The Witcher 3 (and by association 1&2) is a great game, definitely the best in the series. An expansive and incredibly interesting map, huge amount of story and lore to explore, and pretty much every character you meet is at least interesting to talk to, if not necessarily helpful. Running around looking at things and poking them with swords is at least as much fun as playing the storyline and or side-quests: a lot of elements come together to make this a great title.
CD Projekt Red, the Polish makers of the series went from being relatively unknown to being absolute rock-stars practically overnight. After the end of the series, and its expansion packs – the Wild Hunt alone could have made another instalment of the game – they are focussing on other stuff.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few months or years, you already know what their next project is – Cyberpunk 2077. This has been public knowledge for ages now, and while the company is slowly revealing more and more info about the game itself, something else caught our attention – more on that in a moment.
Cyberpunk 2077 was initially set to be released between 2017 and 2021 – now obviously, that’s a pretty big timespan, but it’s not all that unusual. The game is nearing the finish line, with more and more details – most recently, the character classes – being announced regularly. Unlike the Witcher, the game will not feature one single protagonist. Of course, no protagonist they could come up with could hold a candle to Geralt, so it’s probably for the best they are focussing their attention somewhere else. In fact, CD Projekt Red actually bought another studio to work on Cyberpunk 2077 with them, so they must have quite a lot of faith in it and the amount of work associated with it.
The company has released a massive management board report on the groups activities in general, and it’s taken fans until now to really sift through it all – not all that surprising really, since video game fans don’t usually have ‘long board minutes’ as their favourite kind of literature.
Anyway, in said report, which you can look at here: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2018/03/management-board-report-on-the-cd-projekt-capital-group-activity-in-2017-1.pdf, the studio details their plans for the future. Spread out over 106 pages, we get a lot of boring details and hidden among them is one gem:
CD Projekt Red is working on another game alongside Cyberpunk 2077. Also scheduled for release between 2017 and 2021, this is pretty big. It’s not the first time we are hearing about it – in 2015, a financials report mentioned another unannounced project alongside Cyberpunk, and fans have been speculating about it ever since. Theories have ranged from a completely new game to something closer to what they have done so far, from an FPS to an MMO (not that there was ever any evidence to support either) and more.
Some sources from within the company have now confirmed what we’ve been waiting to hear – that there is another game in the works. More specifically, another AAA RPG-title, and a stand-alone at that. If you were hoping for another Witcher or even another Cyberpunk game, sorry.
The release date for the mystery game hasn’t changed in the past two years which is pretty solid evidence of teams actually working on it rather than it being kept on a side-burner only to later be cancelled. Unfortunately, in the video game industry, that is rather common. It’s a pity too, but this game appears to be safe from that.
CD Projekt Red has previously confirmed that it won’t be making more Witcher games, but that they are considering more titles in the same universe, so there is at least a sliver of hope that the mystery game is related, though it seems unlikely at this point. Fans are speculating that a title with Ciri as its lead would be spectacular – we agree, but we don’t think we’ll be seeing one this soon.
Of course, by 2021, quite a lot can change, and the fate of the second game likely depends on the success of Cyberpunk 2077. It is built with next-gen consoles in mind already, so it’s almost guaranteed that the new game will be too – it will also likely feature some kind of VR adaption, though not be a VR title altogether.
For those of you who still don’t have a VR headset, it might be time to invest in one – there’s more than enough games with the technology out there already, and would you want to risk missing this mystery game if it really does come with VR? Good news is you will likely have at least a year if not three to save up for the headset.
That’s something, surely?