We'll be getting our first look at The Witcher 3's upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, during Gamescom 2026, CD Projekt Red has confirmed.

Not only will Songs of the Past be showcased to the public for anyone actually attending Gamescom in Cologne, Germany next month in the form of a "guided presentation," but Geoff Keighley's big Opening Night Live stream on August 25 will see "new information" about the expansion revealed, a press release confirms.

Let's face it, it wouldn't take much to provide us with any new information – all we really know about the expansion – not DLC, CD Projekt Red insists – is that it sounds like it'll be pretty substantial, The Witcher 1 remake studio Fool's Theory is working alongside CDPR on it, and it'll be out next year. We've not actually seen any footage yet, just a nice new image of Geralt, so any glimpse here would be welcome.

The expansion had been rumored for months before its announcement, but it was still quite a surprise to find out it actually exists. After all, The Witcher 3 is now over a decade old, and it's been over 10 years since its last expansion, Blood and Wine, too. Not only that, but The Witcher 4 has been announced, and while that doesn't yet have a release date, it's fair to say that we're not going to be starved of The Witcher content before long – we even have that remake of the first game on the way. Certainly no one is complaining, though.

With Songs of the Past's launch set for 2027, I'd be surprised if we saw an exact release date at Gamescom unless it's planned to arrive early in the year. Regardless, though, it'll be very exciting to have a proper look at it – mark those calendars.

Former Witcher 3 director has just "one request" for CD Projekt Red as it finalizes Songs of the Past expansion.

The Witcher remake developer Fool's Theory is working on under the supervision of CD Projekt Red is going to be open-world, like the fantasy series' more recent installment, The Witcher 3. But, according to the original 2007 game's lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec, it shouldn't be.

Ganszyniec tells Polish website Chip in an interview GamesRadar+ translated with DeepL and Google that converting The Witcher to a spacious open world would make it so "the pace and scale of the entire project would change immediately." He has this nagging theory that more land requires more content – and if you're like me and have played through expansive open worlds like in Shadow of the Erdtree and sighed a spoiled sigh at all the empty plains, you know he's right.

To Ganszyniec, the original Witcher is made more powerful by its snappy narrative and deliberate pacing. "We knew exactly where the player would be," he says, so CD Projekt Red developers could plan environments and cutscenes with a surgeon's intuition. But in an open-world version of the game, Ganszyniec muses, a player could instead grab something like a boat on Lake Vizima and just glide through its fifth act with no regard at all for the 2007 game's ruined old manor and carefully planned challenges.

If that were the case, I wonder if it would even really feel like you were still playing The Witcher 1. And if not, then a 20-year-old game might lose its value in most ways other than as a ploy to sell more copies.

"At some point, a pragmatic question must be asked: when does this multiplication of paths cease to be profitable?" Ganszyniec wonders. "You can invest an infinite amount of time and budget, but will it generate an infinite number of new players?"

In any case, The Witcher remake is going to be open-world. But Ganszyniec's questions are worth sitting with as the video game industry continues to decide if it still values preservation of the past on its journey of wanting infinitely more.

The Witcher 1 Remake made CD Projekt Red realize the "true impact" of not recording its old work: "We had little to no technical knowledge preserved from that time."

Before The Witcher 3 came two predecessors from CD Projekt Red: The Witcher 2 and the series original RPG – an RPG that features one heck of a, erm, unique romance system.

In case you've never played the first Witcher game, the 2007 gem boasts a certain set of cards you can collect that act as… well, sex trophies, basically.

While more modern genre giants like Baldur's Gate 3 have elaborate romantic cutscenes (many of which are indeed NSFW), The Witcher had these romance cards instead – little pieces of art that, much to many fans' dismay, arguably felt a bit shallow in substance.

According to lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec, however, CD Projekt Red opted for the cards because the developers knew they needed romance – The Witcher books do feature romance, after all – but didn't have the resources or ability to create full-blown, lengthy love arcs or animated cutscenes.

He recalls as much in an interview with CHIP (as translated by GameObserver), admitting he's not 100% sure how it all went down.

"Sometimes a feature appears as a result of someone going: in the books, there's lots of romance, so we'll probably need romance, too. Someone creates a list of characters; someone else looks at it productively and says: 'There's no way we're making so many cutscenes.' Then comes the question: 'if the cutscenes are a problem, what do we do? Maybe 2D drawings?'"

That might just be the origin story of the infamous "sex cards," as they're widely known.

"I don't know if that's the exact way it happened," Ganszyniec continues, "but that's how it could have happened. Everyone's responsible for finding solutions to their own problems, and suddenly something's in the game. When something's already made it into a version, it's difficult to remove it."

And, yep – "sometimes it worked as a shortcut." When you have cards instead of scenes, you "understand that it's meant to represent just part of a longer story."

Plus, as the dev puts it, "thanks to the fact that The Witcher was indeterminate and full of shortcuts, the player accepted it." That makes sense, I suppose – and, well, for the most part, folks did.

That's not to say the cards are popular, but it's not as though they soiled The Witcher's reputation. CD Projekt Red worked with the resources it had at the time, and Ganszyniec isn't "ashamed" of the romance cards despite their reception.

"Some of these moments ended up being absurd," though, and he's not afraid to admit as much. "It's just that sometimes you fail to write something good enough – then, you play the game, you read the dialogue, and you see: this did not work." Hey, it happens… right?

Here's hoping The Witcher 4 features a more, uh, immersive romance system, as CD Projekt Red has said it'll "absolutely" be a part of the RPG.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

Did you know that CD Projekt is, in fact, a company that's distinct from CD Projekt Red? I did, but that's only because my days are often occupied with polite but firm emails from PR representatives who are quite particular about these sorts of minutiae. Thankfully, the company has recognized that this state of affairs is extremely confusing, and is unifying its name to make things more consistent.

CD Projekt (without the Red) was founded back in 1994 as a distributor bringing foreign video games to the Polish market. CD Projekt Red was founded in 2002, and that name represents the development studio responsible for The Witcher and Cyberpunk games. Over time, the two names became basically synonymous in the minds of players, and while CD Projekt Red was technically a subsidiary of the broader CD Projekt, the company had a heck of a time getting anyone to recognize the difference.

Now, as part of an effort "ensure full brand consistency and facilitate the identification of the Company with its products on the global market," the whole thing is going to be known as CD Projekt Red. The announcement was buried in one of the company's recent reports, but was soon noted by Polish financial site Bankier.pl (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz).

I choose to believe that we – that is, the general gaming world – have bullied the whole of CD Projekt into appending that "Red" by resolutely refusing to recognize the company and its development house as separate entities. Remember when CDPR insisted that The Witcher 4 was not called The Witcher 4, up until the very moment it was confirmed to be called The Witcher 4? Same principle. This is the power of refusing to accept corporate brand guidelines as a restriction on actual language.

Here are all the upcoming CD Projekt Red games you need to know about.

The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 arguably stand the test of time as two of the best RPGs ever developed – and a lot of this stellar reputation boils down to the quality of not just their main stories, but their side missions, too.

Heck, I don't think I'll ever forget the Land of a Thousand Fables – and I'm certainly not alone in feeling that CD Projekt Red does some excellent side stories. In fact, a thread over on Twitter about the developer's stellar "side quests and DLC" has prompted a reply from Paweł Sasko – quest designer on The Witcher 3 and quest design director on Cyberpunk 2077, who now works as associate game director on Cyberpunk 2. According to him, a lot of elbow grease goes into those "side" missions.

"We put a considerable amount of effort into side stories," writes Sasko. "Those most of the time have same budget and production timeline, talented teams, and more creative freedom (by not being tied to main story, mostly)."

Honestly, I'm not surprised to hear that – and in The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, he says, "quality in those was a must," not just a "nice to have" thing. That's not hard to see if you've played either RPG.

The Witcher 3 boasts nearly 200 hours of content (if you include its main story and the side quests), but I've easily poured hundreds more into it myself. Cyberpunk 2077 is similarly lengthy, and a quick browse on Steam shows folks with 1,000+ hours spent in-game leaving reviews.

In other words, many players find themselves lost within CD Projekt Red's various side missions and lively worlds – a testament to the studio's hard work.

It does beg the question – just how expansive will upcoming CD Projekt Red games be, like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2? I'm willing to bet that they, too, will end up proving some of the greatest RPGs, with much of that falling to their optional content as well as their undoubtedly massive main stories.

Only time can truly tell, however… but for now, I think I'll go replay The Witcher 3 for the umpteenth time.

Joint The Witcher 4 and CD Projekt Red CEO says fully AI-generated games are coming, but he has "some doubts whether this is really the path to follow."

The news that The Witcher 3 is getting a brand-spanking new expansion pack in 2027 might seem bizarre at face value. This is a game that was, by all accounts, settled. But in Songs of the Past, we're going to take old Geralt out for one last spin before Ciri takes the reins in The Witcher 4. What a way to say goodbye to one of the most iconic games of the last few decades.

Over the past ten years or so, we've been seeing a lot more old games getting expansions long after their original release, and I am so here for it. Baldur's Gate got Siege of Dragonspear in 2016, Titan Quest got Ragnarok in 2017. Hell, even Doom 2 got Legacy of Rust in 2024, 30 years after its initial release. As trends go, this one can seem a little self indulgent at first glance. It's easy to write these types of gestures off as cash grabs, rather than fully-fledged works with artistic intent, but you'd be wrong to do that.

Geralt, or the Collapse and Fall of Tech Advances

There are two main reasons that we're seeing developers return to older titles, and neither are as selfish as a cash grab. The first is that the speed of tech advancements has plateaued in recent years, meaning 10-year old games today feel far more playable than those from 20 years ago. This applies to The Witcher 3 specifically, but also to Mario Kart 8's booster courses that massively spiked the number of tracks, and Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary.

Think about games from the 2010s. Do they really look that much worse than games released today? Do they make you wince and gasp at their visuals? Of course not, because the tech plateau means we're more tinkering around the edges rather than creating any grand upgrades, particularly as a lot of titles get significant post-release update support anyway.

The Witcher 3 came out 11 years ago. Think about games that released in 2005, and think if there were any that you'd think still looked almost new in 2016. The closest that you'd come would be maybe Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360, but it's still distinctly an older game. If you want to go back even further, and examine the tech plateau from the peak of Mount Build Engine, consider that there are only 11 years between Duke Nukem 3D and Bioshock.

You can go home again

This is only one of the reasons I think older games are getting delayed expansions, though. The second is that we're now seeing some degree of sentimentality emerge from within game development's often frosty heart.

The games that inspired us are still widely played. Diablo 2's recent Reign of the Warlock expansion was clearly a labor of love, made partly by those who grew up on Diablo 2. The same can be said for Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, likewise for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past – the expansion is being co-developed by Fool's Theory, the studio behind Witcher-inflected The Thaumaturge and headed by former CD Projekt Red dev Jakub Rokosz.

There is a clear throughline here, one that echoes how the games industry is maturing into something that allows for crosspollination: new games are being made, but studios still want to pay homage to the classics.

There's something special about games that allows for developers to pay their respects or build on the past without necessarily committing to a full reboot. Expansions and DLCs are unique to video games. Books can't release an additional chapter for you to enjoy decades later. You wouldn't see Quentin Tarantino adding another section to Pulp Fiction. Video games also have a leg-up on television and movies, as its characters don't age.

For all of the industry's flaws, the medium itself is flexible in a way that nothing else can be. I love that we're starting to see what happens when developers go back to their principles. Instead of decrying the idea that graphics aren't moving forward, let's appreciate that we are living through a golden age, where titles from a decade ago won't be shunned because they look rough: they hold up without any major touch-ups necessary. Let's appreciate, too, that even older games are having new life breathed into them by devs who grew up loving the original. Me? I'm holding out hope that we'll see a new expansion for Fallout: New Vegas.

The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs of all time, and there are plenty more like it.

CD Projekt Red's joint CEO Michał Nowakowski thinks fully AI-generated games are on the way, but being partly in charge of the company behind The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2077, he's not convinced game prompters using generative AI are on the right path.

Speaking to Edge's Knowledge newsletter, Nowakowski mentioned that he "knows for a fact" that games 'made' entirely with generative AI are coming because he's actually had a few chats with AI-based studios.

"I was in a conversation with a person who started a studio and was telling me: 'I'm running a primarily AI-based studio. I can have 40 prototypes within a week, two weeks from now I can have five games that I chose are going to be the best and, three weeks from now, I'm actually launching a game'," Nowakowski recalls. "Maybe that's going to be successful, but I have some doubts whether this is really the path to follow."

The CD Projekt Red executive didn't delve into where his doubts stem from exactly, but elsewhere in the interview, he talked about how the "fight for attention is tougher than it ever was" thanks to the thousands of games that come out every single year - not to mention the films, shows, social media algorithms, and more fighting for our time.

