In an interview with 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 explained that the studio is adapting to the "ge♐nerational shift when it comes to hardware, e🎃ngines, and technology between The Witcher 3 and The Witcher 4." Since the third part of Geralt's saga released in 2015, we've had a whole new console generation, and seen CDPR shift to a new engine for its RPG.

"That generational shift, we want to do it right," Hermanowicz says. "Our ambition is to take full advantage of it and really deliver the next-gen experience." For Hermanowicz in particular, that ambition had to show in the tech demo, which put Valdrest - a small village in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 region of Kovir - in center stage. But by the standards of The Witcher 3, that vill🅺age was not all that small - in fact, it was a busy port town with 300 NPCs and a bustling market.

That density is evidence of how CD Projekt is "stepping up," but Hermanowicz is keen to point out that the studio is "not stepping into this blindly." To help build believable crowds for Valdrest, he says that the tea🧸m "spent a lot of time watching recordings of Novigrad from Witcher 3."

That generational leap means that the last game's biggest settlement is a reasonable comparison for the Witcher 4 tech demo, and the team studied things like NPC density and activity to help shape their showcase. "We ac🧸tually looked at what we did in the past, what was cool about that, and what we couldn't do at the time," Hermanowicz explains.

That also helped the team consider what they hadn't even thought of last time around - watching Novigrad meant they could determine whether their "ambition was even there, and what new ambitions🐎 appeared throughout the last years༺."

Clearly, the detail and density of Valdrest will not necessarily be found in every nook and cranny of The Witcher 4. Both CDPR and Hermanowicz have been keen to remind players that this was a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询✅:proof-of-concept tech demo for The Witcher 4, which means it's probably not representative of the finished game. Either way, it's interesting to 🗹note that the biggest cities in The Witcher 3 are helping shape fairly nondescript villages in The Witcher 4.

The Witcher 4 has a "console-first" philosophy and a 60fps target to avoid another Cyberpunk 2077 situation, though the Xbox Series S is "extremely challenging."

The developer is now using Unreal Engine 5 to make The Witcher 4 instead of its bespoke RED Engine, and👍 Charles Tremblaꦦy, 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 aim𝔍ing for 60fps on console, and even showed off a Witcher 4 demo on a PS5 to prove that it's possible. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, which only had PC review copies available 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 next on our radar for sure. [...] 60fps will definitely be extremely challenging on 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 m𓆏ore people can buy it on Xbox. But hopefully CD Projekt Red manages to get the game 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.

Philipp Weber's first "professional" job was as a quest designer on The Witcher 3, the game that made CDPR a household name globally, after a background of modding the older Witcher games for fun. (Talk about manifestation.) But in a recent chat ꦦwith GamesRadar+ ab⛄out the RPG's 10th anniversary, Weber revealed that things weren't as rig💙id as you might expect from a developer s❀o big.

"I came in with super high motivation, loving the Witcher," he said, explaining that CDPR has a habit of hiring modders like himself. "I think the secret behinꦦd The Witcher 3 was that I wasn't an exception – that was the case for so many people."

You see, at the time, CDPR employed around 160 people and the energy was quite "scrappy." So, Weber's first task was simply to open a GDoc, brainstorm ideas, and then chuck whatever potential quests he could think of into 📖the document. It was admittedly 💎"a little bit vibe-based."

"Do it immediately, do it fast, do it dirty," he said of the studio's winning philosophy, which starts with random ideas in a GDoc and ends with detailed side quests littered all around a fantasy world. "We check it and start iterating [...] we keep that iteration goౠing until the end – we're never happy with the result until it's too late and the game🐈 has to be out."

The Witcher 4's narrative lead is holding onto some of his earliest Witcher 3 feedback for the RPG's sequel: "We don't do fetch quests"

The Witcher 3 is now one of the most revered, well-known games in the entire RPG genre, having sold over 60 million copies and counting, but there was a time when CD Projekt Red was a relatively niche studio. Sure, The Witcher 1 and 2 definitely had solid fanbases and good ideas - The Witcher 3 is what turned CDPR into 🃏a household name, though.

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4's narrative director Philipp Weber recalled, in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:an interview with GamesRadar+, that that shift began happening w🐲hen a working demo for the threequel started to gain traction at E3, courting fans fro🎀m another massive fantasy epic.

"There was this feeling that it was going to be bigger," Weber remembered. "Skyrim was the open world game, and we could feel that suddenly a lot of people who loved Skyrim started paying attention to The Witcher 3. We could kind of feel this… big wave, touching us. There was an excitement, where we could tell that the general public was taking not♕ice. It was a very interesting thing to see."

The rest is history. The Witcher 3 launched to rave reviews, countless awards, and a decade later, CDPR even went back to add just "o🐟ne more patch" bringing mods to consoles for the first time ever. To no one's surprise, it's also influencing th𒀰e direction the s♊tudio takes with The Witcher 4.

Here's some other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and beyond.

