CD Projekt RED has announced The Witcher IV, the beginning of a new video game saga set in The Witcher universe. The game will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC, but the release date has not yet been revealed. “We kick off a new Witcher saga, this time with Ciri at the center of the story,” said Sebastian Kalemba, Game Director of the project. “It’s great to finally be able to say these words: we’ve known for a long time that we wanted Ciri as the protagonist of The Witcher IV; it seemed like the most natural choice and we believe that Ciri deserves it. In this game we want to explore what it really means to become a witcher, following Ciri on her journey. The trailer offers a glimpse of all this, showing how dark and gritty the world of The Witcher can be.”
In the nearly six-minute trailer, viewers were able to see Ciri, the adopted daughter of Geralt of Rivia, struggling with a witcher’s contract in a remote village terrorized for generations by a monster that demands human sacrifices. Presented as a short self-contained story, the trailer showcases Ciri’s new abilities and tools, including a chain and advanced magical powers. At the center of the trailer is Ciri’s perspective as an outsider to the village. While the inhabitants say goodbye to a young girl destined for ritual sacrifice, Ciri chooses to intervene. In an attempt to kill the beast and save the girl, Ciri clashes with the prejudices and superstitions of the inhabitants she tries to protect, learning a painful lesson: monsters can take many forms.
The trailer was pre-rendered in a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an as-yet-unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. Developed with the same technology as The Witcher IV, using assets and models from the game itself, the trailer aims to give players a cinematic taste of the experience the game aspires to provide. The trailer was created thanks to a close collaboration between CD Projekt RED and Platige Image, the studio already responsible for the opening cinematics of the previous chapters of the series.
