A whole new saga of Witcher games is coming from CD Projekt RED and... Epic?? #witcher #witcher4 #CDPR
- -
For more awesome content, check out →https://whatculture.com/gaming
Catch us on Facebook at →https://www.facebook.com/whatculturegaming
Find us on Twitter → https://twitter.com/wculturegaming
Check out our merch store at → https://wcg.creator-spring.com/?
Why not join our Discord? →https://discord.com/invite/MHBjvVv
WhatCulture Gaming Podcast now available!
iTunes → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1433583146
Spotify →
https://open.spotify.com/show/75Wj1jpLKribbIZKTrf9aI?si=Zj0yx0zpTe-AmFCZXFFI2A&nd=1
WhatCulture Gaming Podcast is also available on Acast, Podbean, Podbay, Podcast Addict, and more to come!
- -
For more awesome content, check out →https://whatculture.com/gaming
Catch us on Facebook at →https://www.facebook.com/whatculturegaming
Find us on Twitter → https://twitter.com/wculturegaming
Check out our merch store at → https://wcg.creator-spring.com/?
Why not join our Discord? →https://discord.com/invite/MHBjvVv
WhatCulture Gaming Podcast now available!
iTunes → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1433583146
Spotify →
https://open.spotify.com/show/75Wj1jpLKribbIZKTrf9aI?si=Zj0yx0zpTe-AmFCZXFFI2A&nd=1
WhatCulture Gaming Podcast is also available on Acast, Podbean, Podbay, Podcast Addict, and more to come!
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, welcome to WhatCultureGaming. I'm Scott, joined by the...
00:03Scott, there's a new Witcher game!
00:04There's a new Witcher game!
00:05There's apparently going to be a whole Witcher saga.
00:08Now, as of five minutes ago, the official Witcher account tweeted out a new piece of artwork right there.
00:14It looks very, very sweet.
00:15And if you click the link, the website's down, because everyone's running to the website to try and get more details on it.
00:19But thankfully, we're on the CDPR press release thing, and they sent us it anyway.
00:23So, this is a new saga of Witcher games.
00:26It's not just an announcement for the upscaled version of The Witcher 3 running on PS5, Series X, or whatever.
00:31It is the next, whatever the next main installment in The Witcher series is.
00:34And even more tantalizing is the fact that they're making a switch to Unreal Engine 5.
00:38Now, if you've seen any of the various Unreal Engine 5 demos during the rounds, that thing is absolutely gorgeous.
00:43An insane piece of tech.
00:45And included in the press release is CDPR saying that until this point, they always use their own game engines.
00:50So, it will be a departure from the way that The Witcher 3 worked.
00:53That is fascinating.
00:54First time they've done a contractual thing with an outside party in this way.
00:58Which is also interesting in that regard, because The Witcher 3 was buggy as hell.
01:02Roach was flying all around the place across Wild Hunt.
01:05What do you think of the old new saga?
01:07Well, I mean, they were never going to give up on The Witcher, were they?
01:09The Witcher is such a profitable series, both in games and now outside of games, with the likes of the TV show.
01:15Obviously, it's based on a very popular book series as well.
01:17So, this was never going to happen.
01:19However, Scott, I did not expect, I did not expect an announcement or even an acknowledgement of an announcement right now.
01:26Because they've just dropped.
01:27A quarter to five in the afternoon.
01:28I mean, yeah. I was literally going home.
01:29On the way home, to be honest.
01:30I was staying and brushing my teeth or something now.
01:31I've got my night bag, so that's alright.
01:33There's a lot of content to be done.
01:35I didn't expect the announcement right now coming after, so soon in fact, after Cyberpunk.
01:41And as far as excited as I am, I wonder how much this is to get a surefire bet in the sights on the roadmap for their company.
01:52To be like, look, there's a Witcher on the way, don't worry.
01:54That's the thing.
01:55Do you think they've been waiting until they could get Cyberpunk back to being stable?
01:59And whoever made this piece of artwork has just been sitting on it for about two years at this point.
02:03Maybe. I mean, you could be entirely right there because this does come, like, what, a month after they dropped the next-gen update for Cyberpunk?
02:10Yeah.
02:11Which kind of essentially finished that game, you know, in a way that should have been two years ago.
02:14Well, the thing is as well, in regards to Cyberpunk, there was always rumblings of more Witcher, like Josh says.
02:19It was something they were never going to abandon.
02:21And they did mention in various investors' calls that they think of the Witcher franchise as one of the pillars of the company.
02:26And it was always that thing going forward where it was going to be Witcher stuff and Cyberpunk stuff.
02:29Now, obviously, Cyberpunk's future is all over the place.
02:32It seems like they've largely ditched the multiplayer component.
02:34When asked about it, they just said, look, we don't know.
02:36That was something that we were planning on doing.
02:38And obviously, they had to spend so much more time getting Cyberpunk to work.
02:41And Cyberpunk's just kind of over there now.
02:43So I wonder if they're just front-loading all the marketing, front-loading the optics of the company with Witcher stuff.
02:47Because 2015's CDPR were flying so high.
