Shadow Warrior 3 was the fourth mainline instalment to the Shadow Warrior series and was released in 2021: five years after the previous addition to the franchise, hopefully serving as a precedent for the release window of Shadow Warrior 4. The past two games in the series have all come in the span of around four years in between releases, and we sincerely hope the same is true for Shadow Warrior 4.
The reason behind the actual chronological index of the Shadow Warrior games not matching their title is due to the fact that there have been two games named Shadow Warrior. One was released all the way back in 1997, with development starting as early as 1993. The second was released in 2013, meaning there was a period of nearly a decade and a half when there was absolutely no development in the Shadow Warrior scene.
That being said, there were two DLCs that served as expansion packs to 1997’s Shadow Warrior, named Twin Dragon and Wanton Destruction. The first DLC did share some similarities with Shadow Warrior 3, with an ancient dragon playing a major role in both. Lo Wang also received a brand new sidekick in the fourth game, and we can hope to see its return in the first instalment as well.
The combination of Flying Wild Hog on development duty and Devolver Digital on the publishing front has been serving the Shadow Warrior franchise quite well ever since its return to mainstream attention in 2013. The duo still own the development and publishing rights to the franchise respectively, and it seems hard to imagine them passing up on the opportunity to explore Lo Wang’s character and the world more. If all things fall into place, we could very well be looking at a late 2024 or early 2025 release for the fifth instalment to the game, Shadow Warrior 4.
That being said, it must be kept in mind that the release of DLCs to Shadow Warrior 3 might actually cause the release of Shadow Warrior 4 to be pushed back since Flying Wild Hog’s resources would be more focused on that instead. We’ll just have to wait and watch for what happens eventually!
