Game News CD Projekt announce that the next Witcher game is in development using Unreal Engine 5

[KeighnMcDeath]

Meh! It'll be a Full-Motion Video Movie Game with the netflix actors and you get CHOICES. Like:

 

[FreshCorpse]

That doesn't appear to be true. In the Codexian Top 101 RPG poll, the first game using an 'engine' is Pathfinder: Kingmaker as #14. The next one is Shadowrun: Dragonfall as position #28. Why so few and far between when 'engines' are supposedly essential?

The first game on the Codex's Top 101 List to use an engine is #1, which used the Infinity Engine. That same engine was also used by #3 (BG2). #5 used Valve's Source Engine. #7 took an engine verbatim from another developer to build a glorified asset flip (but god, what an asset flip). #8 used the (original) Unreal Engine. #10 used GameBryo - before it was "warmed over".

I can't be bothered going further than the top 10, you get the idea.

 

[EvilWolf]

That doesn't appear to be true. In the Codexian Top 101 RPG poll, the first game using an 'engine' is Pathfinder: Kingmaker as #14. The next one is Shadowrun: Dragonfall as position #28. Why so few and far between when 'engines' are supposedly essential?

The first game on the Codex's Top 101 List to use an engine is #1, which used the Infinity Engine. That same engine was also used by #3 (BG2). #5 used Valve's Source Engine. #7 took an engine verbatim from another developer to build a glorified asset flip (but god, what an asset flip). #8 used the (original) Unreal Engine. #10 used GameBryo - before it before "warmed over".

I can't be bothering going further than the top 10, you get the idea.

The reason he keeps putting apostrophes around engine is because he means cookie cutter, "here we'll make 90% of the game just add story and art then bake!" "engines". These engines are the number one cause of decline when anyone can pump out any drivel they want, after a single class at a conveyer belt university or a youtube playlist, to the masses.

 

[Rincewind]

These engines are the number one cause of decline

No, computers having become mainstream is (mobile phones and consoles also count).

 

[Jack Of Owls]

No Geralt actually makes me interested in this, kinda. Don't want to see that pasty-faced poor man's Elric ever again.

 

[KafkaBot]

Unreal 5? Good. Maybe now the combat will be a bit less shit.

Sadly, that whole Cyberpunk debacle doesn't allow me to be too optimistic.

 

[tritosine2k]

These engines are the number one cause of decline

No, computers having become mainstream is (mobile phones and consoles also count).

That doesn't make devs less of a computard tho:

Computard -
One who lacks proficiency and competence within the field of computers to the extent at which he or she is an annoyance to others

In this context bringing up mainstream is merely handwaving.

 

[FreshCorpse]

That doesn't appear to be true. In the Codexian Top 101 RPG poll, the first game using an 'engine' is Pathfinder: Kingmaker as #14. The next one is Shadowrun: Dragonfall as position #28. Why so few and far between when 'engines' are supposedly essential?

The first game on the Codex's Top 101 List to use an engine is #1, which used the Infinity Engine. That same engine was also used by #3 (BG2). #5 used Valve's Source Engine. #7 took an engine verbatim from another developer to build a glorified asset flip (but god, what an asset flip). #8 used the (original) Unreal Engine. #10 used GameBryo - before it before "warmed over".

I can't be bothering going further than the top 10, you get the idea.

The reason he keeps putting apostrophes around engine is because he means cookie cutter, "here we'll make 90% of the game just add story and art then bake!" "engines". These engines are the number one cause of decline when anyone can pump out any drivel they want, after a single class at a conveyer belt university or a youtube playlist, to the masses.

The Decline is not about the growth in bad games, it is (imo: was) about the lack of good games. No one cares a fig about the quality standard of the median steam game. There has always been shovelware, there will always be shovelware, and it does not matter, at all, how much shovelware there is.

As evidenced from the 101 top games list, a sizeable fraction of good games use third party game engines. Sometimes a game on that list probably could not have been made without a third-party engine. Good quality, reusable, affordably licenced, third party engines are not a force for decline, they are a tremendous force for incline.

I wouldn't bet on UE5 being a major factor in whether this new Witcher game is good, though.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I wouldn't bet on UE5 being a major factor in whether this new Witcher game is good, though.

I mean game code can be quite universal so I'd expect it to functionally behave as Witcher 3 did. This shouldn't be difficult for them to port over.

