After the release of the already magnificent Cyberpunk 2077, but with its very complicated development, CD Projekt RED has decided to switch to Unreal Engine 5 to power its future games. The flagship of this transition is, of course, The Witcher 4. This serves a dual purpose: to facilitate the work of the Polish studio's developers, and to make the engine more efficient on open-world titles. This is precisely one of the main advances of its version 5.6, now available in Preview form.
The Witcher 4 and Unreal Engine 5: hand-in-hand development
The Witcher 4 entered full production in the middle of last year, but is not expected to be released until 2027/2028 at the earliest. CD Projekt RED wants to take all the time necessary to ensure this new saga at the helm of Ciri is released in the best possible conditions. To achieve this, the Polish studio is counting on Unreal Engine 5, a much less recalcitrant engine than RED Engine, its in-house engine abandoned since Cyberpunk 2077.
Unreal Engine 5 will soon be upgraded to version 5.6. This will offer many new features, including "vast, high-fidelity open worlds with maximum performance at a constant 60 FPS", the ability to create such worlds "faster with a more powerful procedural workflow", and the in-engine addition of Meta Human, the engine's impressive character creator. So many new features that will greatly benefit The Witcher 4.
Since announcing its transition to Unreal Engine 5, CD Projekt RED had indicated that this allowed Epic Games to develop its engine's capabilities to create superb open worlds, with good performance. The fruit of this collaboration is therefore reflected in this upcoming version 5.6. Given the time separating us from the release of The Witcher 4, we can expect even more advanced developments in this area in the years to come. The sequel to The Witcher 3 could therefore still amaze us. Hopefully the same will be true for optimization, with as few bugs as possible, to avoid a new launch like Cyberpunk 2077.
Source: Epic Games
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