Putting games in front of an audience won't get any easier with the growing amount of games hitting shelves, he continues, "but as long as you have a fresh idea, with a soul, with legs, you should have a genuine shot at being successful." Making a soulful game stand out in a crowd is probably much easier when it's not being prompted by an algorithm, I think.

GamesRadar's Austin Wood recently spoke to over 30 game developers about AI, many of whom pointed to ethical concerns around the tech. It's impact on workers, junior positions, artists whose work are being scraped, legal issues, environmental concerns are just some of the reasons why game devs are raising an eyebrow or two.

The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2077 studio wants to make more games without turning CDPR into a company "that's going to be launching a big game every year"

Joint CD Projekt Red CEO Michał Nowakowski doesn't plan on turning the developer, best known for making games in The Witcher and Cyberpunk series, into a company that pumps out yearly releases.

The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2077's sequel are easily two of the most anticipated new games on the horizon, but part of their allure comes from how infrequently CD Projekt Red launches projects. In an interview published in Edge's Knowledge newsletter, Nowakowski says he wants CDPR games to come out more often without flooding the market.

"Our dream is to be making more games, although we never want to turn into the studio that's going to be launching a big game every year," he says. "It may happen, but this is not the goal. We have a rough ten-year rolling plan, but the goal is not to flood the games market with CDPR games. We just want to make really cool games, and we don't want to have a ton of IPs either. We're not planning to grow in that way."

Looking at the slate of upcoming CD Projekt Red games, the company's vision starts to come into view. The Witcher 3's Songs of the Past expansion is due sometime next year, followed by The Witcher 4 and two sequels hopefully dropping in the following six years. Then there's The Witcher 1 remake that's been quietly cooking for a few years, a multiplayer spin-off game, a Cyberpunk sequel, and a new IP, Project Hadar.

Given the five-year gap between The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 - not to mention the decade-plus-long-wait for an entirely new Witcher game - CDPR's insistence on a more frequent release cadence is understandable. And with so many games in the pipeline, I imagine the company's next 10 years will look a lot busier than its last 10 years, if all goes well.

Don't expect a Witcher 4 expansion: CDPR says "it would be difficult" to make extra content when it's already trying to squeeze 3 Witcher games into 6 years

The Witcher's original Geralt actor Doug Cockle has weighed in on Liam Hemsworth's performance as the White Wolf in Netflix's adaptation. The actor, who voiced the character in CD Projekt Red's video games, shared that he was a big fan of Henry Cavill's replacement.

"It's tough to do what [Hemsworth] did. Really, really tough, especially with a character in a show that so many people adore," Cockle told Polygon. "To be the actor replacing someone else who originated a character in the same series is so difficult."

The actor added that he thinks Cavill "did a fabulous job" but he was also a big fan of Hemsworth's take on the monster slayer. "I find that Henry's performance has a little bit more weight to it and Liam's is a little bit more energized and actually kind of youthful, but in a fun way."

Hemsworth took over the role in The Witcher season 4, following on from Cavill's exit. While the former Superman star has never revealed his exact reasons for departing, his exit did cause disruption among the cast with Ciri actor Freya Allan admitting she almost left as well.

Luckily, she stayed the course as reviews for Hemsworth's take on Geralt have been very positive. The actor will be returning to the role for the final season on Netflix too.

With Cockle, Hemsworth and Cavill all playing the role at different times, the game actor also compared the part to Hamlet, adding that everyone brings something unique to it.

"What I always say about these kinds of things is that every actor has to make a role their own," Cockle added to Polygon. "There have been thousands of people who've played Hamlet, and each Hamlet is different. Every individual brings their own quirks, emotional life, experiences, and ideas to the table and interprets the character through all of that."

The Witcher season 5 will be released at some point in 2026. In the meantime, check out our guides to new TV shows on the way.

With all of the upcoming CD Projekt Red games, I wouldn't think to expect any sort of multiplayer mobile title in The Witcher series akin to Horizon Steel Frontiers – but that's apparently what we might get someday, if recent rumors ring true.

The supposed leaks circulating on the web stem from a new MP1st report that claims an inside source has confirmed a free-to-play, co-op action Witcher RPG is currently in development.

This could apparently be the already-known (albeit mysterious) Project Sirius, but MP1st notes the rumored game is planned for only mobile and PC platforms right now – "with no mention" of console launches.

The alleged game's free-to-play model and standing on mobile "could mirror the scale of Horizon Steel Frontiers," according to the report, and it will be set in the year 1230, when beloved series protagonist Geralt was still young.

We can supposedly also expect customizable Witchers in the rumored title, too, which would make it stand out quite a bit from predecessors… so honestly, I'm not sure I feel too excited about the prospect of... well, any of this.

I don't see how a multiplayer Witcher could mesh with Andrzej Sapkowski's already-established universe CD Projekt Red has expanded upon with its games, as so much of what makes titles like The Witcher 3 great is the immersion and the storytelling. I'm also curious about how the whole customizable Witcher thing would work, seeing as we've only ever played as canon protagonists – and we will continue to do so in The Witcher 4, which lets us play as Ciri.

Over on Reddit, a discussion surrounding the game rumors shows that other folks feel similarly worried. "Well… I mean, the silver lining is they aren't forcing any multiplayer shit into their main title games, I guess," reads one comment. "That's something." Another adds, "Can't wait to not play it and see it closed in less than two years after release." Largely, it seems fans aren't too thrilled.

It's hard to consider a free-to-play multiplayer game joining a series best known for its huge open-world, story-focused RPGs, after all. But I suppose that all we can do for now is keep our fingers crossed that somehow – should it be real – the rumored game is good.

Searching for something to wishlist? Here are some of the best new games coming this year and beyond to look forward to.

With The Witcher 3 on all our minds as the RPG's new expansion (no, not DLC, y'all), Songs of the Past, is underway, former CD Projekt Red developers remain as hopeful as we do that it'll prove to be well-done.

Speaking with GamesRadar+ in a recent interview at Summer Game Fest, Rebel Wolves – the team made up of CD Projekt Red veterans currently working on vampire RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker – CEO Konrad Tomaszkiewicz shares his thoughts on Songs of the Past. It's an interesting statement for sure, seeing as Tomaszkiewicz approaches his words as someone who worked on The Witcher 3 and its two previous expansions.

"I've never played The Witcher games as a player," admits the dev. "Because, when you work on the first Witcher, second Witcher, third Witcher, both expansions," it's not the same as it is for normal fans.

"I was the developer playing it all the time," as Tomaszkiewicz puts it. "I couldn't play The Witcher 3 right now, even from the start, because I saw it too many times." Honestly, I get it – it must've been tiring to even consider.

When it comes to Songs of the Past, though, things are a bit different. Tomaszkiewicz didn't work on it himself, after all, so he finally gets to approach it as a player rather than a dev – and, in turn, he hopes the expansion is good… just like the rest of us do.

"I hope this expansion will be good," he says. "I will play it [for the] first time as a player. And I only have one request… how to say it politely… to do it good."

Again, I'd wager the majority of the community feels that way right now, too. CD Projekt Red has been hyping the expansion up as well, making it all the more exciting – for us fans and former devs of The Witcher 3, apparently.

We are discussing a title that's not just one of (if not the) best Witcher games, but one of the best RPGs to date, so it's unsurprising that expectations are high. For what it's worth, I'm thinking it'll deliver, personally.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

If you're familiar with The Witcher 3, you no doubt know what happens when you start killing cows – the Chort shows up to make Geralt's life harder. 11 years after launch, a quest designer on the fantasy RPG has explained what went into that decision, and it turns out we only have ourselves to blame.

It's actually a preventive measure, taken after CD Projekt Red noticed we could farm cow hides thanks to a fast respawn rate. "We could have fixed that cow hide farming exploit in few minutes bonbons, just kill the respawn or drop the price of the hides," Paweł Sasko, a quest designer on The Witcher 3, says on Twitter.

"But that's not how we roll," he adds. "Designer's job is to create fun, not delete it. So we added a Chort instead."

He adds this to a clip of Geralt driving his sword into unsuspecting cattle, only to be met by one of these ferocious beasts. As the saying goes, eff around and find out – the big bad Witcher himself is taken down in unceremonious fashion.

But let it be known, CD Projekt was technically doing you a favour. "Chort hide is double the price of cow hide, not by a coincidence. We saw you farming, so we raised the stakes," Sasko explains.

You want that gold? Get good. Earn it. Bovine prey is easy. Go for the real prize if you're on the hunt. This has long been a running joke within the community, and CD Projekt embraced the hilarity in suitable fashion.

"Later Bovine Defense Force became a Gwent card (cow leaves the battlefield, Chort arrives)," Sasko says. "And then, we made something special in Hearts of Stone. Taxman Walthemor Mitty shows up at 35K orens and asks Geralt point blank whether he was involved in the wholesale rawhide trade in White Orchard."

Sasko, who's now associate game director on Cyberpunk 2, reveals how this whole episode stems from his own philosophy on game development. "Don't patch the fun out, find a way to escalate it, engage with fun dialog with the players, surprise and delight," he finishes.

CD Projekt Red veteran answers for the crime of The Witcher 3's Skellige, says they tried to add more question marks but couldn't.

Between The Witcher 3's Skellige isles and the Trial of the Grasses, it's hard to say which caused Geralt more pain. The area is notorious among completionists for being both incredibly dense and remarkably fruitless – packed with question marks to hunt down to tidy up the map, including a lot in the freakin' sea, but not overflowing with interesting or valuable stuff to find.

Paweł Sasko, a CD Projekt Red veteran now known as associate game director of Cyberpunk 2 and previously as lead quest designer on Cyberpunk 2077, has been with CDPR since its Witcher 3 days. Back then, he was also working as a quest designer, albeit more junior. Sasko waded into a recent discussion among Polish fans chatting about Skellige, and I honestly can't tell if he's joking in his response.

A DeepL translation of a recent Twitter post reads, "Couldn't they have crammed even more question marks into Skellige?" Which is kind of like asking, couldn't they have put more sodium in this pork ramen broth?

Sasko pulled no punches in his reply. "We tried," a translation reads, "but it was no use." A separate machine translation differs slightly: "We tried, but it was no longer possible." Either way, this is a frightening read.

The thing is, Sasko is very active in the CDPR community, regularly replying to fans online when they share stories, criticism, questions, or jokes about The Witcher or Cyberpunk. His responses are a mix of interesting trivia and dev insights, and blatant but good-natured trolling. Gun to my head, I couldn't tell you where this answer falls. I would readily believe that CDPR tried to pack more bullshit into Skellige but feasibly could not, and the evidence is plain as day: they made Skellige. Once you've put 10,000 question marks in the ass end of nowhere, what's 10,001? The point where even the game engine starts to lose it, perhaps.

After CD Projekt Red announced a surprise expansion for The Witcher 3, over 29,000 Steam players booted up the RPG – the most in months.

The Witcher 3 still holds up as one of the best open-world games ever made some 11 years after its release, and arguably its best expansion, Blood and Wine, is exemplary of some of the game's finest quest design and writing. That's not just me saying that, by the way, as developer CD Projekt Red is on the record as saying the expansion itself is right up there with the studio's best work.

In a tweet celebrating 10 years of Blood and Wine, CDPR takes a trip down memory lane. "From the peaceful halls of Corvo Bianco to the battle under a full moon, Blood and Wine remains one of our most unforgettable projects," CDPR says. "Today, we raise a glass to the stories, characters, and battles that made Toussaint a place like no other. Thank you for joining us on this journey! Here's to a decade of adventure."

It's a testament to the gorgeous region of Toussaint and the writing itself that, even after Cyberpunk 2077 transformed itself from the janky mess it was at launch to one of the most celebrated open-world games of the 2020s, Blood and Wine is still widely considered one of CDPR's best projects.

Of course, it's old news by now that The Witcher 3 is getting a surprise new expansion next year, coincidentally 11 years after Blood and Wine, aptly titled Songs of the Past. We also know The Witcher 4 is on the way without an official release date, making The Witcher 3 (with or without Blood and Wine) the perfect game to play or revisit while you wait for those and all of the other upcoming CDPR games we know are in development.

After Witcher 3's new expansion, CD Projekt Red teases more "unannounced projects" are at "advanced stages of development" and could release this year

A new Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past, was hurriedly announced on May 27 after CD Projekt Red accidentally leaked its own reveal ahead of schedule. On May 29, the Steam player count for The Witcher 3 jumped to 29,166 – one of the highest points seen all year, and a peak ahead of several months as far back as 2020, according to SteamDB.

