Epic Games' recent State of Unreal 2025 showcase saw CD Projekt Red unveil more of The Witcher 4 and its features in a new tech demo – and while some of the new RPG's elements may be reminiscent of past genre gems, developers are mostly keeping to their own niche.
CD Projekt Red explains some of what it does, however, look for in other studios' titles for inspiration to PC Gamer in an interview, starting with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. "I love Kingdom Come because of the realism and the feeling, the sense of humor," admits co-CEO Adam Badowski. The more systems-heavy and simulation-aligned aspects of the RPG are areas CD Projekt Red pays the most attention to, as they might translate well into The Witcher 4.
"The Kingdom Come kind of simulation, it's great," continues the lead. "There are so many options, you can change the world, it's super great. And we would like to keep that, we'd like to follow this trend as well. So these are our next steps for sure, and it's kind of a similar challenge to what we have in The Witcher 3 because of the open world and storytelling here, freedom of choices." Nailing Kingdom Come's "kind of simulation" isn't easy, though.
"But at the same time, we would like to build very fleshy, very well-motivated characters. So it's kind of in contradiction from time to time. That's a great design challenge." As for other beloved recent RPGs, like Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3, Badowski explains the inspiration drawn by CD Projekt Red from them hits a bit differently – after all, the turn-based style doesn't exactly fit well into the team's open-world "niche" of games like The Witcher 4.
"In Larian's case, it's turn-based, so it's a different kind of game, and the way you interact with characters is totally different," he says. "We like to fully build the characters, understand the past and the future of the characters' motivation. That's why it takes so much time. [In Baldur's Gate 3] there are great characters as well, but sometimes your choices, because there's freedom of choice in Larian's work, it pushes you to use different tricks than ours."
That doesn't mean CD Projekt Red doesn't ever admire Larian's work, however: "I think we observe each other, and there are not that many games like that, so that's natural, yeah, and we see how players react, how fans react to those tactics." Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski adds: "I think we're still more in the, you know, we're a big open world, but a lot of what Baldur's Gate 3 showed was an inspiration, and to be honest, there's no shame in that."
It's not strange for devs to explore fellow devs' work, even if it differs a bit, as Nowakowski details. "I think everybody who launches games nowadays is looking back on what was done before, and is looking at what worked and what was great and how and if they can fit it into whatever they are doing." CD Projekt Red will, for the most part, stick to its own past games for the bulk of its inspiration while developing new titles, though.
"So, for sure, there was a lot of inspiration in what BG3 did, but I think we're still more sticking to what was The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk, even if we don't want to just make another game like that, just with better graphics," as Nowakowski says – but it'll all be bigger and better. "We do want to innovate in terms of what's available in terms of gameplay and so on. I hope when the time comes, that's going to become clear for the fans as well."
Concluding CD Projekt Red's thoughts on inspiration drawn from Baldur's Gate 3 and the like, Nowakowski clarifies his and Badowski's words so far: "It's a bit of an unclear answer, but to make it more clear, we definitely are not going to make a game like Larian did. That's the kind of game they can make. But a lot of stuff with how the characters can interact with the world and what it does was for sure some inspiration to us."
Need even more to look forward to? Here are other new games coming this year and beyond.
