One of those creators, then-quest designer Philipp Weber, is now The Witcher 4's narrative director. Weber knows how high expectations for the RPG are – after all, 🎃it's his job to bottle lightning once again – and although we mostly spoke about The Witcher 3, the conversation steered into how a decade of lessons have helped to shape its follo🐓w-up.

Winds howling

While CDPR has grown significantly over the last decade, Weber says the studio's original philosophy – "to let people care about what they're doing" – remains in place.

"We don't want to have team members whose job is, you know: 'Place ꧑the trigger. Now place the next trigger. Don't think about what you're doing'. I want every team member to want to make the best game possible, and truly care about the art we're making."

"Part of that is you have to feel ownership," adds Weber. "There's a careful balance. As narrative director, [my job is] to have a very direct vision that the team is supposed to execute, but also, [I shouldn't] look at the hands of the team too closely.

"I think as a quest designer, from my leads and directors I had on The Witcher 3, that was an amazing balance. I knew what they wanted, but at the same time I still got to be creative and feel ownership. ღThis is something I really like to keep around."

For The Witcher 4, Weber maintains that one rule has stayed in place since his days on The Witcher 3: no fetch quests. It's something Weber was told during his very first task at CDPR (澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:throwing quest ideas into a Gdoc), and part of the reason why the studio's bar for storytelling is so high. CDPR doesn't shy away from tough topics – just look at 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3's Bloody Baron, or even developers within the studio feeling uncomfortable about Cyberpunk 207🃏7's S🏅innerman quest line – and even an optional 10-minu📖te sto꧟ry can carry the same weight as major narrative beats.

"A quest has to be something interesting," says Weber. "I have to feel, as a player, that if I played that quest, my time was well spent and not just spꦕent. I was busy doing stuff, and didn't think about work or taxes. I experienced a story, or something else that was worth it. That basic rule is still there 100%."

On the topic of quests, are there any specific lessons – whether from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 or The Witcher 3 – that are being carried into The Witcher 4? "All of them," laughs Weber. Specifically, he believes it's important to maintain a balance between "basic rules" on storytelling and "trusting your gut". For the team, that means keeping in mind how you're "supposed" to plot out an act, for example, while not being afraid to deviate from traditional guidelines where necessary.

"We're never a slave to these kinds of things," he explains, pointing to the 'correct' way of writing a story. "In a lot of contemporary storytelling, people got a little bit too good at following the exact rules. A lot of stuff became pretty same-y, and you get like… 'Yes, that's how a character arc is supposed to work'. But then you can sometimes just follow your gut.

"Is this a scene that doesn't have a big narrative [reason] to be there, but I want to see it as a developer and that's why I assume a player also wants to see it🦩? Does it feel good? Does it feel powerful? This is something I really carry with me, to really keep that middle part."

Reflections

It all comes back to The Witcher 3, as Weber credits his peers for helping to hone that instinct during Wild Hunt. "That was the best game design school I c𓂃ould🌱 have imagined," he explains. "Most of the good lessons we learned on The Witcher 3, we want to use on The Witcher 4."

As narrative director, that means trying to honor what made The Witcher 3 work while still leaving🐽 room to move the series forward. "Sometimes we have new things – you know, new features – but the core stuff? It's the same philosophy," says Weber. He admits that some of The Witcher 4's development has been about "remembering lessons from The Witcher 3 that maybe we even forgot, or changed a little bit," and points to its knack for hard-hitting consequences as an example.

"We want to make sure that when we have consequences, there really is a good reason for the player to see them. Sometimes in the past we would try to be very subtle and very naturalistic about consequences becaus▨e often a character doesn't tell you 'Well, I'm doing this now because you said this two hours ago'. That can feel unnatural, so we try to avoid that, but the result is that then for a lot of people it's invisible that this is a consequence at all."

"In The Witcher 3 we had a very good balance of still being natural about it, but usually you always knew when there was a consequence for your actions," Weber continues.

"That's an example of a lesson where we looked back at The Witcher 3 and said 'OK, we have to be able to hit that one again', because choice and consequence is one of the standards that we ﷽have and want to uphol✅d, and I think The Witcher 3 did it perfectly."

The Witcher 4 has also taken lessons from Cyberpunk 2077, but Weber keeps those a little closer to his chest. "It's difficult to say what specifically, because that might get into spoiler territory and then I think I'm going to get killed," he says, laughing. "But as an example: the way we did characters in Cyberpunk – you know, [players] joining them on their journeys like with Judy, Panam, River, Takemura? This is something that, in terms of storytelling, we're really proud of. We learned a lot on Cyberpunk – how we did these things, how to make those people feel real and tactile, [and these are] things we've learned and try to carry forward."

While Weber understandably can't say much about The Witcher 4 (perhaps CDPR really does enforce its NDAs with a hitman) the approach he outlines is music to my ears. There's a reason we're still buzzing about The Witcher 3 a decade later – there's a depth and consistency to its quests that's rare even across the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs – and if The Witcher 4 can bottle so much as a cr🤪ackle of that lightning again, I suspect we'll still be talking about when 🎀that turns 10, too.

Feast your eyes on all the killer 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games we're waiting patiently for, from The Witcher 4 to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GTA 6

In an interview with Jan Hermanowicz, engineering production manager on The Witcher 4, I asked what the new technology CD Projekt Red showed off during its recent 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Witcher 4 tech demo meant for the rest of the saga. After The Witcher 4, the studio has already made clear that it's got plans for a completely new trilogy, with The Witcher 5✃ an🤪d 6 to follow the fourquel relatively quickly.

Hermanowicz didn't give much away, pointing out that the tech demo was just that - a demo. That means that it's still too early to talk about the contents of The Witc🙈her 4, which means it's "definitely too early to talk about what will be in the rest of the new saga."

But even if "it's wa🌱y too early to talk about the saga itself," Hermanowicz was able to talk about what its existence means for CD Projekt Red and the rest of the studio by extension. The studio has switched from its in-house engine to Unreal for The Witcher 4 (and beyond), and the new tools offer "a lot of cool things that allow 🌼for fast iteration and moving forward."

That's some of the basis for the faster-than-usual expected turnaround for the other games in the series - "the more tailored, the more appropriate for our type of game the pipelines are and the technology is, the easier it is to make the game," Hermanowicz says. It's also useful for the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games. "We have mওultiple projects in flight now. [Cyꦍberpunk 2077 sequel Project] Orion moved to pre-production."

"The development of those things and those improvements for open-world technology go across all those projects and benefit all of those projects. So in a sense, we are now using The Witcher 4, and all the assets which 🅰are for this technical demo, w🌃hich is a vehicle to push the tech forward, in return benefits all of the industry."

It's a big claim, but it does ring true. If CDPR has been working with Epic to improve Unrealꦕ Engine for its own ends, those improvements can still be felt by studios using Unreal for their own games. Granted,𝄹 that doesn't give us any information about The Witcher 4's story, let alone The Witcher 5 or 6, but it's still a pretty major boon.

The Witcher 4 dev says "it's very clear" that Ciri is the right choice of protagonist, but that players shouldn't "make opinions" until the game is out.

One of the defining features of Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 is how it uses the console hardware to its advantage. Yꦰou have access to the touch screen for menu navigation, gyro and mouse controls for more precise aiming, and full-blown motion controls; so you can pretend we lived in a universe where Cyberpunk came out for the Wii when you waggle to swing a melee weapon or bring a JoyCon up to your face to heal.

CD Prꦆojekt gameplay technical design expert Filip Downar said, 💎"The philosophy was to do it but not force it." He adds, "We really wanted to add these features, but decided we would only do so if it was genuinely good, if it actually added to the experience. We didn’t want to include something as an afterthought."

However, when it came to the motion controls, Downa𒆙r explained it was somewhat of a challenge, "We had to create patterns that matched players’ expectations — for a system that no one had used yet!" He added that making sure the motion inputs⛎ didn't get too overwhelming was a priority however, "we found that players get confused if there are too many… different players have unique interpretations of mechanics, and have different means of movement, are playing in different spaces, and so on, getting too granular isn’t effective."

And while I'm sure hearing "motion controls" conjures up the word "gimmick" in ꦺyour mind, Downar was also unsure at first. "I was really, really reserved about the feat🌳ure," he says, "I usually don’t love motion controls in games." However, after the game released, Downar now says it's his favourite new mechanic: "When actually playing, kind of by accident, I learned that I’m able to do things in Cyberpunk 2077 that are impossible to do without."

Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.3 delayed so CD Projekt can "make sure we're happy with it" as it aims for a similar patch to 2.2.

In a tweet today, th꧅e studio said that while "we initially hoped to put Update 2.3 in your hands on June 26," it won't be hitting that date. It's taking "some more time" to hit quality goals, but unfortunately that adjustment doesn't come with a new date, so it'𓃲s no longer clear when Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.3 will be available for players.

What we do have, however🐓, is a better idea of the scale of the new patch. CDPR says it's "aiming for a scope similar to Update 2.2." That patch – which surprise-dropped around a year after the game-changing 2.1 update – was very substantial, especially for the point at which it released on Cyberpunk's timeline.

Offering more player customisation, custom car paint jobs, photo mode overhauls, and ride-alongs with Johnny Silverhand, all in addition to more traditional patch notes, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:update 2.2 was very large. That's before you consider thꦍat pretty much everyone had assumed CDPR was done with Cyberpunk 2077.

Done, however, CDPR was not, and 2.3 has followed 2.2. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Announced earlier this month ahead of Cyberpunk 2077's jܫourney to beco🎐ming one of the top-selling Switch 2 games, we still don't know exactly what we're getting out of (presumably) the game's final update. I say 'presumably,' because you'd assume that the team was now ready to move onto either the 澳洲ﷺ幸运5开奖号码历史查询:pre-production of the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, or to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历🉐史查询:the full production of The Witcher 4.

Th🐲at said, the Switch 2 has clearly given the team an excuse to dive back into Night City once again, so who knows what the future holds.

Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 is not without its flaws, but this is the best portable trip to Night City so far.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Jan Hermanowicz, engineering production manager on the recent 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 tech demo said that "when the game will be out, you'll be able to see for yourself and fully embrace her character, her story. And I think that will be the moment to make opinions and make the calls." In other words, players shouldn't be making up their minds about the CDPR's choic🌞e of main character years before getꦇting to play as them.

"We showed her in various situations, two emotional states [that were] ve𓃲ry distinct from one another," Hermanowicz says. "And there are many, many more parts of her that we will show ꦓin the future."

Hermanowicz expressed agreement with recent comments from Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle, who said that players couldn't simply rely on his character for every future game. Cockle also said that players who doubted CDPR's choice should "read the damn books" - an idea that Hermanowicz agrees with.

"For me, personally, reading the books, it's very clear that the story slowly transitions ꧑from being Geralt's🌼 story to really being Ciri's story, sometimes narrated through the eyes of Geralt," he says.

Whether or not you can be convinced to read Sapkowski's fantasy series, however, Hermanowicz says nothing's going to change with CDPR's choice of character. Pic൩king Ciri is a "choice we made years ago, and this is how it's gonna be," he says. "And you will see in the game how it will play out." Sadly, that game is still likely to be several years away, so we'll be waiting a while before we do get to see how Ciri's as lead does play out, but I'll be eagerly awaiting regardless.

The Witcher 4 devs are preparing for "a generational shift" after The Witcher 3, and they're studying the RPG's biggest city to help.

When I say "massive endorsement," I really just mean Sawyer told that he really enjoyed the way CD Projekt Red implemented romance into 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077, specifically with regards to its pacing, which is some🦂thing he really does not say about games very often.

As PC Gamer notes, Sawyer's nuanced thoughts on RPG romances publicly date♐s back to 2006, when on an Obsidian forum that he doesn't "hate love in game stories" but does hate "reducing love to ওshallow, masturbatory fantasy indulgence." .

Cyberpunk 2077, though, it got romancing right in Sawyer's view. That's because it paces its four available romance options out so that the respective love stories happen separately from each other and thus fee𒀰l more natural and organic.

Sawyer said he finds the typical RPG romance structure of hꦅaving everyone stand around in a camp together while the player character engages with them at will, kind of awkward. "There are six of us together, an🉐d we're engaging in these romantic talks right next to everyone, and it feels kind of odd."

What Sawyer likes about Cyberpunk's romance is that, in his words, "it's not in a party context." It also helps that its big budget cinematic and overall presentation are great for immersion, and Sawy🌺er also prefers the first-person perspective that it offers instead of third-person, but the other Main Thing is Cyberpunk's pacing, which locks a lot of romance progression behind progress points in the critical path.

"You do something with Jܫudy, let's say, and then, you wrap it up, you have a convo, and then she's like, 'I gotta go do some things, bye,'" said Sawyer. "She is gone and you're not going to hear from her until time has elapsed, and probably until you've progressed a critical path.

"There's a built-in pacing, so the dev𒁃elop🐭ment of the human component of that relationship is developed over content that is specifically made for the two of you, like it's content for you and Judy alone. River doesn't come into it at all."

So there you have it. Sawye༒r is no "romance-hating scrooge" as he was dubbed in 2006; he just likes his romance to be believable and org🐼anic, which apparently is a tricky enough feat to accomplish that even Baldur's Gate 3 fell short by Sawyer's standards.

Avowed isn't Pillars of Eternity 3, but if the third RPG ever happens director Josh Sawyer reckons it should move to a proper 3D environment "more like Baldur’s Gate 3"

The developer is now using Unreal Engine 5 to make The Witcher 4 instead of its bespoke RED Engine, and Charles Trembl🍌ay, vice president of technology at CD Projekt Red, tells Digital Foundry that since it had problems in the past going PC-first and then scaling down for console, "this time around we really want ♔to be more console-first."

It's aiming for 60fps on console, and even showed off a Witc♋her 4 demo on a PS5 to prove that it's possible. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, which only had PC review copies 𒁏available and then initially ran like cold sludge on consoles, this game should hopefully be different.

But what about the less-powerful Xbox Series S? Microsoft requires parity across its Xbox Series range, and this has proved troublesome before, with the Black Myth: Wukong developers blaming the budget-friendly Series S for a delay in the Xbox port of the action RPG.

