CD Projekt Red just bagged one of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's lead designers for The Witcher 4 and suddenly I'm far more interested in Ciri's upcoming adventure

I am approximately eight months late to the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 party but I am having an absolute whale of a time so far. It's both obtuse and devilishly moreish in a way that caused me to sink 20 hours into the thing in just two days, and I haven't felt this much comfort from videogame jank since I first popped a copy of Skyrim into my Xbox 360 instead of going to school.

It's managed to get its hooks into me far more than The Witcher 3 ever did despite my repeated attempts to love the game (sorry to our unofficial PC Gamer mascot Geralt of Rivia) but I'm certainly far more interested in the upcoming The Witcher 4 now that CD Projekt Red has managed to scoop up some major talent from KCD2 developer Warhorse.

As reported by Eurogamer, Karel Kolmann revealed on X that he had joined the Cyberpunk and Witcher developer along with the message "Things are happening!" Kolmann's previous work at Warhorse spanned eight years and roles like writer, game designer, scripter, and then lead gameplay designer between May and November this year. He was the lead behind KCD2's Hardcore mode as well as lending a hand in developing the game's crime and punishment system.

Now at CD Projekt Red, he's been bestowed the title of Senior Quest Designer for The Witcher 4, which does have me a little bit giddy about what kinda stuff he'll be cooking up for Ciri and co. I feel like there's plenty of transferable skills here—the two series operate on some similar ground-level vibes and CDPR co-CEO Adam Badowski has even specifically cited Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 as inspiration for the upcoming Witcher game.

"The Kingdom Come kind of simulation, it's great," he told PC Gamer earlier this year. "There's so many options, you can change the world, it's super great. And we would like to keep that, we'd like to follow this trend as well. So these are our next steps for sure, and it's kind of a similar challenge to what we have in The Witcher 3 because of the open world and storytelling here, freedom of choices."

Kolmann's near-decade of Kingdom Come knowledge will most definitely come in handy, though we'll have to wait a while to see any of it come to fruition: development on the game only kicked off in full towards the end of last year, and the earliest we can expect to see The Witcher 4 right now is 2027 since a 2024 earnings presentation told us "All we could share now to give more visibility to investors is that the game will not be launched within the time frame of the first target for the incentive program, which ends December 31, 2026." Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.