Digital Foundry : Epic Games has revealed that Unreal Engine 5 has gone into early access, with the revised engine available to the public complete with a new demo project to play around with. John Linneman and Alex Battaglia talk about the technology and what we've learned from the reveal. More to come on this after we've gone hands on!
Unreal Engine 5 is the most popular game engine of 2025. Of course, it has its flaws, particularly concerning Nanite and Lumen, but the Epic logo is prominent among the most popular titles. Recent hits to feature UE5 include Clair Obscure, Oblivion Remastered, Runescape, Delta Force, Fragpunk, Split Fiction, InZOI, etc.
The original Frostpunk is getting a remaster in Unreal Engine 5 alongside new content for returning fans.
The renowned director says The Witcher 4 is stuck in development hell due to UE5 as the engine can't handle complex open worlds.
PLEASE NOTE: This is the opinion of a developer not working on any CDPR games and only spoke to 'someone' at CDPR about it. This really should not move the needle of concern at all.
IMHO, developers not working on actual games should shut up about those games until it's released. Why are you stepping on the toes of fellow industry professionals and making claims that could be out of context to the intent of the original? Just shut up. I'm certain you don't want others talking similarly about your own games.
The internal Source may have wanted this info to be made public. He may have also been responding to DF's underhanded critique on using CryEngine (as opposed to UE5).
From a dev perspective there is nothing more frustrating than developing in a difficult environment. From a management perspective there is nothing worse than having a tool result in extended development times which only explode costs.
AAA costs are high enough. These issues are being passed on to consumers.
It happened in the past already that fellow studio talent from the outside were given top secret information on purpose to talk about it publically.
Maybe to raise attention to an on-going internal conflict in HR people over there are afraid of raising themselves.
Or like here, for one of a technical matter they're also afraid to talk about fearing punishments.
My personal take:
This here is the game director of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 talking, with probably a ton of very good connections and knowledge within the industry's "What to say and what not to say".
And he by himself did NOT choose UE5 on purpose for KCD2.
Because not just maybe, but highly likely there IS indeed truth about UE5 rather being curse than blessing for the entire industry in its current shape & management goals:
https://youtu.be/M00DGjAP-m...
I really recommend watching all the channels videos. This one linked here isn't even the newest.
Fully agree with your point about devs commenting on other devs work whilst in development.
Also worth mentioning that learning a new engine has its growing pains on every individual developer.
Also, Witcher 4 basically just entered full production. I don't see how they could already be in development hell at this point.
What do you mean by complex? Lords of the Fallen? Ark? STALKER 2? Fortnite LEGO?
Will you just find some excuse to ignore games to make a point or are you actually looking for games?
Avowed? Clair Obscur? MGS Delta? Fable?
There's still a chance to ship the Cyberpunk sequel in Red Engine.
The 2077 build is already there, just use it to create the sequel, instead of using UE5 from scratch.
CP2077 looks better than most current gen games and is actually a current gen game, the last gen builds shouldn't even exist.
So that they can adjust the dev timeline, delay the UE5 Witcher and prepone the Red-engined-CP-sequel development and release. I know it wont happen but to me this makes abit sense.
***There's still a chance to ship the Cyberpunk sequel in Red Engine. ***
I have it on pretty good authority that this is not going to happen. They moved to UE to make it easier to develop multiple games at once and have people move from one project to another and an ease of integration from outside sources.
Edit: to note, I agree that Red Engine is great and produced an amazing cyberpunk game that I'm not sure would be the same in UE. It's sad to see an engine go away after all that time they put into it as well, even going from third-person to first and having to reconfigure the game to match those needs because they couldn't get it to work in third-person to begin with.
I know. The decision was final. Hence my end statement above.
But ..... a last Red Engine endeavor still makes sense. They've got the very tech-laden/forward build ready. It outclasses most rivals. They've just gotta think of a new story, progression and world design. Instead of going all-in on UE for all 3 projects from scratch at the same time. Witcher projects can start their UE transition, CP can follow later.
There's a reason some AAA studios are sticking to the same IP/engine for some time and not transitioning to somethin new . Like Guerilla and Sucker Punch. Coz they can iterate on the previous build than put effort in a whole new IP design change or engine change from scratch.
And CP 2077's Red build at current state is just really good.
But anyways, they wanna streamline internally, so my opinion is from a surface level observation here. But one last Red engine hurrah would've been great.
No there isn't. The talent who knew that engine intimately are gone. It's why they moved to Middleware. So they don't have to spend time training new hires on their engine.
I was thinking, “What is KCD2”? I didn’t recognize the abbreviation. Then I looked it up and thought, “wait so this guy doesn’t even work at CDPR, nor is he working on the Witcher 4 sooo what is he on about?”
Who ever said that game development doesn’t have its hurdles? Whatever is happening they will figure it out.
If this person was quoting the truth from the insider source, than it show that there maybe some fundamental problem on the CDPR development process. CDPR changed to UE5 because it struggle with its own engine. Now it is rumored to struggle with a common engine UE5.
From what I read its true which is the reason cd project is not just using UE5 but they are working in tandem with Unreal to improve the entire engine for other devs and them also its a collaboration.
UE grows based on working with the people who needs it to do things better for them. They may pay for it, but it's definitely a collaborative effort on improving the engine. After all, if Epic doesn't listen to the needs of their customers, they'll just stick to their own engines.
Damn, the games to be created with this for the 9th gen consoles will truly be... "epic".
30fps on console? lol I hope that's because this is very early access. Because I'm sure as hell when the first Unreal Engine 5 game does come out, it will be 60fps or much higher on PC with settings max. Don't know if we will have new GPUs from Nvidia and AMD this year, with the GPU crisis still going on that would be a dumb move.
Very impressive engine - looks gorgeous.
Hell with graphics like that, id play a Rock Simulator
My reaction was that VR is going to be amazing. Totally "Unreal."