"I wish we did a lot of work already on that, but we did not," admits Tremblay. "So, this is something that is nexꦏt on our radar for sure. [...] 60fps will definitely be extremely challenging ꦡon the Series S. Let's just say that it's something that we need to figure out."

Microsoft has allowed games to launch on the Series consoles without parity before though. Baldur's Gate 3 came to Xbox because Larian and Xbox boss Phil Spencer "found a solution": it dropped split-screen on the Series S.

So, Microsoft might be willing to drop that parity requirement for a game as highly anticipated as The Witcher 4 if it guarantees more people can buy it on 🎶Xbox. But hopefully CD Projekt Red manages to get the ga🐭me to 60fps on Series S without compromising it too much.

While you wait, check out the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Xbox Series X games you can play today.

We sat down with CDPR veteran and The Witcher 4 narrative director Philipp Weber to mark 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3's 10-year anniversary, and he gave us something of a peek behind the curtain at what the vibe's like at the studio. The Witcher 4 has been in full-scale production sin🥃ce November 2024, and although it won't be ou🐈t until 2027 at the soonest, it sounds like CDPR is firing on all cylinders at this point.

Weber told us there's the same "scrappy energy" at the studio that there was when he first joined as quest designer o🌳n The Witcher 3 in 2013, a time of "good creative chaos" where a lot of tasks were "a little bit vibe-based" in the sense that developers were just doing what needed to be done regardless of their specific job titles.

"Sometimes I like to just say, 'Get it done. 🍸Do it dirty. Do it the way we used to do it!" Weber said.

This may sound potentially disorderly, but there's an intention behind this philosophy that's defined by CDPR's appreciation and respect for The Witcher 3's legacy as one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs of all time.

"The way we want to do justice to [The Witcher 3's] legacy is t♏o take the philosophy we had during The Witcher 3 – how to make a🎃 game, how to really care about these things, how to tell stories – and keep that," said Weber.

At the same time, "there are [also] new questions we want to answer, beca✃use this is supposed to feel like a true sequel, not just redoing what we did before. And I🍸 think it's really [about] trying to have that healthy mix of moving forward and also trying out some new things."

CDPR unleashed a stunning 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:tech demo for The Witcher 4 earlier this month filled with dramatic valleys, enchanting forests, and plenty of grit and gristle that characterizes♉ the medieval age for many of us. Whatever chaotic energy is driving the sequel's development be♒hind-the-scenes seems A-okay to me if that's the result.

The Witcher 4 setting could be the never-before-seen region of Kovir, as Ciri journeys to the far north in CD Projekt's new tech demo

CDPR was preparing to launch The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings on Xbox 360. The port was largely finished, and work on a follow-up, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, had begun in secret. Yet instead of sticking with what worked for – another hub-based and largely linear RPG – its creators wanted to transplant The Witcher 2's tight, character-driven nar🥂rative into a sprawling open world.

"Everyone in the i🌄ndustry said it's not possible – that these things don't go together, because you almost have contradictory objectives for what you're trying ⛎to achieve," recalls Sasko. But even then, ambition was the studio's guiding light.

We know how the story goes. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 launched to critical and commercial acclaim in 2016, and is considered by many to be the most influential open world RPG of its time. CDPR is a hꦗousehold name. 🅷Now 10 years old, The Witcher 3 retains its magic: there's a smokiness to its tone, its confrontational approach to morality, that's still hard to grasp after all these years. Where did it come from?

"We always wanted to make the kind of game we'd want to play," says Philipp Weber, who joined as a quest designer in 2013 and now works as 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4's narrative director. "But at the same tim🌺e, a lot of it was built on hope… like, 'I hope this works out.'"

Early days

While Sasko has been with The Witcher 3 since its earliest days, Weber arrived slightly further into development. It was Weber's first "professional" job, having come from a background of modding previous Witcher games as a hobby. "I came in with super high motivation, lovin💯g the Witcher," he says, adding that the studio frequently hires modders like himself. "I think the secret behind The Witcher 3 was that I wasn't an exception – that was the case for so many people."

The atmosphere of CDPR, then staffed at around 160, was "scrappy". Weber's first 🔴job was to throw quest ideas into a Google Docs page for three days, and many tasks were "a little bit vibe-based" – it wasn't uncommon to see developers working across disciplines based on what needed doing.

♔It's another of the studio's "secrets," suggests Weber: "Do it immediat🏅ely, do it fast, do it dirty. We check it and start iterating [...] we keep that iteration going until the end – we're never happy with the result until it's too late and the game has to be out."

"Let's not kid ourselves – this wasn't a small indie game or something, but it was still good creative chaos," recalls Weber. "You could get things done, you could move, be creative, do stuff, and ask questions. When you get bigger, you have to be consciously aware of that factor and say 'even though we [have] so many people and have to ꦬorganize more, let's not lose this'. It's very easy to lose this. But sometimes… just do it, get it done. Use the engine, come up with something cool, and do it!"

"That's how it felt, especially at the end of Witcher 2 and beginning of Witcher 3," agrees Sasko, who remembers CDPR starting to embrace now-common industry standards like quest documentation around that time. "The biggest ✱American studios already did that better, but in Eꦦurope, it was a novelty."

When The Witcher 3 started to make rounds at E3 with a working demo, people took notice. Its creators steadily realized they were holding something special. "There was this feeling that it was going to be bigger," says Weber. "Skyrim was the open world game, and we could feel that suddenly a lot of people who loved Skyrim started paying atte☂ntion to The Witcher 3. We could kind of feel this… big wave, touching us. There was an excitemenꦍt, where we could tell that the general public was taking notice. It was a very interesting thing to see."

The secret formula

While that was happening, the studio also knew it was pushing the boat out with the moral complexity of its quests. Even a decade later, few RPGs – if any – have matched the consistency of The Witcher 3's depth, in which everything from the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:now-infamous Bloody Baron quest to the smallest of 🌟contracts can leave a lasting impression. Right or wrong is rarely defined, and goodness glimmers in abhorrence.

𒐪Its best quests, whether spanning several hours of a bite-sized 10 minutes, capture the feeling of being staggered after finishing a good book. (Sasko lights up at the comparison – "That was the goal!"). A large part of that comes from The Witcher 3's morally grey world, which has been discussed at length, and for good reason: it's the secret sauce that makes CDPR continue to stand out. Every potential addition needed to pass an incredibly high quality bar. Some of Weber's first feedback was "we don't do fetch quests" (a rule he maintains for The Witcher 4), and every designer wrote "10 times as many ideas as those that landed in the game".

Meeting that bar was difficult in more ways than one. Across both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, the studio has broached subjects ranging from eating disorders and terminal illness to domestic abuse and the right to die. Not everyone within CDPR has always been on board. Both Weber and Sasko recall 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:internal opposition to Cyberpunk 207💦7's Sinnerman, the beginning of a ques✱t line in which you meet a convicted murderer who wants to record his own crucifixion in a bid to convert more people to Christianity. Evelyn Parker's tragic fate was also controversial, as was the Bloody Baron's unflinching familial tragedy in The Witcher 3.

"There were so many conversations in the studio," says Sasko. "I remember when I was working on the Bloody Baron, I came up wi♐th the idea of the botchling – and to have it in the game. One of our developers, who was a young father at the time, said that he was disturbed by the zombie miscarried child, and should we really be making games like this? Is it moral, or ethical, to make a story like this? I managed to convince him in the end because I think he understood that we were trying to tell a story about domestic violence, broken human beings, and in a way show players that you can feel empathy for people that have done horrible things… and pose the question of: when is the moment you can forgive someone, as a human being?"

Weber agrees that having the confidence to go there is key to CDPR's knack for storytelling. "We ask difficult questions, but don't preach easy answers [...] The Bloody Baron does terrible things, but Geralt can still say that he feels for having lost his family. He can empathize with that aspect – it doesn't mean Geralt says 'I like you, you're a goo🐈d guy'. This way of ⛎writing stories is very important to us."

"We don't just do it to be showy," he continues. "We do it because there's an interesting question to delve into – not necessarily a question we want to answer, but a question we want to explore and think is worth it. I would say that if you never have those discussions, you're probably not making art. 'Maybe we have to be brave? Dive de🥂eper? Maybe this is something that could touch people the wrong way, are we ready to do that?' Those are discussions that we have to this day, but it's important to have them, because otherwise you're never able to do something like this."

Both developers insist the goal isn't to intentionally court controversy. Instead, Sasko believes it's crucial to not be afraid of it. "It's about touching on topics because you feel they should be talked about, because they are an import🃏ant element of your human experience and who we are as people. If that touches on controversial topics, it's OK – we want to talk about human life, and what it really means to be human."

"I'd rather make a game that s𝔍ome people love and some people don't like, than one everyone says is OK," says Weber.

Maturity is the "biggest element" of The Witcher 3's legacy, according to Sasko. A lot of the team were entering their 30s and ꦇ40s during development, and looking for "something more" from their medium. Did the harsh reality of The Witcher 3 come 🌊from shared experiences? "I would say we, as Polish people, are much more negative than Western societies," he replies. "We have a tendency to see glass half empty rather than half full. Part of creating mature entertainment is just realizing that not everything in life is going to go great. In all of our lives, horrible shit is going to happen."

Elaborating, Sasko suggests that having to reckon with the inevitable death of our parents is one of the "most important transitions" of the human condition. "I'm a development psychologist, so I think about those things a lot. For me this moment of transition, of understanding that your parents are aging and they're going to get sick and die, is a part of our human experience. It's dishonest to always show and paint the world in a positive lig﷽ht."

"You c🎃annot prevent your parents dying," he continues. "You cannot prevent the fact that maybe the pet you spent 15 years of your life with has cancer. You cannot completely prevent this. [But it's about] being thankful for everything you experienced. Even in this fucking dystopian horrible world of Cyberpunk, or this dark noir Witcher world, there are good people. There are good moments. There are friendships. There's love! I think that's the ambition: to encourage people toward this, and it might be a bit dark when I'm spea🐈king about it, but I want to make sure that ray of sunlight is visible in our work [...] There's a lot of hope in both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. It's just that you need to look for it."

Best endings

Nowadays, it's almost rote to discuss The Witcher 3's impact. Having sold 60 million copies and counting, the RPG brought CD Projekt Red to the genre's forefront seemingly overnight. Juggernauts like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and have been inspired by its open world.

It's a legacy that Sasko, now associate game director on the next Cyberpunk title, struggles to grasp. "Just last week, The Witcher 3 was on sale, but it was in the top 10 best-selling games on Steam together with Cyberpunk, which was incredible to see," he says, grinning. "I couldn't believe it – the game [is] 10 💦years old!"

For Weber, he feels The Witcher 4 is coming together with the same "scrappy energy" ๊that buzzed around CDPR when he first joined. "Sometimes I like to just say 💟'Get it done. Do it dirty. Do it the way we used to do it!"

As narrative director, Weber doesn't believe his job is to create a "matꦯhematical" improvement to The Witcher 3. Taste is subjective – after all, his favorite Witcher game is the often-forgotten first one ("I love it so much!"). "The way we want to do justice to [The Witcher 3's] legacy is to take the philosophy we had during The Witcher 3 – how to mak⭕e a game, how to really care about these things, how to tell stories – and keep that," he explains. "There are [also] new questions we want to answer, because this is supposed to feel like a true sequel, not just redoing what we did before. And I think it's really [about] trying to have that healthy mix of moving forward and also trying out some new things."

In November 2024, The Witcher 4 entered full-scale production. Unlike its predecessor, it will not have the element of surprise working for it. The Witcher 3 came together not through magic, but through human ambition and the courage to tackle reality – and as a result, expectations for its follow-up are sky-high. Few know this as well as Weber, who laughs. "I do see the articles where people talk about The Witcher 3 being one of the best games ever made and 'how are they going to top it?' – I'm like yeah, how are we going to do that?"

By bringing Cyberpunk 2077's density to The Witcher 4, CDPR is finally bridging the tech gap between its biggest RPGs

As the proud owner of a Steam Deck, I had some doubts about the personal enjoyment I could get out of a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Nintendo Switch 2 port, but at the same time, I was extremely curious about how well it could possibly run on what's ultimately a൲ beefed-up tablet. If this was a serious effort to bring a cutting-edge AAA title to Nintendo's new hybrid console at launch, the rest of the generation could look very promising. Now, 10 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 – I've imported my main PC save – I can confidently say it's easily the best way to play it on the go.

As crisp-looking and smooth as 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Mario Kart World is, Cyberpunk 2077 is the ultimate way to push the Switch 2 to its limits right now. It's the one game that will make your jaw drop once or twice because it almost feels illegal to have something that looks this good running on 'puny' Nintendo hardware. It's not just an excellent rendition of the game as seen in all its glory on current-gen platforms and PC, but also a perfectly fine way to ൲enjoy it for the first time..🐎. as long as you don't mind some rough edges.

Uncompromised vibes

Whereas the (admittedly impressive) Switch port of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 by Saber Interactive had to dial the visual pres♉entation so much that it inevitably ended up looking different, like a PSP-era adaptation of a✤ big PS3 release, CD Projekt Red's Switch 2 debut can be described as the developer coming out swinging.

We can thank the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:console's DLSS capabilities for that, but it's also clear the developer made a ton of platform-specific optimizations in order to ensure it's the real deal. Mind you, the game can chug in certain areas, including the infamous center of Dogtown and some of Night City's busier districts. Just walking or driving slowly around those parts will send the framerate below the 30 FPS cap (40 if you're on Performance mode). Try cruising fast through them and you might get proper hiccups and stutters; the RAM and CPU just can't keep up in such scenarios. Still, none of these slowdowns last too long, and it's safe to say Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 lands closer to the Xbox Series S and low-spec modern PC experience than PS4 & Xbox One's nightmarish versions. 1080🐼p through DLSS gets the job done here thanks to the extra sharpening involved too.