As CDPR superfan Alox noted, this is the biggest Steam spike The Witcher 3 has seen since February 22, back when it was part of the Steam Lunar Sale and discounted down to just $7.99.

There's a strong correlation between discounts and player counts on Steam, but big news or updates can also bring fans back. May saw no such discount for The Witcher 3 (technically, an April Medieval Fest discount lasted until the very start of the month), nor did it have new content ready to play, but it still managed a sharp jump in players for the 10th anniversary of the game's Blood and Wine expansion.

I'd wager that a small portion of those players were fans excitedly booting up the game to see if Songs of the Past was already out. It feels very much like the kind of thing a studio might shadow-drop, but the expansion is actually coming in 2027 and will serve as a snacky prologue while The Witcher 4 brews.

The studio has described Songs of the Past as a "trip down memory lane" for Geralt before Ciri takes the protagonist chair in The Witcher 4 and its trilogy. Somehow, CDPR hopes to have all three games in this new saga shipped within six years of each other, which would be quite a feat indeed, even if the company wasn't also juggling Cyberpunk 2 and multiple other projects. Cyberpunk 2 won't repeat the production mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077, studio veteran Adrian Fulneczek said, stressing that the company has "learned our lesson."

Don't expect a Witcher 4 expansion: CDPR says "it would be difficult" to make extra content when it's already trying to squeeze 3 Witcher games into 6 years.

The Witcher 3 fans think they have already figured out where the upcoming Songs of the Past expansion will take place.

After months of speculation, CD Projekt Red finally confirmed that The Witcher 3 will be getting a brand new DLC expansion over a decade since the game first released, with the announcement of Songs of the Past. This expansion is set to launch in 2027, and from the sounds of things, it'll be one last ride with the iconic RPG before Geralt leaves the protagonist role to Ciri in The Witcher 4… whenever that's going to come out.

But overall, we don't really know all that much about the upcoming expansion, except that it's going to herald a change to the game's system requirements and will, unfortunately, be leaving Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PS4 players behind. Also, that it's "an expansion," and a "major" release on par with the likes of Blood and Wine.

However, despite the lack of info, sleuths within the fanbase have seemingly already figured out major details about the expansion. YouTube creator Neon Knight noticed that the sword Geralt is holding in the Songs of the Past key art is Melltith, evidenced by its flower-like pommel. These swords are a piece of elven sword design, as they can be found on other elven swords throughout The Witcher 3, which in turn has led Knight to believe that Songs of the Past will be set in Cidaris, which was built on the ruins of an elven city.

On top of this, in April, CD Projekt Red released artwork featuring the same sword, celebrating Belleteyn (its own take on the Gaelic holiday Beltane), which, what do you know, is celebrated in the elven calendar in The Witcher. We're through the looking glass here, people.

"Not enough time, can't afford it": The Witcher 3 lead recalls "hardcore" dev timeline of the RPG's past expansions, says CDPR had to "change strategy" with Blood and Wine

The Witcher 3 is once again in the limelight after CD Projekt Red's announcement of the big RPG's new expansion (no, not DLC, guys), Songs of the Past – but before it, there were two others: Heart of Stone, and my favorite, Blood and Wine.

Blood and Wine stands as one of the pinnacles of The Witcher series as a whole, if you ask me, and it's evident that a lot of work went into it.

Lead quest designer Paweł Sasko is taking a look back at that work over on X, first revealing that Blood and Wine was actually called "Bells of Beauclair" until it was renamed "because we needed a captivating title that would grasp the spirit of the narrative, and be easier to spell out and articulate."

Sasko recalls how CD Projekt Red was "already hands deep into building the second expansion" when Hearts of Stone shipped in October 2015. That checks out, seeing as Blood and Wine launched just seven months later, in May 2016 – not very long, eh?

"That production timeline was pretty hardcore. A completely new country, main story, characters, monsters, mechanics, player's vineyard, and a narrative worthy of closing Geralt's journey."

This was no easy task, of course. "Oh, and it had to be better than the base game, and Hearts of Stone." Sasko says "the audacity" of the challenge – producing such a major expansion – "felt just right" to him. What was the most difficult part of Blood and Wine, though?

Amid the "handful of adjustments" developers made, "the hardest creative debate was about a forest." A forest that ended up being the Land of a Thousand Fables.

"Writers needed a Druid's Forest for a specific story thread, something the narrative couldn't breathe without. We went to the Environment Artists and got the answer that everyone feared: not enough time, can't afford it. So we changed the strategy: what if we build a fairy tale world? The kind where the fairy tales went rotten and savage. Twisted archetypes, corrupted stories, a visual language we hadn't touched before."

So, they did.

"The artists said 'yes,' because it stylistically intrigued and inspired them" – but, this fairy tale world "turned out to be way more expensive to build than the Druid's Forest ever would." Why did CD Projekt Red opt to take the pricier road, then, when it was already struggling?

Sasko explains in a reply that it "at first looked easier to build (it wasn't) and smaller (it wasn't either). You operate with your best judgment… trying to estimate."

The artists "really liked the idea," however, "and wanted to build it" – that's what really mattered, as it ensured that Blood and Wine would deliver on both devs' own expectations and fans' excitement… excitement I'd argue hasn't died down yet.

Even Sasko himself concludes fans "surpassed any expectation we had about The Witcher 3's longevity." Heck, I've got hundreds of hours in the RPG myself, and I'm not done with it yet.

Especially not now that we've got Songs of the Past to look forward to. The Witcher 3 isn't just one of the best Witcher games out there with all of this high-quality content, I'd argue – it's one of the greatest games to date.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

A former Destiny boss and Bungie executive thinks another The Witcher 3 expansion is a great idea because there's now a whole generation of gamers who weren't even old enough to play the game a decade ago.

CD Projekt Red this week revealed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past, an upcoming expansion made years after the last major bit of content hit the 2015 RPG. Bungie's ex-vice president Mark Noseworthy took to social media to praise the developer's strategy of renewing the brand before all eyes inevitably turn to The Witcher 4.

"Great idea on a couple of levels," he tweets. "Gets the Witcher (game brand) in the current gamer discussion and grows the audience for W4. Half a generation of players weren't of age when W3 shipped."

Songs of the Past is also being led by Fool's Theory, the studio that's made up of many CDPR veterans and is currently working to remake The Witcher 1. Getting the developer to cut their teeth on a relatively smaller project is another win, in Noseworthy's books, since it "brings up a partner developer who can contribute to W4 (now they've got their reps)."

We don't know too much about the expansion aside from the fact that we'll be stepping into Geralt's bath-soaked shoes again and it'll launch sometime next year for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

CDPR also decided to split the difference and explain they're calling it an expansion because, to them, DLCs "are small pieces of content we release for free." Expansions instead include hours of gameplay and "new story, characters, etc." Do with that information what you will.

Don't expect a Witcher 4 expansion: CDPR says "it would be difficult" to make extra content when it's already trying to squeeze 3 Witcher games into 6 years

We've known since 2024 that Ciri is replacing Geralt as the protagonist of The Witcher 4, a move that carries huge implications for the fourquel's gameplay and story, but developer CD Projekt Red is giving Geralt one last hurrah in the upcoming Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past.

Being developed in tandem with The Witcher remake studio Fool's Theory, Songs of the Past is due to release on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC some time in 2027. Beyond those key details, we don't know a whole lot about the expansion, but CDPR has said it's a "major [piece] of content providing lots of hours of gameplay, including new story, characters, etc," which is why the studio doesn't want you to use the apparently reductive term DLC to describe it.

In CDPR's Q1 2026 earnings report, the DLC – sorry, expansion – is described as one last outing for Geralt as main protagonist before he hands over the reins to Ciri.

"The return of Geralt after more than one decade will be an excellent adventure, and a trip down memory lane, before we pass the baton to Ciri in the upcoming The Witcher 4," says CDPR joint CEO Michał Nowakowski.

Depending on your choices throughout the game, Geralt's story ends fairly decisively in The Witcher 3, and going off the name of the expansion, it seems there's a good chance it takes place before the events of the main game. Regardless, CDPR's senior community manager Laura Beitzel confirmed during a recent livestream that Songs of the Past will be "aligned with what you're familiar with" from the most recent Witcher 3 expansion, Blood and Wine, as well as "what you've experienced and come to expect from us when we do expansions." That suggests somewhere between 20 and 30 hours for Songs of the Past, which is pretty meaty indeed.

Here are all of the upcoming CDPR games we know about.

CD Projekt Red hopes to finish the new Witcher saga beginning with The Witcher 4 within six years, which is a tall order in its own right for a trilogy of hefty RPGs. Consequently, the studio doesn't see much room for expansions a la The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine or the newly announced Songs of the Past, suggesting the new games won't receive any major add-ons.

CDPR joint CEO Michał Nowakowski fielded a question about potential expansions for the new Witcher saga during the company's latest earnings call.

The question was: "Given the very ambitious project pipeline, does the company see room for developing expansions for the new Witcher saga?"

Nowakowski is doubtful. "As you mentioned in the question, the plans are pretty ambitious," he begins. "Specifically, it's to release three Witcher games within a six-year period. It would be difficult, to be very honest, for us to add an expansion to the upcoming trilogy. This is where we are here and now with this particular issue."

The Witcher 3 received numerous small add-ons over the years, as well as two major expansions. The game was released in May 2015, and its first expansion, Hearts of Stone, arrived in October 2015. In May 2016, the Blood and Wine expansion arrived. In this same call, CDPR suggested that Songs of the Past, set for 2027, is close to Blood and Wine in scope.

The expansions released for The Witcher 3 managed a pretty high attach rate and ended up delivering quests and moments that many call the peak of the series, so it may be a bit of a bummer to hear that The Witcher 4 and its follow-ups won't get the same room to breathe.

The obvious counterpoint is that, if CDPR can stick to its six-year plan for the new Witcher saga (and I'll bet my bottom dollar it cannot, purely because game dev almost never goes according to even the best of plans), we shouldn't go more than a few years without a whole new RPG. However it shakes out, The Witcher fans will hopefully be eating better than their fellows across the pond: The Elder Scrolls fans, perpetually hungry for something, anything new.

After Witcher 3's new expansion, CD Projekt Red teases more "unannounced projects" are at "advanced stages of development" and could release this year.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red still has more unannounced projects in the clip even after the reveal of the new Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past, the studio has confirmed.

ICYMI, there's a new Witcher 3 expansion coming out! It's called Songs of the Past! It's set to launch in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC! Obviously, that's all in addition to the upcoming CDPR games we already know about like The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk Orion, The Witcher remake, and the mysterious project Hadar. As if that all wasn't exciting enough already, the studio has teased even more to come that hasn't been announced, and some of it could be coming as early as this year. Whether these "projects" are full-on games or expansions is unclear, but CDPR confirmed their existence in its latest earnings statement.

"Some of the other unannounced projects previously disclosed by the Parent Company in its past periodic reports are also at an advanced stages of development, which may potentially lead up to their release in the coming quarters of the current year and the following year," reads one particularly enticing snippet from the release.

In an earnings call and Q&A accompanying the release of the financial statement, various CDPR executives referenced these unannounced projects several times and confirmed that two of them are gaming-related and one is a "non-gaming project," which could refer to a TV, movie, or comic spinoff of a CDPR IP.

We don't know a whole lot about The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past just yet, but CDPR has been very keen to call it an expansion and not just some DLC. The difference, according to community manager Marcin Łukaszewski, is that expansions like Songs of the Past are "major pieces of content providing lots of hours of gameplay, including new story, characters, etc." In other words, it sounds like CDPR sickos will have plenty to keep them busy while they wait for the studio's announced and unannounced projects, whatever those may be.

The Witcher 3 system requirements change for the first time in 4 years as CDPR wants "to ensure smooth performance and compatibility going forward" for Songs of the Past

The Witcher 3 is back in the limelight thanks to CD Projekt Red's announcement of its RPG's new expansion, Songs of the Past – an expansion that the developers stress is not just any old DLC, thanks to its sheer size.

If you're out of the loop, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is indeed getting new content, even as work on The Witcher 4 cracks on. A lengthy decade has passed since Blood and Wine, the game's previous expansion, launched in 2016, after all.

Many folks have understandably dubbed Songs of the Past "DLC," seeing as… well, it's technically DLC. CD Projekt Red feels differently, however.

That's because Songs of the Past is big – very sizable, in fact, it would seem. In an online post, community manager Marcin Łukaszewski teases as much, first stating, "It's real. It's coming. And for the last time – it's not DLC, it's an expansion!"
In the comments, a fan asks what the difference between the two terms implies for CD Projekt Red. "For us at CDPR, DLCs are small pieces of content we release for free," replies Łukaszewski. "Like the additional outfits for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt."

