The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was a trying time for CD Projekt Red. After years of anticipation, the RPG arrived glitchy and broken, leading to a number of post-launch patches and updates to make it more playable. It was the last major release from the studio to use REDEngine, its in-house engine, before switching to Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4, but one of the company’s leaders contends this is more of a coincidence.
Michał Nowakowski, the joint CEO of CD Projekt Red, appeared on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast (thanks, VGC), where he explained why the decision was made to change technology.
“A lot of people think like this, but this is a bit of a false assumption, I would say,” he explains when asked about if the sci-fi blockbuster influenced the choice, “because the issue with Cyberpunk was not really REDengine itself.”
The logic internally was that CD Projekt Red makes games, and the REDEngine was really a byproduct of doing that. “The dream of the company was actually never to make technology, it was to, yes, create visually and technically cutting-edge games,” he adds. “But most importantly telling the stories in the most convincing and immersive way.”
The incentive to switch came about when we got that The Matrix Awakens demonstration of Unreal Engine 5. At that point, the technology wasn’t quite where CD Projekt Red would like, but Nowakowski and the rest of the company’s leadership could see it was going to be formidable.
“If we form a relationship with Unreal and if we work on certain things which are specifically required to make games of the size and scope and certain technicalities about it that we need for the games, it could actually work,” he recalls thinking. “And that’s where we came to the table with the guys from Epic. That’s where we made the strategic collaboration.”
Now CD Projekt Red is one of the few developers helping to forge the engine from the inside. Which makes sense, since not only is it being used for The Witcher 4, it’s behind the remaster of The Witcher 3 as well.
“We’re actually, I think, the only team in the world outside of Epic that deals with the inside of the ‘black box’ that the engine is. Nobody else is doing that except for us and them, which we do through collaborative efforts together,” he comments. We’ll start seeing what improvements this all provides when The Witcher 3 Remastered arrives in just over a week.