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
No, it's pretty dated. I personally recommend reading the books. I know it's a lot of books, but they're good and I really enjoyed the games a lot more after reading them. Though having read the books makes the first game even weirder, because a bunch of things that happened in the books also happen in the first game, which is set after the books, except names are changed. For instance, there's a scene in the books where a character visits an old man in a swamp who turns out to be a depraved cannibal. In the first game Geralt visits an old man in a swamp who turns out to be a depraved cannibal, except he's in a completely different location and has no connection to the old man from the books.
The main plot of the books is Geralt chasing after his adopted daughter, who is the last daughter of an ancient bloodline that is prophesized to save the world. In the first game Geralt forgets she exists because amnesia and runs into a boy named Alvin, who just so happens to be of the same ancient bloodline. The game was more trying to loosely adapt the book series, rather than being a straightforward continuation of the story. Then they decided to reverse course with Witcher 2 and have the games be a direct continuation of the books, except the events of the first game are still canon, so there's a bunch of weird shit that happens that mostly just doesn't come up again.
All that said, it's not bad for what it is. There's some interesting ideas there, some fun stories, some extremely blatant misogyny, all good stuff. But it's dated, and weird, and if you've read the books you won't be missing out on much if you just skip to Witcher 2. There's some characters you get to know in the first game that appear in later games, and some events that will be referenced, but it's not critical.
The books were a lot of fun. I made it through all seven of them within like two weeks. Also, the games work more or less flawlessly in Proton for any Linux players out there.
spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers
Replaying the game after reading the books, when I got to the scene in Dijkstra's bathhouse where Geralt breaks Dijkstra's knee, realizing Geralt is breaking his SECOND knee, that fucking killed me. :michael-laugh:
Thanks for the in-depth review! I’ll def see what I can do. Maybe I’ll take your suggestion and just read the books and then start with 2.