CD Projekt Red Teases New Witcher Saga Using Unreal 5

The company is ditching REDengine in favor of Epic's popular development tools

By
Rob Rich
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Rob Rich
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  • College for Creative Studies
Rob is a freelance tech reporter with experience writing for a variety of outlets, including IGN, Unwinnable, 148Apps, Gamezebo, Pocket Gamer, Fanbolt, Zam, and more.
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Published on March 21, 2022 02:17PM EDT
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Jerri Ledford
Jerri Ledford
Fact checked by Jerri Ledford
  • Western Kentucky University
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Jerri L. Ledford has been writing, editing, and fact-checking tech stories since 1994. Her work has appeared in Computerworld, PC Magazine, Information Today, and many others.
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CD Projekt Red, the studio behind the popular The Witcher series, has unveiled plans for the next phase of the video game franchise—kind of.

Okay, it hasn't "revealed plans" so much as it's posted a single teaser image on Twitter, along with an accompanying tweet showing the brief announcement. The same announcement has been posted to the official website, but some have been having trouble getting it to load, hence the second tweet.

New Witcher sage teaser

CD Projekt Red

The announcement explains that this next entry in the series will be using Unreal Engine 5 instead of its in-house REDengine, which was most recently used for Cyberpunk 2077. Additionally, the announcement explains that the change is part of a multi-year partnership with Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine. The stated goal is that CDPR and Epic will work together to figure out how to work with Unreal to produce more open-world experiences.

This engine change looks to only apply to the next Witcher title(s) and other future projects and will not affect any currently released games or their patches/downloadable content. CDPR made it clear that the upcoming expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 will continue to use the REDengine that the core game was developed for.

The Witcher 3 screen shot

CD Projekt Red

Details about the next Witcher game (or games) have not been revealed yet. CD Projekt only stated that the next installment is currently in development.

The name, characters, plot, and release date will have to wait for now. And hopefully, the company will be a bit kinder to the development team this time around.

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