Unlike DLC, expansions are a bit wider in scope, apparently. "Expansions, on the other hand, are major pieces of content providing lots of hours of gameplay, including new story, characters, etc."

That makes Songs of the Past sound, well, massive. Or, maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part – but the community lead isn't the only dev that has me excited.

Paweł Sasko, associate game director on Cyberpunk 2, shares a clip of Phantom Liberty star Idris Elba describing the difference between DLC and expansions, writing, "Let me remind you the definition of the Expansion."

In the video, Elba clarifies – in this case, regarding Cyberpunk 2077's own Phantom Liberty, "Just to be clear, it's not a DLC. It's an expansion. You know why? Because we do expansions – big massive monster... We don't do DLC."

And when CD Projekt Red does do DLC? "We give them away." It's amusing, but it does make sense, I suppose… but more importantly, it also means that the new The Witcher 3 DLC – er, expansion, sorry – is going to be a heck of a launch.

The Witcher 3 system requirements change for the first time in 4 years as CDPR wants "to ensure smooth performance and compatibility going forward" for Songs of the Past.

The Witcher 3 is back in the limelight thanks to CD Projekt Red's announcement of its RPG's new DLC, Songs of the Past – an expansion that'll apparently follow some updates to the base game's hardware requirements.

That's right – one of the best RPGs to date is indeed getting brand-new DLC sometime in 2027, confirming long-standing rumors of a post-Blood and Wine expansion. Although CD Projekt Red hasn't told us much about Songs of the Past just yet, the developer did outline some hardware requirement changes in a follow-up post online.

Old technology can't support new software forever, after all, but thankfully, nothing discussed is too drastic.

"With new content coming to the game, we also need to update our system requirements to ensure smooth performance and compatibility going forward," the studio writes. "These requirements will become effective starting from the next update."

CD Projekt Red links out to a support page with the full details, setting the soon-to-be minimum requirements for PC players as follows:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600, Intel Core i5-8400
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB
• VRAM: 6 GB
• RAM: 12 GB
• Storage: 70 GB SSD
• OS: 64-bit Windows 11

Perhaps most notably, HDDs will no longer be supported, furthering the move to SSDs as they offer much quicker loading times and better performance overall.

Folks who are dead set on sticking to Windows 10 will need to bite the bullet for Songs of the Past, too: "Without ongoing security updates, official platform support, and continued GPU driver support, we will no longer test our games on Windows 10."

CD Projekt Red discusses a few other tweaks as well, like the fact that The Witcher 3 "will exclusively run using DirectX 12" to allow the team "to support ongoing technical improvements and modern hardware more effectively."

Keep in mind, every single one of these adjustments affects all players, seemingly, and not just those looking to get Songs of the Past. On the bright side, though, none of it will be forced onto unwilling fans.

You can always roll back to earlier versions of the game if you're not able to keep up with the hardware requirement changes. For those of us who can, however, it'll hopefully pave the way for a better-looking and smoother Witcher 3 experience overall.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

We were collectively blindsided this morning when CD Projekt Red decided to announce brand new DLC for The Witcher 3. The long-rumored Songs of the Past will arrive next year, but we weren't meant to hear about it quite so soon, as the studio's now admitted to.

On Twitter, in response to the posts revealing Songs of the Past, CD Projekt says this new chapter of The Witcher 3 was planned to be unveiled tomorrow instead. "We originally planned to make this big reveal during our REDstreams tomorrow," the studio posted. "But let's say we found something we didn't yet expect on RED Launcher."

Translation: the devs accidentally leaked it themselves. Whatever went on, this news was on the Red Launcher slightly ahead of schedule. Of course, CD Projekt could've ignored the leak and just waited until tomorrow. But unfortunately, the moment's gone now, because we all knew it was happening.

This is another collaboration with Fool's Theory, who're co-developing Songs of the Past with CD Projekt. Fool's Theory is no stranger to Geralt of Rivia at the moment, because it's also working on the remake of The Witcher that's been in development for a number of years now.

Moreover, members of Fool's Theory actually worked on and helped ship The Witcher 3, making it a strong fit for this DLC even before the current partnership. Not much else is known as of now, other than the expansion is being made for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S only.

We'll likely hear more tomorrow, during the REDStreams, where the news itself would've been the centrepiece. Hey, maybe there's a trailer we can watch - only one way to find out.

The Witcher 3 lead quest designer says the room fell into "wide eyes and silence" when he pitched one of the open-world RPG's biggest twists

11 years since it first launched, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting a brand new DLC called Songs of the Past. I can't believe it either, but after a flurry of awestruck "hell yeahs" in the GamesRadar+ Slack channel gave way to deeper thoughts (eventually), it's finally sinking in.

There's precious little to go on at the moment: so far we have a title, a release window (2027) and platforms (PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X), and the fact that it's being developed in tandem with Polish studio Fool's Theory.

That last thing catches my eye. Fool's Theory has worked on its own in-house games, like 2024's The Thaumaturge, and as a support studio for Baldur's Gate 3. But with a number of ex-CDPR devs on deck, it's also in charge of delivering a remake of the original Witcher game. That makes The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past the most important DLC in the RPG's already incredible line-up; it's the connective tissue between Geralt's past, present, and the series' future in The Witcher 4.

Back to the streets where we began

With a title that speaks to tales of monsters long since slain, Songs of the Past will likely be more of a prequel. Or at least feature snippets of Geralt's witchering days before Blood and Wine tied off his saga with satisfying, uplifting finality.

Perhaps the new DLC will be told in the vein of balladic retellings as per Reigns: The Witcher, one of the other best Witcher games out there. Maybe we will see a retired Geralt kicking back in a tavern, spinning tales of victory between high-stakes games of Gwent.

Either way, I'm not coming to Songs of the Past expecting massive changes to the overarching narrative of the core Witcher 3 games or DLCs, but a lively and action-packed collection of missions looked upon from behind nostalgia's rosy veil.

This would likely mean lower stakes for the DLC itself, but that's because there is something else riding upon this DLC other than the continuation of the RPG's story. As the lead developer for upcoming RPG The Witcher 1 Remake, Songs of the Past is Fool's Theory's chance to get behind the wheel and take Geralt for a test drive.

For that reason, I'll be appraising the new Witcher 3 DLC in an entirely different light. How does Fool's Theory handle CDPR's penchant for mystery, merging monster detective work and the forward-planning required to achieve victory with moments of nailbiting choice and consequence? How will the studio channel the character's complexity, from his voice to his attitude and the impact of certain narrative events that may or may not have happened yet? Most importantly, has it managed to secure Doug Cockle in reprising his iconic role in one of the best RPGs ever?

On the victor's path

The answers to all of these will no doubt influence a lot for the series going forward. The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past sounds like it will land during a particularly interesting time for both CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory, in the leadup to Ciri's first leading role in a Witcher game as well as that all-important origin story remake.

With no release date confirmed for either at this point, it will serve to drum up some further hype around The Witcher as a whole while potentially being strategically placed to ensure a very steady stream of new Witcher content in the coming two years.

If Fool's Theory pulls this off the way I am confident it will, who knows what else might come of the partnership? CD Projekt Red is no stranger to recruiting a little co-dev help these days, having enlisted Virtuos Studios to handle the most recent slew of new Cyberpunk 2077 updates. More hands on-deck means more help in bringing players more of the games we love, meaning a little more money in CDPR's pocket and a little more insight into our favorite games.

It's a win-win in my mind, even if the die has yet to be cast. And just like Geralt playing his hand in Gwent, I'll be waiting to see where the cards fall.

The Witcher 3 is still one of the best third-person RPGs of all-time, but which others have you played too?

The Witcher 3, which arguably stands the test of time as one of the best RPGs ever created over a decade on from its 2015 release, is indeed getting a new DLC.

This big news follows months of rumors surrounding potential new Witcher 3 DLC, as CD Projekt Red confirms that it's co-developing the expansion with Fool's Theory – a studio the team has closely worked with in the past on The Witcher 3 and other projects.

It'll feature our first big return to Geralt's adventures since Blood and Wine in 2016, making this quite the monumental moment for us Witcher stans.

Dubbed Songs of the Past, the new Witcher 3 DLC is set to release sometime in 2027 – but has no specific launch date just yet. For now, it'll come to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Notably, there's no word on any Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 version... or Songs of the Past's future arrival on older consoles, like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

There's no telling what direction it will take just yet, as CD Projekt Red hasn't given us any more information on Sons of the Past's actual content. The name is interesting, however, and it does beg the question – will it potentially center around some sort of prequel tale, as many of Ciri's early gameplay bits do?

Or, could it possibly somehow feed into The Witcher 4 as we approach its own release? Honestly, I'm not sure. What we do know is that Songs of the Past will follow an update to the base game itself.

As CD Projekt Red writes in a new online post, "With new content coming to the game, we also need to update our system requirements to ensure smooth performance and compatibility going forward. These requirements will become effective starting from the next update."

Boy, are these next couple of years shaping up to be something for one of the best Witcher games of all time, eh? Fingers crossed, we learn more about the DLC soon.

The Witcher 3 lead recalls having to watch his work "fall apart in front of me," as CD Projekt Red faced various setbacks while developing their legendary RPG

It's no secret that CD Projekt Red is working on a remake of The Witcher, the studio's first RPG centering around sword-wielding Geralt and his wild adventures as a monster killer – but it hasn't exactly been an easy road to go down for the studio.

GamesRadar+ recently had the opportunity to attend Digital Dragons, and it's during this event that lead technical writer Jarosław Ruciński goes over how difficult working on The Witcher remake has been – and it's all thanks to a lack of documentation from the production of the 2007 original.

"The true impact of our everyday documentation culture hit us in 2022 when we announced to the world that we want to make a Witcher remake," he begins.

"We were tasked to recreate the classic game for the modern audience, only to realize that we had little to no technical knowledge preserved from that time." CD Projekt Red did get a bit "lucky," as Ruciński puts it, since there are folks over at development partner Fool's Theory who are "veterans" and " remember the times of The Witcher 1," thankfully.

"That injection of this lost tribal knowledge was certainly uplifting, but even with their help, gaps exist." After all, "18 years does a lot to human memory," so it didn't fully tackle the issue.

"We find ourselves often doing professional guesswork, and sometimes [it] feels that we're trying to figure out a puzzle where half the pieces weren't even put in the box in the first place… the lesson from this era is quite obvious: some documentation is always better than none, and I personally would take the most horrible entangled chaotic mess of documentation over no documentation."

Ruciński explains, "You know you can spend time, you can spend some resources, and eventually figure out what the documentation was. If you don't have it, then you really have nothing. You can't really reverse engineer that."

In other words, some – any, really – documentation is better than none whatsoever. Taking the time to ensure you save some is the way to go, "because you're probably saving yourself a lot of trouble five years from now."

I mean, that checks out – I can't imagine that trying to recreate a game from the early 2000s with little to work with would be easy, but it's also not the first time that CD Projekt Red has had to deal with setbacks.

During the development of The Witcher 3, for example, there were plenty, with a lead recalling having to watch his work "fall apart in front of me" while creating what arguably now stands as one of the best RPGs to date.

Here's hoping that CD Projekt Red heeds Ruciński for future projects like The Witcher 4 – I'd like to think their preservation game is quite strong now, though.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

I'm often curious about how major plot twists are pitched. Did Darth Vader revealing he's Luke's father make sense to everyone else in the room? What about when Ken Levine told his team about where BioShock was going? In the case of one of the bigger moments in The Witcher 3, the writing team was slightly flabbergasted, according to the person who came up with it.

To mark the 11-year anniversary of The Witcher 3, Pawel Sasko, a quest designer on the RPG who's now an associate game director at CD Projekt, revealed he threw out an idea for The Battle of Kaer Morhen that rendered his team speechless.

Some spoilers follow! So be warned

"In a meeting, I propose that Vesemir dies," he says in a post on Twitter.

"First reaction is wide eyes and silence," he describes. "The weight of it is exactly what the act needs. Ciri's outburst, the moment she throws the Wild Hunt back, requires that the floor fall out from under her first."

He's got a point, and this particular scenario was begging for something dramatic. It's where the Wild Hunt storms the witcher school in search of Ciri, an attack, as Sasko points out, only ends due to a huge outpouring of her unrestrained powers.

To get to her unleashing those abilities, the story needed a catalyst. Vesemir, being an old, embattled witcher, was prime for a heartbreaking death on the battlefield, and so it goes that he does, and we all wept.

Sasko goes on to describe his ideation for the whole sequence. "I prototype meteors, rifts opening in the forest, Wild Hunt pouring out of them, the ride back to the keep on horseback," he recalls. "So much of it does not work. Technical issues. The quest flow is unclear. Review feedback I get is negative, so I rebuild."

