Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt are both prime examples of what CD Prokjet Red can do with there bespoke RED engine. With both of these games being technical masterpieces and some of the most popular and well-sold games to date it, comes as a strange decision that they would make the switch to Unreal Engine 5… Or does it? Given that they had trouble training new staff in time to use their in-house software, it led to many complications and delays. Moving to an industry-standard engine means they can hire talent that comes onto the team with knowledge of how to use the engine.
CD Projekt Red has assured people that although the tools they are going to use going forward on their next titles will be full of ambition and be of the quality that fans expect from them. The first games that are going to be released on the new engine include The Witcher 4, The Witcher Remake and a secret game that has yet to be revealed called “Polaris.”
Despite their reassurances, many people are worried that some of their upcoming titles will not include path tracing, one of the big selling points of Cyberpunk.
What CD Projekt Red had to say
The global art director at CD Projekt RED, Jakub Knapik, said
“For sure, Unreal is a different engine with a different balance in terms of how it’s built compared to REDengine, and we will definitely put in a lot of effort and share a lot of passion with our partners in order to harness Unreal Engine’s greatest strengths and expand its capabilities so we can create the games we wish to make for our players. What’s more, we again aim to push technical boundaries while doing so; we have not made our ambitions any smaller in the slightest when it comes to that.”
This statement ultimately doesn’t give too much info or specifics but it is clear that CDPR is really pushing Unreal Engine and I’m sure that nothing but good will come of it and The Witcher 4 and the remake will be real feats of game development that will put your GPU to the test.