Philipp Weber joined The Witcher 3's team as a quest designer early on in development and, in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:an interview with GamesRadar+, he recalled that the earliest bit of feedback he received from the studio was that "We don't do fetch quests." Hear, hear. Now that Weber's leading the narrative on The Witcher 4 a decade later, he told us it's a rule he's hold𝕴ing on to for the open-worl💟d RPG sequel.

The Witcher 3's side quests really made the game stand out in a crowded genre, whether they were funny 10-minute distractions or multi-quest, extraordinarily detailed, hour-long endeavours that wouldn't look out of place in the main story. Pawel Sasko - also a quest designer at the time, now the director of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2 - said "the goal" was to re🅺plicate the feeling ⛎of putting down a good book.

Filling a massive world with so many juicy stories is no easy feat, though. Weber remember🦩ed that every designer wrote "10 times as many ideas as those that landed in the ga🌳me," so there's tons of brainstorming that takes place before the team lands on something as interesting and now-iconic as the Bloody Baron questline, for example.

CD Projekt Red developers are definitely taking what worked in The Witcher 3 and sprinting with them in The Witcher 4, but the studio's also been outspoken about the fact that it can't "copy our own tricks all ꦇover again and again." Here's hoping the ෴team can strike a nice balance between ol♏d and new stuff.

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

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 sinceဣ November🦂 2024, and although it won't be out until 2027 at the soonest, it sounds like CDPR is firing on all cylinders at this p𒆙oint.

Weber told us there's the same "scrappy energy" at the studio that there was 🦄when he first joined as quest designer on 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, 'Gඣet 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 to 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, 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."

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 charac𒉰te𓆉rizes the medieval age for many of us. Whatever chaotic energy is driving the sequel's development behi🍃nd-the-scenes seꦕems 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 t🤡ransplant The Witcher 2's tight, character-driven narrative into a sprawling open world.

"Everyone in the industry said it's not possible – that these things do💯n'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 man🍃y to be the most influential open world RPG of its time. CDPR is a househo🐻ld 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 a🅷t the same time, 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, loving 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 immediately, do it fast, do it dirt🧸y. 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 organize more, let's not lose this'. It's very easy to lose this. But sometimes… just do it, get it done. Use t🍷he 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 Europe, 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 attention to The Witcher 3. We could kind of feel this… big wave, touching us. There was an excitement, where we could tell that the general public was taking notice. It was a very i꧅nteresting 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 im🍌pression. Right or wrong is ꦯrarely defined, and goodness glimmers in abhorrence.

Its best que♌sts, whether spanniꦜng 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 2077's Sinner🥀man, the beginning of a quest line in which you meet a convicted murderer who wants to record his own crucifixion in a bid to convert more people to Christianity. Evely𝄹n Parker's tragic fate was al🉐so 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 with 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 hav𒐪ing lost his family. He can empathize with that aspect – it doesn't mean Geralt says 'I li𝐆ke you, you're a good 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 deeper? 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 important 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 whﷺat it really means to be human."

"I'd rather make a game that some people love and some people don't like, than o🎐ne 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 40s during development, and lookin꧒g 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 psychologistꦍ, 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 light."

"You cannot preꦛvent 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 speaking about it, but I want to make sure that ray of sunlight is visible in our work [...] There's a lot of hope in b⭕oth 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 titl🧔e, 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. "Sometim💜es 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 "mathematical" improvement to The Witcher 3. Taste is subjective – after all, his favorite Witcher game is the often-forgotten first one ("I love it so ꦰmuch!"). "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 make 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

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 to be one of them."

The scrapped ending sounds particularly interesting, with Blacha upfront in saying that "Mass Effect 2 was a huge inspiration for the 𒉰game." 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 fight the Wild Hunt on♓ this dr🌺akkar."

In the end, CD Projekt Red "redesigned" the ending "a little bit," having instead "decided to make this mo▨re personal ending." Clearly, the idea 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, s♕o that's just one 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."

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 𓂃systems-heavy and simulation-aligned aspects of the RPG are areas CD Projekt 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 story🎀telling 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 ga꧃me, and the way you interact with characters is totally different," he says. "We like to fully build the characters, unde༺rstand the past and the 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 player👍s 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 inspiration, 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 launch🥃es 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 titles, 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 and better. "We do want to innovate in terms of what's available in terms of gaꦇmeplay 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, bu🌳t 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 buzz

Night and day cities

As much as I love the "city of dreams,", it took the dℱeveloper almost foꦛur years-post launch to achieve Cyberpunk 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 ne꧒arby 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 something 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 ꦦlack 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 off Geralt's for a moment before coming unstuck and continuing on her travels.

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

Leaps and boundaries

This time around, bringing 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 kickไs in only when obser🦩ving a car crash while driving around Corpo Plaza's roundabout.

Not only that, the environmental noise is far𝐆 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 conversations happeni🅺ng 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 ཧin many areas.

