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The Witcher 4: Dev Confirms Teaser Is a Brand New Witcher School

kingfey

Banned

CD Projekt Red has confirmed the medallion featured in its new Witcher game tease is from a new School of the Lynx, which will seemingly be invented for the new game.

Speaking to Eurogamer, the developer's global communication director Robert Malinowski confirmed that the medallion isn't from any currently canon witcher school. "Some mysteries should not be so mysterious", he said. "I can confirm that the medallion is, in fact, shaped after a lynx."

The previous game's protagonist, Geralt, is from the School of the Wolf, his witcher guild, and the other schools are the Cat, Griffin, Bear, Viper, Manticore, and Crane.

The School of the Lynx is therefore a brand new school that CD Projekt Red is creating for The Witcher 4 (for lack of an official name). This isn't particularly unusual in itself, as Andrzej Sapkowski's original book series only feature the Wolf, Cat, and Griffin schools, and CD Projekt has previously invented others.

While there's no official School of the Lynx in the books or games, a popular Witcher fan fiction features the guild in a story based on other existing Witcher characters Lambert and Keira Metz. There's no word on whether CD Projekt Red was influenced by any of these stories though, meaning the announcement of a brand new school essentially sends theorists back to step one.

The internet was sent into a frenzy when CD Projekt Red made the game announcement on March 21, with fans left debating whether Ciri might be the main character of the new game. The School of the Lynx confirmation doesn't dispel this idea, as while Ciri already wears a School of the Cat medallion one could, for obvious reasons, lead to the other.

Another theory, on the other hand, is now less likely. The teased medallion looked a like fan favourite character, Vesemir's medallion from Netflix's Witcher anime film: Nightmare of the Wolf, but now that it's confirmed not to be a wolf, there's little to suggest the new game will involve Vesemir, especially as he died during the course of the last game.

The new Witcher game was teased just a few hours after a fan potentially found The Witcher 3's final secret, but CD Projekt Red didn't say much else except that the game will run in Unreal Engine 5.

It's director, Jason Slama, commented that he won't allow crunch under his watch, addressing concerns that staff would be forced to work under tough conditions as they did with Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt Red last released a mainline Witcher game with Wild Hunt's release in 2015, but has since released Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher Tales: Thronebreaker, and Gwent. IGN recently gave The Witcher 3 a top spot on our best open world games of all time and in our 9/10 review said "massive in size and meticulously detailed, The Witcher 3 ends Geralt's story on a high note."
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
After Witcher 3? That's hype enough for me. Day one

Day one for me as well. Still... Extremely underwhelming announcement.

R.bac1edb4e3583f7b62a82eb4e4081a6a
 

SaiyanRaoh

Member
Of course it's a new school. The woke crowd wants to appropriate another IP without making their own. And CDPR feeling the need to brown-nose because of recent events will accommodate. And so lets pull out the woke dart board. How many woke tropes will this new witcher school have?
 

Fbh

Member
A new school sounds like it could be a justification to also add a new player created character as the protagonist.

So they now have years to tell us how we'll be able to select different backstories and how they'll affect the way the world interact with our character......only for it to be irrelevant in the final game aside from the prologue.
 

ClosBSAS

Member
good, after the cyberpunk shit they should go back to doing what they do best. Witcher. Day 1 for me just to piss off the REEEEEEtards at ERA.
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
The way this game was "revealed" (announced?) is very underwhelming. Nothing to by hyped about.

I agree but go a step further. It shouldn't have been announced this early. I think they should have waited for the game to be playable all the way through in terms of
development and then announce it.

That way it won't be a 3-5 year wait(minimum) which surely will be the case now with the game and gamers becoming impatient. I thought they had learned some lessons
with Cyberpunk?!
 

Braag

Member
They should just do what Bethesda is doing with TESVI and go radio silent until they have something to show. Don't inflate people's expectations astronomically like with CP2077.
And by something to show, I mean gameplay at least in beta phase. None of that alpha gameplay stuff with experimental features still in development.
 
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Pagusas

Elden Member
why the hell do they announce things half a decade before release???
Lots of reasons:

1. CDR is having a PR issue right now, makes it hard to recruit and get investors
2. Speaking of investors, announcements about a sequel to a best seller bring in increased stock value for a company to leverage for credit/loans and payroll expansion.
3. Recruitment is needed to bring in UE5 engine talent, trying to do that quietly is annoying and not worth it.
4. Most of all, it gives a moral boast to employees who get a kick out of seeing people talking about the project they are working on.
 

