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[Lunatic_Gamer]

During an interview on the Flow Games YouTube channel, Pawel Sasko, Associate Game Director at CD Projekt Red, shared his experience working with Unreal Engine 5. According to him, there are are some things that the engine is inherently “amazing” at doing. Though, he didn’t go into specifics regarding Unreal Engine 5, as he would have had to reveal things that the studio is working on with its future projects, including The Witcher 4 and the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.

Furthermore, Sasko mentioned that every technology has its own set of limitations, and there are things he finds with Unreal Engine 5 that could be improved. Though, he added that the same could have been said about Red Engine 4, the most recent version of CD Projekt Red’s own proprietary engine, as well.

According to Sasko, engine improvements can sometimes also be a matter of perspective, where the development team at CD Projekt Red and Epic Games have different opinions on what is the better way to structure the engine. He said that a better approach has been to work together with Epic Games in figuring out the structural improvements that can be brought to Unreal Engine 5. This is as much as Sasko was able to share without revealing anything specific regarding any of the studio’s upcoming projects, all of which are being developed in Epic Games’ engine.

Previously, during its earnings call for the first quarter of the year 2024, CD Projekt Group shared that it was optimistic about the potential of using Unreal Engine 5 for the next Witcher title. Regarding the transition from Red Engine, the company admitted that it as a significant shift that came with certain challenges. However, the company remained confident about its collaboration with Epic Games and the development of specific tools for Project Polaris, as the engine maker has been providing the kind of support that CD Projekt had hoped for.

The Witcher 4 Developer Is Working Closely With Epic Games To Bring Structural Improvements To Unreal Engine 5

The Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt Red is working closely with Epic Games in order to bring structural improvements to Unreal Engine 5.

twistedvoxel.com

 

[crackajack]

Makes sense for Epic to work together, when Red Engine is arguably showing off better outside of tech demo realms. Cyberpunk being the poster child for various stuff, while UE games so far do not really impress, often just being ports of last engine version. CD maybe should just have kept it for their next project, now that they know how to run it on PS5 and Xbox with all tracers and upscalers. But long term it might be for the better, especially if they can share some of their know how.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

Get some realtime pathtracing in that bitch.

 

[StereoVsn]

We won’t see Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 for a long long time. I really wish they kept their in-house engine as it’s quite performant and very scalable.

Well, and we wouldn’t have to wait as long for the next games. I don’t expect Witcher 4 till like 2028-2029 now and Cyberpunk even later. And that sucks.

 

[mrcroket]

Makes sense for Epic to work together, when Red Engine is arguably showing off better outside of tech demo realms. Cyberpunk being the poster child for various stuff, while UE games so far do not really impress, often just being ports of last engine version. CD maybe should just have kept it for their next project, now that they know how to run it on PS5 and Xbox with all tracers and upscalers. But long term it might be for the better, especially if they can share some of their know how.

Red Engine is in no way better than UE 5, not even close. Nanite and Lumen are much more advanced than Red Engine rendering technologies, the only "advantage" is the implementation of path tracing in collaboration with Nvidia (technology that can be used by UE 5 anyway).

 

[Gaiff]

Is UE5 any good for open-world games?

 

[mrcroket]

Is UE5 any good for open-world games?

UE 5 was release 2 years ago, an modern openworld game takes much longer to develop.

 

[Fafalada]

Is UE5 any good for open-world games?

Historically, UE mostly sucked for open world games, and it was far from being just a rendering problem.
5 is yet to be proven that way.

 

[blastprocessor]

Sounds like it's going to be a mess, let's blame UE5 structural issues before we release the game.

 

[Gaiff]

UE 5 was release 2 years ago, an modern openworld game takes much longer to develop.

Well, UE5 didn’t come out of thin air. It’s built on the back of UE4.

Historically, UE mostly sucked for open world games, and it was far from being just a rendering problem.
5 is yet to be proven that way.

That’s what I thought. Though the Red Engine isn’t great for open-world either. CDPR noted many challenges of the engine which wasn’t originally built for open-world games. One of the reasons they switched to UE5 along with the fact that it’s so widespread that it doesn’t require as much training to onboard new people.

 

[StereoVsn]

Red Engine is in no way better than UE 5, not even close. Nanite and Lumen are much more advanced than Red Engine rendering technologies, the only "advantage" is the implementation of path tracing in collaboration with Nvidia (technology that can be used by UE 5 anyway).

Except it runs like shit even on higher end gear or devs can’t figure out how not to make it run like shit. Except for Epic and Fortnite.

 

[Xtib81]

So to summarize, there's nothing of value in this article since we don't have any details or examples. There's no doubt the witcher 4 will look spectacular though.

 

[mrcroket]

Except it runs like shit even on higher end gear or devs can’t figure out how not to make it run like shit. Except for Epic and Fortnite.

Run like shit on console, on PC (especially on high end) it performs great, just ask my 4080.

 

[lh032]

the new witcher will be a diversity character.

 

[StereoVsn]

Run like shit on console, on PC (especially on high end) it performs great, just ask my 4080.

Even on PC UE5 games aren’t well performing. And we haven’t really seen the features to be worth the performance downside.

 

[mrcroket]

Even on PC UE5 games aren’t well performing. And we haven’t really seen the features to be worth the performance downside.

That's not true at all, well optimized games like robocop look amazing, with moments that look photorealistic and has a great performance, and being only a "double A" game.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[nkarafo]

Is UE5 any good for open-world games?

I don't remember the last time when the UE engine was good. Maybe during the UE2 days?

Ever since that, this engine has become synonymous with issues. Like the UE3 not loading textures or UE4/5 having shader/traversal stutters.

 

[genesisblock]

I don't remember the last time when the UE engine was good. Maybe during the UE2 days?

Ever since that, this engine has become synonymous with issues. Like the UE3 not loading textures or UE4/5 having shader/traversal stutters.

Arkham Knight is a great example of a UE game on open world. And that was version 3.(Heavily modified but yeah).

 

[nkarafo]

Arkham Knight is a great example of a UE game on open world. And that was version 3.(Heavily modified but yeah).

Yes and that game was one of the worst performing open world games ever made, no?

I'm not sure if it still runs OK if you brute force it with a much more powerful modern PC...

 

[genesisblock]

Yes and that game was one of the worst performing open world games ever made, no?

I'm not sure if it still runs OK if you brute force it with a much more powerful modern PC...

To be honest, I wouldn't know. I only played it on PS4 Pro then a second time with my 4090 GPU (not flexing)