Many gamers who don't care much about settings and whatnot might also be wondering which graphics🐭 mode is best. Short answer: There's no clear winner here. Long answer: Quality looks noticeably sharper, with image that resolves more convincingly when it comes to finer details, but the extra 10 FPS (rarely constant, I must say) that come with Performance can help a great deal with the overall fluidity, especially in heated action sequences.

I'm typically a staunch defender of going with more FPS 99% of the time, yet I found myself leaning towards Quality because Performance rarely hits 40 FPS for more than a few seconds, making the loss in visual fidelity harder to swallow. Playing a first-person game at 30 FPS (with drops below possible) might seem bad, but at the time of writing, it's the more consistent experience, especially on handheld mode (澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:VRR isn't a thing when docked). As for load times, don't worry about them.

When it comes to presentation, the big win is that Cyberpunk 2077 looks very much like Cyberpunk 2077. Even when you take away the sweet sweet high framerate which you can get elsewhere and fancy ray tracing, what's left 🐈o💜n Switch 2 looks convincing and retains every delicious bit of the stunning art direction, whether it's the streets at night, the sleek vehicles, or a crowded market under the rain. Neither duller nor barren, this is Night City as I've experienced it for tens of hours on PC and PS5 before.

On the portable PC handhelds, similar visuals and performance are achievable (and DLSS still gives Switch 2 the upper hand), but the big difference is that Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 runs and looks fine out of the box. You can even lꦜoad up cross-saves in mere seconds. There are gameplay, sound, and accessibility options you can tinker with, but hitting the ground running feels great.

Nifty cyberware

On top of HDR support and spatial audio that wows even in portable mode, the Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 comes with all the bells and whistles that Nintendo spent some time marketing ahead of launch. Gyroscope enjoyers can get better precision with that aiming mode, and the console's mouse capabilities, while not ideal when playing at 30 or 40 FPS, are present too. While I'm not a fan of the latter in this game, it's a great showcase of what the console can do outside ofꦍ shinier graphics and denser worlds, and made me very excite🍌d about the future of first-person and strategy games on Switch 2.

If you like tablets a bit too much, the touch screen works in menus and for actions like hacking so you can go all Tom Cruise in Minority Report instead of usꦿing the buttons like a normal gamer. In most cases, it's hard to imagine the average player messing with these options too much, but it's good to see CDPR going this deep and all-out with one of the console's lau🤡nch titles. It sets a golden standard for big third-party ports moving forward, warts and all, and that's ultimately good for consumers.

Cyberpunk 2077 on the Nintendo Switch 2 could've been a curiosity, a fun experiment with somewhat middling results. Instead, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:it's a promise of greater things to come and a bar to match or clear going for▨ward. With new updates and more polishing surely on the way, I find it hard to get t🔴oo hung up on the rockier performance moments of a port that really feels like black magic.

If you can stomach some bumps in the road♌ and deal with less snappy aim, there's no better oꦛption to take Night City everywhere you want. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to replay Phantom Liberty again to try and get the best ending this time around.

We've rated the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Switch 2 games you can play now (and yes, Cyberpunk 2077 made the cut)

Speaking in a post-stream announcement on , Rebel Wolves creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz explores how the studio managed to strike a fun balance between human and vampire gamꦇeplay in protagonist Coen. "From the start, our goal was to make both of Coen's forms, human and vampire, equally engaging, fun, and meaningful to play,⭕" writes the lead. "Each brings unique abilities and influences the world, quests, and story in different ways."

Tomaszkiewicz, who previously worked on iconic 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:CD Projekt Red RPGs like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077, continues, explaining how Rebel Wolves wanted to properly nail the vampires in The Blood of Dawnwalker: "When it comes to vampires, we wanted to honor the classic vision – the elegant "nobility" of the night, w෴hile also introducing some twists that make our vampires stand out in more distinct, sometimes unsettling ways."

That's not all, though. There'👍s some Nosferatu-esque lore in there, too. "To turn a human, a vampire must pull out one of their teeth and pierce the heart of their chosen target," states Tomaszkiewicz. "This ritual is one of our biggest changes to vampire lore, and it plays a crucial role in Coen's transformation into a dawnwalker." It didn't all work out for the main character, however – as the dev says, "something went wrong."

While Tomaszkiewicz doesn't spoil any further details, I can't help but be wildly excited at the prospect of a good vampire game with ties to both history and established mythology. Coupled with what he's said about The Blood of Dawnwalker featuring 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:"combat that feels authentic" because they "studied medieval fighting styles and even have a few trained swordsmen on the team," this all has me thrilled to finally play the RPG in 2026.

Searching for more澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: new games to wishlist? Here's a full rundown of the澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule to look back on for a better idea of what happened when.

Speaking in a post-stream announcement on , Rebel Wolves' creative director, Mateusz🦋 Tomaszkiewicz, dives into the details regarding The Blood of Dawnwalker's combat system and how it works with protagonist Coen. "Coen trained for years with his father, a grizzled war veteran, so during the day he wields a sword," explains ꦓthe dev. "We studied medieval fighting styles and even have a few trained swordsmen on the team."

Tomaszkiewicz, who previously worked on beloved CD Projekt Red RPGs like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077, says these efforts are why combat feels "authentic" ܫin The Blood of Dawnwalker: "The result is combat that feels authentic and grounded, yet approachable and fun." How does combat change for Coen depending on whethe💜r it's day or night in the game, though, as this cycle is part of what makes the title so intriguing?

"As a human, he also learns how to use magic – raw, ritual-based, with dark, primordial origins," describes Tomaszkiewicz. "We're not going the high fantasy route with colorful explosions. Our spells are darker and grounded – tied to blood, heat, and air that seems to pulse and breathe. The visuals can be striking, but in a more vis🍬ceral, eerie way. To cast a spell, you first have to literally open up your body to the occult by carving runes and becoming a living conduit. Magic flows through you."

Once the day draws to a close, combat takes a turn for Coen. "At night, though, these runes seal shut as your flesh regenerates. They fade, like old scars. Instead, your vampiric nature awakens. You'll fight with claws, enhanced strength, supernatural agility, and dark powers available only after sunset. But these powers come at a cost: your humanity." It sounds like the sort of day-to-night shift one would expect of a vampire, withඣ some nuance.

"Coen's vampiric Blood Craving comes into play: a system that ties his health level and his hunger," the lead explains. "When losing health, Coen is at risk of losing control over his vampire nature, which can even lead to involuntary draining [of] an NPC that you interact with, locking you out from some dialogue options or even quest lines as his dark instincts take over." That balance between risk and reward is core to the RPG experience, and as an excited fan myself, I can't wait to experience it firsthand.

Searching for more澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: new games to wishlist? Here's a full rundown of the澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule to look back on for a better idea of what happened when.

This was revealed by lead writer Marcin Blacha in a recent , who mentions that some of the "biggest changes" made to the game between its development and the final version were related to the titular Wild Hunt. Geralt was once planned to be "kind of like an insider," and "doing stuff ♛pretending t🐟o be one of them."

The scrapped ending sounds particularly interesting, with Blacha upfront in sayinꦐg that "Mass Effect 2 was a huge inspiration for the game." He continues: "Initially, we had an ending that was kind of inspired by Mass Effect 2… that moment when Geralt gathers a party and goes on a suicide mission.

"It ✤was on a Skellige drakkar you were sailing into a frozen sea, and you were supposed to f💦ight the Wild Hunt on this drakkar."

In the end, CD Projekt Red "redesigned" the ending "a little bit," having 👍instead "decided to make this more personal ending." Clearly, the ide𝔉a wasn't scrapped in its entirety, with the whole boat on an icy sea setting carrying forth to the actual ending, when Geralt takes on the King of the Wild Hunt.

No game is without its scrapped ideas, and it makes you wonder in this case how many bits of content that got edited out of The Witcher 3 could make an appearance in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4. A recent Witcher 4 tech demo revealed that Manticores feature in the upcoming RPG, over 10 years since they were apparently cut from the last game, so that's just on🅺e example.

The Witcher 4 devs are inspired by RPGs like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Baldur's Gate 3, but "definitely are not going to make a game like Larian did."

"GOG has a great reputation, they are not as big as Steam but always put in more time and effort than any other platform," Skyblivion project lead Kyle "Rebelzize" Rebel tells . "We aꦫre looking to get Skyblivion into as many hands as possible, and GOG will be a great partner to help make that possible. We will still try to self-distribute, but I doubt we can beat stable GOG servers."

Rebel says the Skyblivion team was "definitely inspired" by Fallout: London's release on GOG. "Before [that], I had never thought of a 😼creative solution like this."

Yesterday's show confirmed a 2025 release date for the project, and Rebel says, "We are working with GOG to ensure a stable rollout when the time comes." They're currently "working around the clock to the best of our abilities to make sure we make that release goal," and also trying🅺 🌜to meet some stretch goals.

"Having said that, until Skyblivion is available to download for everyone, I will enjoy no rel💮ief."

A GOG spokesperson tells Rock Paper Shotgun, "Our partnership with Team FOLON, creators of the amazing Fallout: London experience, paved the way for🉐ward, underlining that we, as a p﷽latform, had a unique role in the gaming industry, allowing us to provide very unique solutions to very unique problems. Reaching out to the Skyblivion team felt like an obvious next step."

G﷽OG positions itself as a bastion of game preservation. Owned by Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Re💫d, it provides DRM-free games. Once you buy a game on the storefront and download it, you own it forever.

It's launching the One-click Mods initiative because of the belief that "mods are an essential part of video game preservation." Often, mods go where developers won't, making older games more playable 💯on modern coജnsoles.

"As for the steps required to play, we're still working on them; however, it is very likely that we would propose two options: if you own the base game on GOG, you will only need to add the one-click version of the mod to your account, press install and... just play," explains the GOG spokesperson. "If you don’t, there will be a few🌟 additional steps, but we will d𝓀o our best to make it as simple as possible."

Luckily, the not-so-surprising release of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Oblivion Remastered hasn't impacted Skyblivion. "As for the release of Oblivion Remastered, its success only underlines how eager the gamඣing community is to experience classic games with a fresh touch, and we believe they’ll be very pleased with Skyblivion as well," assures GOG.

While you wait for Skyblivion, check out everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2025.

CD Projekt Red explains some of what it does, however, look for in other studios' titles for inspiration to in an interview, starting with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. "I love Kingdom Come because of the realism and the feeling, the sense of humor," admits co-CEO Adam Badowski. The more systems-heavy and simulation-aligned aspects of the RPG are areas CD Proj🐼ekt Red pays the most attention to, as they might translate well♒ into The Witcher 4.

"The Kingdom Come kind of simulation, it's great," continues the lead. "There are so many options, you can change the world, it's super great. And we would like to keep that, we'd like to follow this trend as well. So these are our next steps for sure, and it's kind of a similar challenge to what we have in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 because of the open world and storytel🗹ling here, freedom of🦋 choices." Nailing Kingdom Come's "kind of simulation" isn't easy, though.

"But at the same time, we would like to build very fleshy, very well-motivated characters. So it's kind of in contradiction from time to time. That's a great design challenge." As for other beloved recent RPGs, like Larian Studios' 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3, Badowski explains the inspiration drawn by CD Projekt Red from them hits a bit differently – after all, the turn-based style doesn't exactly fit well into the team's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:open-world "niche" of games like The Witcher 4.

"In Larian's case, it's turn-based, so it's a different kind of game, and the way you interact with characters is totally different," he says. "We like to fully build the characters, understand the past and t🎀he future of the characters' motivation. That's why it takes so much time. [In Baldur's Gate 3] there are great characters as well, but sometimes your choices, because there's freedom of choice in Larian's work, it pushes you to use different tricks than ours."

That doesn't mean CD Projekt Red doesn't ever admire Larian's work, however: "I think we observe each other, and there are not that many games like that, so that's natural, yeah, and we see how players react, how fans react to those tactics." Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski adds: "I think we're still more in the, you know, we're a big open world, but a lot of what Baldur's Gate 3 showed was an inspirat▨ion, and to be honest, there's no shame in that."

It's not strange for devs to explore fellow devs' work, even if it differs a bit♒, as Nowakowski details. "I think everybody who launches games nowadays is looking back on what was done before, and is looking at what worked and what was great and how and if they can fit it into whatever they are doing." CD Projekt Red will, for the most part, stick to its own past games for the bulk of its inspiration while developing new titl💙es, though.

"So, for sure, there was a lot of inspiration in what BG3 did, but I think we're still more sticking to what was The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk, even if we don't want to just make another game like that, just with better graphics," as Nowakowski says – but it'll all be bigger a✅nd better. "We do want to innovate in terms of what's available in terms of gameplay and so on. I 💝hope when the time comes, that's going to become clear for the fans as well."

Concluding CD Projekt Red's thoughts on inspiration drawn from Baldur's Gate 3 and the like, Nowakowski clarifies his and Badowski's words so far: "It's a bit of an unclear answer, but to make it more clear, we definitely are not going to make a game like Larian did. That's the kind of game they can make. But a lot of stuff with how the characters can interact with the world and what it does was for sure some inspiration to us."

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

Maybe it's the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I never noticed how quiet The Witcher 3 can be. Soft footsteps and the odd NPC bark aside, it seems these thriving townships suffer from a serious lack of actual thriving. Sure, it was (and still is) one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs for a reason, but with The Witcher 3 having turned 10 this year, it's clear that CD Projekt Red has learned a lot of lessons since then. Specifically, around how to craft an environment – and the tech demo has me hyped for Ciri to get a taste of Night City's b𝓰uzz

Night and day cities

As much as I love the "city of dreams,", it took the developer almost four y🐻ears-post launch to achieve Cyberp🔯unk 2077's potential.

Today, Night City is as immersive of a video game metropolis as you can get. Hundreds of NPCs crowd the streets from Heywood to Japantown and beyond, the roads teem with cars of all shapes, sizes, and engine, and sound is pretty much everywhere.

You can almost smell cigarette smoke through the screen, hazy and thick in the early morning air as a nightclub'🌠s rhythmic bass keeps the party going, or taste the oily scopdog being wolfed down by a nearby Tyger Claw seconds before getting shoulder-chucked by a dude in leopard-print hotpants. This thoroughly lived-in vibe is what makes Cyberpunk such an exciting place to escape to in a video game, and sadly, it's somethi🐼ng we just did not get in The Witcher 3.

