The Witcher 4 Stuck In Development Hell Due To Unreal Engine 5, Says KCD2 Director

The renowned director says The Witcher 4 is stuck in development hell due to UE5 as the engine can't handle complex open worlds.

[Christopher]

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.

[rippermcrip]

Ya it's pretty messed up of him to bring this to the public.

[Eonjay]

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.

[dveio]

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.

[Rebel_Scum]

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.

[porkChop]

Also, Witcher 4 basically just entered full production. I don't see how they could already be in development hell at this point.

[Iras_]

Name one complex open world game on UE5.

[Christopher]

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?

[RaidenBlack]

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.

[Christopher]

***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.

[RaidenBlack]

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.

[babadivad]

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.

[persona4chie]

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?”

[GamingSinceForever]

Who ever said that game development doesn’t have its hurdles? Whatever is happening they will figure it out.

[glennhkboy]

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.

[Johnh5223]

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.

[Christopher]

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.

[Npugz7]

Honestly unreal engine 5 has been horrible in recent games

[P_Bomb]

Never been a big fan of UE. I had a great time with the Red Engine tho’

[dveio]

.

[Fishy Fingers]

Guy is obviously more in the know than us. But they used Cry Engine, you'd be hard pressed to find a dev/studio that would claim that engine more user friendly than UE, or any engine for that matter.

No doubt switching is hard, incredibly hard. But if true, UE has experienced industry individuals in abundance. I'm sure they'll figure it out or wont struggle to find the support they need.

[PRIMORDUS]

I wish all devs would avoid using Unreal Engine 5, on PC there are always issues, I don't like UE 4 either. Wish they would have went with ID Tech 7, I'm sure it would work with The Witcher 4

[babadivad]

Seems we're back in the PS360 era when everyone was using UE3. Only difference is, UE3 was more polished when it was released to the masses.

[PRIMORDUS]

Yeah UE3 is so much better, though much older, games run smoother using it. Paladins which I still play uses UE3 and there are no issues at all with performance.

[babadivad]

Not surprised at all.

[Knushwood Butt]

Leadership that don't understand their own business and are incapable of strategic planning will find they run into these kinds of issues when core tools or solutions come up for contract renewals or EOL support. It's then a fire drill to rush any old alternative into production, which was never going to meet the end user requirements in the first place because it wasn't planned for, and was forced in top-down rather than working with the people that, you know, actually use the solution and work bottom-up.

[glennhkboy]

CDPR is (rumor) struggling with UE5; it struggled with their own engine before...... So this make one wander is there any fundamental issue with their coding developers?

[Ronin-Z]

Is he lying though? We have already seen or heard of a bunch of games with UE5 that can't even hit 60fps. Apparently it has too much overhead or something

[jwillj2k4]

So I was like the classic off the shelf product versus build it yourself problem. Off the shelf gets you 7-80%% there out the gate, but that last 20% requires help from the creators at a cost.

[Nukov]

Let's point out that the comment was made NINE MONTHS AGO

[Pyrofire95]

With the technical knowledge they have at CDPR I'm sure there's a TON of work being done on the Engine to really make it into what they want from it.

[gold_drake]

why is a developer speaking on another developers game?

[XBManiac]

Tell Bioware and Bethesda about game engines change... ;)

[Putte]

This Game is already cooked. It's gonna be many years before we If we ever see this game. This doesn't sound good.

[hollabox]

Unreal 5 has issues from performance, to artifacts. Their upscaling produces flicker on high geometric detail objects near the distance. You get frizzle around fast moving objects, blur and speckles on alpha blends such as hair and grass. To top it off, most games run at upscaled 1080 dynamic on consoles to hit 60 FPS. The new Ninja Gaiden 2 remake, visually it's better, but clarity wise it's worst than the XB360 version running in 4K on XSX. Digital Foundry did a crap video comparing NG2 on Xbox 360 to the new version. Compare the 4K version NG2 to the new version, and the difference is less noticeable, I prefer the original version in 4K over the remake. The image is more stable, less flicker, less shadow artifacts, and I like the backdrops better. UE5 version feels heavy, the original XB360 version in 4k you feel lighter and faster. So I don't games running in UE5. You will get more art assets at the expensive of image clarity. Using upscalers introduces additional artifacts. The flicker is distracting, and I want silly Microsoft to start licensing out ID Tech engines. Get a returning player in the engine game. UE5 is more like 3D Studios Max! Movie engine they converted into a game engine, complete with flicker, stutter, frizzle, and bad performance.

[SIdepocket]

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of an open world game having issues with Unreal: Days Gone had to split up the world into multiple sections as a compromise.