CD Projekt RED Announces New The Witcher Game Based On Unreal Engine 5
CD Projekt RED is working on an all-new game in the The Witcher franchise. For the new game, the Polish developer is switching from its own REDengine to the Unreal Engine 5. No release date has been announced yet.
The upcoming The Witcher game features an all-new story, it seems from the first teaser image. CD Projekt RED is talking about a ‘new saga’ within the well-known franchise. It is not clear whether this means that the game will have a new main character or that Geralt will remain central. The image shows a Witcher medallion, but it doesn’t look like a wolf’s head that always hangs around Geralt’s neck. The company has also not yet revealed anything about the inspiration for the game; the first three The Witcher games were loosely based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series of the same name.
CD Projekt RED has a “multi-year strategic partnership” with Epic Games for the Unreal Engine 5. This would provide not only a license for the game engine, but also technical assistance and further development of the engine for the new game.
It is striking that the studio no longer uses the self-developed REDengine for the upcoming game. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 used REDengine 3 and REDengine 4, respectively, which are further developments of the engine. The upcoming expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 will still use an updated version of the REDengine. The next The Witcher is CD Projekt RED’s first 3D open world game since the original 2007 The Witcher, which again runs on a third-party engine.
In February, it was announced that The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has started a new studio after leaving CD Projekt RED. He took a number of former colleagues with him. In addition, CD Projekt RED acquired Canadian game studio Digital Scapes a year ago to work on new titles from the studio. That same month, CD Projekt restructured to work on multiple AAA titles simultaneously. For the time being it is known that Cyberpunk 2077, this The Witcher game and a single player game about Gwent are being worked on.
Image via CD Projekt Red