In the videos linked above, I was surprised to see how much I'd disregarded the lack of urban business in CD Projekt Red's most iconic RPG. One of them sees an NPC drinking silently and repetitively from a flask of wine, rooted to the spot, while a passing woman bemoans her husband's adulterous liaisons, all while Geralt simply walks past them like a ghost. Suddenly, a child comes running up beside him, causing a collision issue with the striding witcher as her character model seems to reverberate off𓂃 Geralt's for a moment before coming unstuck and continuing on her travels.

In♏ hindsight, the lack of bustle makes these cities feel a bit, well, dead. Thankfully, The Witcher 4 looks to change that.

Leaps and boundaries

This time around, bringin🍸g Night City's lively urban environments to The Witcher 4 seems paramount to CD Projekt Red. It's part of the studio's mission to deliver "the most ambitious, immersive Witcher game ever," harnessing the power of Unreal Engine 5.6 to do so.

In the short clip seen in the tech demo where Ciri walks around a marketplace in Kovir, that power is already evident – as are flavors of Night City's vitality. A tavern keeper is seen throwing an unruly patron out into the streets in what looks like a scripted environmental encounter, triggered by the player's proximity to a certain location. This reminds me of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 quest Don't Lose Your Mind, which kicks in only when observing a car crash while driving around Corpo Plaza's roundabo𝐆ut.

Not only that, the environmental noise is far more realistic. It's only an in-engine demo to showcase the technology, with an on-screen warning indicating that it's "not actual gameplay," but hearing fully-scripted NPC co🅺nversations happening while Ciri waltzes past is a far cry from the near deathly silence of towns in The Witcher.

It's too early to say for sure, but this small slice of progress tells me that CD Projekt Red is taking innovation seriously. With plenty of lessons learned through Cyberpunk 2077 and DLC Phantom Liberty, its design philosophy is a testament to the studio's immense growth, reminding us why The Witcher 4 is one of the most exciting 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games on the horizon. Let's hope we get eyes on some actual game footage soon to see if it holds up.

There's plenty more 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games on the way besides The Witcher 4... though I'll admit, it's still my most wanted

It's not often we horse girls get to experience games with realistic mounts – the movement is wonky, the animation is off, and the horses feel like they were implemented with little regard for their real-life counterparts. That's why titles like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Red Dead Redemption 2 that feature a semblance 🌄of horse realism stand out and attract more than just your average RPG fans, but they're a rarity, and they're admittedly still lacking in many areas.

The Witcher 4 might just rewrite the genre's reputation in equestrians' minds, however, with its impressive tech powering the 澳洲ꦆ幸运5开奖号码历史查询:"realistic muscles moving and stretching" under the skin of Ciri's horse, Kelpie. I'm not the only one who thinks so, either – Alice Ruppert, the equestrian and game developer behind , a website "dedicated to horses in video games and video games a♐bout horses," seems to think so, too.

Ruppert discusses CD Projekt Red's tech demo and its exploration of Kelpie's movements, muscles, and more, and it's safe to say she's impressed – although she does proceed with caution as the showcase is meant to highlight developers' "ambit𒈔ion for the game anওd the in-engine capabilities" rather than The Witcher 4 as it'll♍ play upon release. "In the minute or so of footage the tech demo shows us of Kelpie, I fiꦅnd a lot of detail to appreciate."

She continues: "We see Kelpie move at a trot and canter in a generally anatomically correct and possible fashion" – a rare sight ot behold in video games, unfortunately. Ruppert also notes that it's nice to see Kelpie treated as a companion rather than a vehicle. "The demo treats Kelpie like a character rather than a bicycle: Ciri calls her name and the horse reacts and canters up to her and Ciri gives her a little pat after 🌠mounting."

There's no telling whether this means we'll get more interactions than we did with Roach as Geralt in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3, but it's certainly a good sign "that t🎃he horse gameplay in The Witcher 4 is getting some additional attention compared to its predecessor." Ruppert then gets into some of the more movement-related specifics from the demo, as it "goes on to show off Kelpie's coat texture and muscle simulation at a gallop in slow motion."

It all looks so smooth, she guesses animations "were most likely eit𒅌her motion captured or animated by someone who really knows their horses, and seeing it is balm on my soul." While there are flaws, as Ruppert notes, they require "nitpicking on a very high level" as "what we see in the Witcher 4 tech demo is easily one of the overall most impressive and well put together game horse animations ever seen, even if it isn't literally perfect in every way."

As both a longtime horse and RPG lover myself, I can't help but understand what Ruppert means when she admits she "got tears in my eyes the first time I watched this out of sheer 'oh my god they're taking the horse seriously' awe" – the tech demo is stunning, and I agree with her conclusion that "we horse-loving gamers may be in for an absolute treat" if CD Projekt Red's showcase acts as an indicator of what's to come in The Witcher 4.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Wyeth Johnson, senior director of product strategy for Unreal Engine, says that "every developer who uses Unreal will benefit from what we showed today." What Unreal creator Epic showed hinged on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 and its new tech demo, which showed a dense, detailed version of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:region of Kovir, running at 60fps on a base PS5.

Together, Epic and CD Projekt Red covered the ways in which Unreal Engine ca😼n be used to create detailed forests or large crow𒊎ds of unique NPCs – without individual devs having to spend dozens of hours sculpting every branch or character's face. That tech allows for easier creation in less time, and Johnson says that's "good for everybody that uses it."

That's a point that Johnson was keen to emphasize. The Unreal ecosystem, he points out, "is vast," and touches almost any industry you can think of. That has its downsides, however, in the fact that Unreal's devs use their own instincts to create the tools the꧋y think and hope any given development might use, "but there's no possible way that we could push in every direction to the apex level that developers like CD Projekt Red are capable of pushing."

Julius Girbig, senior technical animator who helped put together the tech demo, likens it to a massive game development toolbox, in which studios are able to pick and choose the tools they want to use. But they can also choose to leave certain tools in the box if they don't need them, or even create their own tools to add to it. "That's also what is really powerful for us – that if we don't require a certain feature, we don't use it, and we create our own vඣersion of it, or we build on top of something that's already there."

Overall, Johnson notes, Unreal's suc👍cess stems from what each developer makes of it. "Performance is not just what a player interacts with – it's also what a developer interacts with," he says. "And when the water levelℱ goes up and the time to achieve quality goes down, then you can be more expressive, you can be more playful, you can try to dream a little bit more than just worrying about all these systems holding you back."

That's a sentiment that was echoed by Girbig. His focus was on the marketplace that Ciri walks through, and he says that the animation framework and mass AI tech that were shown off were a key part of his work. As an animation artist, he says he's "not actua🐬lly digging int✱o code that much," but was still able to create and refine "hundreds of characters," each with their own behaviors shaped by Unreal.

"It just unlocks me as an artist. Now, with this engine, it suddenly unlocks me to create much bigger things and think bigger. It's really, really awesome to be able to use things like the nanite foliage to create these vast forests and whatever comes to your mind, and it will ๊be available for everyone."

Swapping to Unreal was "worth it" for The Witcher 4, says CDPR dev defending the transition away from The Witcher 3's RED engine.

It seems CD Projekt Red devs aren't immune to the effects the impressive tech demo had on the community, and it's not hard to see why – from the first look at The Witcher 4's setting in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:never-before-seen kingdom of Kovir to its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:hyper-realistic horse anatomy, it left plenty to be excited about. The stunning visuals and performance offered nothing to scoff at, even if mostly a glance at the studio's "ambition for the game and the in-engine ca🍬pabilities."

As global community director Marcin Momot writes in a , the demo demonstrated "the tech powering The Witcher 4, developed by our team in collaboration with Epic, in buttery smooth 4K/60fp♔s" – some undeniably solid numbers considering the high-tech features♍ CD Projekt Red and Epic Games were highlighting. "This game is shaping up to be something special and we can't wait to show you more when the time is right!"

In a r🗹eply to his tweet, : "Our team is full of wi🐼zards!"

GSA Head of Communication Fabian Mario Döhla seems similarly blown away by the tech demo, revealing in his own that he's 𒆙played it himself – and he "still can'꧒t get enough" of it.

"Some of the best – and genuinely nicest – developers in the industry have poured thei𝓰r heart and soul into this," he says. "I hope you had fun with the tech demo – I've played (on a base PS5!) and watched it a thousand times, and I still can't get enough."

Suffice to say, The Witcher 4 sounds as though it's shaping up to be one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs in a long while – and although ❀yesterday's showcase was only a tech demo, its deep dive into the engine housing the game has me thrilled for more as a ওlongtime fan.

Between this and other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games, like the mysterious codenamed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project Sirius, another🀅 Witcher title devs say will "differ from past productions," th🅘ere's much to look forward to.

Want to keep the excitement flowing? Here are some other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

It's a buzz to be this close to so much creativity. Digital Dragons might not yet have the size and scale of GDC, nor the community-first appeal of something like Gamescom, but Krakow's annual B2B gamedev conference is a whole other bꦍeast in itself – and everything I experienced over my four day excursion proves it means business.

Hive mind

Looking around the crowded glass-paneled interior 𒁃of the Krakow International Conference Center, I remind 🔥myself that Digital Dragons wasn't always such a huge event.

The first conference was hosted in 2012, and on a much smaller sca🌠le – 300 partners total, largely consisting of local Polish developers and publishers. But as of 2025, Digit🍸al Dragons has grown in popularity, with its number of attendees having swelled to attract 2,300 participants from 53 countries this year.

There's a focus on buildingಞ prestige here, a sense of "quality over quantity" as one representative from Krakow Technology Park put it, crafted through its framework of lectures intended for B2B audiences rather than the community feel of other gaming conventions. By effect, Digital Dragons harnesses the opportunity for industry professionals across Eastern Europe and beyond to show face, network, possibly recruit, and learn from one another's successes and setbacks.

This becomes especially important given how the eve♔nt caters not only to double and triple-A♛ studios and publishers, but indie developers too.

The expansive Indie Zone on the ground floor fast became my favorite place to hang out between lectures, a maze of whirring computers and bright poster boards♈, each boasting indies of every genre imaginable.

Here, small studios set up shop to show off their works-in-progress alongside a handful of acclaimed released titles, like , and promising early access games such as . With survival horror gem 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史🍒查询:Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken (winner of the convention's Indie Dragons award) on offer alongside 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Little Nightmares 3-style co-op adventure 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Bumpkin & Sprout, dark fantasy Witcher 3-meets-God of War combo 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Vranygrai, and every shade of indie in between, it was all too easy to simply while away 🔯the hours playing demo 💜builds galore.

But even if I had stayed on the ground floor for the whole convention, I don't think I'd have missed out. Digital Dragon's Indie Zone does not play second fiddle to its plethora of high-profile lectures mere doors away. Rather, it's integral to the whole experꦆience.

From roots to shoots

"It's one ecosystem. So everything grows together," says Jakub Marszalkowski, representing Indie Games Poland Foundation, on the importance of championing i༺ndies at prestigious events such as Digital Dragons.

"This industry is growing in, as it was said already, a little bit of a grassroot pro🌳cess from the bottom up. So all the big companies we have now, at some point were small🐎er companies. This – being independent – was an important part of it."

Shinin🔜g a light on the exceptional talents of the Polish games sector is especially important given the country's historical context. Since the fall of communism in the country as of 1991, Poland has been pushing to "catch up to the West," as Marszalkowski put it, and forge a new identity as a tech-savvy nation of creatives and opportuꦯnity.

With an estimated 15,200 individuals currently in the Polish gaming workforce – "which makes us, on talent pool💝 size, bigger than Germany and somewhat parallel with France" – the country is already taking serious strides forward.

"We don't have that many other cultural exports,"🅰 Marszalkowski says, referencing how Polish industries missed critical waves when it comes to music, film, and other creative booms post World W🗹ar 2. "But the game industry, we were there from the very beginning.

"You probably have not seen many Polish movies, you probably have not listened to much Polish music, but you definitely know some Polish💖 games. So this is our most important – or maybe the only – cultural export, and we should rely on that a lot to have our voice being heard globally."

Passing the baton

This extends to amplifying the voices of not only current industry professionals, but emerging talents too.

During my trip to Krakow, we had a day excursion to the neighboring posti💛ndustrial city of Katowice, where the country's already booming game development scene is being supported through an impressive array of theoretical and practical further education courses.

The effects of these sophisticated programmes is evident at Digital Dragons, where a team of young developerဣs – Rabid Rat, the animation studio-turned game developers who created the aforementioned co-op platformer Bumpkin & Sprout – won the indie Best Pitch award on the final day of the conference, alongside Atomnius, an even younger cohort of gamedevs, who snatched the community vote.

The joy was magnified given that🥀 11 Bit, winner of Best Polish Game for Frostpunk 2, had donated their swanky PC prize to the pitch award victor as an act of solidarity. Every studio has to start somewhere, and for a confer🎀ence about prestige, there's no room for elitism here.

It was a heartfelt moment – and yes, I v♕ery nearly shed a little tear because of it – that perfectly encapsulated how important Digital Dragons has become for studios large and small. This conference is a rare chance for developers to celebrate their wins, even amid a growing spate of industry layoffs, and find connection through the stress and pressure of their chosen career.

Digitꦓal Dragons is a reminder that, despite how many excellent Polish games I've played and adored, the best is yet to come – sooner than you think.

June is here, meaning 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Summer Game Fest 2025 is just around the corner! Here's a full list of the events to expect from June 6-8

Speaking after the State of Unreal showcase, Julius Girbig, Senior Technical Animator – Coordinator, is full of praise for the engine when asked about the jump to Unreal fꦏrom RED.

"We had a blast with Unreal," he says. "We played around with all the different systems, how it's built, all the different features inside. Obviously, it was a well-thought-out 🌄decision to move over.

"We looked at a bunch of different engines, really evaluated it, and it was a conscious decision that Unreal is the right tool for us in the future, and especially when we move to multiple different projectꦜs at the same time. And I think the demo actually shows that it was worth it, the work that we put in is paying off."

