Highlights

  • The Witcher 4's release is highly anticipated but shrouded in mystery, with speculations about the setting and protagonist swirling.
  • Gwent, the popular card game from The Witcher series, faces uncertainty with the end of standalone development, but could find new life in Witcher 4.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains a standout in the franchise, following Geralt's quest to find Ciri, with Gwent and other beloved features.

Though virtually nothing official is known about it yet, The Witcher 4 is still one of the most anticipated games in development right now. Following its tentative announcement in October 2022, CD Projekt Red confirmed that The Witcher 4 - codenamed Project Polaris - would be just the first installment in a new Witcher series, set to be some kind of sequel to both the original Witcher trilogy and the original novels the video games are based on.

Naturally, this has led to some pretty rabid speculation among fans, most of which has revolved around the sequel's potential protagonist, and its setting. But regardless of where or when The Witcher 4 takes place, there's one beloved feature of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that's likely to benefit from a sequel no matter what, and that's Gwent.

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The Witcher 4's Release Is a Win-Win Situation for Gwent

The Witcher 4's Setting Is a Complete Mystery Right Now

A now-infamous image, CD Projekt Red has only released one official promotional poster for The Witcher 4, currently known only as Project Polaris. The game's first and only image depicts a Witcher's medallion lying in the snow. A simple, but deceptively deep image, this Witcher medallion acts as a teaser that The Witcher 4 could revolve around a new protagonist, and potentially a whole new school of Witchers, with the medallion resembling the face of a lynx, as opposed to the face of a wolf, which can be seen on Geralt's.

But aside from this general tease of a new protagonist, and potentially a new setting, no official news has been given about The Witcher 4's story or context. One popular theory is that the sequel could be set in the near future, where players take control of Ciri as she tries to set up her own Witcher school. Another theory suggests that The Witcher 4 could be set hundreds of years in the future, where the world looks drastically different from how players remember it in Wild Hunt.

Any News Is Good News for Gwent

But regardless of where or when The Witcher 4 ends up being set, it's a win-win situation for Gwent. First introduced as a surprisingly deep playable mini-game in The Witcher 3, Gwent quickly became a major highlight of the sprawling fantasy RPG, and seeing an opportunity to take the game to new heights, CD Projekt Red produced a standalone version of Gwent in 2018. Over the last six years, Gwent has continued to be fairly popular, receiving a handful of expansions and spinoffs, but in early 2023 it was announced that development on the card game would be coming to an end.

Flash forward to November 2023 and Gwent receives its final update from CD Projekt Red. Though the game is still playable, and balancing is being left in the hands of the community, CD Projekt Red has stepped away from the spinoff, and unfortunately, it's believed that the entire Gwent development team was laid off or relocated to a different part of the studio. But while the standalone version of Gwent may be finished, there's hope that the beloved card game could see new life in The Witcher 4.

No matter the sequel's setting, a Witcher 4 version of Gwent would inherently have a whole new swathe of inspiration to draw from for its roster of cards. New factions, new monsters, new characters, new heroes, new villains, and new locations are all presumably going to be present in The Witcher 4, and Gwent can draw inspiration from all of it.