The Witcher 4 Gets Huge Development Boost As Unreal Engine 6 Teased
Topics: The Witcher, The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red
Featured Image Credit: CD Projekt RED
Topics: The Witcher, The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red
With two swords on her back, the empress-who-never-was, Cirilla, will be spearheading the next chapter of The Witcher RPGs, which promise to be blockbuster games built on the foundations laid by one of the greatest games of all time.
The Witcher 4 will take the series further than ever before, as CD Projekt RED has designed its semi-canon story around the fate of Ciri, leaving Geralt's protagonist days behind.
But it's not just the story and its plethora of side quests that will make The Witcher 4 so great, as the developers are also building the game on one of the best engines yet.
After switching from Red Engines - something that the CDPR boss says was 'impossible' for The Witcher 4 - to Epic Games' Unreal software, the fourth game in the series is set to be more advanced than anything else ever made on it.
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That's the hype train delivered this week, as the CEO reveals that they have opened the 'black box' of Unreal Engine, and Pandora's paradise inside will make The Witcher 4 and its future follow-ups so much more special.
The Witcher fans are set for an assault on the senses with a new DLC arriving to the 10-year-old game, just months before its successor arrives with its brand-new upgrades.
Speaking this weekend, CDPR co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has claimed that the title will be a leading title on "the biggest techs out there".
"Epic [allowed] us to go into the black box of Unreal Engine," Nowakowski said on a panel at Edge In Person.
"I think we're the only company right now that actually does that outside of Epic themselves - and fiddle with [it], so [we] would actually be co-building one of the biggest techs out there.
"The rationale was we wanted to be able to tell more stories without worrying about the foundation of the engine itself. Epic [gave] us that backbone, and we can still build around that and differentiate ourselves."
All of this comes in the wake of Unreal Engine 6, which got a huge update last month, as Rocket League will lead the way with the new tech wave in '2027-ish'.
Given the timeline, The Witcher 4 might come too soon for Unreal Engine 6, but that's not to say the two follow-ups in Ciri's trilogy won't make that port - as could the original The Witcher remake that is currently in development, alongside future CDPR games.
The franchise is already pencilled in for at least four games in the next few years, and CD Projekt RED is hoping to go big to reestablish its relationship with fans following the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
"I'm not 100 per cent convinced we went through the full redemption arc," he continued. "I'm convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that's a fair thing. But I do hope we will be able to make it back - if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next."
"Our dream is to be making more games, although we never want to turn into the studio that's going to be launching a big game every year. It may happen, but this is not the goal. We have a rough ten-year rolling plan, but the goal is not to flood the games market with CDPR games. We just want to make really cool games, and we don't want to have a ton of IPs either. We're not planning to grow in that way."
The franchise looks to be in steady hands, and we can't wait to see how Ciri tackles life on the path.
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