CD Projekt RED did a veritable press tour for The Witcher IV reveal after the trailer’s debut at The Game Awards 2024. After talking about Ciri as a protagonist, revealing her new voice actress, and confirming Gwent, the developers stopped by for an interview with the YouTube channel Skill Up. Here, Game Director Sebastian Kalemba discussed the game’s scope, which is said to be similar to The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.
I’ll give you guys an anecdote first before I answer the question. I remember when we were thinking about how many hours you would need to, let’s say, finish The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone and The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. When we threw the numbers, we were like, maybe 5 or 10 hours for Heart of Stone and maybe 10 or 15 hours for Blood and Wine, and we ended up with 30 hours. Of course, empirically, we have so much knowledge regarding the structure of The Witcher 1, 2, 3, the structure of Cyberpunk 2077 and all the expansions, so we use this data. But we look at the scale a little differently. We don’t want to be servants to the numbers.
Yeah, the map of The Witcher IV is definitely more or less the same when it comes to the size. The amount of quests is also more or less the same, but again, the game is going to be big, but also, the ambition of the entire team is huge. First and foremost, we want to deliver a super compelling experience. So, again, quality over quantity. But definitely, what we can promise is that, yes, this game is going to be pretty big. It’s going to be comparable to everything we’ve done so far, but I cannot tell you if it will be 90%, 85%, or whatever.
For the record, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is definitely a huge game. The main story alone can take over 50 hours, and with all the side content, it goes easily above a hundred hours, even if you don’t want to complete every single hunt and Easter egg. Still, Kalemba emphasized the studio’s focus on quality.
In a not entirely unrelated addendum, the Game Director of The Witcher IV also stressed that this is not the beginning of the game’s marketing campaign. It was simply a reveal of the title and the new protagonist. The game entered full production earlier this year, so there’s still a long wait ahead for fans – probably a couple of years, if not more.