When asked whether it was Unreal's feature set that tipped the deci🔥sion to use it, Girbig has the following to say:

"When we're loo♔king at an engine, an engine is essentially just a toolbox, right? We're just looking at 'what does this engine give us? What do we already have?' And it's not like we lost things because of the transition.

"We're bringing our experience that we already have from RED Engine, all the AAA open-world with streaming, all that experience, we're now bringing over to experts that have been building engines for years as well, and have that experience of running multiple projects - huge ones at that. Look at Fortnite. And it's ♔that combination that makes us really strong."

Alongside a monster that went 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:unseen in The Witcher 3 and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:horse anatomy, the main pull of The Witcher 4's tech demo, aside from the sights, was the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:region of Kovir. It all looks stunning, but, naturally, you'll want to keep those expectations somewhat in check as director Sebastian Kalemba says the tech demo "showcases both our ambition for the game and the in-engine capabilities," but 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:"isn't a demo" of the RPG.

Chamber pots, spit, and pigs: Between the stunning views, The Witcher 4's Unreal Engine 5 tech demo is the grimy medieval mess I was hoping for.

The tech demo left fans of The Witcher series in a chokehold, blown away by the upcoming game's stunning 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new setting in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:never-before-seen kingdom of Kovir and its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:hyper-realistic horse anatomy. But according to ✤Kalemba, it wasn't exactly an entirely accurate showcase of the RPG a♔s it'll be when it releases, but rather a deep dive into the impressive Unreal Engine 5 technology that's powering The Witcher 4.

Kalemba clarifies🅠 as much in an online following the stream. "This demo is the direct result of the strategic partnership w꧙e announced back in 2022 between CD Projekt Red and Epic Games," writes the lead, going on to describe the studio's work with Epic to enhance the Unreal Engine's toolset. "Since then, we've been working closely together to develop new tools and enhance existing features in Unreal Engine 5."

That's where yesterday's State of Unreal stream comes in – as a look into the "ambition" CD Projekt Red has for the game, rather than the actual final product in action. "The tech demo, running on PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second," writes Kalemba, "showcases both our ambition for the game and the in-engine capabilities 🌃powering The Witcher 4." The director then stresses again that the tech demo is just that.

"One super important thing to remember: this isn't a demo of the game itself, b🥂ut rather a showcase of the engine and its capabilities," concludes Kalemba. "It's an early look and demonstration of what's possible at this stage of development,🤡 thanks to everyone's joint efforts."

In a follow-up , he also explains that, while the demo ran on a PlayStation 5, the technology "works across all platforms the game will lau🧔𝓀nch on."

Despite knowing the tech demo was a quick peek into what the Unreal Engine can do myself, I can't help but be all the more excited for the yet-to-arrive RPG – I mean, just look at those 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new Witcher 4 screenshots shared yesterday.

Need even more to look forward to yourself? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

In case you missed it, CDPR debuted for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 at today's Epic Games State o▨f Unreal showcase, and now that you know that, you should totall👍y go watch both of them and then come back and read this afterward.

The Witcher 4 wouldn't be a modern RPG if it didn't have fans♎ examining its characters' faces through a microscope trying to find minute changes so they can complain about them on social media, and sure enough, people online were quick to point out that Ciri looks slightly different in the new footage than she did back in December.

Well, a CDPR spokesperson has confirmed to that it's the same Ciri – not just from the 2024 trailer, but also from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3, despite two subt🗹le ch๊anges, one of which has already been edited out of the new trailer.

"It's the same character model used in the [2024] trailer," t൲he spokesperson said. "Ciri's face is a direct copy of The Witcher 3 model, adapted to work with the latest MetaHuman technology. Two subtle changes were made to improve animation qu๊ality: slightly raised eyebrows, and a more relaxed eye area – the latter was present in the trailer but has since been removed."

Elsewhere in the new trailer and tech demo is a look at the fabled manticores th▨at were reportedly ꧙cut from The Witcher 3, footage of Ciri strolling through a bustling city, and a great view of th🅰e game's g🌳orgeous open world — all of which is, to me, much more interesting than "slightly raised eyebrows."

The Witcher 4 setting could be the never-before-seen region of Kovir, as Ciri journeys to the far north in CD Projekt's new tech demo

If you're scratching your head at The Witcher 4 setting, you wouldn't be alone. The kingdom of Kovir and Poviss stands as a region that players weren't actually able to explore at all in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 as Geralt. Everything we know about the Northern Kingdom stems from some minor in-game references and details gathered from author Andrzej Sapkowski's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher books, which arguably mak🧜es it obscure enough to not re🌸member well.

What is Kovir, the setting of The Witcher 4?

Two of the most significant mentions of Kovir can be found in The Witcher 3, with the first being a lore book aptly dubbed "Kovir and Poviss." This in-game book rests idly on various bookshelves throughout Wild Hunt, but it contains a wealth of information about the region, including tidbits about its history and reputation. If you don't read everything you come across, it's highly likely you'll miss it. The book's entry reads as follows:

Kovir and Poviss are, without a doubt, the richest realms in the North. Few today remember that this was not always the case, yet their poverty was once literally on everyone's lips, in the form of now-antiquated common sayings. As recently as the days of Heribert the Quarrelsome, one spoke of a particularly impoverished person as being "poorer than a mouse from Poviss," called bone broth "Koviri delight," and referred to beggars as "praxedes," after the bay along the shores of which these kingdoms lie.

Similarly, few remember that a mere handful of generations ago, Kovir and Poviss were still part of Redania. King Radovid I, known as Radovid the Great, handed dominion over them to his hated brother, Troyden, with one stipulation - that he never leave his newly-acquired demesne and not interfere in matters of state.

Handing over this rocky scrap of far-northern ground (where, the saying went, the year had two seasons - August and winter) was naturally meant as a cruel joke, a slap in the face for the over-ambitious Troyden.

Yet time soon proved that Radovid the Great had made a grave error. Before long, it was discovered that Kovir's bare rocks hid priceless treasure in the form of enormous deposits of precious metals and rock salt. This discovery, in turn, led to tremendous growth in productive industry. Mills, forges, and workshops sprouted up like mushrooms after a hearty rain.

Radovid III decided to correct his famous forebear's mistake and take back the northern frontiers of his kingdom. He was convinced the combined armies of Redania and its then-ally Kaedwen would quickly bring this ever more audacious vassal in line. History took a different turn, however, and Kovir won a resounding, crushing victory. Radovid III was forced to sign the First Treaty of Lan Exeter, granting Kovir independence while binding it to eternal neutrality - a promise Troyden's successors have kept with great diligence.

Until recently, Kovir was ruled by Esterad Thyssen, a king as wise as he was greedy. Yet his untimely demise did not stop his lands from continuing to develop and blossom. Koviri metallurgists proudly compete with the best Mahakam can offer, and many believe the University of Lan Exeter long ago surpassed the famous Oxenfurt Academy as the leading seat of higher learning in the North. And so it has come to pass that, over the course of a few generations, the inhabitants of Kovir and Poviss have turned from paupers into princes, from beggars into bankers.

That's not the only taste of Kovir we get in The Witcher 3, however – depending on who you choose to romance, you might hear more about the region at the end of the game. Should you opt to stay with Triss Merigold over Yennefer, the game's post-credits narration will advise you that she and Geralt go on to move to Kovir. There, Triss ends up acting as court advisor to King Tankred Thyssen, the only son 𒅌of Esterad Thyssen.

Does that mean it's one of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 endings that most qualify as the "canon" fina🌠le for Geralt? There's no telling until The Witcher 4 releases, but it's still not the only time Kovir is relevant in a past CD Projekt Red RPG. The kingdom also comes up in The Witcher 2, when Letho o🥂f Gulet reveals King Esterad was supposed to be the first target of the Kingslayers in an assassination attempt that never ends up coming to fruition.

As for The Witcher books, including the latest, which is out now, they offer more technical information on the region. Standing strong as the largest exporter of mineral resources, famed for its glass industries, and rich in mountains and mines, Kovir is situated north of Redania on the Gulf of Praxeda. Unsurprisingly, the mineral-rich realm exp🎉orts chromium, copper, glass, iron ore, lead, nickel, platinum, salt, silver, tin, titanium, tungsten, and zinc.

The Northern Kingdom also accounts for 80% of the woꦯrld's gold, as described in the fourth Witcher book, The Tower of the Swallow. Lan Exeter serves as Kovir's winter capital, while Port Vanis is its summer counterpart – two areas we're sure to see in The Witcher 4. We may get to explore territories like Creyden, Narok, Poviss, Talgar, and Velhad, too, but CD Projekt Red has yet to provide more details on the new game's map.

Hopefully, we don't have to wait much longer to learn about the ins and outs of Kovir in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red game – but until then, details from the Witcher series' prior entries and Sapkowski's books should tide us over.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

CD Projekt Red gave a fresh glimpse of its RPG in a tech demo showcase today, which opened with a cinematic scene showing a group of people traveling in the back of a wagon getting attacked by a ferocious, winged beast. As the developer shows off more footꩵage, including our protagonist Ciri talking to a merchant in a bustling town, we find out that we actually just said hello to a manticore.

Ciri's conversation gives a bit more insight into the attack, as it sounds like Ciri was sent out to look for the merchant's wagons, which he had claimed were transporting salt. "I found them, and suffice to say, they'll not reach you," Ciri says, before pointing out that there wasn't a speck of salt t⛦o be found.

She clarifies that a smuggling trade is "of no concern to me," before adding: "The manticore that flattened your carts and devoured your men, quite the opposite." While the merchant begins to question her on this, we're unfortunately transported away to look at other juicy bits before we can finish listening to the full interaction. Needless to say, though, it certainly🐽 sounds like Ciri might want to take the beast on – perhaps that's what she was going to be asked to do.

Despite manticores appearing in The Witcher books and being mentioned in the games, players have never actually had the🧸 opportunity to take on one of the legendary creatures themselves. Leaks from 2014 suggested that The Witcher 3 was actually supposed to feature them, but they ended up being cut, even though a whole set of manticore gear was♋ added in the Blood and Wine expansion.

We'll just have to wait and see what role the creatures have in the upcoming RPG – there's still no release date, but rest assured that it's targeting 60fps on current-gen consoles.

The Witcher 4 sees Red Dead Redemption 2's horse anatomy and submits "realistic muscles moving and stretching" under the skin of Ciri's horse Kelpie.

Game director Sebastian Kalemba begins by introducing the new Witcher protagonist and her mount. "Just like Geralt had Roach, Ciri has her own loyal companion," he explains. "These two characters need to feel like one – since you're gonna explore the world on horseback, riding needs to feel seamless, natural, and just fun." What exactly does the lead mean by that? Everything about Kelpie is so realistic, it'd make horses in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Red Dead Redemption 2 blush.

Epic Games' senior director of product strategy, Wyeth Johnson, dives into this hyper-realism in depth: "We're inꦅtroducing multi-character Motion Matching in Unreal, so Ciri and Kelpie, they're perfectly synchronized when mounting from any angle and speed," he describes, going🐈 on to detail some of the Unreal Engine tech used. "We also support Root Motion movement on Kelpie, so controlling her feels realistic and grounded."

Kelpie's realism doesn't end with the immersive Root Motion tech, though. "There are also some really nice improvements to our Unreal Chaos Flesh solver and these machine-learned deformations," Johnson concludes alongside a mind-boggling visual of eღverything in action as an unsaddled Kelpie gallops across the screen. "So you've got realistic muscles moving and stretching under Kelpie's skin without compromising the performance there."

The Witcher 4 is shaping up to be a breathtaking entry in CD Projekt Red's beloved series of RPGs, from its ultra-realistic horseback riding, to its ꦕ澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:setting in the never-before-seen kingdom of Kovi⭕r – and as a longtime fan myself, I can't wait to experience it all firsthand whenever the game releases. For now, however, I'll have to remain content with shuffling through the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new Witcher 4 screenshots shared today and rewinding the tech demo.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

𒊎While this was just a PS5 tech demo, it showed "in-engine capabilities," and developer CD Projekt Red said in a press release that "the features and technology will be supported across all platforms the game will launch on."

"This will help other studios create believable and immersive open-world environments that deliver performance at 60 FPS without compromising on quality — even at vast scal𒉰es," CDPR said.

Kalem🙈ba reiterates that The Witcher 4 is "the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game ever." The showcase runs through everything from NPC behavior and crowd density to foliage rendering and realistic horse muscles.

"No compromise means how ambitious we are when it comes to bringing our vision to life with incredible visuals,ꦕ" Kalemba says during the Unreal Fest presentation. "But more than that, together with Epic we've created faster ways to load the world. We can now bring in more content, more quickly for the smoothest possible experienc💜e as we fly down to catch up with Ciri."

Building on crowd density and frame rate, Epic Games' Wyeth Johnson,✅ senior director of product strategy, adds: "An entirely new Unreal animation framework, allowing us to fit easily in our 60 FPS budget – not just in rendering, but also with room to spare on the game thread. Over 300 animated, skeletal mesh agents, all going🦹 about their business. And the whole point is to leave breathing room for developers like you to introduce the gameplay and the systems that your peers expect, empowering you to make your worlds come to life without Unreal standing in your way."

Kalemba respon🐲ds, "that's the open-world RPG that we are making." Moreover, he reckons that the fruit of CDRP and Epic's partnership "is going to bring in a new generation of open-world RPGs, and I🌄'm so proud of what we've accomplished so far."

Accompanying 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 screenshots show Ciri in a beautiful, bustling location, and⭕ a truly horrible monster.

The Witcher 4 setting could be the never-before-seen region of Kovir, as Ciri journeys to the far north in CD Projekt's new tech demo.

In a brief introductory cutscene, we see a cart carrying a merchant attacked by what looks to be a manticore. As the merchant meets his death at the hands of the creature, a coin out of his treasury gets tossed aside. We see Ciri picking up that coin some time later, and the camera then pulls out to reveal that this scene is overlooking a beautiful, forested valley. We even visit a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:nearby town enjoying bustling trade in case the 'of plenty' part wasn't clear.

