With apologies to Geralt of Rivia’s many fans, you’re going to feel some kind of way about this news: It looks as though CD Projekt Red have all but entirely ruled out The Witcher 4.

As the increasingly farcical Bride of Chucky, Seed of Chucky and such have proven, sometimes a trilogy really, really should remain a trilogy. The same line of thinking governed the developer’s decision not to create another sequel, it would appear.

Speaking at the Pareto Securities Gaming Seminar last week, CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kicinski exhorted the virtues of the company’s new project, Cyberpunk 2077. The game is touted to be an RPG set in a dystopian future, centred around a metropolis known as Night City. It features a curious mechanic known as Braindance, which allows the player character to experience the motions and movements of other characters as though they were their own (via a digital streaming device in their brain).

As PC Gamer reports, Cyberpunk promises to be an expansive, free-roaming experience, beyond anything The Witcher 3 offered. That was when Kicinski hit us with the fateful news: the studio currently has no plans to bring us a fourth Witcher title.

"We can't create Witcher 4, because that was a trilogy from the beginning," he simply stated.

Damning as this is, it’s not to say that we’ll never see any further releases in the franchise. If the main series was indeed intended as a trilogy only (unlike the series of Polish books on which it’s based, which ran for five main series novels), we’re probably far from done with the Witcher world. After all, the games were a great success, critically and financially, and who in the industry wants to turn down the chance for making money? Nobody, that’s who.

Even as we speak, the standalone game of Gwent (a card-based minigame in the Witcher series, akin to Final Fantasy’s Triple Triad or Tetra Master) has completed a round of beta tests and is set for release later this year. There’s a great deal to be wrung from the franchise yet, even if Geralt’s story is essentially told. It’s always possible that they may go back on their word some time down the line, too. That’s hardly unheard of. Until then, let’s just keep our radars firmly fixed on the long-awaited Cyberpunk.