Alright, let me be real with you. It's 2026, and the gaming world is buzzing again, but this time it’s a sound that sends shivers down my spine. The whispers from CD Projekt Red about The Witcher 4 are a symphony of hope and terror. On one hand, they've supposedly learned from the Cyberpunk 2077 disaster—promising not to show the game until it's just a couple of years from release. Smart, right? Manage expectations, avoid the hype monster they created last time. But then, like a compulsive gambler who just hit rock bottom, they double down with the most dangerous phrase in gaming: "bigger and better." Bigger and better than Cyberpunk 2077? My friend, are you trying to give me PTSD?
The Ghost of Promises Past
Let's rewind for a second. Remember Cyberpunk 2077? Of course you do. The teaser dropped a staggering eight years before launch, and what did that get us? A hype tsunami that drowned the developers and washed ashore a famously broken game. Features like wall-running and a fully interactive city? Poof, gone. What we got was... well, let's be kind and call it a work-in-progress that took years of patches and an expansion to salvage. So when CDPR says The Witcher 4 won't be revealed until it's almost ready, I want to believe them. I really do. But then they utter "bigger and better," and suddenly I'm having flashbacks to 2020. It’s like watching someone vow to quit smoking, then immediately light a cigar.
What Does "Bigger" Even Mean Anymore?
Here’s the thing—I don’t doubt The Witcher 4 could be physically bigger. The Witcher 3 already had a massive, beautiful map. A fantasy world with sprawling plains, dense forests, and scattered towns? That’s inherently a different beast than the single, dense (in theory) urban jungle of Night City. Walking from one end to the other will probably take longer. But so what? Is that the metric for success now? After the Cyberpunk debacle, is our benchmark just... square footage? The problem isn't whether CDPR can make a big map. Of course they can! The problem is the promise itself. You can't say "we'll be quiet until we're sure" and then immediately shout "IT'S GONNA BE THE BIGGEST AND BESTEST THING EVER!" 🤯 It’s a mixed signal that screams "we haven't learned a thing."
Let’s break down the dangerous logic:
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Lesson Supposedly Learned: Don't over-promise years in advance.
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Action Immediately Taken: Promise it will be "bigger and better" than your most ambitious, troubled project.
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The Cognitive Dissonance: It’s astounding!
The Real Fear: Not Over-Promising, But Under-Delivering (Again)
I'll be honest—I'm not the world's biggest Witcher fanboy. I respected The Witcher 3, but it didn't change my life. So maybe I'm less emotionally invested than some. But that also lets me see this clearly. This "bigger and better" line isn't for me. It's for the fans who felt burned by Cyberpunk. It's CDPR trying to say, "See? We're still the kings!" But telling people what they want to hear is the exact poison that almost killed them last time.
Cyberpunk 2077's reputation did recover, somewhat. By 2026, it's seen as a flawed but ambitious gem that finally found its feet. I put 250 hours into it myself! But that recovery was built on a mountain of patches and the aggressive "we fixed it!" marketing of Phantom Liberty. The non-bug issues—the shallowness, the cut features—never fully went away.
So what is The Witcher 4's marketing supposed to be now? An apology tour for Cyberpunk? A victory lap for their comeback? Or are they just going to pretend Night City never happened and bill this as the true sequel to the "greatest fantasy game ever"? The delayed reveal strategy is the measured, smart part. The "bigger and better" chatter is the old, reckless CDPR peeking through.
The Benchmark of Doom
This is my core anxiety. By setting the benchmark as "bigger and better than Cyberpunk 2077," CDPR isn't just aiming to make a great game. They're implicitly promising to outdo their most ambitious, troubled project. They're inviting comparisons to the game that nearly destroyed their reputation. Why? Why would you do that? After having your face melted off by the heat of your own hype, why walk back into the fire?
It only matters if they can't back it up. But the sheer act of making that promise feels like a failure of wisdom. The gaming landscape in 2026 is different. Players are more skeptical, more weary of pre-release buzzwords. We've seen studios rise and fall on the weight of their own promises. CDPR had a chance to reset, to come back humble and focused on making a great Witcher game. Instead, with a few poorly chosen words, they've already started rebuilding the same shaky pedestal.
So here I am, in 2026, caught between cautious optimism and profound dread. The smart move—delaying the hype—is being undercut by the foolish one—reigniting it with grandiose claims. I want to believe. I want The Witcher 4 to be phenomenal. But every time I hear "bigger and better," I don't hear a promise. I hear an echo. And that echo is saying, "Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We've got a city to burn." Let's just hope this time, the only thing burning isn't the trust of the players all over again. 🫣