Coins were a big part of the early ꧂Witcher 4 t🌺easers, so CD Projekt Red may just be keeping up the theme, but this specific chain of events is so on the nose I can't help but wonder if it's a specific reference. One thing's for suꦓre, though – I'm about to have this song stuck in my head for another six months.

Of course, the big takeaway from today's showcase is the gorgeous open world, which will apparently see us follow Ciri far north to the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:never-before-seen region of Kovir. It lo𝔍oks incredible, and even more impressively, it seems the devs are targeting 60 FPS on current-gen base🦩 consoles. That's a downright delicious promise.

Here are all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games on the horizon.

CDPR and Epic shared just over a dozen new images, as they collaborated to show off the latest state of the latter's Unreal Engine - which 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 is made in (and which its reveal trailer from 2024 was pre-rendered in). Frankly, they look astounding - Ciri looks better than ever, but the world around♛ her is also huge, incredibly detailed, and filled with NPCs.

There are plenty of things to pick up on there, but that final picture really blows me away. The draw distance and terrain detailing are both astounding, but so is the foliage quality in that forest image. My real highlight, however, was the sheer volume of NPCs in that village scene - a density, if not quantity, that blows anything The Witcher 3 managed out of the wateཧr.

The other notable part of this demo was a look at Ciri herself. We got a good look at her in the original trailer, of course, but CDPR has offered a little extra here.𝔉 Nothing much has changed, but I do enjoy the picture of her facing down a distant draconid - at this distance, it's hard to tell exactly what it is, but it has thrown me. Witchers don't hunt true dragons, of course, but it's also not obviously a Wyvern or Forktail. Perhaps it's a previously unseen type of massive, flying lizard?

Actually, I might be wrong about those lizard allegations. Some of the official images𒈔 from the trailer are pretty dark, but they revolve around some unfortunate NPCs appearing to come up against a nighttime threat. In those pictures, we get up-close-and-personal with some kind of bat-like monster with big wings - that could be the flying creature from earlier, but even if it is, I can't tell what we're coming up against.

Finally, there's a closer look at Ciri's horse. One of these images is an out-of-game render, but the other seems to be an in-💫game shot. Sure, it's not Roach - but actually, maybe it is, who knows what Ciri's horse-naming conventions will be? Why wouldn't she borrow them from Geralt?

That's a ful🔯l run-down of all the new official screenshots, but we'll have plenty more breakdowns of the new Witcher 4 information as the day goes on.

CDPR devs are so locked into The Witcher 4 that they're apparently using its new control scheme by accident while playing other games.

Alongside a deeper dive into 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ciri's new role as protagonist, CD Projekt Red's showcase gives fans a glance at where they'll be adventuring as the younger Witcher: the kingdom of Kovir and Poviss, a region players weren't able to explore in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 as Geralt. Standing as the largest exporter of mi꧑neral resources, rich in mountains and mines, Kovir is situated north of Redania on the ♍Gulf of Praxeda.

If the name of the mountainous Northern Realm doesn't ring﷽ a bell, don't be surprised – it's never actively visited by Geralt in CD Projekt Red's other games, and only briefly comes up in narration depending on who players choose to romance in The Witcher 3. Should fans opt to romance Triss Merigold, they're advised that she and Geralt have moved to Kovir. There, Triss acts as court advisor to King Tankred Thyssen.

In The Witcher 4, it seems that, as Ciri, players will finally be able to traverse the kingdom themselves. There's no telling what the new setting could mean in terms of which of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 endings qualify as the "canon" finale for Geralt, b﷽ut it's exciting to see Kovir take on a more central role in-game than ever before. Judging by the tec𓂃h demo, it's also set to be downright stunning – looming pine trees, snow-capped mountains, and all.

The new game looks massive, and there's more to come than just The Witcher 4, too - there are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games like the mysterious codenamed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project Sirius, another Witcher title that developers say will "differ from past productions" at CDPR. A new story from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher books' author Andrzej Sapkowski is also out now, having arrived over a decade after the series' last title.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

As CD Projekt Red continues to celebrate The Witcher 3's tenth anniversary, the studio revealed an idea that seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor pretty early in development. "We toyed with the idea of a mechanꦦic 🎀where Geralt would drown if he entered the water fully geared up," the studio said in a tweet.

If you did want to swim, Geralt would "have to strip down and leave his armor and weapons on the shore." Finishing up by pondering what the community might have thought of the idea, CDPR asked, "Immersive or just a bit tooꦫ realistic?"

I'd say the answer is almost certain𒁏ly the latter - if this concept didn't make it past the team 'toying with the idea of' it, then I'd posit that the devs themselves didn't particularly like the mechanic. While I can see it working for quick dips to fetch a cache in a shallow river, it would quickly become tedious when going any further afield. And how would it work for deep-sea exploration, or quests that involved Geralt disappearing underwater for minutes a💞t a time?

Amusingly, there's some degree of historical precedent for this particular idea. Some accounts of the death of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at the end of the 12th century AD claim that, exhausted from a long ride, he stepped into a river to cool off - in full armor. Weighed down, he's ꧋said to have drowned, in a pretty ignominious fate for an Emperor.

Whether or not Barbarossa's death actually went down exactly like that is lost to history, but suffice to say that it doesn't seem like the world's most entertaining gameplay mechanic, and I think I'm glad CDPR dropped it when they did - if only so it doesn't show up in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4.

CDPR devs are so locked into The Witcher 4 that they're apparently using its new control scheme by accident while playing other games.

"We really thought it was going to be more of a challenge," says Charles Tremblay, VP of technology at CD Projekt Red in an interview with . "But i🌞n the end, not that much."

Rather than assigning another company to d🧸evelop this port, like CDPR did with Saber Interactive and The Witcher 3 on Switch, "it was way easier to have a very su🌼per small team working end-to-end with Nintendo, rather than delegating the process," explains Tremblay.

"One of the struggles" Tremblay notes is the architecture differences between the Switch 2 an♔d PC hardware Cyberpunk is built for. Now, one of the console's cores is used for both the operating system and other operations such 🧸as decompression, "but, otherwise, I think it was surprisingly fast to get the game running on the platform. We were all super impressed," Tremblay says.

"It was very difficult for th🌼e previous generation of consoles," Tremblay admits. "I think I will say that the most difficult problem was the mechanical hard drive, which is one of the things that’s very important not to have." Instead, the Switch 2's microSD Expresဣs storage system "is great," says Tremblay, and "the Switch 2 has more RAM" than last-gen consoles, too.

Cyberpunk 2077's performance mode aims to hit 40fps, which isn't the 60fps a lot of us are used to, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless. "I think that on the handheld device, I think the experience is very good," Tremblay says. "I think the experience th🌃at we have, that is way different than oth🐎er platforms, with the gyros, the Joy-Con, the mouse support. I think the whole package in general, I think it's quite good."

IGN reports you can use motion controls with the Joy-Con on Switch 2 or 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:turn the right controller into a mouse, whether 🍰you're playing docked or in handheld mode. There's also cross save, so you play on your PC or more powerful console at home and then play on your Switch 2 when you're travelling. "It's a system seller for me, for sure," says Tremblay.

If that's got you excited for the upcoming console, check out all the confirmed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Switch 2 launch games that will be coming with it later this week.

Celebrating the third Witcher entry's 10th birthday in a recent , Iwiński explains that CD Projekt Red has lear♚ned over time that its focus should remain on the games that made it great – AAA, open-world RPGs.

"In all that we're doing, we've learned that we have to be razor-sharp, focused," states the studio lead. "We cannot do so many things we would love ✃to do, we are tempted to do. We tried, and it didn't work out."

He concludes that CD Projekt Red has "to focus on what we are good at and really put 100% into it." Badowski agrees, describing how this philosophy is why the studio previously shifted to more of a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:multi-project approach, with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:separ𒆙ate teams working on different games.

"That's why we switched f⛦rom a single project company to a multiple project company♔," the head says. "But everything is in our strategy."

As Badowski puts it, these projects all fall into CD Projekt Red's "niche" – from The Witcher series to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 – and developers are going to stick with s𝄹aid niche. "We're gonna develop AAA RPG, open-world narrative-driven games, and this is our – let's say – niche," the CEO concludes. "So the focus is there."

Marcin chimes in that, while "it sound💦s 💖so simple" to stay in that niche, it's not all that easy to actually do.

"When you're growing," Marcin admits,💮 "it's hard, because there are all these temptations and these people are doing this stuff online, and it's so cool, and we love to play it, and – you think, 'Okay, no let's take a deep breath and come back to what we're doing,' because if we spread ourselves too thin, we'll not deliver." If🅰 there's one thing I'd be willing to bet on as a longtime fan of CD Projekt Red's games, however, it's that they'll definitely deliver.

But if staying within the open-world RPG niche is how the studio does so, then all the power to its developers – after all, there are plenty of projects to look forward to thanks to their approach. From Cyberpunk 2 to The Witcher 4 and the mysterious codenamed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project Sirius, there are various 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games to anticipate – and I'll personally be waiting patiently for them all.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

As part of The Witcher 3's 10-year anniversary celebrations, various groups of veteran CDPR developers sat down to discuss the game and play parts of it while adding insightful commentary. At one point, narrative director Philipp Weber was in a struggle with a giant and realized h൩e wasn't using the right button to dodge-roll. And then this mildly amusing conversation took place:

"How do I do a proper roll ag꧅ain, it's just jump?" Weber asked.

"It's A," advised level design lead Miles Tost.

"Since when?"

"Since always."

"Noooo!"

"Yes."

"I'm actually using Wi൲tcher 4 controls...spoiler."

Indeed, with The Witcher♈ 4 being in full-scale production since November, the developers are officially beyond the conceptual phase and are actually bu🐠ilding out the world, mechanics, characters, story, and systems. That means there's likely a lot of hands-on time with the dev kit happening right now, and apparently there's a new control scheme the developers are using that's a little out of sy🅺nc with The Witcher 3.

Speaking of The Witcher 4, don't get too excited about CDPR's recently revealed partnership with Summer Game Fest, as the studio's co-CEO, Michał Nowakowski, recently appeared to shut down speculation about the seque🗹l showing up at the big summer games show. He also seemed to imply that the main focus will be Cyberpunk 2077: Definitive Edition's imminent launch on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Nintendo Switch 2.

Witcher 3 devs "knew it from the get go" that they wanted Ciri as protagonist for Witcher 4 back in 2014

In a new vi♔deo continuing The W💃itcher 3's 10th anniversary celebrations, narrative director Philip Weber says "I don't know if it's appropriate to talk about it, but one of the longest email threads in our company history was about the question [of] how naked Geralt should be in his bath scene? 'When he gets up, how much butt should we show?'"

It might seem puerile, but it's actually a 𓆉more important question than you might think. This is the scene that The Witcher 3 opens on, after all, and CD Projekt had grand ambitions for its game. Literally everyone who loads up the RPG sees the cutscene, so they couldn't be offering up gratuitous Witcher-cheeks.

"In the end," Weber says, "I think we chose a good middle-point," which I'm not going to make the obvious joke about. "We showed nudity in a kind of European way," he explains - something that would appear later on in the game, duඣring Ciri's time in the sauna𝕴.

That bathtub scene gives way to the game's first romantic moment, which animation director Maciej Pietras pointed to as "the most difficult thing you can do," partly because there had not been "much kissing💧 in video games" before The Witcher se💖ries came along.

Whether you're personally in favor of the Yennefer-centric kiss or not, it's undeniable that Bathtub Geralt has become one of the most iconic scenes in one of the world's most iconic RPGs - so iconic, in fact, that Netflix's The Witcher series was perfectly happy to repeat it multiple times. Though maybe that's just what you do when you've got Henry Cavill in a leading role - and maybe we'll get to see it in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4, too.

"You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books."

"I almost forgot that we 𝓀were struggling with two more challenges," Adam Badowski, joint CEO remembers in a new episode of the AnsweRED podcast. "One of them was that we have to plan how the open world works. What are the basic rules? Basic rules are always the most challenging."

In Ubisoft games, you climb towers to reveal the map; that's a basic rule of its open worlds, one that people have gotten quite sick of over the years. Each company, series, and game will have different rules, and not all work in other fran൩chiseꦡs.

"Do we want to have gating?" Badowski asks. "There is a monster. The monster has this ultimate level 100 or something. You cannot go further without defeating this monster. It was a bad idea for our game. It works for all 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:FromSoftware games, it's natural, it's one of the pillars of those wonde🐼rful games. But in The Witcher, it doesn't work. So you have to plan it differently."

While FromSoftware games are all about the challenge, The Witcher is more about enjoying the story and roleplaying as a൲ monster-slaying witcher.

I actually prefer playing on the hardest difficulty because it makes me engage with the systems of the world a lot morಞe than I otherwise would. I need to make oils and potionౠs and learn a foe's weaknesses.

But if that were how the g🅘ame had to be played by everyone, it would be a completely different ga♚me, not The Witcher 3 as we know it today.

Another aspect of The Witcher 3 that Badowski says is obvious with hindsight is that "we don't have quests that you can cancel and replay if you failed. If you failed, we have to create another constellation of consequences because the story stops when your character dies, not when your characte𝓀r failed the quest.

"So it makes it super, super difficult. Usuꦯallওy, the mission fails, so you can restart it. And here we have, 'No, no, it's a starting point for what's next in The Witcher.'"

The developers have to consider, "What are the consequences? I failed, so there are different choices, different consequences, there are different reactions. It chꦗanges relations with my characters."

They had to learn "how to make it and not to force players to save and load all the time and make gamers frustrated. Now w⛦e kind of know how to deal with it,♑ but back then it was really challenging."

It's not something I'd ever noticed before, but it's a fascinating detail that must🧸 make the world feel so much more real. Th𝔉ings don't always go to plan, and often, playing through your mistakes can be more fun than simply save scumming them away.

If you've already played The Witcher 3 more times than you can remember, why not check out the best 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like The Witcher 3 instead?

This week, Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley took to Twitter to reveal a roster of 60+ partners supporting the🍸 2025 event, and people were quick to spot CDPR among them, prompting a fair bit of speculation in the comments that The Witcher 4 might make an appearance.

