On March 21, CD Projekt Red confirmed a new The Witcher game, revealing a new Unreal Engine 5 partnership with Epic Games. Shortly after that announcement, CD Projekt Red’s global PR director Radek Grabowski had to clarify some important details about this new game and the Epic Games partnership in a tweet:
https://twitter.com/gamebowski/status/1506022957591797760
While this tweet clarifies the biggest misconceptions about CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher announcement, it also highlights that the developer announced the game too quickly and vaguely. CD Projekt Red is already losing control of some of the discussions about the game and risks repeating one of the biggest mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077’s development and marketing: overpromising.
Cyberpunk 2077’s biggest mistake
CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk 2077 at a press conference in May 2012. At the time, the developer promised an “entertaining non-linear story full of life and detail” and features like a variety of character classes to choose from, weapons, upgrades, implants, and more. It said the game would be “set”. [a] “The new standard in the futuristic RPG genre with an extraordinary gaming experience.”
Eight years later, Cyberpunk 2077 won’t be released until December 2020. But in the meantime, CD Projekt Red continues to tease the title with trailers and interviews highlighting the game’s ambitious scope and vision. CD Projekt Red developers emphasized how the main story and sidequests are interconnected, how the game will feature multiplayer, how the police will be very reactive, and more. Although the game looked very impressive before its release, many of these features and promises were either missing or half-hearted in their implementation in Cyberpunk 2077.
cyberpunk 2077 teaser trailer
For eight years, there were promises of an RPG that would change the genre forever, but in the end, we got a fairly standard open-world RPG with a number of technical problems at the time of release. The massive response happened because people were so excited for Cyberpunk 2077, partly because CD Projekt Red had spent eight years promoting all these ambitious features.
The reality is that game development is a difficult journey that doesn’t always go according to plan. Designs change, features are cut, and sometimes the finished product doesn’t come together. CD Projekt Red probably never intended to lie to its fans, but priorities and development timelines changed and what the developer ultimately delivered with Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t right.
Since CD Projekt Red made the mistake of announcing Cyberpunk 2077 too early and too promisingly, I thought the studio would have to share more details about its next game until it gets closer to release. That was not the case.
initial confirmation
CD Projekt Red wasn’t willing to share a development timeline or release window as part of The Witcher announcement, so it’s likely the game is still years away. Although the developer hasn’t revealed many details at this time, announcing the next The Witcher game so soon gives the Polish studio plenty of time to do so. For example, the game’s director is already promising that there will be no glitches during the game’s development, people can hold them accountable for this when stories come out about the game’s development. CD Projekt Red needs to be cautious about what it shares about this new game ahead of launch if it doesn’t want another PR disaster, and this already looks to be getting a little out of hand.
Grabowski’s tweet indicates that there are already some misconceptions about the game. This will likely get worse as CD Projekt Red continues to tease this title in job listings, interviews, and trailers. This is a dangerous approach, so why did the developer do this “initial confirmation” so quickly? There are many reasons for this happening. At first, much of this announcement focused on CD Projekt Red’s partnership with Epic Games and its use of Unreal Engine 5, and the developer wanted to confirm the first game that would feature this partnership to make it more exciting for fans. Will be a part.
Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red is still recovering from the reaction to Cyberpunk 2077’s difficult launch. Announcing a follow-up title to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt now not only restores a little goodwill with fans and investors, but will also attract some Unreal Engine-experienced developers who may have been nervous about coming to CD Projekt Red after Cyberpunk 2077. . 2022 has been a year of regressive and purposefully vague sports announcements. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher announcement is the latest to be part of this trend, but it’s also the most worrying as this developer has made this mistake before.
While CD Projekt Red felt pressured to confirm this game quickly, they need to be very careful if they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077. The best course of action for CD Projekt Red now is to remain completely silent until then. It has a clear idea of what the outcome of the finished game will be. If it is not, all this could lead to disappointment in the year 2030.