The Witcher 4 might just rewrite the genre's reputation in equestrians' minds, however, with its impressive tech powering the 澳洲幸运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 gam꧃e devel🗹oper behind , a website "dedicated to horses in video games and video games about 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' "ambition for the game and the🌜 in-enܫgine capabilities" rather than The Witcher 4 as it'll play upon re♐lease. "In the minute or so of footage the tech demo shows us of Kelpie, I find 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 sig⛎ht 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 the horse gameplay in The Witcher 4 is getting some additional attention compared to its predecessor." Ruppert then gets into someꦡ 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 either 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 i🙈s 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 can be used to create detailed forests or large crowds of unique NPCs – without individ💝ual 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 J💦ohnson 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 they 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 ab⛦le 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 version of it, or we build on top of something that's already there."

Overall, Johnson🐎 notes, Unreal's success 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 level 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 echoꩲed 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 actually digging into 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 ever𝓡yone."

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💮pabil🤪ities."

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/60fps" – some undeniably solid num𓂃bers 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 sh🔜ow you more when the time is right!"

🌳In a reply to his tweet, : "Our team is fu💮ll of wizards!"

GSA Head of Communication Fabian Mario Döhla seems sim🧜ilarly blown away by the tech demo, revealing in his own that he's played it himself – and he "still can't geﷺt enough" of it.

"Some of the best – and genuinely nicest – developers in the industry have poured their 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 longtime 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," there'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.

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

"We had a blast with Unreal𓆉," 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 evalඣuated 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 projects 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 decision🌳 to use it, Girbig has the following to say:

"When we're looking at an engine, an engine is ess🐭entially 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 ov🅠er to experts that have been building engines for years as well, and have that experience of running multiple projects - huge o⛄nes 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 ꦕto Kalemba, it🌞 wasn't exactly an entirely accurate showcase of the RPG as 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 we 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, "show✱cases 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, but rather a showcase of the engine and its capabilities," concludes K𒉰alemba. "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 th🅰at, while the demo ran on a PlayStation 5, the technology "works across all platforms the game will launch 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.

So it was an immense relief to see a woman chuck the contents of a chamber pot off a bridge in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the new tech demo for The Witcher 4. Oh yeah, this is gonna be gross.

It's one thing for The Witcher 4 to launch blood and gore at the camera like a 3D film. I get it, CDPR. Gross! But the grit and gristle I'm really looking for is in the proudly unwashed realities of medieval life. The dirty, uncouth, and uncaring. Here, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4 tech demo, which is also filled with gorgeous val✃leys and fores🎶ts and so on, did not disappoint.

There is, of course, the chamber pot, nearly the very first thing we see as Ciri approaches an otherwise pretty city. I'd like to extend a special shoutout to the chamber pot womꦅan and her 🙈brown cap. She doesn't get paid enough for this shit.

Seconds 🐈later, as Ciri strolls through the marketplace, the ground strewn with all manner of delightful filth, a guard 🎉spits just inches from her feet. Maybe he's not fond of Witchers. Maybe he, like a concerning number of men online, is intimidated by a woman as strong as Ciri. All I know is that he put some stank on that spit, and for his contributions to this canvas of crap, I have to respect it.

Ciri's walk continues. A live bear performs tricks before a small sꩲtreetside crowd – not something that OSHA would abide, I'd wager. A man drops all his apples on the ground after bumping into Ciri. Polish those puppies right up and get 'em on the fruit stand. Pigs pass chickens as they escape their pen, perhaps lured by the apples. Behind a street beggar, an innkeeper rolls an apparent Gwent cheater out into the street. The background music to all of this is an energetic chorus of villagers hawking and gossiping and coughing.

This is the kind of atmosphere that helped make 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3, and games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, so great. I know this is just a tech demo that 🍌we shouldn't read too much into, but the direction here seems pretty clear. The Witcher 4 grimes up good.

CDPR says Ciri's face in the new Witcher 4 trailer is "a direct copy of The Witcher 3 model" despite "two subtle changes."

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 of Unreal showcase, and now that you know that, you should totally go watch both of them a♏nd 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, de🍃spite two subtle changes, one of which has alr♓eady been edited out of the new trailer.

"It's the same character model used in the [2024] trailer," the 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 quality: 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 manticoresཧ that were reportedly c𝓀ut from The Witcher 3, footage of Ciri strolling through a bustling city, and a great view of the game's gorgeous open worꦬld — 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, whi♔ch arguably makes it obscure enoug💜h to not remember 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 oඣf 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 of 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 of 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 mo♏untains and mines, Kovir is situated north of Redania on the Gulf of Praxeda. Unsurprisingly, the mineral-rich realm exports chromium, copper, glass, iron ore, lead, nickel, platinum, salt, silver, tin, titanium, tungsten, and zinc.

The Northern Kingdom also accounts for 80% of the world'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 P🅰rojekt 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 withౠ 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 footage, 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'sꦆ conve꧋rsation 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 to 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 listeni🎃ng to the full interaction. Needless to say, though, it certai𒅌nly 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 pr𝔉oduct strategy, Wyeth Johnson, dives into this hyper-realism in depth: "We're introducing 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 Enginಞe 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. "Therꦇe 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 everything 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 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:setting in t♉he never-before-seen king🍸dom of Kovir – 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.