02:50Yeah.
02:51And The Witcher 3 is obviously one of the greatest games of all time.
02:53One of the best open-world games of all time.
02:55One of the best things you can do with your time of all time.
02:59And I guess that's the thing.
03:01What do you want from a new Witcher saga?
03:03Because they're getting out there immediately saying it's a whole new saga.
03:05Yeah.
03:06They also said Gero's story was done across the two pieces of DLC that Witcher 3 got.
03:10Yeah, it being a saga is incredibly tantalizing.
03:13I want to know what route they go down with that.
03:15But from a sort of gameplay perspective, I'm excited to see what they're going to do to innovate.
03:20Because, you know, there are big jumps in quality and kind of ambition.
03:24If you go from The Witcher 1, which was obviously, you know, kind of very scrappy, very underdoggy.
03:28Like this RPG that didn't quite fully come together but had a lot of limitations.
03:32Number 2 was like a big strive forward.
03:34And number 3, obviously, was this big AAA blockbuster that went open-world and did, like,
03:39so, so much and started competing on the level of Skyrim.
03:42To me, it's like, do we see another jump of that caliber?
03:45Or do we see, essentially, The Witcher 3 too?
03:48Because I wouldn't mind The Witcher 3 too.
03:50But you have to imagine that this is going to be a few years out yet.
03:53Well, the thing is, like, it's interesting in regards to where the open-world space is at.
03:56Because there are big open-world parts of The Witcher 2.
03:58But like you said, it's a bit more linear to use a term for it.
04:01And there are, like, there's a big branching pathway in that game where you pick which half of the game you want to play.
04:05But The Witcher 3, you know, was one of those games that sort of pioneered the whole,
04:08here's a question mark, here's a thing, go hoover up this whole world in whatever order you want.
04:12And it wasn't as icon-filled as an Assassin's Creed or an Ubisoft template or what's now become the Sony formula.
04:17But I feel like they straddle quite a nice line between sheer discovery and, you know, waypointing and telling you where to go.
04:23So I wonder, now that we've had Elden Ring, now that we've had the likes of Immortals, Phoenix Rising and whatever.
04:28I wonder, or Breath of the Wild, I wonder what they do.
04:31How much of, you know, how much Elden Ring is going to be in The Witcher 4, basically.
04:35Or whatever the Witcher thing turns into.
04:37I am more interested in how much of cyberpunk is going to be in The Witcher 4.
04:40Because when that game worked, I really enjoyed it.
04:42But its approach to open-world game design, infamously, for better and mostly for worse, was more inspired by the likes of GTA and stuff.
04:49Where you had all of these icons, all of these things to do, all of these kind of errands to run, you know, whether you were just stopping petty crimes or what have you.
04:56That thing was packed in.
04:58True.
04:59More than The Witcher 3, in my opinion.
05:01Like you said, The Witcher 3 was kind of more exploration-driven, at least I think.
05:04Just like the question marks.
05:05Yeah, you had the question marks.
05:06You didn't necessarily know what you were.
05:08You were invited to kind of look.
05:09And I know Cyberpunk had it, but to me it was way more of the Ubisoft mold, if that makes sense.
05:14So I am fascinated to see how they react to that, considering that The Witcher 3 was such a pioneer in the open-world space.
05:20If you look at a lot of Sony's first-party open-world games, they're incredibly inspired by The Witcher 3.
05:26Even Assassin's Creed now, you know, has so much of The Witcher 3's DNA in it.
05:31Oh god, yeah.
05:32That kind of formula has become standardised in a lot of ways.
05:34So yeah, in response to the likes of Breath of the Wild, in response to Elden Ring, how do they shake it up?
05:39Because, you know, for what issues CD Projekt has, they are great at building a world.
05:46Well, the thing that's interesting, that's the thing, Witcher 3's overall world, like, and especially when you first get to Valen, like, it has such a specific feel.
05:53Skellige has such a specific feel.
05:54And it's interesting because a lot of the, or some of the key figures behind The Witcher 3 have left CDPR.
06:00They left during Cyberpunk's development.
06:02And I wonder if any of those people come back.
06:04Because I remember watching a documentary about, even they thought about the literal topography of the land itself.
06:08They would want to make it so that a village was next to a stream and there was, like, fish in that river.
06:11You would make sense why the village was living off that stream.
06:13They thought of all those things.
06:15It made perfect sense in that regard, ecological sense or whatever.
06:18So I kind of, I question what, you know, a next generation Witcher looks like when it's made on Unreal Engine 5.
06:24Which is something that we, you know, we've not seen Unreal 5 fully been fleshed out yet.
06:27But I hope that solves the technical side of it.
06:29Because Witcher 3 was dogged by a lot of bugs at launch.
06:32But also that maybe takes the impetus away from our, like, putting so much influence on, or interest, into making sure the game is smooth.
06:39They can just go, well, the engine's solid, we can do everything else instead.
06:42True.
06:43There's no mention of platforms, but assumedly it'll be on next-gen consoles, I would hope, exclusively.
06:47You have to think, yeah.
