CD Projekt RED Confirms Next "The Witcher" Game Will Use Unreal Engine 5

Teaser image released by the developer
(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

CD Projekt RED today confirmed that development has started on the next installment in the popular Witcher franchise. While the announcement was extremely short on details on the game proper, the developer also announced it has entered a new strategic partnership with Epic Games, which will see the replacement of its in-house-developed REDengine by Epic's Unreal Engine 5.

With millions of copies sold, The Witcher 3 remains one of the most lauded RPGs of all time -- it garnered over 250 Game of the Year awards, pleasing both critics and gamers alike. Development on another Witcher game isn't necessarily news. We knew CD Projekt RED had more than a "mere" next-gen upgrade in mind for the franchise. However, the announcement that CD Projekt RED will be forgoing its own development tool comes as a curveball of sorts.

The company originally debuted its in-house engine with The Witcher 2: Assassin's of Kings in 2011, showcasing incredible visual and systems improvements over the licensed Bioware "Aurora" engine employed in the original 2007 The Witcher game. REDengine has since become the backbone to all of the developers' releases - including 2020's Cyberpunk 2077. The company has likely poured millions of dollars into engine development throughout the years, and they've now elected to scrap that work in favor of a new engine with new tools and workflows. Naturally, work on Cyberpunk 2077's future content will still be carried out within REDengine.

CD Projekt RED is well aware of the toll this takes in development. Speaking on the transition to Unreal Engine 5 for this and future games, CTO of CD PROJEKT RED, Paweł Zawodny explained the reasoning somewhat:

“One of the core aspects of our internal RED 2.0 Transformation is a much stronger focus on technology, and our cooperation with Epic Games is based on this principle. From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. 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!”     

It seems that CD Projekt RED took a long look at the opportunity cost of either further developing its in-house engine, or settling for an industry stalwart such as Epic's Unreal Engine. Ultimately, the company concluded that it had more to win by leveraging not only a well-known and well-documented game development engine -- with all the nifty forward-facing features such as Nanite and Lumen that generated that incredible engine showcase demo -- but also Epic Games itself. The joint development collaboration makes sense in more ways than one: CD Projekt RED knows exactly what it needs for smooth development of its open-world sandboxes. The company's engineers are sure to have an impact on Epic's future development of the engine.

Even so, the decision of which engine to use remains one of the most fundamental questions of game design. And as mentioned by Zawodny, it's one that needs to be taken as early as possible in the development. This tells us that the next Witcher installment will still take years to be delivered onto whatever hardware or gaming console that's prominent at the time.

Perhaps we're just witnessing some of the fallout from Cyberpunk 2077. It's at least conceivable that part of the reason for the games' troubled launch (and its much-delayed DLCs and expansions) lay with CD Projekt RED's tools. Here's hoping that the next installment in the Witcher series is less delay-prone and problematic than Cyberpunk 2077.

Francisco Pires
Freelance News Writer

Francisco Pires is a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware with a soft side for quantum computing.

  • washmc
    "...both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. "

    Does anyone else wonder if this will have any impact on their GOG store? Epic recently buying bandcamp and wanting to be their own powerful ecosystem I'm just wondering if GOG merging into Epic is part of the "long-term" part of their "fulfilling ... partnership."
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Josh Mahurin said:
    I'm just wondering if GOG merging into Epic is part of the "long-term" part of their "fulfilling ... partnership."
    God I hope not.

    I've been making it a point to not get into the EGS ecosystem (for admittedly petty reasons). If I have to use EGS to access my GoG collection, I'm downloading my entire collection before it goes through. Or worse, Epic stomps all over the whole "DRM free" aspect of GoG.
    Reply
  • renz496
    Josh Mahurin said:
    "...both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. "

    Does anyone else wonder if this will have any impact on their GOG store? Epic recently buying bandcamp and wanting to be their own powerful ecosystem I'm just wondering if GOG merging into Epic is part of the "long-term" part of their "fulfilling ... partnership."

    I don't think GoG will ever merge with Epic EGS. EGS like steam still have some sort of DRM on top of publisher own DRM. The very existence of GoG is to sell games completely without any DRM. That's why majority of triple A games did not land on GoG.
    Reply
  • DonQuixoteIII
    This is a sad day for games in general. The Red Engine had such good physics, the engine was quite easy to understand and mod for... And for CDProjectRed to partner with Epic, well... the less said the better.

    Witcher 4 will probably have the fewest mods of any title in the franchise.
    Reply
  • renz496
    DonQuixoteIII said:
    This is a sad day for games in general. The Red Engine had such good physics, the engine was quite easy to understand and mod for... And for CDProjectRed to partner with Epic, well... the less said the better.

    Witcher 4 will probably have the fewest mods of any title in the franchise.

    Every game developer that use UE is Epic "partner".
    Reply
  • salgado18
    DonQuixoteIII said:
    This is a sad day for games in general. The Red Engine had such good physics, the engine was quite easy to understand and mod for... And for CDProjectRed to partner with Epic, well... the less said the better.

    Witcher 4 will probably have the fewest mods of any title in the franchise.
    Mod-wise, I agree. I also like independent efforts, it shields them of other's bad decisions, and gives them the freedom to take any direction they want.

    However, the techs teased by UE5 are way too good to turn a blind eye to. Developing those in-house would probably be too expensive, and by looking at how hard it was to make new stuff for Cyberpunk 2077 (I mean features they never had to do, like car physics, crowds, police, things that the Witcher series didn't have), I kind of get why they considered the change.

    Here's hoping they can keep their principles and modding support even with the new tools.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    renz496 said:
    I don't think GoG will ever merge with Epic EGS. EGS like steam still have some sort of DRM on top of publisher own DRM. The very existence of GoG is to sell games completely without any DRM. That's why majority of triple A games did not land on GoG.
    That's not quite true, they both OFFER additional DRM on top of whatever but it's not forced upon all the games by default, there are games that you can run downloaded from both steam or epic that will run happily without starting either steam or epic.
    (like slay the spire or 20xx , let alone all the "retro" stuff that uses dosbox or scummVM where they can't add any DRM no matter how much they want to)
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Josh Mahurin said:
    Does anyone else wonder if this will have any impact on their GOG store?
    no.
    They make way too much $ with GoG.
    Reply
  • RodroX
    So this will be another EPIC store only title?.. If thats so, that sucks big time.
    Reply
  • renz496
    RodroX said:
    So this will be another EPIC store only title?.. If thats so, that sucks big time.
    nope. since it is CDPR game then first and foremost it is guaranteed to be available on GOG. in fact buying the game at GOG is the best option.
    Reply