The issue for CDPR isn't their tech, its with their organizational culture. They've turned into yet another AAA studio with a culture that matches, they've purged a lot of talent for the past 2 titles because both were bleedingly difficult games to develop.

Where one was a critical success it succeeded downward because people were burnt out and left CDPR. Their strategy with Cyberpunk was a huge disaster, they attempted to move the pressure away from CDPR Poland and push the bulk of the workload onto 3rd party studios.
What they didn't realize as is the case with most of the industry, doing this can produce undesirable results and then you're stuck with a mess that you can't easily clean up, the end result is a product that feels like it was made by 20 different teams with varying concepts of quality.
There is no consistency in the work that had been done. That to me is the crucial issue CDPR has to fix.

The question is, are CDPR interested in training and acquiring new and experienced in-house staff to work UE5 or is this all just a ploy to further expand on their access to 3rd party talent pools? if its not in-house the end result will be worse than even Cyberpunk.
I don't necessarily think Red Engine was the issue. I think the issue was with the staff and that they've lost a lot of people experienced with that technology, which is evident by how terrible the post-release support for Cyberpunk has been.

What I see is a lack of evidence that CDPR has fixed its organizational issues. That should concern everyone because that's why Cyberpunk was a disaster.

 

[hivemind]

cdproject made 2 good games

withcer 1

and gewnt

that's it

twitcher 3 was p much an interactive movie and in that category cyberpunk blew it out of the water

 

[random_name]

I hope they drop the open world.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Another clone.

 

[OSK]

This next one is going to be a Souls-like, right? That seems to be what's popular today.

 

[Viata]

What is the point of reinventing the wheel

Just like to point out that reinventing the wheel is not a bad thing. That is how many things were created. The car's wheel is different from the bicycle's wheel that is also different from cart's wheel, etc. If man had not reinvented the wheel so many times, we would be forced to change our design every time it had a wheel on it so it would work in the only available wheel model.

 

[Rincewind]

What is the point of reinventing the wheel

Just like to point out that reinventing the wheel is not a bad thing. That is how many things were created. The car's wheel is different from the bicycle's wheel that is also different from cart's wheel, etc. If man had not reinvented the wheel so many times, we would be forced to change our design every time it had a wheel on it so it would work in the only available wheel model.

True, but write some basic game from scratch, then try to port it to 5 different platforms. Then repeat the exercise using some engine. Not saying game engines are the promised land of game development necessarily, but given the alternative of hand porting shit yourself, it's a tradeoff many are happily willing to take.

I could write my own HTTP server or whatever, but it would take a lot of time, and I would hit the same weird quirks and issues that many have before me. Most of the issues you hit in software development these days are not algorithmic in nature; it's just fucking around with broken APIs, weird undocumented behaviour, broken libraries, platform related incompatibilities, driver issues, etc. It's just a slog to work through all of that, it's not a matter of being clever or even experienced, it's really about perseverance and a high tolerance for frustration, and I absolutely hate it personally. It takes away your time from focusing on the real problem you're trying to solve. It's not uncommon for even small companies to have one dev who focuses on the abstract algorithmic stuff (the interesting part) and what makes the product unique, then hire another dev who is happy to do the grunt work of everything else that is unglamorous, boring, frustrating, but *must be done*. As I see it, game engines can take away lot of that grunt work, and I'm all for it.

We can bitch about it all day, but todays OSs are a *lot* more complex than the home computers of the past. At the end of the day, you either wade through all that crap yourself, use an engine and/or libraries, or you just don't develop any software and take up a more relaxing hobby, like gardening.

There's a place for custom code written from the ground up, but I'd say what makes most good games good games these days is not the technological innovation, but everything else (gameplay, systems, story, art, etc). Many of my favourite new(ish) games are Unity based, so after all this theorising that's the concrete reality of the situation. It just handles the low-level technical aspects well enough, so people can focus on the actually important stuff.

 

[Drowed]

What is the point of reinventing the wheel

Just like to point out that reinventing the wheel is not a bad thing. That is how many things were created. The car's wheel is different from the bicycle's wheel that is also different from cart's wheel, etc. If man had not reinvented the wheel so many times, we would be forced to change our design every time it had a wheel on it so it would work in the only available wheel model.

I would not consider any of these situations a reinvention of the wheel, but the use of the wheel. Yes, there were little changes and adaptations but in essence the wheel remains a wheel, when you use an engine you also make changes and adaptations within what it offers to best fit what you need. We are at a stage of technological development where most of our work is based on the accumulated labor of millions of human beings over centuries. Hell, just to post this answer here, how many people have worked, directly and indirectly, on all the theoretical and practical aspects, components and production lines and all the code we use to even be here right now?

