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Career before CDPR

Before joining CD Projekt Red, Kalemba worked at Platige Image, a Polish visual effects and animation studio known for game cinematics and short films. He also worked at Piranha Bytes as lead animator on Risen 3: Titan Lords.

At CD Projekt Red

Kalemba joined CDPR in October 2014. His progression through the studio:

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: character animator on the base game

• Hearts of Stone (TW3 expansion): lead animator

• Blood and Wine (TW3 expansion): animation director

• Cyberpunk 2077: animation director, later promoted to creative director

• The Witcher IV: Game Director (announced November 2022)

His trajectory through CDPR is worth noting. He started as a single character animator and worked his way to directing the studio's next flagship project in about eight years. His animation background shows up in how he talks about the game.

Directing The Witcher IV

In November 2022, Kalemba announced he was directing "the new Witcher Saga," which is the internal name for the planned trilogy of new Witcher games. He is the Game Director on The Witcher IV (Project Polaris) and is likely overseeing the creative direction of all three games.

Design philosophy

Kalemba has been vocal about NPC quality. He stated: "We have this rule to make every single NPC looking like they're living, with their own story." This connects to his animation background. When the person directing your game spent a decade focused on character movement and expression, the bar for NPC believability goes up.

On the Bauk monster from the Game Awards trailer, he described it as a creature that "has this ability to smell your fear, to be able to play with your traumas, to paralyze you." That description suggests monster encounters in the game will have psychological dimensions beyond just combat mechanics.

He also confirmed the return of Gwent ("It's a part of the experience, absolutely. We also love Gwent.") and spoke extensively about romance being a priority: "We want to pay a lot of attention to it and make it super compelling and very meaningful."

Animation legacy

Kalemba's fingerprints are visible in the State of Unreal 2025 tech demo, which demonstrated seamless horse mounting, ML Deformer muscle simulation on Kelpie, and up to 300 individually animated NPCs in a single scene. The tech demo prioritized showing off character animation and NPC behavior, the areas where Kalemba built his expertise.