The co-CEO of CD Projekt Crimson says the corporate’s choice to cease utilizing its in-house REDengine and use Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4 as an alternative wasn’t a response to Cyberpunk 2077’s notorious launch points.
REDengine was the proprietary sport engine developed by CD Projekt Crimson to be used in its personal open-world video games. Variations of the engine had been used for The Witcher 2 in 2011, The Witcher 3 in 2015 and Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020.
In March 2022, nonetheless, the corporate introduced that the subsequent Witcher sport was being constructed with Epic Video games’ Unreal Engine 5, relatively than its personal REDengine. Later that yr it introduced that it was remaking the unique Witcher sport, additionally in Unreal Engine 5.
In a brand new interview with the Deconstructor of Enjoyable podcast, CD Projekt Crimson co-CEO Michał Nowakowski was requested how the corporate’s improvement course of modified after the discharge of Cyberpunk 2077, and whether or not its efficiency points at launch had been the principle motive it moved to Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4.
“Sure and no”, Nowakowski replied. “Lots of people suppose like this, however this can be a little bit of a false assumption, I might say, as a result of the difficulty with Cyberpunk was not likely REDengine itself.”
Nowakowski mentioned that CD Projekt‘s intention was to be a online game firm, not a tech firm, and whereas it had used its personal engine for its final three main video games, that didn’t imply it wasn’t open to utilizing one other engine if it may meet its wants.
“The dream of the corporate was truly by no means to make expertise,” he defined. “It was to, sure, create visually and technically cutting-edge video games, however most significantly telling the tales in probably the most convincing and immersive approach.”
Nowakowski: It was The Matrix, not Cyberpunk, that acquired us to modify to UE5
Nowakowski additionally said that it was The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, not the problems suffered by Cyberpunk, that supplied the most important incentive to modify engines.
“It was not the Cyberpunk launch that satisfied us to desert the REDengine and swap utterly to to Unreal Engine 5 with the long run tasks,” he recalled. “It was extra the second we acquired an early scoop of the Matrix demo that Epic made. We then requested ourselves: ‘Is UE5 able to ship a sport like we make?’
“The reply was ‘no – not in the intervening time, not on the entry degree – but when we type a relationship with Unreal and if we work on sure issues that are particularly required to make video games of the dimensions and scope and sure technicalities about it that we’d like for the for the video games, it may truly work’.
“And that’s the place we got here to the desk with the blokes from Epic. That’s the place we made the strategic collaboration.”
Nowakowski added that as a result of CD Projekt Crimson now works intently with Epic so as to add new options to Unreal Engine, it nonetheless enjoys the power to adapt the engine to its wants, prefer it used to with REDengine.
“We’re truly, I feel, the one staff on the planet exterior of Epic that offers with the within of the ‘black field’ that the engine is,” he mentioned. “No one else is doing that apart from us and them, which we do by collaborative efforts collectively.
“And by doing so, we really feel we’re going to have the ability to inform extra tales and launch extra video games, as a result of we’re not going to be liable for creating the expertise from scratch, however relatively creating for that expertise little issues that truly make an enormous distinction for the precise sorts of video games that we make.”
