As CD Projekt RED continues its work on a project codenamed Hadar, the company has now said that it has been taking its time with the project to ensure that it ends up with a “coherent vision”. In an interview with Biznes, co-CEO of the studio Michał Nowakowski spoke about Hadar and confirmed that work on the project is in full swing. He even called it the “biggest undertaking to date” for the studio.
“It’s been the biggest undertaking so far that has taken us a few good years, but at this point we can say that we have a coherent vision of this world and its key elements. The team has started work on the game, although it is still not yet in pre-production,” he said (via machine translation). “Some small prototypes are currently being created, and gameplay elements are being tried.”
Just last month, CD Projekt RED’s vice president of investor relations, Karolina Gnaś, had confirmed that Hadar continues to be in its concept stages, and said that the studio will work on growing the project’s team later this year. In its current concept form, Hadar has more than 30 developers working on it, and CD Projekt RED will “hire more, up to 50 developers by the end of the year”.
Little has been confirmed about Hadar so far. However, a job listing at the studio has indicated that it will be an “emotional, open-world experience.” This likely means that CD Projekt RED isn’t going to stray too far from its area of expertise, since the studio has plenty of experience in creating narrative open-world games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Nowakowski had spoken about the development progress of Hadar back in March, noting that the team had been working on “multiple prototypes” that would help define the title’s vision. During an earnings call, he also said that an important milestone had been met, with the team having “established the foundations of this entirely new IP.”
“Now, we have clearly defined distinguishing features of this world, and established key pillars that will not only provide the foundation for the game itself, but also, potentially, for other future products.”
As for what the development team has been doing since then, Nowakowski said that it was “actively designing specific elements that might be included in the game. We are creating multiple prototypes and implementing them directly in Unreal Engine. This allows us to live-test and verify how selected mechanics and gameplay elements can perform.”
In 2022, CD Projekt RED had confirmed that work on Hadar was taking place “100% internally”, and described the project as being entirely separate from its Cyberpunk and The Witcher franchises. More reports around the same time had also indicated that Hadar might include some RPG elements. On the subject, Nowakowski said that “when it comes to the genre, we do certain types of games and I think it’s safe to assume that we want to continue to do the games within that kind of genre, so you can imagine what kind of game to expect.”
