CD Projekt RED has abandoned its RED Engine for its upcoming Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 titles. However, with the change to Unreal Engine 5, the studio has partnered with Epic Games to make development less challenging.
The upcoming Cyberpunk sequel will release after the next Witcher title. Developer CD Projekt RED hopes the title will be a huge improvement over the first game, inspired by the changes made in the game’s recent Phantom Liberty expansion.
In an interview with YouTuber The Neon Arcade, lead quest designer Pawel Sasko explains that the move to Unreal Engine 5 has been a “challenge”. With CDPR using its own proprietary engine since 2011’s The Witcher 2, the move to Unreal Engine has been a huge switch.
“There's a lot of work to be done when it comes to the toolset specifically and so on,” Sasko explained. “Because there are so many I would say specific things that our RED engine was tailored for.”
The developer explained that a lot of work is going on to bring the studio’s processes into Unreal Engine 5. Additionally, the studio isn’t on its own, working alongside UE5 creators Epic Games to make the engine perfect for the studio’s needs.
Working together with Epic is a completely new thing for us, it's a challenge for one thing but also it's an honour," Sasko explains. "It's a huge studio - they have an incredible amount of engineers, very seasoned engineers. So it's something that we can also learn from."
While the move to Unreal Engine 5 is a “challenge” for the studio, it’s also an exciting new prospect for the teams behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2.
“I don't understand the challenge as a difficulty, but more as an opportunity,” Sasko explained. “I see so much space to actually do something awesome, so I'm actually really looking forward to that, but there's lot of work to be done on that front."
Cyberpunk 2 is many years away, but fans of the series are already excited to see more from the franchise. After the brilliant Edgerunners anime and the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update, it’s going to be a painfully long wait until this sequel.