CDPR Says The Witcher 4 Won't Look Like a 'Generic' UE5 Game, While Witcher 1 Remake Waits on Its Tech

CD Projekt Red is grappling with the risk that The Witcher 4, built on Unreal Engine 5, could end up looking like countless other UE5 titles that share a similar glossy visual style. Unlike The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, which ran on CDPR's proprietary REDengine and had distinct visual identities, The Witcher 4 marks a shift to an industry-standard engine now widely used across the gaming industry.

Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski acknowledged that this was a major question during the studio's research and development phase, saying CDPR spent real time considering whether Unreal Engine 5 was the right fit given how important the cinematic look and feel of its games has been. He expressed confidence that players will still recognize The Witcher 4 as a CDPR game and that the engine will fade into the background once the title ships.

CDPR has already shown a tech demo set in The Witcher 4's world, running at 60 FPS on a base PS5 and using features like Nanite Foliage, FastGeo Streaming, and the Unreal Animation Framework. The studio was careful to describe this as a tech demo rather than actual gameplay, meaning the final look of the game remains unknown. The Witcher 4 is currently targeting a 2028 release, a delay from earlier rumors pointing to 2027.

Separately, CDPR confirmed that development on The Witcher 1 Remake, announced in 2022 and being made by Fool's Theory, has been temporarily integrated with The Witcher 4 due to production dependencies. Fool's Theory's team is currently focused mainly on Songs of the Past, the newest expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with only a small portion of the team supporting The Witcher 4.

Nowakowski explained that Fool's Theory was originally slated to work on The Witcher 1 Remake, but the project needed more time because of technological dependencies tied to The Witcher 4. Since the remake will be built on the foundation laid by the new game, CDPR says it needs the necessary assets, tools, and pipelines from The Witcher 4 in place first.

While CDPR's comments don't rule out the remake launching before Songs of the Past or The Witcher 4, the development resources currently tied up in the expansion suggest full-scale production on The Witcher 1 Remake won't resume until those resources are freed up—meaning the remake will likely launch much closer to 2028 at the earliest.