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11 The Core Rule
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33 Narrative Director Philipp Weber put it simply: "We don't do fetch quests." He elaborated: "A quest has to be something interesting. I have to feel, as a player, that if I played that quest, my time was well spent and not just spent."
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55 In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, that philosophy produced the side-quest standard CDPR aims to inherit for The Witcher IV. Missions like the Bloody Baron questline or the quest to lift a curse from a tower were full short stories with moral ambiguity, memorable characters, and consequences that echoed through the rest of the game. CDPR is aiming for the same standard.
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77 Choice and Consequence
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99 Branching choices have been a Witcher trademark since the first game. Weber has emphasized that maintaining this standard is non-negotiable. Players should face decisions where there is no obviously correct answer, and the results of those decisions should ripple outward.
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1111 How this works with Ciri as the protagonist, rather than Geralt, is not yet clear. Geralt was a defined character with his own moral compass. Ciri could be played as a wider range of personalities depending on how CDPR structures the dialogue system.
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1313 Creative Process
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1515 Weber described the team's creative approach as: "Do it immediately, do it fast, do it dirty." The idea is rapid iteration. The quest design team produces roughly ten times more ideas than the ones that actually land in the game. Most concepts get prototyped quickly, tested, and either refined or discarded.
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1717 This method favors quantity of experimentation over perfection in early stages. A quest idea might go through dozens of versions before it reaches its final form. The approach is designed to prevent the team from over-committing to ideas that do not work.
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1919 Karel Kolmann Joins CDPR
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2121 In November 2025, Karel Kolmann joined CDPR as Senior Quest Designer. Kolmann spent eight years at Warhorse Studios, where he was a lead designer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. That game is known for its historically grounded quest design and non-linear mission structures.
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2323 The hire signals that CDPR is investing in quest design talent from studios with similar values around player agency and narrative depth. Kolmann's experience with open-world quest systems in a medieval setting translates directly to the kind of work The Witcher IV demands.
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2525 What This Means for the Game
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2727 If CDPR delivers on Weber's stated goals, every side quest in the game should feel like a self-contained story worth experiencing. Combined with the Romance System, Ciri's unique abilities, and the open world, the quest design philosophy suggests a game where off-the-beaten-path content is as compelling as the main storyline.
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29+Stated Design Intent (May 2026)
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31+CD Projekt Red has publicly stated The Witcher IV is being built without traditional fetch-style quests, with the studio framing the goal as quests that always carry narrative weight. CDPR has positioned this as a lesson drawn from past projects, and senior staff have emphasized that the quest team is focused on what they describe as caring about the art being made. These statements describe stated design intent rather than verified shipped systems; the playable build's quest structure will need to confirm them when the game ships.