This level of change is so trivial that it misses the essence of the point of the sentence. "Reinventing the wheel" has the sense of having the whole process re-done from scratch when it is unnecessary.

I would say the opposite of you, almost nothing significant has been done by humanity with the reinvention of the wheel and the few cases where it really happened were phenomenal paradigm shifts that dramatically changed the course of our technology - when, for example, we "reinvented" the laws of gravitation going from Newton's vision to Einstein's. Most of the work done today is based on work already done by others. And this goes for programming even leaving engines aside, most programmers simply copy code easily available on the internet and adapt it to what they are going to use, or recycle something they have already used in the past. Precisely because it is a waste of time to spend your energy on a job that has already been done. Those who do not do this usually do not do it out of ignorance or stubbornness, rarely out of necessity.

Of course, switching to Unreal is not a magic solution to all of CDPR's structural problems. They have already lost much of the staff that worked on the best aspects of the previous games and switching engines will not magically solve this issue. But leaving aside the graphics of the games from Witcher 2 on (which are praised outside the Codex but here many don't even consider it as a positive point), REDengine's inability to control basic issues such as NPC behavior, collision with the scenery and several other details has always been visible, something on the level of Bethesda. What always made CDPR better seen was its great ability to wake up storyfagottry fans. You won't find many here defending the gameplay of the Witcher series, but I admit without fear that I enjoyed the story.

But when the game is too broken you can't even focus on the story. And in that sense, switching to Unreal may give a level of stability that CDPR games never had. Sure, it will still require some level of competence from the team and people familiar with the engine, but it's a lot less work than trying to maintain your own separate engine, especially when you've been failing at it for over a decade. It's just that your cumulative failure has reached the point of finally exploding, but the signs were already there. The change may end up not representing an improvement in the next games for a variety of reasons, but if it does, it won't be because of the change, but in spite of it. In the current context, I can only see this as a positive sign that they realized that they needed to get off the leaky boat they were on. Better late than later.

 

[Rincewind]

We are at a stage of technological development where most of our work is based on the accumulated labor of millions of human beings over centuries. Hell, just to post this answer here, how many people have worked, directly and indirectly, on all the theoretical and practical aspects, components and production lines and all the code we use to even be here right now?

I would say the opposite of you, almost nothing significant has been done by humanity with the reinvention of the wheel and the few cases where it really happened were phenomenal paradigm shifts that dramatically changed the course of our technology [...] Most of the work done today is based on work already done by others. And this goes for programming even leaving engines aside

Very well said; this should be framed and hanged above the entrance of every development studio. After 20+ years of developing software professionally, I'm a bit allergic to people reinventing the wheel in their own shitty and buggy way. Usually it's stemming from a weird combination of egoism and cowboy mentality, often (but not always) with a good dose of ignorance added to the mix. It's a form of developer narcissism, and I can see some of that pigheaded mentality on display in this thread.

Anyway, I will waste no more words on this — I will not get into fistfights with people who are adamant on hanging themselves...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This next one is going to be a Souls-like, right? That seems to be what's popular today.

For CDPR to turn The Witcher IV into a proper Souls-like, they would not only have to allow a customizable character, as was already done in Cyberpunk 2077, but also eliminate the voluminous cutscenes and the narrative story-telling, which have both been integral components of CDPR's last three games. That would be a tremendous improvement, but it's sadly quite unlikely.

 

[CRD]

This next one is going to be a Souls-like, right? That seems to be what's popular today.

For CDPR to turn The Witcher IV into a proper Souls-like, they would not only have to allow a customizable character, as was already done in Cyberpunk 2077, but also eliminate the voluminous cutscenes and the narrative story-telling, which have both been integral components of CDPR's last three games. That would be a tremendous improvement, but it's sadly quite unlikely.

