CD Projekt has confirmed that a new Witcher game is in development, "kicking off a new saga for the franchise."
The new game will be built using Unreal Engine 5 rather than CD Projekt's REDengine, which the studio said will begin "a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games."
"It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant," CD Projekt said. "We'll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences."
CD Projekt said that the change to the new engine was made to help streamline the development process. "From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership," CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said. "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!"
The studio also confirmed that despite the shift to a new engine, the new Witcher game is not planned as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
https://www.pcgamer.com/witcher-4-announced/
Don't fuck this up please don't fuck this up
Witcher will be Elder Scrolls, Cyberpunk will be Fallout. They'll just go back and forth forever.
lol no, they're making an anime I think, they're going to get as much revenue sources out of the brand as possible.
Yeah, they already know how to make a Witcher game. They fucked up Cyberpunk, but they did introduce some new stuff that they might be able to utilize. Hopefully they realize that the reason Cyberpunk failed was because of shit working conditions and brain drain.
If I understand correctly they burned the entire witcher 3 team, then burned the cyberpunk team, so this will be an entirely new team.
You serious? The witcher 3 guys are gone?
Fuck this then.
I refunded Cyberpunk on the microsoft store because it was such dog shit, and I usually will play Western RPGS the whole way through because I love the genre so much. Even if they are terrible.
Cyberpunk was just too much to ask
I think the Unreal Engine stuff is a big deal. It's pretty weird to me how many game studios have their own game engines that they use for a single game and then have to overhaul. More game studios using a shared game engine is probably a good thing. Most of the software industry already shares a ton of code. Like it says, the "partnership" will probably make Unreal better at open world game creation.
I'm not a coder but surely there'd be some downsides to the homogenization of Middleware and engines, right? If for no other reason than it helps give Epic even more of a monopoly/oligopoly?
Definitely. It's just weird that so much effort is spent reimplementing the same systems over and over again. It can lead to a lot of cool and unique things if done by competent people who care, but it usually leads to making the same basic mistakes over and over again. A sort of capitalist waste that doesn't always produce much "innovation". In an ideal society I think people would mostly contribute to big shared projects to make them better, with some smaller projects that try alternative approaches.
It will be a bit different for me playing a CDProket game without the RED engine. Im so used to the engine from the WItcher games. Hopefully it results in a good game, Cyberpunk left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Not paying for shit. Pirating it. Company burned all goodwill I had for it.
Name an RPG duo people like to shit on more than Bethesda and CDProjektred these days.
I'll probably still buy the next Elder Scrolls though, I don't utterly hate Bethesda yet. CDPR however burned me real hard with Cyberpunk. So much squandered potential.
Only Rockstar seem to consistently deliver on actually improving their release iteratively. Next thing I really look forwards to in this whole open world story-driven sort of space is probably GTA but I'm super concerned that they'll be too scared to do the kind of political satire that their games have been known for so far.
Yeah I love Western RPGS and I even gave Fallout76 a chance. Id be willing to throw my hat in with the opinon that Fallout76 right now is a better game than Cybperpunk ever was.
Im wary of Bethesda, but im not as burned by them as CDProjektred right now.
Its funny a couple years ago CDprojekt was on the Golden Boy level that rockstar is.
Lying will do that.
I never really felt like Bethesda have lied to me, although I missed the 76 dramas. CDPR outright lied hundreds of times and then just launched their broken ass heartless game. It's such a beautiful canvas for a game and they squandered it.
people saw 76 being a shit show a mile out. It was less lying and more completely misunderstanding what people wanted. It's supposedly pretty decent these days though
There was plenty of lying too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghdOSTAda1w
which the studio said will begin “a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games
:disgost:
Wonder why they didn't announce this with a fancy video? I mean it worked so well last time.
Heh I knew it. They\ve spectacularly fucked up the Cyberpunk 2077 with no expectations from the audience for sequels, DLCs etc, still patching it up. Game is a mess without proper vision and coherence with awful politics. People loved the Witcher series so bad that they'll forget about this blunder.
Is there even any of the Witcher 3 writing team left? Also, I hope they don't try to squeeze any more story juice out of Geralt, but I also have no confidence that they will be able to write a new character that is anywhere near as good.
There will be bewwwbs and there will be lots of cussing and status quo apologia where trying to improve society somewhat is punished by the narration. It's a winning formula so the only way CDPR can blow it is if it's a buggy mess.
Doesn’t Witcher III sort of make it so that the radical anti-status quo action is the only ending that seems decent? Like if you don’t assassinate Radovid you’re told that he keeps doing pogroms against non-humans.
If that happens, that's nice. I tuned out the series after too many "oh you tried to help strangers and change their conditions somewhat? Well you're a fucking idiot because look at the consequences" moments before I could get there.
I expected the same in CyberNotSoPunk 2077, and my expectations were met, between cop apologia and helping cops by hunting down people victimized by an unjust system (SO PUNK!), and that unjust system basically can't be changed at all and there's no option to meaningfully change it, and the only ending choices being varying shades of "will it be Generic Ego Insert With Custom Dick Options or Keanu Reeves that becomes A NIGHT CITY LEGEND(tm)?"