TonyK

Member
Ohh, then Geralt is not the main character? A bit worried about a new character, or worse: a character creator like Cyberpunk, Mass Effect, Elden Ring... I really like to play a well written character with his own personality and aspect, like Geralt. He is charismatic, something almost lost in today's games.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Nice! Expanding the canon.

I'd like to see something like "School of the Proboscis Monkey" in future games, a more fearsome creature than the animals that represent the other schools we know of so far.
 

Mozzarella

Member
I liked Witcher games, but im not hyped at all for the new ones, it feels that they shouldve tried to make Vampire The Masquerade instead of this.
Pointless details from them anyway, its not going to release until 2026 at the least.
 

artsi

Member
I agree but go a step further. It shouldn't have been announced this early. I think they should have waited for the game to be playable all the way through in terms of
development and then announce it.

That way it won't be a 3-5 year wait(minimum) which surely will be the case now with the game and gamers becoming impatient. I thought they had learned some lessons
with Cyberpunk?!

CDPR announcing that another Witcher game exists is like Rockstar announcing they're making another GTA.

Everyone knows it's coming at some point so does it really matter if they say it out loud? It's the juicy details people are waiting for.
 
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Trunim

Member
Good news is that they're using UE5. But I really hope this game doesn't have as long development as Cyberpunk. And also the writing in cyberpunk was way worse than in the witcher games.
 
The way this game was "revealed" (announced?) is very underwhelming. Nothing to by hyped about.
This is not a reveal...it's just a teaser that its officially in development. Game could be 2-3 years in development from now. But for any fan, its good to have it confirmed and I think everyone is excited for U5 engine for its visuals and hopefully no jank bugs.
 
Am I the only one who has a bad feeling about this? Expanding the canon beyond the books..? New storylines and characters may turn out like fan fiction.
 
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A.Romero

Member
Am I the only one who has a bad feeling about this? Expanding the canon beyond the books..? New storylines and characters may turn out like fan fiction.
That's pretty much what some of the quests in the games are.

Plus they already added schools before. Viper is not canon and others (it's mentioned in OP).

CDPR might be shit to deliver a technically capable game now but their writing is always on point. The writing is probably the best part of Cyberpunk too.
 
That's pretty much what some of the quests in the games are.

Plus they already added schools before. Viper is not canon and others (it's mentioned in OP).

CDPR might be shit to deliver a technically capable game now but their writing is always on point. The writing is probably the best part of Cyberpunk too.
OK, fair enough! Didn't know that they did it before. And yeah, I absolutely love the quests and writing in Cyberpunk (which is an absolutely amazing game on PC, love it to bits).
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
This is not a reveal...it's just a teaser that its officially in development. Game could be 2-3 years in development from now. But for any fan, its good to have it confirmed and I think everyone is excited for U5 engine for its visuals and hopefully no jank bugs.

The way this game was teased is very underwhelming. Nothing to by hyped about.
 

mutt765

Member
Am I the only one who has a bad feeling about this? Expanding the canon beyond the books..? New storylines and characters may turn out like fan fiction.
I believe the games are a continuation of the books, so you could say they're already fan fiction. My guess would be that Geralt and/or Ciri decide to start a new witcher school somewhere other than Kaer Morhen and we'll be playing as one of their students.
 

Hugare

Member
They should just do what Bethesda is doing with TESVI and go radio silent until they have something to show. Don't inflate people's expectations astronomically like with CP2077.
And by something to show, I mean gameplay at least in beta phase. None of that alpha gameplay stuff with experimental features still in development.
They have shareholders to please, that's why

Being under MS umbrella helps Bethesda to do their own thing at their own time
 

zeorhymer

Member
Ugh...new school invented and it happens to be a Lynx. I know where this is going. Subvert my expectations and show us who is in this school.
 

Vaelka

Member
Imo I'd like a Witcher game where we got to create our own character.
And I don't mean like V in Cyberpunk 2077, V was an already established character you couldn't really RP as you liked.
 

Ristifer

Member
I'm not sure why people are let down by the announcement. Everybody and their brother knew they were working on W4. It was just a matter of time before they formally announced it. Even if they announced this in 2025, it's not like we'd all be sitting here wondering what they were up to. We'd all know. So what's the difference?
 

Sophist

Member
why the hell do they announce things half a decade before release???
CDR stock is still at -60% since Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco. If they need funds, they may issue new shares (stock dilution). higher the trading share price is, better it is for them.
 
I would love it if they would allow some ranged or proper mage combat systems. For all the signs you can use and crossbow as a utility item, it's still a forced melee game. Just some change would be nice.
 
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