CD Projekt Red has announced today that they are working on the next installment in the Witcher series. This is the first Witcher game announced since the release of the highly acclaimed The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, an RPG that won a total of 250 Game of the Year awards. A teaser image was released with a wolf medallion buried in the snow, accompanied by the phrase, “A New Saga Begins.” No further information on the game, such as a release date or development time frame has been released.
CD Projekt Red also announced that they will be switching from their proprietary REDengine technology that they have been using since The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, to Unreal Engine 5 in a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. CTO of CD Projekt Red, Pawel Zawodny, said that the partnership arose out of a desire to have the technical aspects of the game worked out as early as possible, as having to update REDengine for every new release uses a lot of resources:
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!
Tim Sweeny, founder and CEO of Epic Games has also released a statement about the partnership:
Epic has been building Unreal Engine 5 to enable teams to create dynamic open worlds at an unprecedented scale and level of fidelity. We are deeply honored by the opportunity to partner with CD PROJEKT RED to push the limits of interactive storytelling and gameplay together, and this effort will benefit the developer community for years to come.
CD Projekt Red will still be using REDengine to develop the upcoming expansion for Cyberpunk 2077.
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