Eurogamer's full interview with CD Projekt Red after the first reveal trailer for The Witcher 4, including talk of Ciri's gameplay, launch platforms and more.
www.eurogamer.net
So the first thing for me is: is there a single, canon ending to The Witcher 3 that you're working from now? Obviously, there's quite dramatically different endings available for Ciri in particular there…
Philipp Weber: So we can't say yet how exactly we're going to handle it. This is something that we want to reveal later. What I can say is that we really want to respect everything that came before, that being the books by Andrzej Sapkowski and all three Witcher games, and that of course, should also include some of the most important choices the player made there. But exactly how we, you know, reveal how we handle all of these things, this will be part of the story that we tell in Polaris so I think that we have to talk about how we do it a little bit later.
Can you talk about how many years after The Witcher 3 we are here? Obviously, Ciri looks a little bit older, so we can assume it's a fair bit afterwards - can you say exactly how long?
Sebastian Kalemba: We cannot say exactly how long, but we can say 'a few' [years], that's for sure. And yeah, I would keep it at that.
A few years, okay. You mentioned Andrzej Sapkowski - what does his involvement look like with The Witcher 4? Do you speak with him directly, do you run things by him, or is it totally hands off?
Kalemba: Actually, he's hands off. But, you know, he's not [involved] in the form of a consultant or whatever, but we have a great relationship with him. So we meet with Andrzej Sapkowski from time to time, discuss things. But generally, there is a great trust between us when it comes to dealing with this world. And I believe we are perfectly calibrated when it comes to the framing.
Does he 'approve' of Ciri being a fully fledged witcher? I ask as it's a bit of a discussion point with fans at the moment, about whether she is or she isn't officially a witcher, whether she goes through the Trial of the Grasses [CDPR has confirmed that she does, in the time before The Witcher 4]. Has he explicitly said, say, 'yes, that's absolutely fine'?
Weber: I mean, I can actually give you a very good answer, because it's the answer that Andrzej Sapkowski usually gives: the answer is in the books. And in the books, Andrzej Sapkowski called Ciri a witcher multiple times, and Geralt called Ciri a witcher in the books too. So I think that basically says what Andrzej Sapkowski thinks about the topic.
You mentioned Geralt. Obviously, we know he's alive and in the game, in some form. Will he be playable at any point, like Ciri was in The Witcher 3?
Kalemba: Well, actually, currently, he's having the best time of his life Touissant in Henrietta's mansion [laughs]. And, you know, playing with some wine, and dealing with vineyards. This is where we left him last time. But obviously we can promise that Geralt will appear, but we cannot tell you if it's going to be playable or not right now. But yeah, he will appear. He's going to be present in The Witcher 4.
One interesting part of featuring Ciri here is that there's now maybe some concern, or more like speculation, that you might need to kind of 'nerf' her in some way, right? That she has to go back to 'power level one' at the beginning of an RPG - and obviously she finished The Witcher 3 as pretty powerful, right? Like she's one of the more powerful entities in the world at that time. How are you trying to handle that? Can we expect a low power Ciri at the start of this?
Kalemba: No, we cannot tell you exactly how. But we can tell you just, like, believe us: that was one of the things, or first things, that we were solving, to make sure - the way we develop here, we do not leave anything without a clear answer. And the answer we'll provide for sure, as soon as we let you experience the game.
And finally, it's been discussed a fair bit now, but you folks have been stung in the past with announcing things early, and with pre-rendered footage. I know after Cyberpunk 2077's launch you've now changed development practice, to where you develop games on the lowest spec hardware at the same time as the highest end ones. So can players be confident that even though this trailer is on, as you've mentioned, some super secret next gen graphics card, the game could also run on current gen consoles - say an Xbox Series S - at the same time?
Kalemba: You know, first of all, this is good to say: this is not a kind of 'beginning of marketing' campaign. We firstly wanted to showcase and share with the entire world that Ciri is the main protagonist; it's The Witcher 4; and she's mutated; and she's on The Path, definitely, right?
The second thing is that, yes, we are working on a new engine right now, together with Epic's engineers, and there is a great synergy and a great collaboration between us. And currently we're working on Unreal Engine 5 and our custom build. And obviously we want to support all the platforms - meaning PC, Xbox and Sony, right? - but I cannot, right now, tell you more specifics regarding that.
Magari in futuro faranno anche il remake o una pseudo remaster del due, ma dubito li porteranno così come sono (Altro motivo per cui adoro il PC, non abbiamo questo problema, possiamo giocare a qualsiasi cosa, in qualsiasi momento, nonostante l'età).
