Coming after what is commonly regarded as one of the finest open-world role-playing games ever made, CD Projekt Red will have to go the extra mile with The Witcher 4 to deliver a game that will meet the high expectations its predecessor has set. Although it was eventually fixed and improved, Cyberpunk 2077's known launch woes are making more than a few worried that the studio's next big adventure will have a similarly troubled release. However, the Polish developer is imposing certain requirements to prevent the same development chaos that affected their previous games.
“We've got some new requirements, especially a new definition of 'done',” said senior technical writer Adrian Fulneczek during a presentation held at this year's Digital Dragons, as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun.
This new set of requirements is in place for both The Witcher 4 and the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, and the accurate documentation will benefit both teams. Technical writer team lead Jarosław Ruciński explained that every project milestone now ends with a strict gate. Part of the requirements to pass that gate is the documentation, which wasn't the case during the production of their older titles.
With a greater care in keeping the documentation available to developers, the development chaos that impacted even The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt should not happen with the studio's future projects. Interestingly enough, the one game that did not suffer from it before the enforcement of the new requirements was Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, which Jarosław Ruciński described as the studio's best documented game.
“In a live service environment, which you could argue Gwent was, it is easy to say that you don't have the time to document everything, because the game is changing so fast,” he said. “It receives patches, new content, new balance, every month. So all those documents need to be constantly updated, and somebody has to do that. It is a cost.” This upfront cost, however, was offset by allowing new artists, coders, and designers to contribute instantly to any task, highlighting the importance of maintaining documentation and how it doesn't slow development down but, in fact, accelerates it.
Hopefully, it won't take much longer to see if CDPR's new documentation requirements will indeed bear fruit for The Witcher 4 (or even for the next The Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past). Following the game's reveal at The Game Awards 2024, we only got a short glimpse at how CD Projekt Red will take advantage of the generational leap since The Witcher 3 with last year's impressive tech demo. Since then, the Polish developer has kept the lid tightly closed on a game that will honor its predecessor's legacy without trying to outdo it.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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