While this was just a PS5 tech demo, it showed "in-engine capabilities," and developer CD Projekt Red said i𝕴n 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 scales," CDPR said.

Kalemba reiterates that The Witcher 4 is "the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game eꦜ🌞ver." 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," Kalemba says during the U🎃nreal Fest presentation. "Bu𝔍t 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 experience 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 FPS𒊎 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 responds, "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 prou🐠d 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 wer﷽e a big parꦚt of the early Witcher 4 teasers, 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 sure, though – I'm about to have this sꦜong 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 looks 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, tဣhey 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, b൲ut 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 water.

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. 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. Witchersꩲ 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, flyi🍬ng lizard?

Actually, I might be wrong about those lizard allegations. Some of the official images from the trailer are pretty dark, but they revolve around some unfortunat🌃e NPCs appearing t✤o 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.

Final🍰ly, there's a closer look at Ciri's horse. One of these i🅷mages 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 aᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ full 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 mineral resources, rich in mountains and mines, Kovir is situate🦹d 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 n♒ever 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, but it's exciting to see Kovir take on a more central role in-game than ever before. Judging by the tech 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 𒀰CD 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 mechanic 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, "Im𒆙mersive or just a bit too realisti🐷c?"

I'd say the answer is almost♕ certainly 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. Wh🍸ile 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 at a time?

Amusingly, there's some degree of historical precedent for this particular idea. Som🐷e 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 i🦄gnominious 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.

CDPR's Co-CEO Adam Badowski talked about how the company's business strategy is "coherent" with what its developers are making in a celebrating a decade of The Witcher 3. He basically reckons that gamers want good experiences, and having multiple 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games in development increases the odds of that happ𒅌ening.

"With one game in a chain, one by one, it takes so much time," Badowski said. "So having multiඣple projects, which is a big change in our strategy, giꦉves us more opportunities to be more creative and to achieve way, way more."

"I don't want to brag but as a company we are pretty good at creating new IPs, new worlds, and new universes," he continued, humbly, o🐠f course. "This is the most exciting part of our business."

It's no secret that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher are adaptations of existing source material (a TTRPG in the former's case and a series of novels for the latter), but the studi🌞o were definitely able to♒ add nuances and put its own stamp on both worlds.

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Project Hadar is the name of the studio's original IP, though as of 2022 it was in "the earliest stages of the creative process, which means we are not developing any game yet, but working exclusively on the foundation for this neཧw setting."

Check out some of the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games coming in 2025 and beyond.

Celebrating the third Witcher entry's 10th birthday in a recent , Iwiński 💧explains that CD Projekt Red has learned 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 trജied, 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:separate t♔eams working on different games.

"That's why weꦦ switched from a single project company to a multiple project company," the hea💖d 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 said 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 sounds so sim꧒ple" to stay in th🍰at 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 deliv🦩er." 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 deliv𒉰er.

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.

Joint CEO Adam Badowski said as much 🧸in a looking back on a decade of the generational RPG. "At the very beginning of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we decided to combine those two things: wꦰater and fire," Badowski said. "We would like to continue with this approach with all our next games."

Speaking on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CDPR games, the co-studio head explained they "have to add something" in every new release. "We have to add something that changes the consensus. We don't wa🅘nt to copy our own tricks all over again and again. So every game should consist [of] something new."

Badowski♒ acknowledges that CDPR games do tend to follow a loose formula, sure - they🍨're usually "open world, story-driven, quality" RPGs - but, still, "every new game has to bring something new. So this is the general rule for the company."

That should bode well for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4, which has had 澳洲ꦛ幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ciri in the 𓆉driver's seat ever since 2014, and Cyberpunk 2, which will apparently go beyond Night City with a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:second area that's like "Chicago gone wrong,🍒" according to the original TTRPG's creator.

Elsewhere in the interview, the developers revealed one of the biggest arguments they had while making The Witcher 3 was about just how naked Geralt should be in💖 that in✃famous bath tub scene.

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

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 he wasn't using the right button to dodge-roll. And then this mildly amusing conversation took place:

"How do I do a proper roll agaဣin, it's just juꩵmp?" Weber asked.

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

"Since when?"

"Since always."

"Noooo!"

"Yes."

"I'm actually usin⛄g Witcher 4 controls...spoiler."

Indeed, with The Witcher 4 being in fullꦯ-scale production since Novembeꦜr, the 🍸developers are officially beyond the conceptual phase and are actually building 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 sync 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 sequel 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 video continuing The Witcher 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 more💟 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 𝓰showed nudity in a kind of European way," he explains - something that would appear later on in the game, during Ciri's time in the sauna.

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 b✨ecause there had not been "much kissing in video games" before The Witcher series ♉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."

"We will introduce cross-platform mod support for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S later this yea🌳r," the developer announces on . 🐼"For the first time, creating, sharing, and enjoying mods for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be easier and more accessible than ever."

Essentially, console 𓄧folks will soon have the option to slap Henry Cavill's face onto Geralt's body, download all sorts of cosmetics, or have all quest markers on the map from the get-go, as long as all existing mods are approved on consoles.

