CD PROJEKT RED teased their next video game for The Witcher series and announced a new engine collaboration with Epic Games.
Never forget to toss a coin to your Witcher! So far, the team released a teaser image for a game, a rough idea of what to expect with the technological leaps they are taking with Unreal Engine 5 and Epic Games.
The image showed a Witcher medallion with its glowing red eyes partially covered in snow with the title labelled, “The Witcher” and subtext that read, “A New Saga Begins.” Depending on the ending that players chose in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, each one reveals some potential to continue the story. No story details, devilment time frame or release date have been released as yet though.
In addition to the news of the game, CD PROJEKT RED said they will be working closely with Epic Games as part of a “multi-year strategic partnership” to help advance the technical development of Unreal Engine 5. This would mean both companies would have licensing rights over the newly built engine and future Unreal Engine designs. Since the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings in 2011, CD PROJEKT RED has been using their own engine called REDengine to build their games.
The developers said they wanted to focus on pushing the technological boundaries before putting out their fourth game. In regard to Unreal Engine 5 and future games, CTO of CD PROJEKT RED, Paweł Zawodny, shared their thoughts on the matter.
“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!”
Paweł Zawodny
From the Epic Games camp, the founder and CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, added, “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 honoured 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.”
While the collaborative efforts of both developers have kicked off already, CD PROJEKT RED confirmed that the REDengine would still be used for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion as it was used for the base game. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was initially released in 2015 with expansions like Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine that followed. The game won a whopping 250 Game of the Year awards, so hearing seven years later that a new instalment is coming is very exciting.
