While CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher series have been telling their own, original stories since the first title, all three games have also featured elements of the works of The Witcher creator Andrzej Sapkowski. In a new series of social media posts, narrative lead on The Witcher 4 Philipp Weber has indicated that the upcoming RPG will also similarly use elements of Sapkowski’s novels.
In a post celebrating his latest haul of fantasy novels, Weber posted a picture featuring three books, with Sapkowski’s The Witcher: Crossroads of Ravens taking center stage. In his posts, however, Weber did note that he was already aware of the more important points thanks to his work on The Witcher 4. “Sadly due to the requirements of the job I know all the most important points already,” said Weber when asked by a fan about being spoiled about its story. “But I’ll still enjoy it!”
Responding to another post about whether those points have influenced anything in The Witcher games in the past, Weber also noted that he can’t exactly reveal how CD Projekt RED will make use of the plot points of Crossroads of Ravens for The Witcher 4. He did, however, mention the fact that another The Witcher book – Season of Storms – was released while The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was still under development. The studio then tried incorporating some of the book’s plot points into the game as well.
“I can’t reveal how exactly we’ll do it, but Season of Storms also came out while we developed The Witcher 3, so we still tried to include some of the new elements,” wrote Weber. “You can expect something similar!”
Weber had previously spoken about the pressure that CD Projekt RED feels to make sure that The Witcher 4 surpasses The Witcher 3, and how the studio is developing the upcoming title. According to Weber, “‘Witcher 3 was one of the best games ever made, how are they going to top it?’” he went on to mention that he agrees with discourse surrounding the 2015 RPG, saying “I’m like ‘yeah, how are we going to do that?’”
When it comes to the studio doing justice to the legacy of the beloved RPG, Weber spoke about how the studio was trying to make sure it follows similar philosophies to what it had during the development of The Witcher 3. At the same time, the studio is also trying to make sure that they don’t just repeat what they’ve already made.
“I think the way we want to do justice to the legacy of The Witcher 3 is to take the philosophy we had during The Witcher 3 – how to make a game, how to really care about these things, how to tell stories – and keep that philosophy,” Weber continued. “At the same time, there are new questions we want to answer, because this is supposed to feel like a true sequel, not just redoing what we did before. And I think it’s really trying to have that healthy mix of really moving forward and also trying out some new things, but doing justice to what was there, not trying to beat it.”
The Witcher 4 is under development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The title doesn’t yet have a release date.
