CD Projekt Red is a gaming studio that has grown significantly in popularity and notoriety in recent years. The company behind the successful Witcher franchise and Cyberpunk 2077, there is understandably a lot of attention within the industry regarding its next moves and projects of the studio.

Due to this, many fans are excited about the recent trend of CD Projekt Red utilizing the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5 in upcoming confirmed projects. While this sadly means that fans may see a reduced role of Projekt Red's REDengine, the prospects of what Unreal Engine can bring to the company's future work are simply massive.



Discourse surrounding CD Projekt Red's use of Unreal Engine 5 recently came with the announcement of a ground-up remake for The Witcher, the franchise-launching title that originally released in 2007. This remake will reportedly be created entirely with Unreal Engine 5, along with any future Witcher titles, marking a huge potential shift in what the company will use as standard from now on.

Finding its origins in 1998, Unreal Engine has long been a staple of the video game industry, with its latest fifth iteration promising to be a truly groundbreaking piece of software. With its unparalleled level of realism and its great ease of access to developers, it is no wonder that established high-profile companies like CD Projekt Red are already adopting the ambitious new engine for its projects.

The REDengine has long been the engine of choice for CD Projekt Red, specifically for its open-world RPG titles. First being used for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011, the REDengine was created in-house by Projekt Red and has undergone several improved iterations since its initial release. The very successful The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt utilized the third iteration of REDengine, while the more recent Cyberpunk 2077 used the fourth.

Although CD Projekt Red has enjoyed plenty of success with its own game engine, the potential capabilities of Unreal Engine 5 have clearly proven to be too attractive to pass up for the company. The upcoming remake for the original Witcher will be the perfect staging ground for the company to become comfortable and familiar with this comparatively newer hardware of Unreal's latest game engine, with there already being a slew of upcoming titles throughout the gaming world that are confirmed to be using Unreal Engine 5.

The type of expansive open-world games that CD Projekt Red is known for will undoubtedly be significantly boosted by the use of Unreal Engine 5, and this is something that fans are already celebrating. While it is sad to consider the loss of the previously used REDengine, the shaky launch of the recent Cyberpunk 2077 perhaps indicates that it is time for Projekt Red to move beyond its old game engine to match the ever-increasing ambition of its new projects.

Projekt Red has confirmed that it will be using Unreal Engine 5 for the development of the anticipated Witcher 4, showing that the company is not afraid to apply UE5 to its most expansive and important releases. Given the aforementioned ease of access that UE5 provides developers in creating high quality and intensely detailed environments with a much faster turnaround, it is likely that fans are going to see some truly awe-inspiring scenes in future CD Projekt Red games, in a way that the REDengine would not be able to feasibly match.



Posted: Dec 05, 2022 12:07 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://gamerant.com/cd-projekt-red-abandoning-redengine-unreal-engine-5-good/