He calls it the time of his life, and may we all be so creatively fulfilled at one point or another. If we're really lucky, it can involve a story-defining bit of writing, too.

The Witcher 3's best ending is the one where "everybody lives happily ever after," says Geralt actor – and he got it in his only-ever playthrough: "I didn't know the choices that would lead me there."

Although The Witcher 3 now stands the test of time as one of the best RPGs ever created, it doesn't boast such a simple origin story. CD Projekt Red had to try, and then try again.

And again, apparently. Lead quest designer Paweł Sasko recalls as much in a new online post commemorating the conception of The Witcher 3. "It's February 2012," he begins.

"A former factory in Warsaw. Red brick, wooden folding chairs, the smell of an old building that has been a hundred things before. Around 80 of us, the team that just shipped The Witcher 2. The lights dim." That's when The Witcher 3 was born.

"Game director and executive producer speak briefly about [the] new game we are going to make. Few sentences change the air in the room. The next game will be an open world. At the end, they show one image on the screen – it's Geralt, but older, with a beard. We will grow into 330 people before we ship. I am one of three quest designers under a lead. Pretty early, the story outline for No Man's Land arrives."

That's when things went a bit haywire.

"First mention of the Bloody Baron. I design my first quest for the project, walk into the review, and watch it fall apart in front of me. Nothing works. I sit there while it dies. Have two days to bring something new. I do not rest much. I read Slavic folktales until I find the poroniec, a stillborn child creature with [a] hideous appearance that later we are going to call Botchling. I come back with a first draft of Family Matters."

It's still not enough.

"The review outcome is a little better this time, but the fight is not over. The script grows to 40 pages. Cut it shorter, I am told. Need to do it numerous times. The discipline of removing what I like teaches me more than the writing and design ever did. After many reviews, it is approved."

It doesn't become any easier, however. "For the first nine months, all of us write the main story quests, because every other department is eagerly waiting."

There's not even grass yet, and the studio's game engine "is still finding shape," as Sasko says – "but we keep moving" nonetheless. "I write much more than we need for the game, because we pick only the best. Priscilla's concert in Novigrad is next. Then the The Last Wish. Some of it is designed last minute. Then comes [the] Battle of Kaer Morhen."

That's when the designer faces another hurdle – he proposes that Vesemir dies.

"First reaction is wide eyes and silence. The weight of it is exactly what the act needs. Ciri's outburst, the moment she throws the Wild Hunt back, requires that the floor fall out from under her first. I prototype meteors, rifts opening in the forest, Wild Hunt pouring out of them, the ride back to the keep on horseback. So much of it does not work. Technical issues. The quest flow is unclear. Review feedback I get is negative, so I rebuild."

But then, things finally take a positive turn. "Pieces start to hold," as Sasko puts it. "I begin to see why something works and why the thing next to it does not. Through repetition, I truly start understanding the craft."

Although the CD Projekt Red developers "still do not know if the open world will actually work," they "try anyway," he explains. "We push to [the] finish line and ship." A scary release, I'd say, but one that reshaped the studio's course forever.

The Witcher 3 has redefined the RPG genre and set standards I'd argue few other titles have, changing the way other devs approach open-world mechanics and the like. Now, it boasts over 60 million copies sold and a dedicated community looking forward to The Witcher 4.

It didn't come without its setbacks, but Sasko is thankful for them all: "I am grateful for the skills, the friendships, the failures that taught me more than any success ever could."

He concludes, "I am grateful for the lead who told me my first quest did not work. I am grateful for the rewrites that became Family Matters. I am grateful for every meeting that ended in silence and every review that ended in a yes. The Witcher 3 is a major part of my life. It always will be."

Ours, too, Mr. Sasko. Ours, too. I, for one, don't think I'll ever forget the first time I played the threequel – nor will I ever stop coming back to it.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

Years before Cyberpunk 2077 bailed on the idea, CD Projekt Red wanted The Witcher, the first RPG in the series, to have multiplayer.

Speaking at a Digital Dragons talk attended by GamesRadar+, CDPR senior technical writer Adrian Fulneczek discusses the dusty documentation that's home to the first scratches of what The Witcher would become.

"If the state of your documentation is this black hole, this means you have to reverse-engineer everything," he says, "and basically reverse-engineer your own legacy. Since I've mentioned legacy: we don't have much in digital form, but we have some physical documents, and we would like to show one of them to you."

Fulneczek brings up a notebook that "predates" The Witcher. "It lists the features we wanted to have in that game, among them a multiplayer mode, which didn't happen, but it shows ambition," he says.

Earlier in the talk, Fulneczek discussed how the early days of CDPR saw a small, tight-knit team of devs work out "our craft, our pipelines, and the logic as we went." This team was not, history has shown, up to the task of adding multiplayer to what was already a hefty RPG.

CD Projekt Red has an interesting history with multiplayer, which makes it doubly amusing that the original Witcher also had designs of its own at one point.

There's the Cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer snag, obviously. The studio said years ago, following a disastrous launch and hard-fought recovery, that it had "decided to reconsider" making "a multiplayer Cyberpunk game". However, job listings for Cyberpunk 2 suggest it will fold in some kind of online play, though its scale and form are unknown.

Historically, any sort of online and/or co-op play has been reserved for spinoff or side games under CDPR. Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is the obvious pick, but there's also The Witcher Adventure Game digital adaptation, the MOBA-shaped Witcher Battle Arena, and the vaguely Pokemon Go-like Witcher: Monster Slayer.

Multiplayer in the mainline CDPR RPGs has thus come from fans, like the makers of Witcher Online and CyberMP.

However, the studio is now actively working on a new Witcher game with multiplayer, code named Project Sirius. It just added the narrative lead of Destiny 2: The Final Shape to its development team.

As it happens, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners characters Lucy and Rebecca will soon debut in Wuthering Waves through a collab, and that's technically an RPG with multiplayer. One small step for Lucy, one giant leap for Cyberpunk's roster.

"We learned our lesson": The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 won't repeat the development mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red says.

The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 likely won't suffer from some of the same behind-the-scenes issues that infected Cyberpunk 2077, developers at CD Projekt Red say, and it's all because the studio finally sorted out a crucial if unexciting part of the production process: documentation.

CD Projekt Red's lead technical writer Jarosław Ruciński and senior technical writer Adrian Fulneczek spoke about the company's evolving documentation efforts in a lengthy Digital Dragons panel attended by GamesRadar+.

The duo explained that CDPR has traditionally not documented its games very well. During the development of The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2, for instance, almost no one at the company "was thinking 20 years ahead," and now the studio has almost "nothing from that period."

Messy or non-existent documentation proved particularly troublesome when work began on The Witcher remake. "We were tasked to recreate the classic game for the modern audience, only to realize that we had little to no technical knowledge preserved from that time," Ruciński says. Thankfully, co-developer Fool's Theory consists of many veteran CDPR devs who provided an "injection of this lost tribal knowledge."

Cyberpunk 2077 was perhaps the biggest victim of the developer letting its documentation get out of hand, though. Fulneczek says the game "was a fresh start" and a "massive undertaking" - one the devs thought they could tackle thanks to a new documentation tool called Confluence, which was a "living documentation" tool. Things quickly snowballed from there on. The devs created more than 8,000 unwieldy pages of documentation, and as the project ballooned in size, maintaining those documents became "a low priority."

To avoid the tangled pile of files, the team then decided to separate documents relating to the Phantom Liberty DLC and moved "to a cloud instance of Confluence." Suddenly, documents were split between those stored on the cloud and those stored on the company's servers. "It was chaos, right? Two spaces, two instances," Fulneczek adds, pointing out that fragmented documentation could also correlate to worker burnout. "It was very difficult to understand for us, for our outsource partners as well… If you can, don't divide between platforms or different tools. You have to link very clearly between them."

Mistakes were made, sure, but the company is trying to move past them with the upcoming CD Projekt Red games and a two-fold approach. First, documents are shared across the company, so teams working on the other side of the globe, in different time zones, are kept in the loop. And, second, keeping documentation is non-negotiable if a team wants to go through a development 'gate' - pre-production to alpha to beta to release.

"The future looks really promising for us," Fulneczek says of The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. "We learned our lesson."

"We've got some new requirements, especially a new definition of 'done'," Fulneczek explains. "So as you know, any project, any game goes through development stages, and right now, every stage ends with a gate. Part of the requirements to pass that gate is the documentation, which wasn't the case before."

"Unlike in the past, now, today our knowledge isn't locked between specific teams' permissions," Ruciński goes on. "It's a shared asset. If a team working on, let's say, The Witcher figures out a solution for a specific issue, the Cyberpunk team can see it, benefit from it, take it into their own code, modify it probably a little bit." The more shared approach ensures "problems aren't being solved multiple times by different teams, and also that if a breakthrough happens on one of the projects, the whole company benefits."

Yet another Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead joins CD Projekt Red as it juggles development on The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, and more

Well, here's an unexpected yet intriguing crossover. One of the central writers on Destiny 2's The Final Shape expansion has been enlisted by CD Projekt Red for the upcoming, as-yet-untitled The Witcher multiplayer game.

Kwan Perng revealed his new employer himself on LinkedIn, but he makes it clear details are very hush-hush right now. "I've joined CD Projekt Red as the lead writer on Project Sirius," he says. "It will be some time before I can talk about the project, but in the meantime I've been immersing myself in the dark and eclectic universe of The Witcher. It's humbling to get the opportunity to tell stories in this world and in the company of such talented developers."

He made another post on Twitter, seemingly just to show off the swag he's received for joining. The spin-off is indeed codenamed Project Sirius, and it's been in the works for a number of years now. It was announced in 2022, before development was restarted in 2023. The Molasses Flood is the studio that's primarily handling the game, with support from CD Projekt, but it's unclear how much is being handled by either side in light of the slightly tumultuous journey thus far.

Though the multiplayer aspects are the central attraction, an early outline states single-player is still part of the structure. But again, how much or how little of that remains true is unknown.

Besides contributing to The Final Shape, as well as Warmind and The Black Armory during a previous tenure at Bungie, Perng spent some time as narrative lead on Guild Wars 2, working on the End of Dragons expansion. He clearly knows his way around storytelling for blockbuster MMOs, and it'll be intriguing to see what he brings to The Continent.

Project Sirius is one of several irons CD Projekt has in the fire surrounding Geralt of Rivia. There's a remake of the first The Witcher on the way, and The Witcher 4 is happening, though the current status of both is unknown. The first game turns 20 next year, and it seems like there could be plenty going on to mark the occasion.

Yet another Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead joins CD Projekt Red as it juggles development on The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, and more

The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings looks better than I remembered. The world is awash in color, hues of red and orange engulfing the burning city I'm clearing on behalf of Temeria's king. I take a moment to remove Geralt's sword from the chest of a La Valette soldier to admire it.

The game just turned 15, and it's been about that long since I played it. It's also one of the few remaining Xbox exclusives – something I only realized a few weeks ago – yet my 2020 HP Pavilion gaming laptop has it looking almost as good as a pre-enhanced Witcher 3. I don't know why so many of us forget about Geralt's second adventure. Myself included, unfortunately. But in the leadup to The Witcher 4, going back to the series' roots feels not only incredibly fulfilling and insightful, but has me more excited than ever for what might come next.

Good to be back

I'm incredibly sorry to inform all PS4 and PS5-only owners out there that The Witcher 2 is a blast and a half. Time has done nothing to diminish the polish of one of the best Witcher games ever, and thanks to the PC version's enhancements, it's a missed opportunity that CD Projekt Red never ported it over to Sony consoles.

It starts off right in the heat of battle, as King Foltest launches an assault on his mistress to retrieve his illegitimate children. It's a great way to remind myself of the events of the first game; much as in The Witcher 3, this can be done through carrying over choices from the previous game or going with the default settings instead. The developer's storytelling chops are sharp as ever, immediately hooking me from the get-go as Geralt pleads his case with Vernon Roche: he did not kill the king, actually, and really ought to be freed.

But the fact that CD Projekt Red has stellar storytellers on-side shouldn't be news to you. What should be, however, is that The Witcher 2 isn't hugely dissimilar to its successor. Here is where the studio ironed out the form and flow of The Witcher, complete with potion crafting, Witcher signs, sword combat, and toxicity. Really the only glaring moments of "oof" I experienced were in having to stand completely still to use my Witcher Senses and the brief loading screens upon entering and exiting even the smallest cottages.

There is one mechanic here that we don't see in The Witcher 3, though: persuasion. I try in vain to talk one of Foltest's men out of roughing up some villagers after selecting the green-eyed icon next to one of the dialogue choices. Maybe force would have been more appropriate, signified by the red-eyed icon next to another? I reload for a closer look and spot an interaction I'd missed completely: mind control.

