CD Projekt is focused on The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 right now, but it’s also got a brand new IP in the works, codenamed Project Hadar. And while Hadar is shrouded in mystery, a new job advert has teased what to expect, although given it’s a CD Projekt game, perhaps none of this should come as a surprise.
As spotted by GamesRadar, a job ad for Project Hadar calls for an engineering director who will help “push the envelope for the next, immersive game in the Hadar world, creating an emotional, open-world experience that will stay with gamers.”
Based on that brief description, it sounds like CD Projekt hopes Hadar will become its third tentpole video game franchise, up there with The Witcher and Cyberpunk, and will play along the same lines. Given how successful both series have been, that’s a lofty ambition. But you wouldn’t bet against it, this being CD Projekt’s first own, original IP after developing games for existing properties for close to 20 years.
Hadar, though, is likely still years away, despite official early conceptual work beginning in late 2021. The foundation of the new setting was still in a creative exploration stage a few years ago, and is only now described as being in the “early pre-development” stage. Is Hadar a fantasy title? A sci-fi game? A game in a modern setting? Is it purely single-player or will it have multiplayer? We don’t know.
We do know Hadar is still a relatively small project within CD Projekt itself, with just 24 people working on it, according to the company’s latest financial report. To put that into context, 513 people are working on The Witcher 4, 163 on Cyberpunk 2, and 83 on Sirius, the multiplayer-focused video game set in The Witcher universe. And we now know The Witcher 3 is getting a brand new expansion, although the heavy lifting is being done by Fool’s Theory.
On top of that, CD Projekt has an extremely ambitious plan to launch The Witcher 4, The Witcher 5, and The Witcher 6 all in a six-year time period. It’s this plan which essentially rules out the possibility of expansions for The Witcher 4. And then there’s Cyberpunk 2 to consider. How Hadar slots in CD Projekt’s packed release plans remains to be seen.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