And while CDPR co-CEO Michał Nowakowski doesn't mention The Witcher 4 specifically and thus doesn't completely rule out the idea, he does strongly suggest in a quote tweet that the imminent release of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Ni🦋ntendo Switc൩h 2 will be the star of the show on CDPR's side.

"I see a bit of creative speculation in the comments section :)," says Nowakowski. "Please remember that next week we are launching Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Nintendo Switch 2. So keep calm, e🙈tc ;)"

As someone who shamefully, time and time again gets worked up against💃 my best judgment about apparent teases, only to inevitably be disappointed when nothing happens, I think it's admirable thatꦐ Nowakowski is stamping out that particular fire before it gets out of hand.

With The Witcher 4 having entered full-scale production back, it's not unreasonable to expect a new trailer sometime in the near-ish future, but sadly it seems this year's Summer Game Fest will not be that day. Or, maybe, Nowakowski sent that tweet precisely because he wants the new trailer to be a surp— Jordan, y🍒ou're doingꦅ it again, you old fool.

Asked about Cyberpunk 2 release date, CDPR boss reiterates "our journey from the pre-production to the final release takes 4 to 5 years on average" but "each project is unique."

The devs would like to make sure you don't get it twisted, though – just because they're calling it Cyberpunk 2 doesn't mean it's actually going to be called Cyberpunk 2.

"Several weeks ago the CD PROJEKT RED team responsible for the next big game set in the Cyberpunk universe completed the project’s co෴nceptual phase," the company said in a accompanying its latest financial report. "As a result, Cyberpunk 2 – previously known under the codename Project Orion – has progressed to preproduction."

That sure sounds like an official name♐ announcement, but as CDPR's senior PR manager Ola Sonde𓃲j told earlier today, it isn't meant to be. "'Cyberpunk 2' just means it’s another game in the Cyberpunk universe," Sondej said.

If this whole song and dance sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the time CD Projekt Red announced the fourth game in The Witcher series and, the instant we all started calling it The Witcher 4, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:insisted that it💯 was not called The Witcher 4. The official reveal last year, of course, confirmed that it will be called 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 after all.

It's not unthinkable that the same thing might happen with Cyberpunk 2, but in fairness, the year-based naming format 🌼established with the original game does open up a much wider range of possibilities for the sequel's title. The Witcher 4 seemed inevitable, but Cyberpunk 2 does actually sound purely like a working title.

The game could be named anything from Cyberpunk 2078 to Cyberpunk 40,000, but nailing that down might give away more of the setting than CDPR is 🅠willing to commit to just yet.

Asked about Cyberpunk 2 release date, CDPR boss reiterates "our journey from the pre-production to the final release takes 4 to 5 years on average" but "each project is unique."

In today's investors call (), CDPR management was asked whether the pipeline from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4's pre-production phase from 2022 to its expected 2027 release date is a r💃eliable indicator of how long it'll take Cyberpunk 2 to go from pre-production to launch.

That woul꧃d mean Cyberpunk 2 won't come ou🌼t until 2030 or 2031, and that does indeed sound like a safe bet for the time being, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

"Our journey from the pr♓e-production to the final release date takes four to five years on average," said CDPR co-CEO Michał Nowakowski. "Having said that, and keeping in mind that each project is unique and there are many variables that influence the final outcome, I will not lead you into specific years."

It's worth noting that, since the release of Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR has opened new North America-based offices dedicated to making the sequel, which at the very least should help to support its parallel development process and minimize any hu🦋rdles that might be in its future.

The thought of Cybಌerpunk 2 releasing in 2031 remains as harrowing as ever with that in mind, but that's just the nature of AAA game devel🉐opment these days.

"Even people in the studio had problems" with Cyberpunk 2077's most uncomfortable quest, but CDPR stood by it because "we don't do heavy things for the sake of edginess."

In a new , one slide simply reads that "Cyberpunk 2 has entered pre-production phase." More information is likely to be availabl♉e as part of the overall presentation, but for now these s🔥lides do offer some interesting information to pick over.

Chief among that is the fact that, externally at least, CDPR is still referring to the game - p𒆙revious♌ly referred to as Project Orion 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:– as Cyberpunk 2. That's likely to prevent giving away too much information about its setting. While original Cyberpunk author Mike Pondsmith did ๊recently reveal that the new game would be set in a second location after Night City, the developℱers are yet to attach anything like the originඣal's naming convention to the project.

A sequel to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 conjures images of Cyberpunk 2078, but as soon as we know if🍌 that's the case, players can start making guesses about the narrative – if there's no date, there are no theories to be drawn up.

Importantly, pre-production also doesn't give us much information about the timeline for the game. We do know that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 - CDPR's next game - 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:is in full production, and the studio has offered hints about its timeline for the new Witcher s🅘aga over the past couple of years.

But pre-production is a very different beast to full production – it's often a period of ideation and trial-and-error, rather than actually building the final project, and it can often last for years. We do know that CD Projekt Red has built a new, US-based ♋studio to make Cyberpunk 2, so it won't interfere with The Witcher 4 too much, but it's still anyone's guess as to how long we could be waiting.

Speaking of The Witcher, the studio has unveiled new sales figures for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3, confirming that it's now sh꧅ifted 60 million copies. That jump puts it further up the list of the best-selling games of all time, clear of Overwatch and even Super Mario Bros. Given the recent celebration of the game's tenth anniversary, it's likely that CD Projekt is very happy with the timing of that parti🔯cular milestone.

"Even people in the studio had problems" with Cyberpunk 2077's most uncomfortable quest, but CDPR stood by it because "we don't do heavy things for the sake of edginess."

In a world teeming with dying gods and dark supernaturality, sees a lone pagan priest known as a volkhv (think of him as a Slavic druid) on a mission to free his sister's soul, which is trapped somewhere between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Promising magic-melee "Soulslite" combat and a tight, linear narrative told across hub-and-spoke exploration zones, Vranygrai already looks and feels better than I expected it to at this early stage in its development – and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Crimson Desert hopefuls will want to pay attention.

Arcane roots

As soon as I start exploring Vranygrai, I'm struck by how gorgeous it is. 🌞Kubal sits next to me as I take my first inquisitive steps, marvelling at the sight♐s and textures of the not-quite open world lying before me.

Despite how its magic-infused melee combat and RPG systems are partly inspired by CD Projekt Red's Witcher games, I'm told that Vranygrai offers a more focused storytelling experience that taps a more God of War-like vein.

This nod to Santa Monica's 2018 modern classic, widely regarded as one of the best PS4 games ever, is palpable from the movem🎃ent of the volkhv as well as the world itself. That's because it's impossible to take a wrong turn in Vranygrai, since the environment gently funnels me toward the mission objective – here, namely, to seek "the maiden born of dew and conceived of thre🉐e mothers" – though I see loads of potential for collectibles and other optional opportunities.

Given the context of Great Moravian and Slavic folklore, Vranygrai's purposely confusing, archaic language seen in both mission object🌞ives and in-game inscriptions reminds me of Ninja Theory's Hellblade games. The effect is immediately alienating, pitting me against my surroundings as the world becomes the primary antagonist. The de🌃liciously bleak atmosphere only adds to my enjoyment of Vranygrai's style and tone.

Instead of traversal-based puzzles like in Hellblade 2, however, Vranygrai gets a little more hands-on and Witcher-y. One riddle I ch♋ance upon tasks me with killing a certain nearby enemy and bringing back something specific, which in turn will activate a shrine – I'm playing a priest, remember?

Kubal warns me of something very key, however – much as in the best FromSoftware games, resting at a shrine in Vranygrai replenishes all health and mag༒ical essence at the cost of enemies respawning in the world.

Bear necessities

Alas, resting at shrines is paramount in Vranygrai. It's a beautifully rendered world, yes, but also plenty hostile.

When I'm not battering every red-eyed, gnomish enemy in sight with my massive druidic staff, I'm pelting them with magical ranged projectiles. Every so often, I burn through a large amount of essence, make like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3's Halsin, and hulk out in bear form to deliver a turbo-charged special attack. It's a welcome change of pace from the button mashing, combo-heavy likes of Crimson Desert, another upcoming Witcher-like, so anyone who didn't like the sound of its combat in our latest 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Crimson Desert preview can take solace in Vranygrai's more t༒raditional approach.

That's not to say Vranygrai is easy, despite its simplicity. Enemies hit hard, and every use of magic abilities eats away at your magical essence bar. Defeated enemies sometimes drop HP or essence top-ups in the form of glowing green orbs, but for the most part, ess🎀ence is something I try to savor instead of splꦿurge.

With a more powerful, charged heavy attack at my𓆉 disposal in the form of an AOE ground-pound, I quickly learn that without a blo𓂃ck or parry mechanic – "yet," hints Kubal – dodging and timing is everything. That doesn't stop me from wasting all my essence too early, however, and I sadly run out of juice and patience when facing my first heavy enemy and promptly die at their hands.

Though my first hands-on experience with Vranygrai might have ended in bitter defeat, I'm all the more excited to have another go someday soon. It's staggering to think of this demo as the work of a ℱsolo developer. With the exception of one or two collision problems with felled enemies – the dead dudes seem to have little invisible walls built around them – my gameplay experience is pretty much flawless. With the more RPG-leaning elements like parrying and an inventory still in development, I have no doubt that Dire Badger will impress me again with a full demo – and next time, I will have my revenge.

Check out all of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PC games coming in 2025 and beyond

While reflecting on The Witcher 3's 10th anniversary in an interview with PC Gamer magazine, Michal Nowakowski, joint-CEO of CD Projekt Red, revealed that things weren't always so good for the studio. Thanks to the 2008 financial crisis, some within CD Projekt Red were worried they would have to shut its doors after the release of the first game in The Witc💧her series. Nowakowski said it "was a very tricky period for the comp♔any."

Between the release of The Witcher in 2007 and The Witcher 2 in 2011, Nowakowski say🧸s the priority was "making sure we have the money to pay people their salaries, and making sure we make good with everybody we owe money to." He recalled "The early days were quite - for me - focused on 'how do we escape annihilation?'"

Thankfully, CD Projekt Red persevered, and since then the studio has reached the level of the likes of Rockstar, Bethesda Game Studio, and Kojima Productions, whereꦛ whatever they're worki𒊎ng on will instantly become the most anticipated game for many people – even if we know next to nothing about them.

Before The Witcher 3 smashed its "super ambitious" lifetime sales goals in just 3 months, CDPR's CEO was convinced Batman: Arkham Knight was going to "roll over us."

In an interview with to celebrate The Witcher 3's 10th anniversary, Michal Nowakowski, joint-CEO at CD Projekt Red, explains that the studio had "super ambitious 🤡goals" for the game's sales. Those goals amounted to "maybe six million units," Nowakowski says, a figureꦬ that the game didn't take very long to hit.

In fact, that number is one "which we ended up achieving in, I think, about a quarter," Nowakowski says, outlining that CDPR's lifetime sales projections for their game were hit within three months. In reality, those lifetime figures have exceeded 50 million copies, placing The Witcher 3 inside the top 20💮 best-selling games of all time. And with the serie♑s' ongoing popularity and the relatively recent release of its new-gen edition, that number is still likely to be slowly growing.

But ✨Nowakowski and his team had no idea that would be how things panned out back in 2015. In fact, he says he was deeply concerned that another game would eat The Witcher 3's lunch. The highly anticipated release of Batman: Arkham Knight, the latest iteration of the ๊acclaimed Arkhamverse series, was due just over a month after The Witcher 3. Nowakowski feared Rocksteady's sequel would "roll over us," but in reality, Geralt came out on top of Batman - a tricky PC port meant that while Arkham Knight was generally well-received, it didn't make the same splash Nowakowski was worried about, eventually selling 5 million copies in its own first quarter.

Geralt won that particular battle, and it seems he probably won the war too. While CD Projekt pushed out the eventually-good 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 and is now well into production on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4, Rocksteady spent nearly a decade creating its own follow-up, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which is said to have 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:flopped to the tune♍ of nearly $200 million, and has become something of a scapegoat for Warner Bros' recent suit🐻e of financial failures. I know which horse I would 𒀰have pre🐻ferred to have backed 9 years ago.

"You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books."

During an interview presented at the Digital Dragons conference earlier today, Pondsmith said he's "not as involved directly" with Project Orion has he was with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077, but also thඣat he recently visited the devs at CDPR. "I was wandering around talking to different departments and se💮eing what they had," Pondsmith explained, offering his opinions on features like new cyberware.

"I spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys," Pondsmith continued. "He was explaining how the new place in Orion, because there's a🎃nother city we visit – I'm not telling you any more than that, but there's another city we visit."

You can see this moment for yourself at the 3:45:47 mark in the video above, and the brief hesitation Pondsmith has really makes it feel like he's revealed a bit more about the game than he was supposed to. Nonetheless, he went on to💮 give us a few more🐬 details.

"Night City's still there," Pondsmith said. "But I remember looking at and going 'yeah, I understand the feel that you're going for in this, and this really does work.' It doesn't feel like Blade Run💎ner. It feels more like Chicago gone wrong. I said 'yeah, I can see this wo💫rking.'"

and have persisted for yea𒐪rs that the Cyberpunk sequel might go to Chicago, but it now seems certain that even if the game doesn't go to the Windy City itself, it is going someplace very similar.

Here are all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games you need to know about.

"It's a cool character from the Witcher, and they're gonna focus on that character," he says during a Fall Damage video, responding to a post regarding people calling Ciri's newfound spotlight "woke."

"I think that's awesome. You can't just have Geralt for every single game for The Witche𒁃r ad nauseam through eternity."

For as much as we all love Geralt, he's got💎 a point. Sometimes, you just need to retire a character when🌼 there's nothing left to do with them. Uncharted put Nathan Drake into retirement so we could focus on Chloe and Nadine in The Lost Legacy, and they were a breath of fresh air.

"We've seen the end of Geralt's journey," Cockle continues. "澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Blood and Wine was supposed to wrap up Geralt's journey."