Choose your Path

Or, more specifically, Axii. This was always one of my favorite witchering tricks to pull in Wild Hunt, bending softer minds to Geralt's iron will. Blessedly it works, and the soldiers scarper off.

While the persuasion, intimidation, and manipulation mechanic is refined in the third game, there's something about its simplicity in The Witcher 2. It's the building blocks for what comes next, the framework that CD Projekt Red tested out before doubling down on the series' now-iconic choice and consequence moments that can make or break a given situation.

But so too can sticky combat, my biggest gripe with this game. Geralt's forward rolls are slow and cumbersome, and his slower swordstrikes means that being ganged up on is a quick recipe for disaster. Crowd control is not his strongest suit, unfortunately, and with an unreliable target lock-on proving more of a hindrance than a help when focusing my attacks, I quickly get cut down. Swapping over to Igni is a welcome reprieve from Aard's sluggish refresh speed, but of course, I miss the quick sign casting feature added to The Witcher 3 post-launch.

As I roll my eyes at needing to meditate when making or using potions and bemoan the lack of in-combat heals, though, I remind myself that this game is a stepping stone. It's hard to imagine it now, but The Witcher 3 is more or less the same for The Witcher 4. Someday when I hold Ciri's adventure in my hands and am no doubt blown away by all the shiny new baubles the developer has planned for us, I'll probably replay Geralt's last hurrah and gripe over all the things I miss from the newer game too.

CD Projekt is good at delivering brilliance and somehow one-upping itself. Playing The Witcher 2 some 15 years on has reminded me that perfection is futile without the building blocks which take us there. Now if you don't mind, I have some Scoia'tael to slaughter or be slaughtered by.

Check out the best RPGs to play next... and you already know there's a Witcher game in here.

Over the past year or so, CD Projekt Red has welcomed quite a lot of talent – over 220 new developers, in fact – with a good few of them coming from RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and, of course, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and its predecessor.

As work on The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 presses on, CD Projekt Red is pulling in a good few new devs from other legendary studios. In December, an ex-Baldur's Gate 3 dev joined the team, while a former Mass Effect lead hopped on board as AI director in February.

In between, there have also been a couple of Warhorse Studios veterans making their way to CD Projekt Red, like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 designer Karel Kolmann.

It appears another past Warhorse dev is joining CD Projekt Red's forces now, too, as Zdeněk Glatz – a senior Kingdom Come: Deliverance designer and writer – reveals in an exciting post on LinkedIn.

Although he only leaves a few exclamation marks himself, attached is an image that reads, "I'm happy to share that I've joined CD Projekt Red." Glatz's new title is visible as well: senior open world designer. Which RPG is he working on, though?

Well, it's not exactly clear. The picture does mention that CD Projekt Red is the creator of Cyberpunk and The Witcher, but Glatz's actual profile doesn't detail which game he's going to be focusing on as a senior open world designer.

I'd imagine it'd have to be either The Witcher 4 or Cyberpunk 2 – or perhaps both – as they're the studio's two "big" projects right now, but only time will tell what Glatz will be credited with in the end.

There is also, unsurprisingly, some discussion on what this could mean for Warhorse Studios, as multiple devs have moved on to CD Projekt Red now. Over on Reddit, folks question if it "spells trouble for Warhorse's next game" – but I wouldn't bet on it, personally.

It's not uncommon for people to move around in the industry, especially when there are so many new games underway to work on. CD Projekt Red just so happens to be one of many.

As for Warhorse Studios, there are talks of a Kingdom Come: Deliverance movie or TV show in the air, as Daniel Vávra, studio co-founder, has stepped down from his position to focus on bringing the RPG duology to the big screen.

The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2 developer CD Projekt Red scoops up more industry talent as a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 cinematics dev joins the team

When it comes to ranking the best Witcher games, you'd be surprised by how many there are to sift through. I certainly was, and have spent the past three days getting my head around the many spin-offs to CD Projekt Red's mainline RPG series. They all take place at different points in and around the original Polish novel saga, with a tiny bit of overlap with Netflix's The Witcher TV series for good measure. But with so many titles to choose from, I've come up with a few rules in making this list to keep things nice and simple.

Firstly, I've only listed the Witcher games you can play right now on modern platforms, and I've specifically used Steam as a benchmark. It would also be a very short list if I restricted it to just the best RPGs in the franchise, so I've widened my search to draw in some iconic narrative, tactical, and card-based offerings, too. Many of the games here are playable on mobile, while one of them is actually a PC and Xbox exclusive as of 2026, and a host of others are available on a range of consoles, ensuring that there's a Witchering delight for everyone to enjoy – even if you don't know where to start.

Below, I've included a vibe for each entry so you can get a general idea of the kind of experience they offer (you can learn more about that in our FAQ section). It's an exciting time for the Witcher series, with lots of upcoming CD Projekt Red games in the works such as The Witcher 4. But while we wait for what's next, here are the best Witcher games you can go and download right now!

The best Witcher games to play today, starting with…

7. The Witcher Enhanced Edition Director's Cut

Calling it one of the best Witcher games is a bit of a stretch, but Geralt of Rivia's maiden voyage has to go somewhere on this list. 2008's enhanced edition of The Witcher came out a year after its initial 2007 launch, offering an extended experience for PC players to explore. At the time, it was a welcome little facelift to correct course and give the new franchise a head start toward greatness. Alas, the game itself does not hold up very well to the test of time.

Combat is a hard slog. Our The Witcher Enhanced Edition review noted the mystifying controls and "long-winded" storytelling, even by 2008's standards, and the graphics and movement systems have only gotten clunkier with age. Then there's the tokenizing Romance cards Geralt collects upon successfully wooing one of the RPG's lovely ladies…. Yeah, it's altogether a bit of a chaotic mess to play in 2026, and I can only recommend it to absolute Witcher die-hards. Otherwise, I'd wait it out for the Witcher 1 Remake, which is currently in the works.

6. The Witcher Adventure Game

Perhaps the most dicey Witcher game on this list, The Witcher Adventure Game is a 2014 digitized rendition of the popular board game. You can play against either the computer or your real-life friends as one of four characters from CD Projekt Red's games and the original novels themselves. Then, you'll be vying to conquer the board either through combat or the gift of the gab, whichever your character excels at most.

The Witcher Adventure Game isn't an RPG, really, though the stat-based gameplay does funnel you toward taking certain avenues when it comes to problem-solving (we all know Geralt isn't a diplomat). Now roughly 12 years old, The Witcher Adventure Game is a niche recommendation in 2026 – that UI still feels like an eyesore to me, and the whole game wears its mobile game aesthetic on its war-torn sleeve. But if you're looking for a more strategic approach to The Witcher universe that you can take on-the-go, it's one to keep in mind.

5. Reigns: The Witcher

The newest entrant on my list of best Witcher games, Reigns is a fast-paced and silly narrative adventure where you'll be swiping through Dandelion's (aka Jaskier's) ballads for a choose-you-own-adventure of epic proportions. I love playing Reigns on my phone, whether at the bus stop or on the airplane, but it's also great fun to sit down and play on my computer when I fancy something silly yet compulsive.

The Tinder-like swiping is a fun gimmick that works seamlessly with Reigns' scenario-based gameplay, casting Geralt in the role of many a tale, all of them yours to shape. It's refreshing to have a more lighthearted way to engage with The Witcher – one that won't ask you to murder either a whole village or some little orphan kids. Be it bathing, romancing, "dying a lot", or getting grubby in a monster fight, Reigns trades the narrative weight and mechanical complexity of its RPG counterparts for pure bardic nonsense. And honestly, I love that for Geralt.

4. The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings

As mentioned in our The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings review, Geralt's second RPG outing is where things really start picking up steam. With a reworked combat system and a darker, more mature tone, CD Projekt Red "replaced or improved all the needlessly cumbersome design decisions that plagued the first game" to deliver a bombastic RPG adventure that, sadly, you still can't play on PlayStation.

I've docked it a few points for the purposes of this list – I'm trying to find easily accessible options, after all – but The Witcher 2 deserves a special shoutout as the game that gave us our first proper taste of what Geralt of Rivia could become. Think agonizing moral conundrums, nail-biting battles, stunning world design (by 2011's standpoint, though the enhanced edition cleans up a lot of it)... CD Projekt Red struck gold with this one, and if you have the right platforms at hand, you won't regret going back 15 years to experience it.

3. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

Card-based RPG Thronebreaker is one of the most unique and best Witcher games of the bunch. As a prequel to the events of CD Projekt Red's mainline games, it sees players set out across the continent as Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia, drawing cards and finding allies to rally the troops and build up a formidable army.

But although it's a companion piece to the next item on this list, this isn't your average deck-builder. Our five-star Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales review explains how this spin-off thrives in its very own right, as "instead of drawing through your deck and needing to react to your opponent's every move, you're more focused on simply sticking to the plan set forth by your opening hand." It's the perfect setup for choice and consequence moments as effects ripple out over the course of a 30-hour playthrough, and an excellent isometric venture for fans of the best tactical RPGs who want a dose of the Witcherverse at the same time.

2. Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

I'm not sure if it's a contentious opinion, but the digital Gwent card game is probably the second-best Witcher game by virtue of its sheer staying power. Inspired by the popularity of playing Gwent in The Witcher 3, this game lets you do nothing but that as you battle it out in 1v1 matches against strangers via online matchmaking. CD Projekt Red cut its ongoing dev support for it in 2023, handing the reins to the community instead – and it's still just as popular.

Players dutifully vote for changes to the card meta, ushering in a new era of true democracy that protects the core game experience while ensuring it stays fresh and exciting. There's also a physical edition if you're looking for fixed parameters, which our US Managing Editor deems "just as engrossing as the original" in his Gwent: The Legendary Card Game review. Gwent is clearly here to stay, and I can't wait to (hopefully) see it in The Witcher 4 too.

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

To absolutely nobody's surprise (least of all mine), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt reigns supreme as the best Witcher game of all time. You're probably familiar with it if you're already here, but let me paint you a quick picture: you are Geralt of Rivia, monster hunter extraordinaire, and you're traipsing the Continent in search of your adopted Child Surprise daughter, Ciri.

Over a decade later, Witcher 3 is the undisputed king among the best third-person RPGs. It has grueling action, a stunning open world, engaging characters, interwoven plotlines, political intrigue, love triangles, fearsome beasts, and just about every other flavor of RPG goodness you could ever wish for – even the opportunity to build out Geralt's retirement plan in one of its two DLCs, as described in our The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine review. Whether you're brand new to the franchise or not, believe the hype and play The Witcher 3 before you do any other game on this list.

Best Witcher games FAQs

For more recommendations, check out our pick of the best games like the Witcher 3.

CD Projekt is rapidly expanding as development of The Witcher 4 continues. Alongside the company's latest financial report, executives have offered details on that development. CD Projekt Red now employs nearly 1,000 people, and more than half of them are working on the upcoming RPG.

"Over the past year more than 220 developers have joined our teams," CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski says in a comment shared to Twitter. "Most of new hires are working on The Witcher 4 where they help to improve quality and scale up solutions presented in the Unreal Fest tech demo across the entire game."

CD Projekt Red now has 933 developers in total, with 499 of them assigned to The Witcher 4. You can see the full breakdown of how the devs split across all of CD Projekt Red's upcoming games, but it's clear that the new fantasy RPG is the studio's biggest focus – just as it has been for the past handful of years. Even in 2024, when the game hadn't even entered full production, the company said over 400 people were already working on it.

As chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz puts it in a video overview of the company's financials, "the production of The Witcher 4 is steaming ahead." He, too, cites last year's big engine demo, which showed off tech that the devs are using to "create worlds with an unprecedented level of detail."

While that demo is the closest thing we've seen to The Witcher 4 gameplay, CD Projekt has been keen to emphasize that it was "a technological demo and not an actual game, or gameplay." Still, it was an impressive first look, and if production truly is now "steaming ahead," hopefully it won't be too much longer before we get a real, concrete glimpse at the long-awaited RPG.

Here are all the new games for 2026 and beyond you need to know about.

Lucie Hennet, one of the cinematic animators who worked on Sandfall Interactive's record-breaking J'RPG, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, has joined CD Projekt Red's Warsaw studio under the same job title.

Hennet spent two years on-site with Sandfall, first as an intern and then as an independent contractor, working on the game's gorgeous cinematics. Among the turn-based RPG with a distinctly French twist's long, long, long list of awards, you'll find prizes for cinematic categories like Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, and Best Art Direction.

