the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

In a new press release looking back on the studio's financial report for the first half of the year, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said that CD Projekt Red is now "gearing up to begin the full-fledged production phase" of the next major Witcher game - aka Project Polaris - and that its Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, Project Orion, is now in the planning phase.

"Work on Polaris is progressing – its development team is nearing a major milestone which will mark the end of the preproduction phase," Nowakowski said. 

"The first half of the year was also a busy period for our Boston studio, which is laying the groundwork for Project Orion – a new game set in the Cyberpunk universe."

In a separate earnings call covered by VGC, Nowakowski reaffirmed that work on the studio's ongoing projects is "pretty stable" and that they "have been progressing at a consistent pace."

"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," the CEO added.

Polaris was announced in March 2022 and will kick off a new saga for the role-playing game (RPG) series. As of July 31, 2024, it's now being worked on by 410 developers, which was predicted by CDPR CEO Adam Kiciński last year. 

As for Project Orion, the next Cyberpunk game will be made by the developers responsible for fine-tuning Cyberpunk 2077 and designing Phantom Liberty team and was said to be in the conceptual design phase during October 2023. 

Cyberpunk 2077's quest director Paweł Sasko, now associate game director of the sequel, revealed this summer that the game is being worked on by former modders.

"Half of the quest team [on the next Cyberpunk] - this is the team that builds the quests which is at 24 people right now - are former modders," Sasko said. "[They come] from Witcher, Cyberpunk, and other games."

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