To avoid any doubt on where he stands, he continues: "Celebrate Ciri, I celebrate her being the protagonist. So all you people who think it's 'woke' [blows raspberry]... If you read the books, then you understand why 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:CD Projekt went down this avenue.

"There's a whole rich world of stuff to🐻 explore with Ciri, that they didn't do when they put her into Witcher 3, because the story was about Geralt. But she hints at it. If you think it's woke, read the damn books – they're good, first of all. And secondly, you won't think it's so woke anymore."

A lot of people – myself included, when I first played 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 – didn't knowꦏ the games were based on a popular series 🔥of books. Everything CD Projekt Red does is rooted in it.

As the years have gone by, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the books have become more about 🅰Ciri🎐.▨ Geralt may be a witcher, but he's getting old, so passing the torch was inevitable. It's either that, or no more Witcher.

There's no release date for 4 just yet, so for now, try some of the best 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like The Witcher 3 to satiate all your monster-slaying RPG needs.

Both The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 are packed with impactful choices, which will affect how a questline branches, your relationship with, or even the fates of certain characters, with some ev﷽en transferring throughout the series (well, in The Witcher's case, there's no Cyberpunk sequel yet). The Witcher 2's second chapter was massively different depending on who you de꧙cided to ally with.

However, Sebastian Kalemba, game d💖irector on The Witcher 4 explained his approach to decision making in RPGs, saying, "Whatever the choice is and whatever the consequence is, we want players to feel rewarded, even if the emotion in the end is sadness." Kalemba adds, "If this ♏is coherent with the emotional journey we're delivering, [it will allow] the player to feel [that they are] okay with this consequence." So if you were hoping you wouldn't have to make any tough choices in The Witcher 4, I think you're out of luck.

Kalemba also talked about the team's goals for The Witcher 4, saying, "We want to put player agency in the center... We want players to be able to really sense these opportunities and to go in-depth when it comes to 💞choice and consequences." He added, "We want to give players more tools, more opportunities, to be able to feel that 'I am the player anཧd I define my experience.'"

CD Projekt quest designer Paweł Gąska chimed in on this,🤪 saying, "We want the player to see that even a good choice can have bad consequences, and that a bad choice can still be justified because of something else you focused on." Gąska also gave major praise to the narrative team, saying “As quest designers, we can think of good choices, good dilemmas, good themes, but it's the writers who have to deliver the dialogues that will actually elicit emotions in the players,” adding, “It's the cinematics [team] and the animators who have to give [the story] to you in a way that you will actually feel it.”

The Witcher 4 lead is "pretty confident" about the series' new saga: "We know how to handle it [...] we made it popular."

In an interview with , 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 lead writer Marcin Blacha, who's returning to his role on The Witcher 4, explained that that confidence stems from CDPR's history with all things The Witcher: "It's a very well-established franchise. People love it, w꧋e know how to handle it. I'm pretty confident about The Witcher 4."

While Blacha acknowledges that CDPR didn't create Geralt and the world he inhabits, he does claim that "we made [the franchise] popular through t꧅he games."

In the past, he says, the company didn't have that same popularity to coast on, but now, he says that the series has "shaped me in a way that I became confident about it…and it doesn't make me anxious anymore. It just goe🦄s on."

"And it's a nice feeling because🐻 I know that I created something big, and probably I will be remembered because of it."

Exactly how the series' actual creator, Witcher author Andrezj Sapkowski, might feel about Blacha's claims around its popularity isn't clear (though historically he's seemed pleased to work with both CD Projekt on the games and with Netflix on the Witcher TV series). It can🎀't be denied, however, that The Witcher may well have remained a cult hit with little po꧟pularity outside of its native Poland were it not for the global success of the game trilogy.

Either way, Blacha's confidence remains reassuring, particularly in the wake of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077's launch. While CD Projekt Red has firmly reversed the narrative about that game, I'd be surprised if 'confident' was a word that described ꦦany developers' attitude in the weeks leading up to the studio's last major release. But with lessons apparently learned from last time, it seems that we won't see a similar nightmare with The Witcher 4.

CD Projekt Red exec says Ciri is a great choice for The Witcher 4, and she opens up new possibilities for the series after more than a decade of RPGs.

Discussing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ciri's new role as protagonist in The Witcher 4 in a recent interview with (translated by Google and DeepL), Nielubowicz recalls the reveal trailer that debuted during last year's Game Awards. While it didn't show any gameplay, the cinematic peek into the new game's world, stunning Unreal Engine 5-adjacent visuals🌸, and Ciri as the series' next central character understandably made waves.

While Nielubowicz can't reveal too much, he does explain that CD Projekt Red believes Ciri is a "great choice" for the series' new saga as she paves the way for various possibilities, both in an artistic and narrative sense. Havingꦛ Geralt's adopted daughte🥂r take over as protagonist also allows developers to tell their upcoming game's story from a fresh perspective, in ways that they previously haven't been able to.

Nielubowicz describes that, although he isn't able to unveil more of the new RPG's details, it's set to reach higher expectations than The Witcher series' previous entries – a goal he says CD Projekt Red has for all of its future follow-ups. The Witcher 4, which the studio stated would be the "ꦯmost immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date" in the past, 🌳will hopefully stand as a "proud suc꧑cessor" to its predecessors.

The new game sounds massive, and there's more to come than just The Witcher 4, too – there are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games like the mysterious codenamed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project Sirius, another Witcher title that developers say will "differ from past productions" at CDPR. A new story from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher books' author Andrzej Sapkowski is also out now, having arrived over a decade after the series' last title.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming this year and beyond.

"It's kind of a weird thing that we could not have predicted, where by expanding it and making it somehow less focused, we allow people to♕ feel even more invested in it," says Behaviꩲour Interactive's Mathieu Cote, game director for Dead by Daylight. Recent announcements put that wider aperture into perspective.

This time it's personalized

The 澳洲幸运ꦏ5开奖号码历史查询:teased Fi🌠ve Nights at Freddy's collaboration is coming to Dead by Daylight soon – featuring Springtrap as the Killer and voice lines from Scream star Matthew Lilliard – as well as collections for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 and competition show Dragula on the cards, with the latter landin꧋g July 8.

This speaks to a key way Dead by Daylight hopes t🅘o 🌟achieve that heightened sense of relatability: cosmetic collections, one of the "most exciting" being that Witcher 3 crossover.

Likening in-game cosplays to how players might wear a Witcher shirt or cosplay as Geralt themselves in real life, Cote says the game's mission is a💙s much about celebrating fan culture as it is about horror. "The more you can relate to the character, the Survivor that you portray, the more you can feel empathy for that character – because they look like you, because they sound like you, because they could be you."

Likely set to comeꦉ after the Dragula collection – featuring a cosmetic for The Huntress mirroring Asia Consent's winning outfit from the Dead by Daylight-themed episode (where Cote appeared as a guest judge) and a Boulet Brothers skin for The Artist – Behaviour has big pl൲ans for its Witcher 3 content.

"The Artist is going to get a legendary [skin] to be the Leshen, that terrible creature. It's going to be fun," Cote says gleefully. "And of course, my favorite, Geralt, is coming, ๊and that's going to be a legendary [cosmetic] for Vittorio, so we'll have two silver foxes." Complete with voice lines recorded by Doug Cockle himself, the original Geralt from the CD Projekt Red games, this collaboration is tantamount to one of Behaviour's biggest intertextual moments ever.

Player banners, icons, and charms are also in the mix – including the iconic "wolf medallio💟n with, of course glowy eyes". Hilariously, there's also be a playercard icon depicting Geralt in the tub (which I'm told is a particular team favorite) and very rare-tier outfits evoking Yennefer, Ciri, Triss, and Eredin. Which Survivors will be receiving those last four cosmetics, however, has yet to be stipulated.

But perhaps the most important thing coming to Dead by Daylight this year is what Cote describes as its most-requested collaboration. "Five Nights at Freddy's is one of the biggest indie horror games, and it sort of launched the idea that you can make very small, little horror games and really connect to peo🅠ple," he says of the game's lasting significance. "There's quite a big overlap in our fans. And so it took us a long while to get to it, because we wanted to d🐈o it right."

Dead by Daylight's Five Nights at Freddy's collaboration might lack a Survivor, but with Springtap reigning as a Killer called The Animatronic, the chapter marks the first time also that players will be able to play as Springtrap – "something not possible in any of the other games," remarks Cote.

There will also be cosmetics for Springtrap, including the iconic Yellow Rabbit from the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Five Nights movies, as well as yet another famous voice to listen out for. "We are very happy to have had the collaboration with Matthew Lillard, so you're gonna have his pretty face, and he recorded the voice lines also for the characters, so you're 🌠gonna be able to hear him in the game."

It's taken years for Behaviour to land its most-wanted license, but at long last, it seems to be "the right t𒆙ime" for Freddy's to enter The Fog. Which then begs the question: where do we go from here?

A many-tendrilled thing

Everywhere, it seems. Dead by Daylight has become something of an unteth🍌ered entity all in itself, with a firm foothold in both gaming and broader pop cultural scenes that lends it a unique chance to seek self-referentialism in more spaces than one.

"With time, we realized that it was okay to integrate other things and to sort of expand the definition of horror and the definition of what the world of Dead by Daylight could be." Cote refers in part to Behaviour's partnership with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Until Dawn studio Supermassive Games, which last year brought the Dead by Daylight universe to a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:branching narrative 𒐪horror adventure in The Casting of Frank Stone. "And I t🌠hink we've built a strong enough world now that we're able to do that without breaking anything.

"Part of the culture now [is] that you can reference video games in video games in the way that they are part of everything, the same way that movies about movies make sense in a way they couldn't before, right? Cabin in the Woods is a great example of that," he offers. "It couldn't exist if movies and horror movies were not an intrinsic part of culture. And in the 🍸same way that Dead by Daylight can be sort of meta about it because of that."

This leads to one of Dead by Daylight's most charming lore hooks. Anything mentioned in the game, be it a Witcher or Iron Maiden shirt or a Fran💯k Stone skin – "which will have a legendary outfit for The Trapper" – infers that those things actually exist in Dead by Daylight's universe as well. "It's really interesting to be able to t🐓ell a story so convoluted, right?"

But that convolution, he says, is part of what makes horror such fertile ground to cultivate. "Horror is the biggest niche. Everyone's like 'oh, the cult of horror' but it's so prevalent. Like, everybody's a fan of horror. Everyone's happy that it's such a small group – like, it's just us, but there's a lot of 'us'. It's always been the biggest, completely well known secret, " Cote says.

It makes perfect sense, put like that, how Dead by Daylig🍌ht can appeal to more than your average horror fan – it's a place for communities to ꧅carve out their identities, expressing themselves in the process.

A new nightmare begins

The Dead by Daylight community has a close relationship with its crea♌tors, and that is being elevated in a unique upcoming "design-by-committee" initiative: Choose Your Own Chapter.

Dead by Daylight's Choose Your Own Chapter stunt will give fans the opportunity to vote on design concepts, visuals, and perhaps Perk-related mechanics over the course of an entire development cycle, the hive mind effectively shaping an original Killer and Survivor for a bespoke new chapter. Every stage will involve branching options to choose from, each coming at various stages in production.

"I believe there's also going to be a system whereby after each decision, or after each major decision, we tell people what the options would have been if they'd pick the other side and allow them to vote again if they want to switch back," Cote says. "Essentially, we're giving them choice💖s between branches that we believe are both good, so it should end up being something really interesting."

If that isn't the biggest display of trust,♏ I don't know what is. "Maybe we'll realize that this is absolutely awesome, and we'ജll do that every year. Or maybe we'll say never again and wake up in the middle of the night screaming," Cote shrugs with a smile.

Nine years, 35 chapters, and 39 maps later, Dead by Daylight's journey so far is nothing short of impressive. But with such humble beginnings as a streamer sensation, Cote still doesn't take any of it for granted – and he owes it all to the luck of virality.

"It's fascinating because the viral thing is almost impossible to purposely create. And I believe, because I'm a big D&D nerd, that you create a game and it gives you a bonus, and then you roll the dice and you add your bonus, and who knows what's going to happen?" He draws finger quotes. "Bad is an extremely loaded word, but let's just say, 'bad' games can make the news and be everywhere for a week. A really good game, it's easier, but it's certainᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ�🐻�ᩚᩚᩚly no guarantee.

"You just don'tღ know, and that's part of the magic," Co🎶te adds. "But also, that's part of luck. And Dead by Daylight, we were very lucky – we still are."

Check out some of the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best horror games to play while you wait for Five Nights to enter The Fog

In a tweet celebrating ten years of The Witcher 3, the studio revealed that over the past decade, Geralt has partaken in more than 458 million rounds of Gwent. You might wond﷽er how he had time for quite so many games of cards when Ciri's fate hung in the balance, but that's a question that's probably better not to ask out loud.

In fact, that 458 million figure isn't even close to the total - CDPR says that it's only counting matches played since the launch of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3's next-gen update in 2022. Over the past ten years, then, we could be talking about billions of rounds played♏.

One thing we know for sure, however, is just how ♎effective a Gwent player one particular NPC is. CDPR says that The Bloody Baron is the community's "most dreaded opponent," claiming a win-ratio over players of 61% - far in excess of the 50/50 you might guess at. Happy to kick Baron Strenger while he's up, however, CDPR says that "the old man might be a wreck of a human being, but he sure can hustle🍌."

The Bloody Baron certainly is a Gwent skill check in the early game, but if you can beat him, he'll give you a useful card in the form of spymaster Djikstra, and point you towards several other players you might want to face off against. Personally, I didn't find him that hard to beat, but that's because I mostly skipped Gwent during my first playthrough until I was forced to repeatedly save-scum to beat Shani's one-time match late in the Hearts of Stone expansion.

Without any decent cards to pad out my deck, I spent many attempts over several hours, playing Gwent late into the night to ensure I didn't miss out on that one reward card - though in doing some research for this story, I've just fo🍰und out that you can pick her Olgierd card up from her clinic in Oxenfurtꩵ if you don't win it off her, so apparently all that was a complete waste of time.

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Gwent will be back in The Witcher 4, so maybe I'll be able to redeem myself.