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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Cyberpunk 2077 marks the end for CD Projekt's REDengine, the in-house technology that it's been building on since 2011's The Witcher 2. Last year, CD Projekt announced that its next Witcher game and other games going forward—including Cyberpunk's sequel, codename Orion—will be developed with Unreal Engine 5.

In a recent interview with Cyberpunk 2077 director Gabe Amatangelo, I asked about that transition to UE5, especially in light of the cutting edge tech the studio has continued adding to Cyberpunk 2077 (it's the first game to build in Nvidia's new ray tracing Ray Reconstruction, for example). Does all that work essentially die with 2077?

"It isn't starting from scratch," Amatangelo said. "A lot of times when you build these things, like Ray Reconstruction, there are a lot of methodologies you can apply to new engines. Learnings and the strategy of setting up the architecture. And when you look at the things that Unreal does well, the things that REDengine does well—there are some similarities and some gaps, but the brilliant engineers are like 'with all the stuff that we know you crazy creatives want to do in the future, there's less of a delta here. Let's strategically shift to [Unreal Engine 5]'."

I asked Amatangelo if he could point to any specific challenges that the dev team faced with REDengine that would be easier with Unreal. He didn't want to give away any secrets from Cyberpunk's sequel, but said that at the high level it's "refreshing" to be coming to Unreal with what they've learned while developing 2077 without having to start the process of "rebuilding" their own engine for the next game.

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic to basically bring to that engine as well. So it goes both ways… It's about economies of scale: you can obviously do all these amazing things in both. There's so much nuance behind it, but it comes down to ways to approach things to be able to do more. Not necessarily better—it could be just as good—but do it more. It's a scale thing sometimes."

The Cyberpunk team is ready to start developing the sequel, but it likely won't be the first game we see from CD Projekt built on Unreal Engine 4. That's more likely to be The Witcher 4 (or whatever its name ends up being), announced last year.

Cyberpunk 2077 director says studio's switch from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5 'isn't starting from scratch'

CD Projekt's engineers decided the move was the right "strategic shift" for future games.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[k_trout]

makes me sad so it does

 

[Thirty7ven]

People focus too much on the rendering sid, and engine is a lot more than that.

 

[Goalus]

The Cyberpunk team is ready to start developing the sequel, but it likely won't be the first game we see from CD Projekt built on Unreal Engine 4.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Seems that the author of the article made a typo.

 

[Shut0wen]

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic"

Say goodbye to multiple options to completing quests

 

[SJRB]

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic"

Say goodbye to multiple options to completing quests

 

[Shut0wen]

Honestly unreal engine 5 is a bastard for it

 

[The Cockatrice]

Honestly unreal engine 5 is a bastard for it

???? How would you know? Do you have any concrete examples?

 

[Griffon]

RED Engine runs so much better than UE5 on my machine, it's not even funny, and it looks miles better too.

I understand that CDPR needs to have easier authoring tools and onboarding, but I'm not sure if the end result will be better.

 

[Keihart]

who cares, i'm not buying shit from CDPR until they prove themselves again with a good game.

 

[Fabieter]

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic"

Say goodbye to multiple options to completing quests

I think they are talking about ray tracing.

 

[ckaneo]

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic"

Say goodbye to multiple options to completing quests

Huh? Why would that be based on the unreal or REDengine? I swear people have the weirdest idea of that engines actually do. You could add multiple options for completing quest in literally any code base

 

[DonJorginho]

who cares, i'm not buying shit from CDPR until they prove themselves again with a good game.

You never played this little game called Cyberpunk 2077 then I take it?

 

[HL3.exe]

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic"

Say goodbye to multiple options to completing quests

Wait, this literally has nothing to do with the engine of choice. Wut?

A little game called Deus Ex 1 (build on the first Unreal) knocks on the door.

 

[Luipadre]

As good as cyberpunk looks, the game still feels like it held together with ducktapes. Still so buggy and janky. Im glad they move over. They can do insane visuals in UE5 too dont you worry with hopefully less bugs

 

[FeralEcho]

who cares, i'm not buying shit from CDPR until they prove themselves again with a good game.

If you could just push that rock you're under you'd realize they just released an incredible expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty.

 

[balls of snow]

Wait, this literally has nothing to do with the engine of choice. Wut?

