If CD Projekt Red is something today, without a doubt that position is due to The Witcher, the exceptional saga of Geralt de Rivia created, based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski by the Polish studio, which peaked with The Wither 3: Wild Hunt, in my opinion one of the best games of the past decade. Since then, and to keep the spirit alive, CDPR has published a couple of card games based on the same universe, as well as a title for smartphones that was released last summer, but nothing to glorify, to tell the truth.
Since the arrival of the third installment of the saga, the study turned, as we well know, in Cyberpunk 2077, a title in which he had already started working even before that moment, and which has kept the studio totally busy until very recently, specifically until the expected arrival, just over a month ago, of the version of Cyberpunk 2077 for the current generation of consoles. Now, and although the company will continue to work on its most recent release, it is time to talk about the future.
And for this, to talk about its future, at CD Projekt Red they have made a move that, personally, seems quite intelligent to me, and that is to look at the past, and draw inspiration from it to decide their next big step. A big step that, as we can read on your website, consists of the return to the universe of The Witcher, with what the company itself calls “The beginning of a new saga”.
https://t.co/XtbfqscMWr pic.twitter.com/eK6ZIbfLRa
— The Witcher (@witchergame) March 21, 2022
The first (and only so far) image of this new beginning of The Witcher is a medallion of the Cat School in the snow, which puts us on the track that Geralt de Rivia could not be its protagonist, although it does not seem likely that CDPR will leave aside the character and everything created around him. A golden secondary? Any punctual appearance? We do not know, at the moment the study does not advance absolutely nothing about the plot line of the game.
Yes, they have counted, and this is a surprise (in the first instance I think a good one, although we will have to wait to see the result) that for this new installment of The Witcher will not use REDengine. Instead, the Polish studio has opted for Unreal Engine 5, within the framework of a collaboration agreement signed between CD Project Red and Epic Games. However, CDPR will continue to work on REDengine, ahead of a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion that will be released soon.
One of the first questions to which CDPR has answered, yes, anticipating the fear of many users, is that the collaboration between both companies will not result in the new installment of The Witcher being exclusive to the Epic Games Store. We can expect, at the very least, that it will also be released on GOG, the CDPR store, and although maybe not from day one, it would be quite strange if it wasn’t also distributed through Steam.
We are not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront.
— The Witcher (@witchergame) March 21, 2022
Two pretty smart decisions, The Witcher and Unreal Engine 5. The first, because after the reputation crisis experienced by the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco at its launch, the studio urgently needs to regain the trust of users, and using precisely the saga with which he earned his name and prestige, can add a few points to that score. In addition, it indicates that the company returns to a context that it knows very well, which invites us to think that it already knows how to face many of the challenges that will arise during development.
And opt for Unreal Engine 5 relieves the company of having to review and improve its own engine, and therefore allows them to focus on the development of the game itself. Everything we have seen so far from Unreal Engine 5 is very promising, the demo that they published coinciding with the premiere of Matrix: Revolutions was spectacular, and if the development team is able to squeeze the functions and features of it well, Leaving behind the limitations of REDengine, the result can be much, much better than what we unfortunately saw with the arrival of Cyberpunk 2077.
Obviously, we still have to wait a long time (years) until the arrival of the new The Witcher, this is only a first sign to warm up engines. But, and this is not a phrase that we have been able to use frequently in recent times, it seems that CD Projekt Red is on the right track.
