sv3672;n10830861 said:
Speak of the devil...
Yes, preproduction for The Witcher 3 started somewhere in the second half of 2011, then the game went into full devolopment around the middle of 2012, soon after preproduction for Cyberpunk started. Based on LinkedIn page of some of the developers, we can see that in 2013-2014 period they were working, among other things, on prototype of Cyberpunk and the game's internal demo, though I don't know if it was completed, but it means that some serious work was certainly taking place there during that time. Also it's worth to notice that I know from the developers that the lengthy preproduction period does greatly helps in the long term, as we can see on the example of Blood and Wine, which despite being a huge expansion in a completely new region, took around half a year of full development to be made, thanks to the two years of early development provided via courtesy of Cracow division.