A little game called Deus Ex 1 (build on the first Unreal) knocks on the door.

Mass effect 1 -3 was unreal engine 3.

 

[Black_Stride]

who cares, i'm not buying shit from CDPR until they prove themselves again with a good game.

CDPR prove themselves?

Mate even their expansion packs review better than most games.

Hell they made a game based on a mini-game from one of their main games and that game has a metacritic of 80+

Even Roach Race is actually a legit fun game.

How you gonna sit here and say they need to prove themsleves when theyve released nothing but bangers.

 

[ReBurn]

CDPR prove themselves?

Mate even their expansion packs review better than most games.

Hell they made a game based on a mini-game from one of their main games and that game has a metacritic of 80+

Even Roach Race is actually a legit fun game.

How you gonna sit here and say they need to prove themsleves when theyve released nothing but bangers.

In the case of Cyberpunk their expansion pack has reviewed better than their main game, too. So not really sure what that is supposed to prove. Roach Race is legit fun.

 

[Braag]

Sad to see them abandon Red Engine cause it always looked so good and ran quite well. I hope their UE game isn't a stuttering mess like so many others are.

 

[Kenpachii]

Just stay with your current engine looks amazing. EU5 is a stutter resource hog.

 

[Bojji]

Just stay with your current engine looks amazing. EU5 is a stutter resource hog.

Their current engine has amazing rt integration and multithreading (much better than ue5 or pretty much any other big engine) but I think it went out of control after Witcher 3 and become broken in many aspects. That's why cyberpunk was so buggy and it took them some months to patch it up (base game 1.0) to really playable state. They probably expect much smoother development with ue5 and epic help.

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

who cares, i'm not buying shit from CDPR until they prove themselves again with a good game.

brother, you didn't like the next generation of open world games?

 

[simpatico]

Big sad. I don't know if it's dev choice or an engine limitation, but Unreal games always have that sense of being on a movie set where nothing is interactive. Like the game world is just a static one piece environment.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I hope what they mean is that they will reuse Night City in the sequel. It’s such an amazing place, just expand upon it.

 

[Dr.D00p]

I doubt it's about the tech and more about the vast army of talent that CDPR can outsource work to who use UE for authoring their models and artwork.

Cheaper than keeping people on the internal payroll.

 

[Fbh]

Hope I can afford a PC by the time their next game is out because if it's UE5 it will probably run like crap on consoles.

 

[sendit]

RED Engine runs so much better than UE5 on my machine, it's not even funny, and it looks miles better too.

I understand that CDPR needs to have easier authoring tools and onboarding, but I'm not sure if the end result will be better.

I didn’t know current CDPR games are already on UE5 to compare between the two.


/s

 

[StereoVsn]

RED Engine runs so much better than UE5 on my machine, it's not even funny, and it looks miles better too.

I understand that CDPR needs to have easier authoring tools and onboarding, but I'm not sure if the end result will be better.

Man, prepare for pain. Have yet to see a decent running AAA UE5 game. I guess by the time Cyberpunk 2 comes out somewhere in 2030, we will all have much faster systems at least.

“Bro, you need a 7090 to play Cyberpunk 2 on Psycho Overdrive full Pathtracing. Do you even game with your AMD 9900RTX?”

 

[Del_X]

Man, prepare for pain. Have yet to see a decent running AAA UE5 game. I guess by the time Cyberpunk 2 comes out somewhere in 2030, we will all have much faster systems at least.

Immortals of Aveum runs well considering what they’re doing at 60fps. They should have probably given consoles a 30fps option but considering the geometry and lighting it is pretty impressive. Art style might not be to everyone’s taste but it is legit pushing a lot of calculations into each frame.

 

[StereoVsn]

Immortals of Aveum runs well considering what they’re doing at 60fps. They should have probably given consoles a 30fps option but considering the geometry and lighting it is pretty impressive. Art style might not be to everyone’s taste but it is legit pushing a lot of calculations into each frame.

Haven’t played it but it’s been pretty piled on for being fairly low res. Issue is CPU/GPU cycles seem to being spent on stupid shit resulting in bad performance.

 

[balls of snow]

I hope what they mean is that they will reuse Night City in the sequel. It’s such an amazing place, just expand upon it.

Yep and include a city from NUSA too and you travel by the defunct NCART rails system. Or hell go crazy and put in Neo Tokyo.

