Cyberpunk 2077 dev reveals why it really moved to Unreal Engine 5

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red's decision to ditch its own REDengine to move to Unreal Engine 5 was apparently controversial even within the company itself. There was a lot of speculation at the time that the decision was prompted by challenges the development of Cyberpunk 2077. Not so according to Vice President of Technology Charles Tremblay.

Tremblay has said in an interview that there was a different reason for the move to Epic Games' popular game engine. And it was more to do with a change in strategy for future releases.

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In an interview with Eurogamer, Tremblay admitted that the decision to move to Unreal Engine had been "very polarising" but insisted that REDengine wasn't the cause of the problems with with the development of Cyberpunk 2077.

"The first thing I want to say again, to be sure, 100 per cent clear, is that the whole team, myself included, are extremely proud of the engine we built for Cyberpunk," he said. "So it is not about, 'This is so bad that we need to switch' and, you know, 'Kill me now' – that is not true."

Instead, the reason is that the developer wants to shift from its one-game-at-a-time approach to instead have multiple projects on the go at once. At the moment, it has The Witcher 4, a Cyberpunk sequel codenamed Orion and a new project with the codename of Hadar.

"The way we built stuff in the past was very one-sided, like one project at a time," Temblay said. "We pushed the limit – but also, we saw that if we wanted to have a multi-project at the same time, building in parallel, sharing technology together, it is not easy."

Tremblay said the studio's aim is "having a good partnership with Epic, and working together on the technology." He said: "We can also help them to achieve their vision, to do open world games, and also they can help us too, from some technical perspectives."

As for The Witcher 4, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski has confirmed that the game has entered "full-scale production".

For more on Unreal Engine, see our roundup of Unreal Engine 5.5 features.