The first world premiere trailer shown at the 2024 Game Awards was CD Projekt RED’s first look at The Witcher IV. We watched a pre-rendered movie running on an unreleased GeForce RTX graphics card (likely the RTX 5090, the rumors suggest will be released next month) and shows the well-known process of a The Witcher quest. A young woman is pressured into sacrificing herself to a cursed monster that lives in a nearby forest, but Cirilla Fiona Riannon intervenes and kills the monster first to save the girl… or so she thought.

When Ciri returns to the village, she finds the girl dead, having been stabbed because she did not go through the supposed protective ritual. Then she says that there are monsters here like humans and no gods.

It’s about as much The Witcher as you could hope for. Of course, there is no release window, but the press release provides some details about the game. Sebastian Kalemba, game director of The Witcher IV, explained:

We’re starting a brand new Witcher saga, this time with Ciri at the heart of the story! It feels so good to finally be able to say these words – we’ve known for a long time that we wanted Ciri to be the protagonist of The Witcher IV; It just felt natural to us and we believe Ciri deserves it. In this game we want to explore what it means to truly become a sorcerer by following Ciri on her journey. This trailer is a taste of both and shows how dark and grounded the world of The Witcher can be.

The trailer is based on the same technology as The Witcher IV and uses elements and models from the game itself. The aim of the trailer is to give players a cinematic glimpse of the type of experience the game is intended to offer.

The game is in full production and we could potentially play it in the next few years.