CD Projekt Red Confirms Next Witcher Game, Using Unreal Engine 5

Get ready for another iteration in one of the most beloved RPGs of the current age. CD Projekt Red has officially announced the development of the next Witcher game.

Announced on their website, little to nothing is currently known about the upcoming game, save for that it is currently in development. The graphic they used for the post shows the wolf medallion in the snow, which could be used to imply some kind of tundra based adventure. But that is hardly anything to base information off of.

More interestingly, however, is the one detail they did provide: The developers are making the game in the Unreal Engine, instead of their own REDengine.

This is an exciting moment as were moving from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5, beginning a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant. We'll closely collaborate with Epic Games developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.

It sounds like this is more than just an internal decision. It sounds like Epic themselves pushed for the change, possibly even paying some green for the honor. Epics strategy for the last several years has been based around the idea of paying for exclusivity deals and cross promotional material. This has ranged from Epic Games Store exclusives to popular culture icons appearing in games like Fortnite. Granted, that is for Epic Games, which is a separate corporate entity from the Epic that develops the Unreal engine. But THAT Epic has also made a strong push for promoting the game engine recently.

Cyberpunk 2077 will continue to use the REDengine, though.

All of this likely will make no difference for the players themselves. And if it does, It's far too early to tell how. Games like The Witcher will take years upon years to develop. You saw how long they worked on Cyberpunk. So we still have a long, long time to wait.