Following The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red wants to ensure it doesn't "copy our own tricks all over again and again"

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a mammoth success judging by most metrics. It's not only one of the most acclaimed games of its decade, it's also sold a whopping 60 million copies and passed Super Mario Bros. on the all-time charts. But CD Projekt Red doesn't want to rinse and repeat the formula for its future games.

Joint CEO Adam Badowski said as much in a new podcast looking back on a decade of the generational RPG. "At the very beginning of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we decided to combine those two things: water and fire," Badowski said. "We would like to continue with this approach with all our next games."

Speaking on upcoming CDPR games, the co-studio head explained they "have to add something" in every new release. "We have to add something that changes the consensus. We don't want to copy our own tricks all over again and again. So every game should consist [of] something new."

Badowski acknowledges that CDPR games do tend to follow a loose formula, sure - they're usually "open world, story-driven, quality" RPGs - but, still, "every new game has to bring something new. So this is the general rule for the company."

That should bode well for The Witcher 4, which has had Ciri in the driver's seat ever since 2014, and Cyberpunk 2, which will apparently go beyond Night City with a second area that's like "Chicago gone wrong," according to the original TTRPG's creator.

Elsewhere in the interview, the developers revealed one of the biggest arguments they had while making The Witcher 3 was about just how naked Geralt should be in that infamous bath tub scene.

CDPR devs are so locked into The Witcher 4 that they're apparently using its new control scheme by accident while playing other games