The update's explains that existing mod platforms, such as NexusMods and Steam Workshop, can still be used after the upco꧙ming patch, which doesn't currently have a release date. One thing to note is that modders won't actually be able to create anything new on Xbox or PlayStation - all console mods need to be made on PC with the CDPR's modding tool REDkit.

CDPR's dedication to the evergreen open world is really nice to see, regardless. Even after countless updates and a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:historic 60 million copies sold, the studio is still working on "one more patch," which has a slight finality to it, while still leaving the door open for another "one more patch" further down the road. (For its 20th, maybe?)

The Witcher 3's big boy birthday is also being ushered in with these lovely-looking inspired by Geralt's silver and steel swords. Plus, CDPR developers recently took a trip down memory lane to share how difficཧult it was to manage The Witcher 3's, err, difficult🔯y.

Check out the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Witcher 3 mods to see what you could be downloading on consoles later this year.

"I almost forgot that we 💙were 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 diffeꦉrent rules, and not all work in other franchises.

"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 wonderful games. Butꦆ in The Witcher, it doesn't work. So 𒀰you have to plan it differently."

While FromSoftware 🧸games are all about the challenge, The Witcher is more about enjoying the story and roleplaying as a monster-sla🔥ying witcher.

I actually prefer playing on the hardest difficulty because it makes me engage with the systems of the 🍰world a l⭕ot more than I otherwise would. I need to make oils and potions and learn a foe's weaknesses.

But if that were how th🥂e game had to be ꧑played by everyone, it would be a completely different game, 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 caﷺncel and replay if you failed. If you failed, we have to cr🃏eate another constellation of consequences because the story stops when your character dies, not when your character failed the quest.

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

Th🃏e developers have to consider, "What are the consequences? I failed, so there are different choices, different consequences, there are different reactions. It changes relations with my 🎀characters."

They had to learn "how ಞto make it and not to force players to save and load all the time and make gamers frustrated. Now we 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. Things don't always go to plaﷺn, and often, playing through your mistakes can be more fun than simply save s🤪cumming 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 Keighle🐼y 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 Nintendo S🐲witch 2 will be the star of the show on CDPR's side.

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

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 that 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, you're doꦕing 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."

In an interview featured in , the team behind reveals that plans to pla🙈ce Ciri at the forefront of the next saga were in motion as early as 2014. “It was pretty early on we realised that [Blood & Wine] is where it ends, and also pretty early on, we knew that we wanted to work with Ciri later on…even like 2014, it was already an idea floating around the studio that she’s next. In Witcher 3, Geralt is just helping out…he is there for her. So it was pretty clear we want her as the next main person, main characte🌄r.”

In a recent behind-the-scenes video published on the GameStar YouTube channel, The 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Witcher 4 game director⭕ Sebastian Kalemba doubles down on this lo🍰ngstanding vision.

“We knew it from the get-go,” Kalemba says. “I remember a discussion with Badowski. During Blood and Wine, we’d been talking about Cirꦬi, and why it’s a good choice. Eight years, nine years ago, we already had a very solid motivation for why this is important and why this should be the next step for us. We knew it already there. Of course it wasn’t that crystallised, but the big idea was already there, and set in stone.”

Also appearing in the video were global community project director, Marcin Momot, and Pawel Mieln♌iczuk, the art director. They discussed the studio’s excitement to return to the Continent and explore it from Ciri’s perspective.

While the next Witcher game, often referred to as Polaris, is still deep in develo☂pment, the creative team’s early clarity about Ciri’s role suggests the studio is 💙building her arc as a centrepiece of a new saga, not just a continuation.

The Witcher’s🔜 future, it seems, was decided long before𒅌 Geralt ever hung up his swords.

First look at The Witcher 4 shows Ciri is the star, but that sure sounds like Geralt at the end to me.

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 Witch𝕴er series. Nowakowski said it "was a very tricky period for the company."

Between the release of The Witcher in 2007 and The Witcher 2 in 2011, Nowakowski says 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 ea🔯rly days were quite - for me - focused on 'how dౠo 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, where whatever they're working on will instantly become the most a𓃲nticipated 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."

Speaking to , art director on the unannounced Project Hadar Pawel Mielniczuk said "after years of making this medieval universe of The Witcher, switching to 🦂Cyberpunk was really hard."

The Witcher 4 game director Sebastian Kalemba addedꦬ that "the moment of recalibrating, it's tough - it requires some time to rewire the brain and really get into the IP, the genre, the characters, all that required some time to really 🍃fully recalibrate."

And going back to The Witcher 4 after a tour of Night City was just as difficult. "It's neve﷽r easy. It's really nice to get back to the IP. I think people love it, and we have something great to cook," Kalemba said, but pivoting to an entirely different genre, inspired by a different historical period, where people speak completely differen🏅tly, "is challenging, but super cool at the same time."

"🦩You're kinda reinventing - and at the same time we're thinking about how we can improve it," he added.

