Jumping out of the medieval fantasy universe it spent years crafting in The Witcher to the futuristic dystopia of Cyberpunk 2077 was apparently “really hard” for developers at CD Projekt Red, as was switching back once more with The Witcher 4, but senior members of the studio reckon its finally ready to have two franchises cook at the same time.
Speaking to Gamestar, 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 added 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 never 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 differently, “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 Projekt 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.)
