The Witcher 4 has "completely new regions" and monsters, including one the game director calls a "tricky, tricky bastard" that "plays with your own fears"

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Leave us alone, Bauk!

The Witcher 4 screenshot showing a huge towering beast
(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

The Witcher 4 will take place in the series' unnamed Continent, where grass spills over everything like champagne on a tablecloth, like always. But, this time around, players will get to experience brand new regions and nightmare beasts, including one that's apparently a real bastard.

A "tricky, tricky, tricky bastard" to be exact, according to game director Sebastian Kalemba in a recent interview with Gamertag Radio co-host Parris Lilly. Its name is Bauk, and you'll find it nestled in one of the "amazing," "completely new regions" Kalemba hints at to Lilly. 

"Fate cannot be changed," it pronounces as if gagging, its skin stretched tight over its beak, threatening to pop Ciri's eye out. 

Appropriately, Kalemba tells Lilly that this version of Bauk "plays with your own fears," and says he loves that aspect of the monster encounter.

"When you look at The Witcher, the way we dealt with the word 'monster,' we deal with it in a completely different perspective since The Witcher 1," Kalemba continues. Initially in the series, you had to "deal with a regular monster, then you had humans that behave monstrously. Then, here, you have inner demons that you have to fight first to be able to finally spot [Bauk] and to kill it." 

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.