The "Wizard" series is coming up with a new one.
Polish game company CD Projekt Red announced today that the new Wizards series is currently in development, but did not disclose when the game will be released or which platforms it will land in the future. Separately, CDPR said in a press release that the company has entered into a "multi-year strategic partnership" with Epic Games and will no longer use the in-house engine RedEngine to develop the game, but will instead use Unreal Engine 5 for development.
This does not mean that the next PC version of the Wizard will land exclusively on the Epic Store. On social media, the official The Witcher account said: "We do not plan to have this game exclusive to a single platform. ”
According to CDPR, their collaboration with Epic "covers not only licensing, but also the technical development of Unreal Engine 5 and potential future versions of Unreal Engine." In the partnership, CDPR's development team will work closely with Epic to "tailor the engine to [build] an open-world experience."
Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic, said: "We are honored to have the opportunity to partner with CDPR to push the limits of interactive storytelling and gameplay together. Our efforts in this area will also benefit the developer community for many years to come. ”
Polygon believes that considering the numerous technical challenges encountered during the development and release of the previous game on CDPR, Cyberpunk 2077, it seems like a wise decision for the Polish company to use a more technologically mature Unreal Engine.
"Within the company, one of the core directions of our Red 2.0 transformation is a greater focus on technology, and our partnership with Epic is based on this principle." Pavel Zavodney, CDPR's chief technology officer, said in a statement, "It is crucial for CDPR to decide the technical direction of the next game as early as possible, because in the past, whenever we launched a game, we had to spend a lot of resources and effort to adjust and improve the engine. ”
"This collaboration is very exciting because it will improve the predictability and efficiency of development while giving us access to cutting-edge game development tools."
Currently, the new Wizard series is the only cdpr game developed using Unreal Engine 5. CDPR confirmed that the company is using its self-developed engine RedEngine to develop the cyberpunk 2077 expansion package that has been previously announced to the public.