New The Witcher Game Officially Confirmed in Development in Unreal Engine 5; EGS Exclusive “Not Planned”

Today CD Projekt RED officially announced that it’s developing a new game within its popular The Witcher franchise.

The new game will start a new saga and will be developed in Unreal Engine 5.

No release window nor any further details were provided.

On top of that, the studio announced that it’s moving to Unreal Engine 5 as part of the multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games. 

This will mean that Epic will also help with technical development while CD Projekt’s devs will “help tailor the engine for open-world experiences.”

That being said, CD Projekt’s own REDengine is still being used for Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming expansion.

The press release that accompanied the announcement included a comment by CD Projekt RED CTO Paweł Zawodny:

“One of the core aspects of our internal RED 2.0 Transformation is a much stronger focus on technology, and our cooperation with Epic Games is based on this principle. From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership. It is vital for CD PROJEKT RED to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as; in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can’t wait for the great games we’re going to create using Unreal Engine 5!”     

We also hear from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.

“Epic has been building Unreal Engine 5 to enable teams to create dynamic open worlds at an unprecedented scale and level of fidelity. We are deeply honored by the opportunity to partner with CD PROJEKT RED to push the limits of interactive storytelling and gameplay together, and this effort will benefit the developer community for years to come.”

Some may ask themselves if this means that the new game will be Epic Game Store exclusive, but CD Projekt confirmed that won’t be the case.

This likely should not surprise, as CD Projekt RED has been historically against this kind of exclusivity deal and has its own PC store with GoG.com.

Lastly, we hear that Gwent game director Jason Slama has been covering the same role for the new Witcher game.