CD Projekt Red Director Comments On Unreal Engine 5 Transition

gameranx.com:

When Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC launched, it marked the end of REDengine. The development team has been using that engine for years, and their transition to Unreal Engine 5 also meant that the studio would no longer support Cyberpunk 2077. Instead, this launch expansion was the last of the big new content for the game. Now, the focus is on developing future games through Unreal Engine 5. However, if you thought that this shift was difficult, you’d be surprised. We’re finding out that the transition and the content they learned to develop using REDengine is a bit easier to bring onto the new engine. 

This news came from a PC Gamer interview with Gabe Amatangelo, the director behind Cyberpunk 2077. During their conversation, the topic of starting over completely with Unreal Engine 5, especially with the content and tech developed using REDengine. However, Gabe noted that the studio is not starting from scratch because a lot of things they built using REDengine, such as Ray Reconstruction, can be applied to new engines. 

It isn’t starting from scratch. A lot of times when you build these things, like Ray Reconstruction, there are a lot of methodologies you can apply to new engines. Learnings and the strategy of setting up the architecture. And when you look at the things that Unreal does well, the things that REDengine does well—there are some similarities and some gaps, but the brilliant engineers are like ‘with all the stuff that we know you crazy creatives want to do in the future, there’s less of a delta here. Let’s strategically shift to [Unreal Engine 5]’.

The game director went on to say that the engineers looked through Unreal Engine 5 and found plenty of similarities and methodologies that can be carried