As noted on her LinkedIn page, Hennet joined the team at CD Projekt Red as of this month, specifically working as a cinematic animator at the studio's Warsaw branch. This is the head office of the Cyberpunk and The Witcher creator, and as such has people working on every game in the developer's upcoming and ongoing library.

The post does not specify which project Hennet is working on, and we couldn't find mention of any particular game on other platforms. The Witcher 4 is exclusively developed at CD Projekt Red's Warsaw studio, but Hennet isn't necessarily working on this game. However, the other major named project currently in development, Cyberpunk 2, is mostly worked on at the company's Boston studio.

There is also currently a contracted position open at the Warsaw office for a gameplay animator showing that there's a recruitment drive for the upcoming fourth entry in similar roles. Though recently, CD Projekt Red has been bolstering all of its teams, filling roles on every game.

If Hennet has not been placed on development of The Witcher 4, then it is likely that she is working on the game currently codenamed Project Hadar. This is a completely new IP that's primarily being developed at CD Projekt Red's Polish studios.

CD Projekt Red welcomes new AI director, who joins The Witcher 4 studio "after 8 years of building memorable RPGs at BioWare" like Mass Effect 2 and 3

The Witcher 1 had a pretty peculiar take on RPG romances back in 2007, rewarding players with collectible, salacious cards for having sex with various women. But if you've ever taken a moment to really analyze the cards (for what I assume are research purposes), then you might just notice the romance cards rarely ever match up with the characters' portraits or in-game models, and there's a very good reason why.

The Witcher's original lead story designer, Artur Ganszyniec, is playing through the game for the first time in 18 years or so, and he's actually streaming the entire thing for our viewing pleasure in a series of lovely videos posted to his YouTube channel. And his second episode is the one where Geralt begins a card collection impressive enough to make a Pokemon scalper blush.

Ganszyniec admits that some of Geralt's courting tactics, like asking a woman he's only just met to follow him into a "nook" somewhere, are a bit off. "That doesn't sound creepy at all, Geralt."

"I wasn't responsible for the sex cards," he quickly adds, "but I overheard the designing of this particular one and that's when I learned the term, uh, MILF. And I'm sorry you had to hear that, but there's another funny story with it."

The former CDPR developer then scrolls through the game's menus to find the 'Characters' tab, which lists all the people Geralt's encountered on his adventure alongside a portrait of them. Romance cards can also be viewed here. Ganszyniec spends some time showing how some characters' cards are out of whack with their menu portraits, which are also sometimes out of sync with their in-game models. Oddly enough, hair colors, skin tones and more can all differ quite drastically.

"What we later learned was that the person who was responsible for making sure the colors matched [were] colorblind, like, totally," Ganszyniec explains. "But they were too shy to talk about it. So how do you approach the task? Well, you can copy the RGB numbers or casually ask fellow designers [...] 'Do you think this hair is more auburn or?'"

The Witcher 1 is now being remade in a joint effort from CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory as the former also hammers away at the much-hyped The Witcher 4.

OG The Witcher lead thinks the Wild Hunt "will probably need to be changed" for the RPG's new remake because they were originally seen as wraiths – not "elves in armor"

Doug Cockle, the talented voice actor behind protagonist Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3 and its predecessors, has a favorite ending in the third RPG – somewhat, anyway.

Speaking in a new interview with Goated Synro on YouTube, the actor reveals as much, first explaining that even though he didn't know every Witcher 3 ending – there are like 36, after all – he did know what he wanted to see happen in the game's finale.

"I knew the ending that I wanted, and I didn't know all the endings. I didn't know what exactly CD Projekt Red had in store for us, depending on the choices we make," he admits.

"But, I knew that one of the possibilities was that Geralt would end up with Triss and that Ciri would be a Witcher, and everybody lives happily ever after – and that is the one I got." Cockle states he "couldn't remember all the choices" he needed to make to get that ending, but "was working towards it" regardless.

"I didn't know the choices that would lead me there. I just made the choices that I thought would be helpful in getting me towards that ending."

He concludes, in awe of the sheer number of endings in The Witcher 3, but solid on what he wanted to happen: "There's something like 20 different endings possible or something like that? Insane. I knew I didn't want Ciri to become the empress, and I certainly didn't want her to die."

It's certainly interesting to hear what the actor hoped to see, and also what he ended up experiencing. As he later says, he never actually got to replay the RPG, either.

So, the ending he got is the ending for him. While I'm personally a Yennefer truther myself, I'm sure the Triss stans will be thrilled to hear Cockle agrees with them on who Geralt should end up with.

It does all make me curious, though – with Ciri as the brand-new Witcher in The Witcher 4, how will the next part of the saga wrap up? Only time will tell, I suppose, but I can't wait to continue from where The Witcher 3 canonically left off.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

Geralt actor Doug Cockle is clearly a fan of the RPGs he's appeared in, and he's putting that fandom to good use by putting down arbitrary rankings of his favorite things in The Witcher. In fairness, he's only doing it because he was asked to, but if you agree to weigh in on the great Witcher 3 romance debate, you know what you're in for.

Cockle doesn't give much thought to two potential partners for Geralt in an interview with GoatedSynro on YouTube, as Syanna is a "psycho" and Keira is a "romantic side quest." Bold descriptors, but there's nothing as bold as his ultimate top rankings: "Yen is three, Triss is two, and Shani's one," he argues. "There, I said it."

Shani is a particularly interesting choice as number one since she doesn't factor that heavily into The Witcher 3, the game series fans tend to be most invested in. Cockle describes her as "good fun," and seems to admire the realistic view she has of Geralt. But he's equally not afraid to weigh in on the battle that continues to tear the fandom apart: Triss versus Yennefer.

"I prefer Triss in the game, partly because I'm partial to redheads," Cockle says, "but also because in the game Triss is more like a friend with benefits. She and Geralt have a laugh together whereas Yen is a little bit more like a naggy mom."

I can see Cockle's argument, but as far as I'm concerned Yen is Geralt's one true wife and Triss deserves a whole lot more heat than she gets for seducing him while he's going through full amnesia. I say this all as an unbiased journalist with no side in the debate, of course.

"The truth is that both of them are absolutely stonkin' ladies," Cockle says. "They're great. They're both powerful sorceresses, they're both beautiful, they're both smart, they're both all that. But I just prefer Triss over Yen." Well, there's no accounting for taste, I guess.

The Witcher 3 may have one of the best quests in RPG history, but it drove Geralt actor Doug Cockle completely "bonkers": "I hated running up and down that hill."

Many The Witcher 3 fans consider its Bloody Baron quest to be not only one of the most narratively astounding of the whole fantasy franchise, but also one of the most satisfying quests in general across all RPGs. But Geralt's veteran voice actor Doug Cockle is not one of those fans.

"The Bloody Baron, that quest drove me bonkers at the beginning," Cockle tells YouTuber GoatedSynro, in a new video where he ranks The Witcher 3 locations and romance options. The Bloody Baron's home in the Velen province sits at an unremarkable number five spot out of seven for Cockle, and it likely doesn't help that Velen's Baron made Geralt do so much legwork.

"It was before I had access to, or before I discovered the ability to, fast travel in the world," Cockle continues to say about completing the Bloody Baron questline. "I was just riding my freaking horse up and down that hill, and you have to leave [your horse] Roach at some point, and then you're just running up the hill."

Where's Kate Bush with an assist when you need her? "It was just up and down, up and down, up and down. It drove me crazy," Cockle says. "I hated running up and down that hill."

Really internalizing the challenge of the hill, discarding all metaphor, Cockle reflects and decides that Velen actually does only rank at number five because it was a bad place for Geralt's feet.

"His pedometer was just, like, off the charts," he says. "His legs are sore."

"That is extremely stupid design": The Witcher 1 story lead, frustrated playing the epilogue he largely designed, says "I got only myself to blame for everything that's happening here."

The original Witcher game hit a major testing roadblock after one of its designers accidentally consigned a notable NPC to the gamedev shadow realm to prevent him from ever showing up in a climactic cutscene.

Artur Ganyzyniec, lead story designer on The Witcher 1, has recently been playing through the first game in the series, adding his commentary as he goes. During the final episode, which aired earlier this week, he recounted the story of a major bug that took hours of testing to fix.

While checking over the game's epilogue, he reached a point that should have instigated a cutscene with Yaevinn, a leader among the Scoia'tael, the rebellious elven faction who are major players in The Witcher 1 and 2. But instead of loading that cutscene, the game became stuck on an endless black screen.

Normally, Ganyzyniec explains, that black screen is used at the start of every cutscene to teleport the relevant characters into the right place. Once they're there, the scene begins, but this time, "the black screen didn't disappear and the dialogue didn't start." To work out why, the devs eventually discovered that Yaevinn wasn't in the scene, so it couldn't start. And he wasn't in the scene because the game thought he was dead.

"We were stuck for a moment," Ganyzyniec says, "and I started thinking 'when was the last time we saw Yaevinn?'" The answer was in a separate cutscene at the end of the game's third chapter, hours before the events of the epilogue. Much debugging later, the devs discovered that at the end of that scene, instead of getting the simple command to despawn, Yaevinn had been given a different command.

"It was a deprecated comment that shouldn't be used anymore," Ganyzyniec explains. Whether by mistake, curiosity, or simple boredom, the scripter had attached a command to Yaevinn that said something like "'despawn the character, mark the character as dead, and make sure that the character never spawns again'." It was an error not helped by the fact that the difference wasn't mentioned in the name of the comment, but was buried "somewhere deep in the documentation for the scripting language."

Once uncovered, the fix was relatively simple, but checking that the solution had actually worked was much more time-intensive. Ganyzyniec outlines how, at that point in production, any changes to the game corrupted all associated saves, which meant that one unfortunate tester had to play the entire game up to the epilogue just to check if Yaevinn would actually load into his cutscene. He did, but "it was hours of play just to test if this one bug was fixed."

Yaevinn never appears in the Witcher series after his epilogue cutscene - his role is primarily taken over by Iorveth in The Witcher 2, but the Scoia'tael are much smaller figures in The Witcher 3. His absence through the rest of the trilogy is a little strange given his role in certain branches of the plot, but perhaps that's got something to do with The Witcher 1 team's apparent desire to set up sequel-relevant story beats without actually consulting the writing team, which is what happened at the end of Geralt's first adventure.

OG The Witcher lead thinks the Wild Hunt "will probably need to be changed" for the RPG's new remake because they were originally seen as wraiths – not "elves in armor"

Although we have The Witcher 4 to look forward to, another exciting prospect is the remake of the first The Witcher that's also coming from CD Projekt Red. Details are relatively limited as of now, but a prominent writer on the original game believes a couple of alterations will be necessary, particularly around the Wild Hunt.

In a video providing commentary on The Witcher in real-time, Artur Ganszyniec, the game's lead story designer, speaks about how the current team will likely revisit the mythological group's physical form. "In the first Witcher, the Wild Hunt is more like the Wild Hunt from the legends," he says.

"We didn't know yet they are elves in armor," he continues. "We really thought of them as wraiths, and omens of death, and tools of destiny. This part will probably need to be changed a bit in the remake."

He's playing through the ending of The Witcher, where the Wild Hunt is teased as "an omen of war and tragedy." This description carries over from their mythic roots, wherein a godly entity leads a cavalcade of spectral warriors, all on horseback. Versions iterate across European folklore, and they tend to be a mixture of awe-inspiring and terrifying to think about.

This perception is woven into the lore of The Witcher - see their title on Skellige, the Wraiths of Mörhogg - but then, as Ganszyniec points out, we learn in The Witcher 3 that they're actually powerful elves who're trying to find a way to stop a magical infection known as the White Frost. Back during 2007's The Witcher, those narrative decisions hadn't been made yet.

"Here the King of the Hunt is the personification of death," he says, during a scene where Geralt comes face to face with the Hunt's leader, "and that will take some retrofitting in the remake, I think."

True enough, this version of the King of the Hunt is ghostly blue, with a hulking body and a skeletal face. Some elements were kept for The Witcher 3, but it transpires this look is all part of his armor. CD Projekt will probably aim to create more consistency in redoing the first installment.

Personally, I hope the original look is kept. He looks different because he's the King of the Hunt, what further explanation would you need?

"That is extremely stupid design": The Witcher 1 story lead, frustrated playing the epilogue he largely designed, says "I got only myself to blame for everything that's happening here"

Even the most beloved video games have their critics, but it's not often that those critics are the people who made the game. But that's exactly what happened at the end of a recent Witcher 1 playthrough by the game's lead narrative designer Artur Ganszyniec, who became frustrated during an action sequence in the game's epilogue but kept it classy and took the entirety of the blame.

Ganszyniec recently published the final episode of his 26-video saga, in which he played through the entirety of the first Witcher for the first time in 20 years, and at about the 23-minute mark in the new video (embedded below), he mistakenly attacked an elf and was then forced to "kill them all" or load up an old save.