06:48Like, I really hope that CDPR does go, well, we've got access to Unreal 5, it's the Witcher mythos, let's do an actual full next-gen thing.
06:55Well, again, for better or worse, CD Projekt Red has almost been defined on, like, trying to create technologically pushing games.
07:02You know, you look at The Witcher 1, you look at The Witcher 2 especially, which was, like, a PC powerhouse back in the day.
07:07Obviously, The Witcher 3 was very, kind of, pushing the limits in terms of its tech.
07:11So to get an engine like that, like you say, that hopefully kind of just works, and they can build up the foundations off of to avoid the issues that plagued their previous games.
07:19Hopefully that's a step in the right direction.
07:21However, I come to the question of...
07:23Go on.
07:24We are obviously very excited right now doing this news.
07:26It's the end of the day, a new Witcher's been announced, obviously that's exciting.
07:29However, for me personally, after the Cyberpunk fiasco, I'm not going to suddenly start saying that it's a surefire bet.
07:35The Witcher 4 is going to be amazing just because The Witcher 3 was.
07:38To me, I'm at a position right now where they have to prove themselves to me yet again.
07:43Like, they just do, man.
07:45I know.
07:46They're in a position where they don't have the goodwill that we gave them for so long for, you know, the Cyberpunk years.
07:52And I'm like, right, I love The Witcher, I like CD Projekt Red in theory, I want them to be back where they were,
07:57but I need to see proof that this isn't going to be another Cyberpunk.
08:01Yeah, that's an extremely valid point.
08:03That I think the artwork is cool, everyone loves The Witcher, like whatever, I read the books and everything else.
08:07There's a lot of fan love in there.
08:09But yeah, massively valid.
08:11Like, it can't be overstated how much they dropped the ball and then sat on it when it came to Cyberpunk,
08:15and how long that game took to just be in a remotely sellable state as it should have been back in 2020.
08:20It's interesting though in regards to the staff that were responsible for that, the individual figureheads,
08:24the likes of Adam Badalski who was highlighted in the various behind the scenes reports,
08:27and the fact that the devs in the art department and everyone were just saying,
08:30this game needs two more years, and now you look at the version of Cyberpunk that's in 2022,
08:34and it's the one that should have come in 2020.
08:36That's not to excuse anything, but I wonder, or I have to hope, rather hope, rather than wonder,
08:41that they've learned from that, and that the various coding departments have the sway to say,
08:45remember Cyberpunk? Let's never do that again.
08:48Yeah.
08:49And let's compare and contrast with The Witcher 3.
08:51I also hope that The Witcher 3 is getting its next-gen update, because on the PC,
08:56I think it's just a PC mod, but there's a photo mode in there, you know, the game looks gorgeous,
09:00and I think that it will be a nice twofer if they, they might have tweeted it right now for all we know,
09:04we're in this room.
09:05But they should do something with The Witcher 3 in the moment, just to sort of go like,
09:09by the way guys, we used to be good and incredible, and here's why.
09:13I think that's going to hold sober, because I imagine just based on this announcement,
09:16based on like the artwork, based on the tentative kind of trickle of information that we've just got,
09:22this is not necessarily going to be a Cyberpunk situation when that was announced in like 2012,
09:26it was 2012, it was before Witcher 3.
09:28The original teaser was.
09:29Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think it'll take as long as that,
09:31but I can't imagine we're getting this for another four years or something, if not longer,
09:35so the Witcher 3 remaster that has been promised, like that will be a nice stopgap,
09:40and hopefully they just take the time to get it right, you know,
09:42I'm not expecting this thing to drop next year, the year after, even the year after that.
09:46I think it's going to be a long time coming, but like you said,
09:48I don't think a company of this size, of any size, can make the Cyberpunk mistake twice,
09:53and I just feel like they've got to take that on board, they know they're fighting an uphill battle,
09:57and hopefully they just take the time that is needed to do justice to this brand.
10:02Yeah, I think the whole idea of signing with Epic and doing the Unreal Engine 5 thing
10:07should free up some level of production that means this maybe doesn't take years and years to come,
10:12like with Death Stranding, you know, like Kojima went ahead and used the Decimer engine,
10:15Guerrilla helped with that stuff, and it meant that Death Stranding was turned around,
10:18I think almost entirely in about three years.
10:20Yeah.
10:21Either three or four years, there's a whole timeline Kojima put out on Twitter,
10:23but it points to a potential release of the game that doesn't take the rest of the generation to actually appear.
10:32But who knows?
10:33I'll believe it when I see it.
10:34Exactly. Believe it when you see it.
10:35But for right now, potential excitement, and hopefully we'll not get too carried away
10:38in regards to what we did with all the Cyberpunk stuff.
10:40Let us know what you think down in the comments below of the idea of a new Witcher saga.
10:43What do you want to see? Custom Witches? More Geralt somehow? Let us know.
10:47For now, I've been Scott from WhatCulture.com.
10:48I've been Josh from WhatCulture.com.
10:49And we'll catch you next time.
10:50Bye-bye.
10:51Bye-bye.
10:52Bye-bye.
Comments