Cyberpunk 2077 director says shift to Unreal Engine 5 'isn't starting from scratch'

"It isn't starting from scratch," Amatangelo explained. "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]'."

Amatangelo was asked what were the challenges that the development team faced while using the REDengine that would be easier using Unreal. The director didn't want to reveal details for the upcoming Cyberpunk sequel but said that it was "refreshing" to be using Unreal Engine 5 given what the studio has learned with 2077.

"Likewise there's some things that REDengine does better than Unreal [that] we're working with Epic to basically bring to that engine as well," Amatangelo shared. "So it goes both ways… It's about economies of scale: you can obviously do all these amazing things in both. There's so much nuance behind it, but it comes down to ways to approach things to be able to do more. Not necessarily better—it could be just as good—but do it more. It's a scale thing sometimes."

Much of the Cyberpunk 2077 team is moving to The Witcher 4 with the release of Phantom Liberty. The next Witcher title will likely be the first game from the studio powered by Unreal Engine 5. The Cyberpunk sequel may be the next big project from CD Projekt Red after The Witcher 4.