The pair also said the studio is more ready to tackle two very different franchises at the same time now. It's apparently always been CD Prᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤🧔⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚojekt Red's intention, though the studio was too small and inexperienced to pull it off 10 years ago. It now has two massive RPG hits under its belt (and probably way more developers under its umbrella.)

"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"

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 figure 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 excee𒆙ded 50 million copies, placing The Witcher 3 inside the top 20 best-sell🌞ing games of all time. And with the series' 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 anticipateওd 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 𒉰ne♌arly $200 million, and has become something of a scapegoat for Warner Bros' recent su꧋ite of financial failures. I k🌞now which horse I would have preferred 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."

CDPR's Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz, the English di𝔍rector for the RPG now celebrating its 10th anniversary, recently told that the studio decided to nix the big reveal that was initially planned at the end of the countdown.

"I don't remember, actually, the nature of the announcement we were going to make," Pugacz-M🅰uraszkiewicz recalled, "but we had the countdown ꩵon the website and then we decided not to make the announcement."

Unfortunately, there was no going bacꦚk from having put the counꦚtdown on their site, and the team had to quickly come up with another announcement for fans lest they reach zero with nothing to show for it.

As the studio scrambled for something to live up to the expectations the countdown had set, the idea was floated to just "enlist a top actor and, when the clock runs down, announce them as the big reveal," according to Puga🍸cz-Muraszkiewicz. Soon after, a member of CD Projekt Red’s business development team’s contacts were raided in order to find a big name talent to tag onto the upcoming title.

This resulted in the quick recruitment of Charles Dance, who at the time was playing Tywin Lannister on the smash-hit show Game of Thrones. With Dance now committed to play the Emperor of Nilfgaard in The Witcher 3, the studio narrowly avoided an♒y possible embarrassment for the countdown to nothing.

The Witcher 3's deadliest foe might just be The Bloody Baron's Gwent deck, which has spent 10 years kicking our collective butts across 458 million matches

"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 fo🍌r The Witcher ad nauseam through eternity."

For as much as we all love Geralt, he's got a point. Sometimes, you just need t𒅌o 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 did꧟n'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 know the games were based on a popular sꦗeries of books. Everything CD Projekt Red does is rooted in it.

As the years have gone by, 澳洲幸运5开꧒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 to🌱rch🤪 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 aff🦩ect how a questline branches, your relationship with, or even the fates of certain characters, with some even 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 decided to ally with.

However, Sebastian Kalemba, game director on The Witcher 4 explained h𝔉is 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 pl༺ayers more tools, more opportunities, to be able to feel that 'I am the player and I define my experience.'"

CD Projekt quest designer Paweł Gąska chimed in onꦅ 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 ga💙ve 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 writ🐓er 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, we know how to handle it. I'mꦯ pretty confident about The Witcher 4."

While Blacha acknowledges that CDPR didn't create Geralt and the world he inhabits, he does clai🌺m that "we made [the franchise] popular through the 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 i🏅t…and it doesn't make me ꦗanxious anymore. It just goes on."

"And it's a nice feeling because I know that I created something big, and probably I w🏅ill beಞ remembered because of it."

Exactly how the series' actual creator, Witcher author Andrezj Sapkowski, might feel about Bla✃cha'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 deni𒈔ed, however, that The Witcher may well have remained a cult hit with little popularity 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 any developers' attitudꦆe 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 Deep🌳L), 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 vari🎶ous possibilities, both in an artistic and narrative sense. Having Geralt's adopted daughter 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 "most immersive and ambitiou🌱s open-world Witcher game to date" in the past, will hopefully stan🍨d as a "proud successor" 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.

In a tweet celebrating ten years of The Witcher 3, the studio revealed that over the past decade, Geralt has partak💖en in more than 458 million rounds of Gwent. You might wonder 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 t🧸alking 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 hum♚an 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 found out that you can pick her Olgierd card up from her clinic in Oxenfurt 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.

When posed with the question of a Switch 2 port of Witcher 3 by , gameplay design lead Filip Down๊ar simply said that the studio is "all in on Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition" for the system.

"Our rel🌳ationship with Nintendo goes back to the original Nintendo Switch, where we released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," Downar added. "We were hap🌺py with how that game was received by players so, when we heard about the more powerful Nintendo Switch 2, we immediately thought it would be the perfect platform for Cyberpunk 2077."

The Switch version of The Witcher 3 is certainly not the ideal platform on which to play the game, but it's a minor miracle the portable console can handle the massive open-world RPG ♑at all, and it did bring the game to a whole new au💛dience.

It looks like Cyberp🐬unk 2077 on S🧸witch 2 is going to provide a far more impressive experience, and by all accounts the new console should be able to del🅷iver a not just solid, but excellent version of a game like The Witc꧙her 3, which is nearly a full decade old. I'm sure CD Projekt will be more than happen to lay a claim to the re-release crown that keeps being traded back and forth between Skyrim and The Last of Us if it means making a few more Witcher fans in the process.

For more 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming Switch 2 games, you know where to click.

