Witcher 3 the final Witcher game

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt will be the final Witcher game, developer CD Projekt Red announced today. The 2014 open-world game will represent the conclusion of Geralt of Rivia's story, and the timing is fitting, according to CD Projekt Red studio manager Adam Badowski.

"People may ask if this is really going to be the last Witcher game. Yes, it is. Why? Because we believe that we should end the series on a high note," Badowski said in a statement.

"Technology has progressed to where we can finally tell the story the way we want, with the visuals we want, in the world we imagined. This will be the ultimate fantasy RPG experience, and while we're hardly out of stories to tell, we believe it's time for us to look to new worlds and new horizons to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can create."

The Witcher 3 is due out for unspecified "high-end" platforms. Next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony are rumored to be released this fall, with the PlayStation 4 potentially being announced as early as February 20.

CD Projekt Red also revealed that The Witcher 3's gameworld will be 30 times bigger than The Witcher 2 and that the game will not feature any quick-time events.

"Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great nonlinear story as in the previous Witcher titles, but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries. The war-ravaged world is so huge that to reach further places you will need to ride a horse or sail a boat to get there," Badowski said.

The Witcher 3 will prompt users to make choices with "truly epic consequences," Badowski said, noting this has presented a number of "demanding" development challenges for CD Projekt Red.

The Witcher series has sold more than 4 million copies as of last summer. CD Projekt Red has been teasing The Witcher 3 since 2011, with the latest barrage of speculation coming last month, when the company showed off a teaser image depicting Geralt's sword. For more on the series, check out GameSpot's review of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

The Witcher 3 is not the only new game CD Projekt Red is at work on. The company is also developing Cyberpunk 2077, a new role-playing game set in a "dark future" where advanced technologies have become "both the salvation and the curse of humanity."