"That's the unfortunate part, that by mistake I attacked an elf and now I will just have to kill them all, and I didn't really want to do that," said Ganszyniec. "But oh well, this is war, and I should have been more careful with group style.

"And, to be honest, it's all my fault anyway, because this chapter, epilogue, was one that I implemented in the most part."

Ganszyniec explained that the epilogue was made at the last minute, toward the very end of the game's production, after [project lead Jacek Brzeziński] decided to "find some extra time" to make a worthwhile epilogue. He and Ganszyniec then started working on the epilogue at night after they'd already been working their normal development schedules during the day. The result, at least in Ganszyniec's opinion, is an epilogue with a few rough edges.

"Most of the epilogue, I was the one implementing it, so I got only myself to blame for everything that's happening here," he said.

Later, at around the 30:10 mark in the above video, Ganszyniec ran into another situation that caused him some frustration when he tried to meditate but couldn't because the fire in front of him wasn't lit and couldn't be lit because you can't cast spells in safe areas.

"That was really stupid. I can't cast Igni here because it is a safe location," Ganszyniec said. "Maybe there will be something to loot here. Where are the bodies? No bodies here. That is extremely stupid design. Artur, you should be ashamed."

You know what they say, we're our own worst critics.

Ahead of The Witcher 1 remake, OG RPG story lead reveals that ending cutscene was created not "really involving the story team," which was "a mistake"

The whole reason The Witcher 2 goes off in a decidedly more political direction is because someone high up at developer CD Projekt Red wanted the first Witcher to have one more final ending cutscene and chose to have one made without much involvement from the studio's narrative team, according to original lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec.

Ganszyniec recently wrapped up his first playthrough of the original Witcher in about 20 years on YouTube, a 26-video series that yielded all sorts of interesting development insights, and the latest video sheds new light on how the game's final cutscene came to be.

We usually wouldn't do spoiler warnings for nearly 20-year-old games, but because there's a remake of the first game happening, it's worth confirming that we are about to discuss pretty big story details from the end of The Witcher 1 through the beginning of The Witcher 2. If you want to dive into the series completely fresh, maybe turn back.

"That's where we wanted the game to end, like with an open question and open future. But while we were finishing the game, someone decided, like the board decided or [Michał Kiciński, CD Projekt Red co-founder], that we needed an animated outro of the game," said Ganszyniec.

Based on the fantasy novel series of the same name by Andrzej Sapkowsk, The Witcher series has always had political intrigue bubbling beneath the surface from the first game, but it wasn't a driving force for the plot until the second game, when Geralt is framed for regicide. Apparently, the final scene of The Witcher 1 where Geralt fights off Foltest's would-be assassin wasn't the intended original ending, and set the story off on a completely different course that's much less intimate than the first game.

"The script for what we are seeing now, for this animation, it was created not really involving the story team. So we weren't really paying attention and that was a mistake, I think. Because this animation tells a different story than the outro pictures, because Geralt is still in Vizima, and he's deep, deep into a political intrigue because someone is trying to kill Foltest," said Ganszyniec.

"There's someone, as you will see, is a Witcher, and soon after that it became evident that the next game will have to follow up on this and tell a story about Witchers who are killing kings for some reason. And that's why the second Witcher is very political, and there's not really room for exploring who Geralt is, his family, his history, and stuff like this."

The Witcher remake was announced back in 2022 as a full-blown, ground-up redoing of the first game in the series, being made in Unreal Engine 5 by external studio Fool's Theory, which has previously provided development support for RPG greats like Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. There's no release date just yet.

Meanwhile, here's everything we know about The Witcher 4.

The Witcher's lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec has finished a playthrough of the original CD Projekt Red RPG on YouTube.

Despite The Witcher being one of the biggest gaming series on the planet now, a majority of the attention is placed on the The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and what's left over gets left to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but rarely do I see anyone talk about the original game. And granted, the original is somewhat rough to go back to, with some dated mechanics and overall jank, which is probably why it's getting a remake in the future. But the game's lead story designer may have given people a great reason to return to it now instead of waiting.

About five months ago, Ganszyniec started his "The Witcher with a designer's commentary" series on YouTube (thanks, PC Gamer), almost working like a commentary track found on DVDs, and this isn't a half-assed video, its 26 videos – each lasting an hour or two – encompassing the entire game from start to finish. In the first episode, he explains it's his first time playing it in "almost 20 years."

Late last week, Ganszyniec finally reached the end of The Witcher and thus the end of his series, calling it "a very satisfying half of the year." The series has shockingly low views considering how popular The Witcher is right now, but those who have watched the entire thing have praised the playthrough, with one commenter saying, "It's been amazing to follow your playthrough and to listen to your insightful commentary." So if you fancied revisiting The Witcher before its remake but don't feel like playing it, this may be the move for you.

CDPR welcomes new AI director, who joins The Witcher 4 studio "after 8 years of building memorable RPGs at BioWare."

As work on The Witcher 4 continues to press on, CD Projekt Red opens the door to new faces with plenty of experience under their belts – like Dorian Kieken, the studio's new AI director and a hardened BioWare veteran boasting credits on gems from the Mass Effect series.

Kieken worked at BioWare for a solid eight years, as per his LinkedIn profile, starting as a producer on titles like Sonic Chronicles before moving on to act as development director and co-founder of the company's Montreal studio.

He then undertook projects like Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 – DLC included. Since leaving the team in 2015, he's gone on to found his own AI startup: AI Redefined, also known by the acronym "AIR."

Now, he's returning to game development, it seems – and he's not just going to any studio. Kieken is working with CD Projekt Red as the company's new AI director, as he reveals in an online post.

"After eight years of building memorable RPGs at BioWare and eight years of building cutting-edge AI solutions at AI Redefined, it is finally time to bring all of that together in my new role at CDPR as AI Director," he writes.

The new AI lead then explains that he'll be "responsible for the company's AI vision and strategy," and is "so excited" to be there. It's pretty cool, honestly, especially as it's not the first instance of CD Projekt Red welcoming knowledgeable devs recently.

Two months ago, former Baldur's Gate 3 developer Felix Pedulla joined CD Projekt Red as the team's newest senior cinematic designer, with other positions opening shortly after. As for Kieken's AI startup, AI Redefined, he posted late last year that it had been "acquired by CM Labs."

Fingers crossed that Kieken settles in nicely, and the next few years are just as bright for The Witcher masterminds as the past decade.

The Witcher 4 will cost CD Projekt almost $800 million between development and marketing, estimates analyst who also predicts new The Witcher 3 DLC this year

The developers behind The Witcher spinoff game Reigns: The Witcher may shyly tell GamesRadar+ it's only a "fan-fiction simulator," but, crucially, it's fanfiction that IP holder CD Projekt Red approved.

Reigns narrative designer Oscar Harrington-Shaw and design director Francois Alliot explain in their joint interview with GamesRadar+, saying CD Projekt Red devs have "been extremely generous with their time. Every scenario you face in the game has been read by multiple loremasters, writers and producers on their end to ensure that all of the content is in keeping with the tone and lore of the Witcher universe."

Previously, Reigns developer Nerial collaborated with HBO for a Game of Thrones version of the "swipe 'em up" strategy game – which anoints you as a monarch who decides their next move by swiping left or right on scenario cards, turning the fate of your kingdom into an RPG dating app.

But while "Reigns: Game of Thrones is still a light management simulation through the eyes of the ruler, as the original Reigns was," Harrington-Shaw and Alliot say, "In this game you play as Geralt in his role and position as a witcher. It's not so much about the fate of the Continent as it is about being an outcast who needs to strike a balance between the factions he encounters – humans, nonhumans and mages – while also maintaining his reputation as a monster hunter."

Originally, Nerial thought about using "a structure which involved the re-discovery of the [alchemical experiment] Trial of the Grasses, leading to new witchers and perhaps even resurrection." But CD Projekt Red swooped in as Reigns: The Witcher's true overlord. Harrington-Shaw and Alliot say, "Hordes of zombie witchers was considered a step too far…!"

Geralt "dies a lot" in the new Witcher game out next month, a "Witcher fan-fiction simulator" narrated by Dandelion the bard and published by Devolver Digital.

After almost four years, the newest Reigns game is coming, and this time the card-based royalty sim is centering on Geralt of Rivia himself in a crossover with The Witcher. The aptly titled Reigns: The Witcher has you handle quests on behalf of the White Wolf as you navigate the RNG looking for the most desirable outcome possible.

But there's an important distinction to be made, because although the subject of the new Reigns is Geralt, the narrator is actually Dandelion, everyone's favorite bard. Or he’s mine, at least - and I know a few! Anyway, this means there’ll be a musical quality to your readouts, letting you hum along to the increasingly distressing situations you find yourself in.

Yen, Triss, and Vesemir will make appearances, along with many other names and faces from across the Witcher canon. There are minigames to keep Geralt sprightly, because he’s hardly going to let himself be confined to some cards, is he?

For the uninitiated, Reigns involves assembling runs based on luck of the draw. Your deck includes characters and encounters, and each one requires a singular decision that'll impact your stats one way or another. Collapse is inevitable, but you learn something each time that helps the next run.

Developer Nerial has made several installments so far, including ones based on Game of Thrones and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Each has distinct mechanics tailored to the setting, and Reigns: Three Kingdoms even included multiplayer. This time, narrative designer Oscar Harrington-Shaw and design director Francois Alliot say the formula is more combat-forward.

"In the fight scenes, we tried to recreate the feeling of the Witcher dancing with a sword around his enemies within the simple format of our game and the swiping mechanic," the devs tell GamesRadar+. "The fights are inspired by Crypt of the Necrodancer, swiping left and right in rhythm to avoid the enemy’s attack while preparing to strike."

Asked how to describe the game to fans of the main RPGs or books, the pair says, "It’s fundamentally a Witcher fan-fiction simulator. You play as Geralt, trying to survive on the Path, but within the songs of Dandelion. So the scenarios which you face stay true to the confines of the Witcher universe; they’re quests which Geralt plausibly could have gone on, but they’re also storylines which Dandelion has written to entertain an audience, perhaps after one or two drinks.

"Players can expect to see humorous riffs on familiar tales alongside brand new adventures! It will feel both familiar and new to anyone who knows this world."

If it looks and sounds like Geralt dies a lot, that's because he does. "He dies a lot, in very creative manners," the devs say. "Each run is revealed to be Dandelion trying to tell a new story of the Witcher, endlessly making up his adventures and his demises."

Reigns: The Witcher will arrive on February 25, so not long to wait. It's going to be a while for The Witcher 4, but at least we have this to help keep us busy.

"Absolute idiocy" killed The Witcher game that never was, OG dev says, but he's happy CD Projekt Red landed the series in the end: "I love what they've done"

The upcoming The Witcher 4 is going to be tectonic for CD Projekt Red, as an analyst believes it's going to cost the company the bones of one billion dollars. He estimates the total cost of the fantasy sequel will be around 10-times those of the threequel.

Per a report from Mateus Chrzanowski of Noble Securities, via Strefa Inwestorow (machine translated) and Clawsome Gamer, The Witcher 4's total budget is estimated to be (at the current conversion rate) in the realm of $778.9 million US dollars, a jump on every other release CD Projekt has shipped to date. But while the development costs alone are substantial, they aren't all that'll be impacting the bottom line.

Rather, the press and marketing might cost the same as production. Chrzanowski believes the next mainline Witcher game will run CD Projekt around $389 million to develop. This comes from increased costs, a larger team, higher ambitions for the game itself, and all sorts of other budgetary concerns.

Support around the launch – public events, big reveals, social media campaigns and such – is likely to come in for about the same amount, Chranowski believes. Similar to the actual production of the game, it's easy to believe these numbers when you consider having to pay for prime spots at industry-leading showcases like The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest, the labor in creating those trailers, and then travelling around for months of interviews.

This is the same company that got Keanu Reeves involved to both be a character in Cyberpunk 2077 and assist in the pre-release buzz. Hollywood legends aren't cheap in any capacity, and it's safe to assume the studio hopes to make this a trend. For comparison's sake, The Witcher 3 cost something in the region of $81 million all in, and Cyberpunk's came in at $400 million, accounting for the whole release.

The Witcher 4 is looking like it'll be a behemoth, but the franchise is now much bigger with the Netflix show and the gradual rise of CD Projekt itself. We possibly haven't seen the last of The Wild Hunt either, as Chrzanowski predicts another DLC this year. It could be a big year for Geralt, all to prepare for his grandest chapter yet.

Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod creator isn't ruling out making it free following DMCA from CD Projekt Red, but says it's kind of pointless now because people are pirating it to "punish" him