Monday, March 21st 2022
CD PROJEKT RED Prepares a new Witcher Game with Unreal Engine 5
CD PROJEKT RED today revealed that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development with Unreal Engine 5, kicking off a new saga for the franchise and a new technology partnership with Epic Games.
Today's announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED's previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons.
The teaser image for the new game features a medallion, accompanied by the phrase A New Saga Begins. Beyond this initial confirmation of a new saga in The Witcher franchise, no further details—such as a development time frame or release date—were provided.
CD PROJEKT RED also announced that they will be moving to Unreal Engine 5 as part of the multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. Since The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, released in 2011, CD PROJEKT RED has used their proprietary REDengine technology to build their games. This new relationship with Epic covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. Developers from CD PROJEKT RED will collaborate with those from Epic with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences, beginning with the development of the next game in The Witcher franchise.
Speaking on the use of Unreal Engine 5 for this, and future games, CTO of CD PROJEKT RED, Paweł Zawodny stated:
Today's announcement marks the first official confirmation of a new game in The Witcher series since the release of CD PROJEKT RED's previous single-player, AAA RPG in the franchise—The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt—which won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards and was later expanded upon with the Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine add-ons.
CD PROJEKT RED also announced that they will be moving to Unreal Engine 5 as part of the multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. Since The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, released in 2011, CD PROJEKT RED has used their proprietary REDengine technology to build their games. This new relationship with Epic covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. Developers from CD PROJEKT RED will collaborate with those from Epic with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences, beginning with the development of the next game in The Witcher franchise.
Speaking on the use of Unreal Engine 5 for this, and future games, CTO of CD PROJEKT RED, Paweł Zawodny stated:
One of the core aspects of our internal RED 2.0 Transformation is a much stronger focus on technology, and our cooperation with Epic Games is based on this principle. From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. It is vital for CD PROJEKT RED to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as; in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can't wait for the great games we're going to create using Unreal Engine 5!Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games, remarked about the partnership:
"Epic has been building Unreal Engine 5 to enable teams to create dynamic open worlds at an unprecedented scale and level of fidelity. We are deeply honored by the opportunity to partner with CD PROJEKT RED to push the limits of interactive storytelling and gameplay together, and this effort will benefit the developer community for years to come."Simultaneously with these announcements, CD PROJEKT RED also provided confirmation that REDengine, the technology which powers Cyberpunk 2077, is still being used for the development of the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.
42 Comments on CD PROJEKT RED Prepares a new Witcher Game with Unreal Engine 5
That's interesting, there was some rumours if i remember correctly that the Coalition evaluation of UE5 with all the optimizations that they tried they couldn't hit 1080p 60fps on consoles.
Also surprising was that Asobo went with UE5 (if I'm not mistaken) for their sequel: "a plague tale : requiem" since the results they achieved with their engine in "a plague tale : innocence" was excellent!
I guess it means less issues across targeted systems (not having to dev your own engine on consoles / pc variants) and perhaps even licensing UE is cheaper in the long run.
So Epic won't pay you to use UE5, but if you take their word for it, then you'll save money in the long run by going with them. CDPR specifically has struggled a lot with their in-house engine, so I guess management was ready to pitch the whole thing in the trash and start fresh with what Epic is claiming to be the easiest to use game engine ever. A lot of other studios are probably running the numbers on how much labor they can save by switching, and what that means for their finances and development schedules.
Upon release, I waited a while for patches because that's what most informed people should know to do by now. I played it, finished it and enjoyed it. End of story.
Negativity online is always 10x worse than product in my experience.
Wasn't the best game but it was fun.
My feeling that it was launched in such a botched, unfinished state that it's taken this long to un-botch. Now that the base game is stable CDPR can go some distance towards finishing it.
It'll never be the game that was promised or shown in demos, but it is set in a world I want to explore and has a plot I want to enjoy. I'll probably only play it through once, so I'd rather do that when it's 'ready'.
And by content, they meant more mission/quest content, not just cosmetics.
"As part of an announcement revealing that The Witcher 4 is officially in the works, CD Projekt Red stated that although the new Witcher will run on Unreal Engine 5, the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC is still being developed using the studio's REDengine."
-CDPR Twitter Account, emphasis mine
Thought I'd dislike CP'77 or it'd be unplayable, nope. Ended up getting that 'I wanna see what's next' feeling any good movie or book gives ya.
From the phrasing of their statement, it sounds like this is still in the very early stages. It honestly sounds like they're announcing this immediately after signing the licensing deal. It's going to be a while.
From the infosec angle, they did cancel the Cyberpunk online so there might be something there, it should have been very close to launch (i mean, cyberpunk wasn't ready and launched anyway so who knows) so the hack might have been a major factor.
Either case it will certainly reduce risks (or rather shift) so maybe Witcher 4 will be a comeback for CDproject
What has me worried about how far this one is out is it uses an engine CDPR has never used that just recently came out of beta.