The Witcher 4 vs The Witcher 3: Every Known Difference

Geralt of Rivia was the protagonist of all three previous Witcher games. The Witcher 4 switches to Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter, who is now a witcher herself. According to CD PROJEKT RED, that was clear from the start: story director Tomasz Marchewka said “from the very beginning we knew it had to be Ciri.” Narrative director Philipp Weber admitted the team expected some pushback, but he also sees it as a way to honour the ending Geralt had in Witcher 3 and Blood and Wine.

This is meant to show in play. Executive producer Małgorzata Mitręga describes Ciri as faster and more agile than Geralt, but no longer as overpowered as at the end of Witcher 3. Instead of two swords and five Signs, the trailer shows a sword, a chain and magic she draws from the elements. Geralt does not disappear entirely: he appears in the game, though CDPR is keeping his role secret.

Everything known about Ciri is under Ciri, and her tools under gameplay.

The Witcher 3 ran on REDengine 3, CD PROJEKT RED’s in-house technology. For the new saga, the studio switched to Unreal Engine 5 in March 2022 and has been developing it further with Epic Games for large open worlds ever since. The order of work changes too: games used to be made for PC first and then scaled down for consoles; on The Witcher 4, the team says it works “console first.”

For frame rate, CDPR is aiming for 60 frames per second instead of 30. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Witcher 3 ran at 30 fps. So far CDPR has only proven that the tech demo runs at 60 fps on a PS5 – whether the game will manage it is too early to say, according to VP of Technology Charles Tremblay. Details under technology.

Anyone hoping for a much bigger map will be tempered by Sebastian Kalemba. In December 2024, the game director said the map and the number of quests would be “more or less the same” as in Witcher 3 – “quality over quantity.” The regions are new: Kovir, the wealthy trading kingdom in the far north, appears in the series for the first time, along with the port town of Valdrest and the village of Stromford.

Compared with Witcher 3, the world is meant to feel denser and more alive. The tech demo showed hundreds of people in the Valdrest market and unscripted reactions, such as rolling apples chased by children and pigs. Animation director Maciej Pietras calls the work on the open world the biggest change from Witcher 3. How much of this makes it into the game is open – the demo was not gameplay. More under locations.

The Witcher 3 wrapped up Geralt’s story in 2015; with the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, it ended in Toussaint in 2016. The Witcher 4, by contrast, is a beginning: CD PROJEKT RED is planning a trilogy, with parts 5 and 6 due within six years after The Witcher 4. According to Michał Nowakowski, adding expansions to the new games would be “difficult.”

Witcher 3 stays close, though. The Witcher 3 Remastered has been out since September 29, 2026, and in 2027 a third expansion, Songs of the Past, follows – Nowakowski calls it a prologue to The Witcher 4. What to play first is covered under what to play first, and the trilogy under new saga.

For all the change, the core remains. Like Witcher 3, The Witcher 4 is a story-driven single-player open-world RPG – “built on the legacy of The Witcher 3,” according to the 2022 strategy update. As a witcher, you take contracts against monsters, and choices are meant to have consequences; according to Kalemba, the reveal trailer is an actual quest in which the sacrificial girl can be saved.

The world is still Andrzej Sapkowski’s, with monsters such as the Bauk and familiar faces like Geralt. Platige Image, the studio behind the intros of the earlier games, co-created the reveal trailer, and the tone stays bleak: according to Kalemba, the trailer shows “just how dark and grounded the world of The Witcher can be.”

Many of the questions Witcher 3 fans care about most cannot be answered yet. Not announced (as of October 30, 2026):

• the combat system in detail, a skill tree and mutations,
• alchemy, crafting, gear and witcher schools,
• Gwent or any other card game,
• the length of the game and the number of endings,
• whether Witcher 3 saves carry over.

We check what rumors claim about these in the rumor check. Our standalone Witcher 3 database with a map, planner and builds is at Witcher 3 on RaidDex.