your opinion | Moving The Witcher and CD Projekt RED to Unreal Engine 5 is the right move

Recently, CD Projekt RED announced that it is joining the next part From the work of The Witcher. The Polish studio of course went through a very turbulent period with the dramatic release of Cyberpunk 2077 moviealthough one with current generation version I definitely managed to make things better. Although the studio isn’t finished with the dystopian cyberpunk title just yet – one or more expansions are still on the way – the developer thought it necessary to look into the future and it looks like The Witcher is back.

How, what, where and who is still a mystery at present (and will likely remain so for some time to come), but soon the ladies and gentlemen of Poland declare that this The new part is not necessarily The Witcher 4 is, which likely indicates that it is not certain whether Geralt or Rivia and his companions will be part of the next saga. For example, the game could revolve around a new (custom) character from another Witcher school. Well, then we speculate again.

Another significant development in the announcement is that CD Projekt RED is moving to Unreal Engine 5 for this project, in part due to the partnership with Epic Games; The company behind the toolkit. This means that the Polish studio will be retiring from RED’s internal drive (for now). The developer has been using this engine since The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. For the first Witcher game, the studio used BioWare’s Aurora engine, which turned out to be unsuitable for the kind of game CD Projekt wanted to make.

In our opinion, this switch is the right choice for the studio. CD Projekt RED contains (or has) the image they (want) to do as much as possible to serve the players and fan base. For The Witcher 2, they promised comprehensive modding tools – REDkit – that would allow fans to create their own content and share it with other users. Although the studio (eventually) got things done, the mod collection wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as hoped, and it was only in 2013, two years after The Witcher 2 was released. By that time, everyone was pretty tired of the game. .

CD Projekt RED is clearly one of the most ambitious studios in the world right now; They want to do everything right, and this is also their biggest predicament. After all, they want to create groundbreaking games that blow up competition in every region. The problem is that the studio doesn’t seem to dare make choices and that’s partly the source of (in my opinion) the Cyberpunk 2077 identity crisis.

Because this game should be a deep RPG and have the most interactive and vibrant world ever and tell an amazing and non-linear story, but at the end of the day the game doesn’t actually achieve any of these goals. And then you still have to maintain and develop your own engine? This is a job that even stars look forward to and certainly one that CD Projekt RED has been underestimated, given Cyberpunk 2077’s flawed state of the art.

That’s why we think CD Projekt RED’s move to Unreal Engine 5 is the way to go. The studio should focus back on its core business and this makes for a good game; Leave the artwork (for now) to the professionals who are constantly working on the engine and can tell you all the nooks and crannies, because that’s clearly not their forte.

Of course we’re interested in what you think of this statement: Should Polish studio stand still and continue with its own drive, or is it okay for CD Projekt RED to admit that it’s technically not yet up to the mark, an example of a dog brat or a rockstar? Let us know in the comments!