While CD Projekt RED has been working on The Witcher 4 with Unreal Engine 5.6, the the studio has noted that its work with the engine has been helping it move the technology forwards when it came to open world games. In an interview with GamesRadar, The Witcher 4 engineering production manager Jan Hermanowicz spoke about how, while it’s still to early to talk about the future of the franchise right now, its switch to Unreal Engine has been helping it quite a bit thanks to its new tools.
Hermanowicz notes that Unreal Engine 5.6 offers plenty of new features for the developers at CD Projekt RED to play around with for The Witcher 4 – and possibly even future games – thanks to “a lot of cool things that allow for fast iteration and moving forward.”
He also noted that, thanks to these new tools, the studio has a faster turnaround for whenever it is working on its other games. Hermanowicz said that “the more tailored, the more appropriate for our type of game the pipelines are and the technology is, the easier it is to make the game.”
“We have multiple projects in flight now. [Cyberpunk 2077 sequel] Orion moved to pre-production.”
“The development of those things and those improvements for open-world technology go across all those projects and benefit all of those projects,” Hermanowicz further explained. “So in a sense, we are now using The Witcher 4, and all the assets which are for this technical demo, which is a vehicle to push the tech forward, in return benefits all of the industry.”
Earlier this month, Hermanowicz also spoke about how CD Projekt RED has been looking at one of the densest locations from The Witcher 3 – Novigrad – to help it develop the denser towns in the upcoming The Witcher 4. “We actually looked at what we did in the past, what was cool about that, and what we couldn’t do at the time,” he said. “We actually looked at what we did in the past, what was cool about that, and what we couldn’t do at the time.”
When it comes to The Witcher 4, CD Projekt RED has been quite excited about the project since it released the tech demo showcase during the Unreal Engine event.
“Here’s the very first look at the tech powering The Witcher 4, developed by our team in collaboration with Epic, in buttery smooth 4K/60fps,” wrote the studio’s global community director Marcin Momot on social media. “This game is shaping up to be something special and we can’t wait to show you more when the time is right!”
The senior technical animator working on The Witcher 4 – Julius Girbig – has also spoken about the new tools available to him thanks to Unreal Engine 5.6, exclaiming that these tools have allowed him work on creating and refining “hundreds of characters” without having to dig into the code.
“It just unlocks me as an artist,” said Girbirg. “Now, with this engine, it suddenly unlocks me to create much bigger things and think bigger. It’s really, really awesome to be able to use things like the nanite foliage to create these vast forests and whatever comes to your mind, and it will be available for everyone.”
The Witcher 4 is in development for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
