Karel Kolmann has announced through a post on LinkedIn that he has joined CD Projekt RED as a senior quest designer on The Witcher 4. Before this announcement, Kolmann had previously worked with Warhorse Studios for 8 years. Among his projects, Kolmann has worked on quests and gameplay features on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, as well as on writing, designing, and scripting.
The last major project that Kolmann has worked on, according to his LinkedIn profile, was for the Hardcode mode in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Along with this, he has also served as writer, game designer, and lead game designer during his time at the studio.
Kolmann’s departure from Warhorse Studio comes hot on the heels of the developer having released the final bit of planned DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – Mysteria Ecclesiae. While more DLC for the title might eventually get made, for the time being, Mysteria Ecclesiae servers as the final bit of post-launch content that was first announced as part of the game’s season pass.
As for The Witcher 4, CD Projekt RED hasn’t announced much in the way of new information about the project. The closest to new details we’ve gotten so far was back in September, when narrative lead Philipp Weber hinted that we might see elements from the latest books by The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski in the upcoming RPG. The book in question – The Witcher: Crossroads of Raven – was shown off in a picture Weber posted on social media.
Responding to whether CD Projekt RED would actually use elements of the book, Weber noted that even The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which was under development when Season of Storms came out, had the developers try and incorporate some of the elements of the book at the time. We might end up seeing something similar happen with The Witcher 4.
“I can’t reveal how exactly we’ll do it, but Season of Storms also came out while we developed The Witcher 3, so we still tried to include some of the new elements,” wrote Weber. “You can expect something similar!”
CD Projekt RED had announced back in August that it was continuing to grow its development teams for both the upcoming RPG, as well as the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. According to an H1 report filed by CD Projekt RED, the team working on The Witcher 4 has grown up to 444 employees as of the end of July, while Cyberpunk 2’s team has grown to 116 employees.
“Our recruitment efforts have significantly sped up over the last three months and as a result the total number of talented developers working across our projects has grown by 10% reaching almost 800 people,” said joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski in a presentation to investors. “This growth was primarily driven by our two largest development teams.”
The Witcher 4 doesn’t yet have a release date. The open-world RPG is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will feature Ciri taking over as protagonist from Geralt.
