The Witcher Remake: Release Date and What To Expect

There was great excitement when CD Projekt Red announced that The Witcher Remake was in the works in October 2022. The official Witcher website revealed that the Polish studio Fool's Theory, which employs former Witcher employees, is currently teaming up on the Remake.

Those unaware of Fool's Theory are the developers responsible for a fantastic adventure RPG game, The Thaumaturge. Former CDPR employee and Fool's Theory co-owner Jakub Rokosz was a senior quest designer on The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 for five years, from 2010 to 2015. Along with Larian Studios, more than fifty developers at the company have worked on various projects, including Divinity: Original Sin 2 DLC and Baldur's Gate 3. They were also involved in Outriders and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, so all things considered, it's a solid team.

As for The Witcher Remake and its developer, CDPR's head, Adam Badowski, said: - Working with Fool's Theory on The Witcher Remake is equally exciting. Some of their staff have worked on previous Witcher games, so they have a good grasp of the source material, an understanding of how eager gamers are for the remake to happen, and a knack for creating ambitious and visually stunning games. Even though we won't be able to reveal much about the game for a while, it will be well worth the wait.

It's great to hear that Fool's Theory has Badowski's support. However, the previous game left a lot of high expectations, and combat is one area that clearly needs a major overhaul. In its present form, The Witcher 1 is somewhat unorthodox. Even in The Witcher 3, players have voiced their displeasure with the game's combat mechanism, but so far, CDPR has failed to resolve the issue.

Fortunately, they have made strides in this area with Cyberpunk 2077, but combat has been a long-standing complaint with the series. So, I'm more interested in this area to see how Fool's Theory approaches it. It is more likely that they will attempt a complete overhaul of the fighting system. Considering the remake is built on Unreal Engine 5, I doubt whether they want to replicate the Witcher 3's fighting. I would actually rather have a new approach.

The most critical element missing from combat, in my opinion, is depth, along with intensity and accuracy. The fighting in The Witcher 1 is terrible, and in The Witcher 3, it's a little too easy. It seems fitting that Geralt of Rivia, a demon hunter with superhuman abilities, be shown in battle. He is a beast, after all. I don't mean they have to develop a whole new system; they could easily use the fighting from The Witcher 3 or even improve upon it from The Witcher 1, but I would rather have a more involved journey.

It was revealed at the game's announcement that The Witcher Remake would be an open-world role-playing game, in case you were unaware. While it wasn't technically an open-world game, The Witcher 1 has several significant landscapes and smaller, more limited regions. But there will be an open universe in the remake.

I don't think it will be completely smooth since the Witcher 1 tutorial begins in Kaer Morhen, and then the game moves on to Vizima and the surrounding area once the lesson ends. In The Witcher 3, the only location in Vizima that could be explored was the Royal Palace. Now, picture this: as you exit the castle, you find yourself in a walled city. The Witcher 1 allowed you to roam both the city center and the outskirts of Vizima.

They will turn Vizima and the surrounding regions into one big open environment for the remake, which is probably how they originally envisioned. Nevertheless, the areas were probably first divided because of technical limitations. The fact that CDPR had to put in so much effort to make The Witcher 1 as good as it was is justified because it employed Bioware's Aurora engine, also used for Neverwinter Nights. The vast environment and the sheer amount of exploring in The Witcher 3 are two of my favorite parts of the game. Therefore, I am certain that the open world will work well in The Witcher 1 Remake, even if they just accomplish a quarter of what they did with Wicker 3.

The first thing to consider is that the first Witcher game had a lot of problems, such as a complicated alchemy system that many players found frustrating, an inventory management system that was poorly designed, and an awkward and unintuitive user interface. As every PC player who has used mods knows, Rise of the White Wolf is an essential PC mod. The user interface (UI) and combat are two areas that might require some improvement; nevertheless, I believe that the UI could be simplified to make it more user-friendly and in keeping with modern games.

Also, there were a lot of fetch quests, and the initial quest design was shallow, so it seemed repetitious. Redesigning the missions with more interesting goals and maybe even offering several means to achieve them would make them more fun to play again and again. Given Jakub's background as a Quest Designer for The Witcher 3 and CEO of Fool's Theory, I'm assuming this will be one area where the remake significantly improves.

There will be noticeable improvements to the visual quality and visuals because the game is being rebuilt using the Unreal Engine 5. The original's graphics were great considering the engine they used, but they looked a little old-fashioned now. It would be great if the graphics were updated and the animations and cutscenes were improved, and this will undoubtedly happen.

Speaking with Fool's Theory's CEO, they stress the need to stay true to the original while updating it for modern audiences. Additionally, he said that some problematic portions would be revised or eliminated. In response, Jakob mentioned that they must first and foremost have an honest, realistic assessment of what has to be changed and what may be kept, emphasizing what is good and should be kept or direct essential pillars that must not be removed. Regarding fixing the "bad" portions, let's just say that the remake will probably change or eliminate a certain card game from the original.

With everything out of the way, is there a rough release date in mind for The Witcher Remake? Unfortunately, the remake will not be occurring anytime soon. It will be quite a while. The president and joint CEO of CD Projekt Red Group said, while discussing the release timeframe of Project Polaris and The Witcher Remake, Regarding the future of The Witcher Remake, my current thoughts on the project dictate that it will follow Polaris, The Witcher 4.

The Witcher Remake will likely draw heavily from Polaris's technology, so development on both will occur simultaneously. However, once Polaris was released, all its assets reached their final form, and some were reused in the remake. This makes perfect sense, in my opinion. Since they will already have the development done, they could also recycle some of the gameplay features from previous games—like The Witcher 4 or The Witcher Polaris—for the remake. This includes parts like combat and other gameplay elements.

Although that's rational, the thought of waiting four to five years for Project Polaris to be released before receiving The Witcher Remake is absolutely insane. This suggests the remake won't be out for at least another year, maybe even two. This indicates that The Witcher 1 might not be published until 2028, perhaps 2029, or even later, with a reveal taking place a year or two before release. Given that The Witcher 1 takes about 40 to 50 hours to complete, it's not unexpected that the development team at Fool's Theory would take longer to complete a full remake utilizing a new engine. With a more extensive remake, it wouldn't be shocking if The Witcher Remake slipped into 2030.