The official Witcher Twitter account shared a rare PSA alerting foll🔜owers to reports of sham communications from people claiming to be CDPR representatives inviting them to beta test The Witcher 4. "This is a scam!" CDPR said.

"We've been taking the necessary steps to take this fraudulent messaging down," reads the tweet. "That said, if you receive any invites to or stumble upon news of one, we kindly ask you to report the൩ scam using the tools available to you in your email client or the social media platform you are using. Remember: professional monster slayers don't fall for scams; they see right through them and slay them!"

The Witcher 4 was only just recently fully unveiled at the 2024 Game Awards, and even if it was in an advanced enough development state to be ready for beta testing (which it almost certainly isn't), there'd still be no guarantees that CDPR would hold beta tests for it. That said, ꦫthe developer assured fans that, should 💮it decide to run Witcher 4 beta tests in the future, you'll hear about it on their official social channels first.

The Witcher 4 is just one of several 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games in development, including a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new AAA RPG trilogy, a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Witcher remake, and a full-blown 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

The Witcher 4 has "a huge team" focused on the believability of the RPG's world, because even things like trees and foliage always need to belong.

The conversat𒁃ion ar🗹ound AI in gaming isn’t exactly new. For a while now, people have been wondering if artificial intelligence might eventually replace human actors. But if you ask Kate Saxon - the acclaimed performance director behind the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - she’s not convinced.

“I just don’t see it ever fully replacing actors” she tells Edge in issue 409, which is . “At least not in the kinds of gams that truly care about strong storytelling, rich ch𓆉aracters, and mဣeaningful dialogue.”

It’s not just about𝄹 delivering lines or syncing up facial animations. For Saxon, it goes much deeper. “There’s something missing - something you can’t quite quantify - that lifts a performance from decent to genuinely moving.”

And it’s that ‘something’ ♑that brings characters to life.

Saxon has witnessed the impact firsthand with over two decades of experience that have seen her name attached to games such as F🌼able II and Alien: Isolation. One of her favourite moments? When voice actors finally join a project. “It’s the point where characters stop being just drawings or words on a page,” she explains. “That’s when they start to breathe. They get a pulse.”

She describes how th♔e energy in a dev team shifts when actors come onboard. Those scripted lines and concep𒁃t designs suddenly start feeling real, like living, feeling people.

Yes, AI tools are evolving quickly. I can under𒆙stand why some studios might explore automation for certain jobs, like generating background chatter or gi🐓ving a minor NPC a voice. It can save time and resources.

But when it comes to the main characters, the emotional heart of a game? That’s where Saxon believes AI still falls short. “Actors bring more than just their voices,” she say𒊎s. “They bring life experience, their instiꦏncts, their emotional intelligence.”

Those little moments of vulnerability o🦋r surprise, those micro expressions t🐽hat land just right, come from a place AI can’t reach. Not yet, at least.

Here's everything we know about 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4, which we imagine won't feature AI.

As of April 1, The Molasses Flood has ceased operations as "a separate legal entity," as noted on the studio's (via ). This doesn't mean that the studio is gone or the developers are being laid off – at least, there have been no layoff a🍌nnouncements alongside this nꦍews – but rather that the studio is now straight-up a part of CD Projekt proper.

The move was quietly announced in March as part of CD Projekt's , where joint CDPR CEO Michał Nowakowski noted that "we have decided to integrate The Molasses Flood team into our studio൲'s structure by merging the company with CD PROJEKT RED Inc." in order to "ensure even better alignment in the scope and direction of the project."

Now🎃akowski added that while this move "naturally entails some changes in the project leadership," Project Sirius "itself is proceeding." The exact details of those leadership changes have not yet been disclosed, but it seems at least one of the studio's co-founders has decided to make this his exit point from the company.

"I've decided not to follow TMF on this transition," Damian Isla, who served in various leadership roles on Project Sirius, said in a. "So last Monday – the last day of TMF's legal existence! – was also my l🃏ast day at the studio."

Isla also said that "this is a GOOD AND HEALTHY thing for the s𒐪tudio, and it was long-expected. It breaks♓ down some organizational barriers and better integrates the TMF team with the rest of the amazing CDPR org.

"Overall, it shows a very bright future for Project Sirius (aka 'the multiplayer Witcher game,' of which I was the Design♔ Director for three years). It's going to be an amazing game, one for the books, and I cannot wait until the rest of the 𒆙world learns about what we've been working on."

Before its acquisition by CDPR, The Molasses Flood developed two indie games, The Flame in the Flood and Drake Hollow, both of which launched to generally positive sentiment but were not breakout success stories. After the buyout, Project Sirius was one of many announcements about 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming CD Projekt Red games back in 2022.

While we don't know much about the game beyond its multiplayer focus, we do know that there's been some struggle in its development, which 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:was rebooted in 2023. Here's hoping🅺 this absorption works out well for both the game itself and the devs who are buildin🦩g it.

The Witcher 4 has "a huge team" focused on the believability of the RPG's world, because even things like trees and foliage always need to belong.

