The Witcher 4 Will Have New Gameplay and Mechanics Not Seen in Previous Games

The Witcher 4 is set to enter production sometime during the second half of the year, which means it probably won’t release until 2028 or 2029 as a cross-gen game available on PC, PS5, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and the next Xbox. This means we have a few years of CD Projekt Red vaguely talking about the game. To this end, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski recently spoke about the game with investors, noting it will not just be a reskin of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Rather, it will introduce new gameplay design and mechanics not seen in not just The Witcher 3, but also Cyberpunk 2077.

According to Nowakowski, the aim of CD Projekt Red is to do something the team has never done before. Now, this could just be PR speaking hyping up the game in a room full of people who give the company money to make said games. That said, this ambition lines up with word that the team working on the game is the biggest team CD Projekt Red has ever assembled. 

“When it comes to the risks of innovative elements- making a new game is always a creative risk, especially since we’re trying to push new boundaries and explore new fields, do something we haven’t actually done before,” said Nowakowski “I guess what I’m saying is that you should not be expecting The Witcher 3 in new clothing, of sorts. Of course, we’re building on the shoulders of what came before and on what we’ve learned, but we will be adding new gameplay elements and new mechanics that you have not seen in our previous games. I’d say doing such things is always a risk. It’s not just repeating what was done before.”

New gameplay elements and new mechanics is obviously vague, but given how long the game has been in pre-production it is not surprising that CD Projekt Red has cooked up a few ways to evolve the series. After all, it is during this conceptual stage these groundworks are laid out. 

With The Witcher 4 not entering production until this year, we probably won’t see its first teaser trailer until 2025 at the earliest, maybe even 2026. Sometimes teams release trailers earlier than this, but it is usually when they are working on an unknown project and want to get word out for hiring purposes. Since that is not applicable here, we don’t expect an early reveal.