Confirmed best PC game Baldur’s Gate 3 brought CRPG stylings back into the spotlight, and more than that, proved the enduring appeal of an exceptionally reactive, player-driven story with emergent narratives and shenanigans aplenty.
But while the game’s success was “an inspiration” according to CD Projekt’s joint CEO Michał Nowakowski, it’s not necessarily the direction development division CD Projekt Red (CDPR)’s games are headed.
Speaking to PC Gamer’s Joshua Wolens, Nowakowski said “There was a lot of inspiration in what Baldur’s Gate 3 did, but I think we’re still sticking to what was in Witcher 3, Cyberpunk. But we don’t want to just make another game like that, just with better graphics. We do want to innovate.”
As for how, Nowakowski didn’t have anything to reveal just yet. But he doubled down on the fact that it wouldn’t resemble Divinity or Baldur’s Gate: “We definitely are not going to make a game like Larian did.
“That’s the kind of game they can make. But a lot of stuff with how they can interact with the world and what it does was, for sure, some inspiration to us.”
Of course, CDPR has taken The Witcher in new directions before with spinoffs like Gwent and Thronebreaker. But as Nowakowski told Joshua, “we made at some point the decision that the in-house team has to focus on the key pillar games rather than doing spinoffs … maybe that’s going to change, but at the moment, the way we are structured right now, we don’t necessarily want to walk away from that.”
I’m keen to see what the next open-world game from CDPR looks like. Cyberpunk took a while to find its footing, but it turned out pretty snazzy in the end, and it’s no secret that The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs in the biz. It cured my open-world fatigue once; maybe the next entry can similarly tear me away from my nth replay of Baldur’s Gate.
