CD Projekt RED have told Polish gaming site Polygamia.pl that they're working on a brand new AAA title , set in a “totally different universe” to their popular Witcher RPG series . More exact details haven't been confirmed, but it makes total sense for the new game to be a sci-fi RPG.
“The biggest news is that we are going to work on a new IP, a totally new title,” Adam Badowski, a studio director at CD Projekt RED, told Polygamia. When the presenter guessed that new title was a sci-fi game, Badowski replied with, “You can keep guessing all you want, but we will reveal more when the time is right.”
It makes a lot of sense for CD Projekt RED to move into the sci-fi arena, after all both BioWare and Bethesda have been highly successful with their Mass Effect and Fallout series. The Witcher series has shown that the CD Projeky RED has an anatomical view of RPG mechanics, presumably gleamed from their many years pulling American games to bits and reassembling them for Polish audiences. A Polish take on the sci-fi RPG genre will be a world away from Fallout's dusty Americana cheese and Mass Effect's digs at Republicanism, too - and this is a very good thing.
Early in 2010 CD Projekt canned a sci-fi project, a British-set first person shooter called They. The game was included when CD Projekt bought fellow Polish studio Metropolis Software (Gorky 17) in 2008 - but Badowski is keen to point out that the new IP will not be They. “It was Metropolis' brand, we would like to go in a completely different direction.”
Badowski is firmly tight-lipped about the new project, but he does admit that it's going to be a AAA-title, and aimed at a similarly mature audience as The Witcher 2. Which probably means boobies. It's going to follow The Witcher's labyrinthine plotting, too. “We would like to take advantage of the experience we've gained while working on both parts of The Witcher - both very complex and non-linear games” said Badowski. “We definitely would like to build on that experience while working on the new title.”
When questioned on the setting, Badowski said, “This game will be set in a totally different universe, and that's the best part about it. It's too early to reveal what setting [it will] be though.” The use of the word “universe” is enough to convince us that the new game definitely features a sci-fi setting, and will definitely be called “Universe Game: Witcher in Space”.
