Witcher developer's new IP is "definitely NOT a cosmic horror in feudal Japan", in case you were wondering
Well, that clears that up, I guess.
Bad news, fans of interesting things, it looks like the mysterious new IP in the works at The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt isn’t a cosmic horror game set in feudal Japan. It’s a very specific option to rule out, but that’s what co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has done.
While there’s been some buzz around Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel - codenamed Project Orion - recently, thanks to CD Projekt officially acknowledging that development has kicked off for it and sharing news of some additions to the team working on it, things have remained quite quiet on the Project Hadar front. Now, though, we’ve had an update on what the game won’t be, just in case you were hyped up for one very specific idea.
In response to some fan speculation about what Hadar might involve - via a tweet that happened to mention cosmic horror and feudal Japan as separate ideas - CD Projekt Michał Nowakowski has shot down the idea of it being those two things welded together in some fashion. “[I] can only tell [you] it’s definitely NOT a cosmic horror in feudal Japan ;),” he said, adding: “Time will come, we will spill the beans. Worry not.”
As that winking face might suggest, Nowakowski was definitely having a bit of fun teasing people with his tweet. “I would say, everything outside of a rather specific, and slightly odd field of ‘Cosmic horror in feudal Japan’ is an option,” he responded to one fan cheekily asking to be given an idea of what Hadar could be.
The co-CEO also admitted that that exact idea was growing on him, even if it’s not what his studio’s new IP is. So what is Project Hadar? Well, we’ve still got no clue, other than being able to say that it’s one of the numerous projects currently in the works at CD Projekt, as was revealed via a big announcement back in October 2022.
To be fair, between this, The Witcher 4, that Cyberpunk sequel I mentioned, and everything else mentioned in that announcement, one thing you can’t accuse CD Projekt of is not giving us things to look forward to, even if it’s still being coy in terms of details about a lot of them.
If thinking about this has you feeling like another Cyberpunk playthrough, it might be worth checking out this new mod that aims to make finding all of the hidden secrets in Phantom Liberty’s Dogtown a bit more immersive and rewarding, and reading what that scene where Johnny Silverhand’s girlfriend got kidnapped could have been like.