CD Projekt Red has officially unveiled The Witcher 4, previously known by its internal project codename Polaris, and it'll star Geralt's ward Ciri as she embarks on her own Witcher Path.
The cinematic reveal trailer for The Witcher 4 was shown during yesterday's Game Awards, where we also got reveals for the likes of Okami 2, the new Naughty Dog game, and co-op survival spinoff Elden Ring Nightreign.
In the trailer, we see Ciri taking on a witcher contract to dispatch a monster "demanding ritual sacrifice", as CD Projekt Red says. A villager attempts to stop her going after the girl who has been chosen for sacrifice, but she angrily retorts that it wasn't the gods who chose the girl, but the villagers themselves.
We see Ciri venture into the forest where the monster lives, dispatching it in a typically Witcher-esque combat scene that feels very weighty and heavy.
She returns to the village with the monster's head, whereupon the girl from the beginning of the trailer apparently dies in her father's arms. The villagers say they only wanted the girl to "go to the gods", whereupon Ciri responds that "there are no gods here, there are only monsters".
It all looks like typically riveting, typically grounded Witcher stuff, and it's nice to see Ciri taking Geralt's role as the protagonist, especially given that she seems to be a less detached and more fiery Witcher than he was.
In an announcement post, CD Projekt Red says the trailer was pre-rendered using "a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU", presumably referring to the mooted 50 series, which has yet to be revealed.
Last month, CDPR said production on the new Witcher game was ramping up, so its announcement during yesterday's Game Awards makes a lot of sense.
The studio is promising "the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game to date", but we still don't have a release window for it yet, unfortunately. We'll likely have to wait a while for more info, so watch this space.