Spea�🐈�king in a new episode of CD Projekt Red's AnsweRED podcast (further below), senior communication manager Paweł Burza, game director Sebastian Kalemba, environment art director Michał Janiszewski, and engineering production manager Jan Hermanowicz discuss the process of worldbuilding, with Hermanowicz noting that a believable world should have consistency. Janiszewski adds to this, saying that worldbuilding is about immediately immersing the player – "everything clicks together," he adds, pointing to "the environment, the characters, and the way that everything is laid out on the level itself." He reiterates: "Everything needs to be consistent."

CD Projekt Red has obviously pulled this off many times before, with the likes of 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, so the🀅 studio really knows what it's doing in this regard.

"It 🍸is important for us for the player to get the world [as] believable as possible," Janiszewski says.

Going on to talk about The Witcher 4 specifically, Janiszewski explains that CD Projekt Red has "a huge team that is taking care of the believability." He references a point that Hermanowicz makes earlier in the conversation about building environments like f🌳orests, where effort is made to ensure that the foliage and trees used would actually belong there, adding t🦂hat this large team is in place since "even the line of the trees need to be specifically created."

He continues: "We have some tools that are supporting us, and w✱e are building inside of our worldbuilding team tools that will make our work a little bit faster and a little bit more, I would say, easier to populate th🍎e whole world."

We still don't know exactly when The Witcher 4 is supposed to launch – right now, we've not even been💛 given a vague release window. However, anyone ♛hungry for the next installment can be somewhat reassured by whatever these "worldbuilding tools" the studio has up its sleeve are, so long as they have the power to speed up the RPG's development, even if only a little bit.

In the meantime, be sure to check out our roundup of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPGs you can play now.

CD Projekt Red's Ciri-based sequel and Naughty Dog's spacefaring 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet were both announced with expensive-smelling trailers at The Game Awards 2024, but the two games are apparently no where close to releasing, whi♕ch shouldn't be much of a surprise considering we only saw 'in-engine' CGI cutscenes from both.

News of The Witcher 4's late arrival comes from CD Projekt Red CFO Piotr Nielubowicz, who told investors "that the game will not be launched within the time frame of the first target of the incenti🌳ve program, which ends December 31, 2026," during the company's latest fiscal .

Reacting to the release window on ResetEra, ever-reliable Bloomsburg journalist Jason Schreier also threw Intergalܫactic's name into the ring. "I'm pretty sure I said they were both going to be very early teases," he . "Neither of those games will be out next year."

In case your memory needs jogging, Intergalactic is a brand new sci-fi universe from the studio behind The Last of Us and Uncharted about a woman who gets stranded on a strange planet while on the hunt for an ex-co-worker. Director Neil Druckmann said it's s♐till "evolving and changing" five years into developmentꦓ, though, so that alleged🃏 2027 window isn't hard to believe.

Regardless, blockbuster games have become so expensive and complicated to make this decade that we're pretty much only getting one game per generation from sܫome of the world's biggest studios🌊, sadly. The has never been more relevant.

2027 seems to far away, so why not check out the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and beyond in the meantime?

In , 🎶sizing up its 2024 activities and results, Nowakowski 💃writes:

"We are aware that the video game market continues to evolve – however, we believe that cutting-edge single-player games rooted in strong franchises and immersive narratives will continue to enjoy great popularity. Our experience, along with brands such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk, which it is our pleasure to further develop, help us build a strong position on the market and paint a positive outlook – while collaboration with global tech and✱ innovation leaders enables us to keep abreast of technical developments in the industry and con𝔍tinue to deliver top-quality entertainment."

Vincke, meanwhile, in a sharper 𒐪dig at the harebrained recurring declaration that big single-player games are dead, reckoned they aren't going anywhere, "they just have to be good." And when you get down to it, 'just make a good one' is really just a short version of 'make a cutting-edge one rooted in a strong franchise and with an immersive narrative.'

CD Projekt is in the process of establishing a new IP (codenamed Hadar), and has just announced a collaboration with mobile powerhouse Scopely, but its fastest horses are still the same two single-player series. The company's pipeline includes 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2 (rather, Orion, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, whatever it ends up being called), 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher remake, and The Witcher spinoff thing-a-majig Sirius.

CD Projekt is very much embedded in the "cutting-edge single-player" business, and it remains one of 🍌the most successful companies in the space, so Nowakowski's comments come as no surprise as the studio invests and expands for parallel projects that seem to double down on what got it this far.

Per today's report, from October 31, 2024 to February 28, 2025, CD Projekt wen🍸t from 650 to 707 active developers, with particularly large gains ℱto the Witcher 4, Orion, and "shared services" teams. As associate Cyberpunk director , "we are growing my chooms."

Single-player games certainly seem to be doing alright this month: 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Assassin's Creed Shadows has sold over 2 million copies in a few days, generating th♈e series' biggest launch since Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which Ubisoft has dubbed a "perfect storm" we're unlike💫ly to see again.

Nowakowski recently said the studio won't make survival games just because they're popular, but Netflix's Edgerunners anime is fueling dreams bigger than RPGs.