As troubled as Cyberpunk 2077 was at launch, it's remarkable to think back to what a CD Projekt Red game looked like just 12 years before. The first Witcher game is almost comically rudimentary next to the lavishly motion captured, ray traced first-person world of Cyberpunk. But it was fun, with a fantasy setting that felt different to other RPGs I'd played at the time. The graphical leap in 2011's The Witcher 2 was nothing short of stunning, and the quality of the sidequests in The Witcher 3's massive open world made CD Projekt my favorite RPG developer just four years later. I'm thinking about that progression now that CD Projekt is moving on to work on Cyberpunk 2077's sequel—and so are the developers.
"Consider The Witcher games and how much they changed with each installment. We want a similar evolution here," narrative director Igor Sarzyński said in a recent interview with PC Gamer.