 

[Black_Stride]

Man, prepare for pain. Have yet to see a decent running AAA UE5 game.

You have yet to see a AAA UE5 game period.

While Ascendant are/were a studio filled with talented people, I wouldnt call them a AAA studio, we have to wait for the first batch of AAA UE5 games to come out before we can judge the engine in anyway.

Hell 5.3 just came out and alot of the experimental features are only production ready now, while a bunch of other features are actually still experimental, which would require having some pretty hectic engineers in place to make sure said features are stable.

And CDPR have already stated they are extending UE5 to fit their needs, few if any AAA developers use Unreal in its "stock" form, it has a lot of bloat thats not necessary and alot of features that devs need for specific projects.
Im sure their build of UE5 is very different to the stock version, just like The Coalitions build of Unreal Engine 4 (The Fenix Engine) is substancially different from UE4.xx.
Hell even Nether Realms build of UE4 seems to be vastly different to the stock version.......its probably gonna be the best looking fighting game of the generation, until Mortal Kombat 2X.

 

[DragonNCM]

Do you guys realize we are at least 5y from Witcher 3 ?
Till then we will have new consoles & new PC's who can eat UE5 for breakfast.........

 

[Woggleman]

Hope next time they develop within the confines of the platform. That is where things went wrong.

 

[Barakov]

Do you guys realize we are at least 5y from Witcher 4 ?
Till then we will have new consoles & new PC's who can eat UE5 for breakfast.........

ftfy

 

[Roni]

I hope what they mean is that they will reuse Night City in the sequel. It’s such an amazing place, just expand upon it.

That would be the smart move, at least for the next immediate sequel. But I fear creative egos might get in the way...

 

[Loomy]

That would be the smart move, at least for the next immediate sequel. But I fear creative egos might get in the way...

What does that even mean?

 

[sankt-Antonio]

Bs. All of it. If these engines are so similar it would make absolutely no sense paying the hefty licensing fees for UE5.

They want an engine that works, people know and doesn’t lead to a games broken launch , needing a massive patch three years in the works to fix things.

 

[StereoVsn]

You have yet to see a AAA UE5 game period.

While Ascendant are/were a studio filled with talented people, I wouldnt call them a AAA studio, we have to wait for the first batch of AAA UE5 games to come out before we can judge the engine in anyway.

Hell 5.3 just came out and alot of the experimental features are only production ready now, while a bunch of other features are actually still experimental, which would require having some pretty hectic engineers in place to make sure said features are stable.

And CDPR have already stated they are extending UE5 to fit their needs, few if any AAA developers use Unreal in its "stock" form, it has a lot of bloat thats not necessary and alot of features that devs need for specific projects.
Im sure their build of UE5 is very different to the stock version, just like The Coalitions build of Unreal Engine 4 (The Fenix Engine) is substancially different from UE4.xx.
Hell even Nether Realms build of UE4 seems to be vastly different to the stock version.......its probably gonna be the best looking fighting game of the generation, until Mortal Kombat 2X.

Of course they will all be modified and expanded, extended and use bunch of different middleware. Considering the state of games right now that are coming out I am dubious any of they will be well optimized.

 

[Roni]

What does that even mean?

It means the design department might not want to spend the next 5 years simply tweaking a level created and established by the team of the previous entry.

 

[hyperbertha]

You never played this little game called Cyberpunk 2077 then I take it?

He's just butthurt his base PS4 couldn't run cyberpunk over 20 fps.

 

[blastprocessor]

Can you imagine engineers of an in-house engine deciding that UE5 would be best to switch to? I highly doubt it, they have their jobs to protect.

It is l suspect management driven.

Was it based on the delays and subsequent issues with previous generation? I'm sure that played a part.

I don't think they will have it easy with UE5 but l suspect Amatangelo will be a driver to ensure the release goes smother than before.

 

[Bkdk]

Hopefully they could speed up the development time with ue5. They struggled big time to upgrade and develop features for cp2077 with red engine 3 and that likely takes away so much of their time with a lot of unnecessary costs. Also a lot easier to hire people that knows the engine.

 

[RJMacready73]

Hopefully they can make their world's feel alive with this switch, somehow Witcher3's world felt more alive than Cyberpunk which tbh just looked dead, gorgeous but dead