The Witcher and Cyberpunk studio CD Projekt Red has teased a couple more details about its upcoming new IP, Hadar, which is set to be an "emotional, open-world experience."
Very little is known about Hadar, which was first announced back in 2022 when it was "in the earliest stages of the creative process." The team is clearly making steady progress, though – this March, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski stated that "the team has established the foundations of this entirely new IP," with the devs "designing specific elements that might be included in the game, creating multiple prototypes and implementing them directly in Unreal Engine." Now, the company is hiring for multiple roles to bring Hadar to life, with one revealing a few more details about the project.
As stated in a job ad, the engineering director listing is looking for someone who "will help push the envelope for the next, immersive game in the Hadar world, creating an emotional, open-world experience that will stay with gamers." This isn't the first time that CD Projekt Red has hinted about Hadar being an "emotional" experience – last year, prospective quest designers were told that they should be "passionate about narrative-driven and emotional design" in another job listing, making it sound like the story will be of great importance, as it is in the studio's other games.
Interestingly, the reference to an "open-world experience" doesn't feature in the other Hadar job listings – given the studio's previous games and their own open worlds, it's not too shocking to hear the term crop up here, but it's another exciting nugget of information that can help us imagine what the game might look like.
It's all very intriguing, though I imagine it's still going to be some time before we see what Hadar is all about. In CD Projekt Red's latest financial results presentation last week, it confirmed that there were 24 developers working on the game as of April 30 – down two from the end of February this year. To put it into perspective, as of the latest count, there were 513 devs working on The Witcher 4, 163 on Cyberpunk 2, and 83 on Project Sirius, so it's comparatively a very small team right now.
We also now know that The Witcher 3 is getting a new expansion, Songs of the Past, next year, and CD Projekt Red also teased that "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." Needless to say, the team is very busy – fans have a lot to look forward to in the future.
Be sure to check out our roundup of all the upcoming CD Projekt Red games to get up to date.