Not agree on that

if CDPR had the combat designers of fromsoftware, platinum, team ninja or someone alike, and not the atrocity they usually have their games, witcher 3 would have been straight up top 5 game of all time without discussion. Hopefully they can recognize it same as they did with the red engine and put someone competent in charge for the design of W4

You don't need a game without story and custom character to have an awesome combat design

sekiro, ghosts of tsusima, Batman games, god of war, nioh, ninja gaiden, DMC, bayonnetta, nier, the surge. There are a lot of games with a superb designed combat that with a bit of reworking would fit like a globe in w3

and even those games you are using as examples, bloodborne, elden ring or dark souls, would work amazing just cutting some mechanics like going full magician and forcing a mix of weapons and skills, while maintaining the pacing

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

As much as we might prefer to imagine that an RPG developer could implement a complex combat system without detracting from other aspects of the game, the reality is that resources for a game's development are finite, especially in regard to attention paid by the producers/directors/managers. A Witcher game where the primary emphasis is on delivering a multitude of high-quality cutscenes in the furtherance of narrative story-telling is never going to be a Witcher game with the fulling combat systems of Demon's/Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma, just as it will never be a Witcher game with compelling exploration aspects either. Priority given to certain systems or aspects of a game necessarily diverts resources and attention from the other systems and aspects.

Moreover, the overall design and intended audience of a game must also be considered. The narrative focus and profusion of cutscenes are aimed at certain types of gamers who would generally dislike a Souls-like combat system and probably find themselves prevented from completing the game if combat were more challenging with great demands placed on the player's physical skill.

 

[Taurist]

I'm uninsterested to be honest. The Witcher Universe is done. CDPR have pulled 100 hours of mostly quality content from it. I dont think there is much else there.

 

[Marte1980]

The main point should be whether or not the same people behind Witcher 3 are going to work on Witcher 4, because it's not a company that creates a videogame. Are the people creating story and characters still the same? Are the people designing quests and side-quests still the same? I mean the senior, key people, are they going to be the same?

 

[BruceVC]

What is the point of reinventing the wheel

Just like to point out that reinventing the wheel is not a bad thing. That is how many things were created. The car's wheel is different from the bicycle's wheel that is also different from cart's wheel, etc. If man had not reinvented the wheel so many times, we would be forced to change our design every time it had a wheel on it so it would work in the only available wheel model.

I would not consider any of these situations a reinvention of the wheel, but the use of the wheel. Yes, there were little changes and adaptations but in essence the wheel remains a wheel, when you use an engine you also make changes and adaptations within what it offers to best fit what you need. We are at a stage of technological development where most of our work is based on the accumulated labor of millions of human beings over centuries. Hell, just to post this answer here, how many people have worked, directly and indirectly, on all the theoretical and practical aspects, components and production lines and all the code we use to even be here right now?

This level of change is so trivial that it misses the essence of the point of the sentence. "Reinventing the wheel" has the sense of having the whole process re-done from scratch when it is unnecessary.

I would say the opposite of you, almost nothing significant has been done by humanity with the reinvention of the wheel and the few cases where it really happened were phenomenal paradigm shifts that dramatically changed the course of our technology - when, for example, we "reinvented" the laws of gravitation going from Newton's vision to Einstein's. Most of the work done today is based on work already done by others. And this goes for programming even leaving engines aside, most programmers simply copy code easily available on the internet and adapt it to what they are going to use, or recycle something they have already used in the past. Precisely because it is a waste of time to spend your energy on a job that has already been done. Those who do not do this usually do not do it out of ignorance or stubbornness, rarely out of necessity.

Of course, switching to Unreal is not a magic solution to all of CDPR's structural problems. They have already lost much of the staff that worked on the best aspects of the previous games and switching engines will not magically solve this issue. But leaving aside the graphics of the games from Witcher 2 on (which are praised outside the Codex but here many don't even consider it as a positive point), REDengine's inability to control basic issues such as NPC behavior, collision with the scenery and several other details has always been visible, something on the level of Bethesda. What always made CDPR better seen was its great ability to wake up storyfagottry fans. You won't find many here defending the gameplay of the Witcher series, but I admit without fear that I enjoyed the story.

But when the game is too broken you can't even focus on the story. And in that sense, switching to Unreal may give a level of stability that CDPR games never had. Sure, it will still require some level of competence from the team and people familiar with the engine, but it's a lot less work than trying to maintain your own separate engine, especially when you've been failing at it for over a decade. It's just that your cumulative failure has reached the point of finally exploding, but the signs were already there. The change may end up not representing an improvement in the next games for a variety of reasons, but if it does, it won't be because of the change, but in spite of it. In the current context, I can only see this as a positive sign that they realized that they needed to get off the leaky boat they were on. Better late than later.

Do you have any links that confirm that CDPR has lost much of the staff that worked on W3 ?

 

[newageofpower]

WRONG

What game is this?

 

[Wunderbar]

newageofpower silent storm