The development of the next The Witcher, code-named Polaris, has now reached full speed: CD Projekt RED confirmed it in the last few hours, in the latest quarterly meeting with investors. At the moment the Polish studio has over 400 developers dedicated to the project, out of a total workforce of around 600. Formally the phase is pre-production, with the aim of entering production in the second half of the year; of course it is still too early to have any idea about the release timing of the game. We remind you that based on what is known so far it will represent the beginning of a new trilogy of the franchise inspired by the stories of Andrzej Sapkowski, with a protagonist different from the legendary Geralt of Rivia
The hope is that its gestation will take less time than Cyberpunk 2077; in that case there were many difficulties related to the proprietary graphics engine, RED Engine, and its poor ability to adapt to new technologies, but now the group has moved on to Unreal Engine, which, at least on paper, is more versatile, better maintained and better documented. Conversely, changing a crucial component in the development chain such as the graphics engine can itself present challenges and complications.
In any case, as you can see from the graph above, the rest of CDPR’s employees are spread across several longer-term projects. We have about fifty working on Orion, the code name of the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, which will be followed by the new CDPR studio located in the USA, to be precise in Massachusetts. The company promises an even more “cinematic” title of its predecessor, a true fusion between cinema and video game.
There are then just under forty engaged in Sirius, the multiplayer game set in The Witcher universe and whose development will be followed mainly by an external studio, The Molasses’ Flood. Finally, around twenty developers are moving the first stones regarding Hadar, a game about which very little is known for the moment and which will inaugurate a new intellectual property.
