The co-CEO of CD Projekt Red says the company’s decision to stop using its in-house REDengine and use Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4 instead wasn’t a reaction to Cyberpunk 2077’s infamous launch issues.
REDengine was the proprietary game engine developed by CD Projekt Red for use in its own open-world games. Variations of the engine were used for The Witcher 2 in 2011, The Witcher 3 in 2015 and Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020.
In March 2022, however, the company announced that the next Witcher game was being built with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, rather than its own REDengine. Later that year it announced that it was remaking the original Witcher game, also in Unreal Engine 5.
In a new interview with the Deconstructor of Fun podcast, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski was asked how the company’s development process changed after the release of Cyberpunk 2077, and whether its performance issues at launch were the main reason it moved to Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4.
“Yes and no”, Nowakowski replied. “A lot of people think like this, but this is a bit of a false assumption, I would say, because the issue with Cyberpunk was not really REDengine itself.”
Nowakowski said that CD Projekt‘s aim was to be a video game company, not a tech company, and while it had used its own engine for its last three major games, that didn’t mean it wasn’t open to using another engine if it could meet its needs.
“The dream of the company was actually never to make technology,” he explained. “It was to, yes, create visually and technically cutting-edge games, but most importantly telling the stories in the most convincing and immersive way.”
Nowakowski also stated that it was The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, not the issues suffered by Cyberpunk, that provided the biggest incentive to switch engines.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/cd-projekt-reds-move-from-redengine-to-ue5-for-the-witcher-4-wasnt-because-of-cyberpunks-launch-co-ceo-says/
