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CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

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Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#111

Post by snuxoll »

wmichelin wrote: post #63
plsbenice34 wrote: post #61

I already played it, so I'm unexcited. Remakes these days generally seem like lazier ways to try to make money compared to making new art from scratch. I thought Cyberpunk was abysmal (though i loved the witcher games) so I wouldn't expect much from them anymore in any case.

What about Cyberpunk was abysmal to you? I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the gun-play. NPC animations left some to be desired, but overall I thought the graphics were super engaging and Night City was super fun to run around in.

Not OP, I wouldn't call CP2077 "abysmal" but even looking outside the bugs the game just wasn't anywhere near the quality I expect from CDPR. The gunplay was actually pretty mediocre, "better than Fallout" is not high praise and that's the best I could give it; the environment was pretty but lacked depth; I, personally, do not care fo

* The gunplay was mediocre, in my opinion. "Better than Fallout" is the rating I'd give it, and that's a "you did better coloring inside the lines than the kid with a motor disability" on my scale.

* While I'm talking about gameplay, driving ranks as "Better than GTA4", and see above for where that falls on my scale.

* The environment was pretty as all hell, but it felt shallow and unlived in due to a lack of unique characters that weren't copy-paste NPCs populating the world, a few fleshed out characters relating to the main story, and some uninspired side mission fillers. Witcher 3 may not be as shiny, or as dense, but the world feels more alive due to the detail put into it.

* This is a personal gripe, but I really did not care for the story and ludonarrative dissonance it creates. I'm also not a fan of being given an illusion of choice, when all the endings ultimately play out the same way with a different skin (see: Mass Effect 3).

There's more, but those are my biggest issues with the game, even discounting the AWFUL state the game was in for a long time.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#112

Post by hbn »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #67
HideousKojima wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this site (can't vouch for how accurate their numbers are) The Witcher III sold ~12 million copies on Steam, The Witcher II sold ~6 million, and the original sold ~3 million. That's not counting sales on GOG and other stores, consoles, etc. And I personally got copies of the first and second game around the time the second game released. https://vginsights.com/game/292030

If it doesn't count sales on GOG then it's not really reliable. GOG is owned by CD Projekt group, and one of the big points when releasing Witcher games was that people bought them on GOG so that all money went to the devs instead of paying the Steam tax.

How many people were aware of that campaign? Maybe in the Witcher/CDPR superfan groups, but on the scale of 12 million copies I can't imagine it budges the number that much.

I don't know why we're only talking about the PC version anyway, there's apparently been 40 million copies sold across all platforms according to a quick Google search, so most people didn't even play on PC.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#113

Post by badpun »

jvanderbot wrote: post #77
agilob wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't deliver 1 good project CP77, but now committing to 5 at around the same time? You said: >Its a third party studio doing the remake, CDPR probably won't be diverting many internal resources away from their existing in-house projects for this. but the link claims: >On Tuesday, CD Projekt Red announced five all-new games currently in development at the studio Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can t…

>Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford it? It's new to me that the company makes its money selling its stock, not games.

Have you heard of Elon Musk?

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#114

Post by hbn »

serf wrote: post #31
4pkjai wrote: post #6

I don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a game. The GTA trilogy lost a lot when they did their remastering project with a different engine. Although I'm sure it can be done well. StarCraft remastered was done really well, but I believe they built on top of their existing engine.

>don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a game. absolutely. whenever a friend is playing anything with specific shader/specular/lighting styles I always yell "Unity!" while watching him. I'm generally dead-on accurate with those guesses. It's definetly not coincidence at this point; there is some default behavior or lighting gimmick I can generally always cue i…

There's always been something about the Source engine that felt distinctive. The lighting and physics feel weird and creepy.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#115

Post by jason-phillips »

zeagle wrote: post #74
jason-phillips wrote: post #3

As someone playing through Witcher 3 on a Steam Deck for the first time, to say that I'm wildly excited about this is not an understatement. Witcher 2 currently appears to be a no-go on the Deck and I'd love to play the rest of the games in the series.

Do you mind if I ask what settings you run it on and how happy you are with the performance? I'm precontemplatively considering a steam deck but haven't really looked into it.

Sure. I left it on default settings and the video/graphics performance along with the playability has been truly remarkable. The stereo surround is also quite good. I suppose some criticisms might be that the battery goes pretty quickly (~1 hour) and it does get very warm, but I find these tradeoffs easy to live with. I've only had my deck for about a month and this is my first game to play through on it.

I'm a software engineer with a ton of Linux experience so hacking the Deck doesn't scare me at all; I've read quite a bit about it. But I figured I'd give it a go first with the out-of-the-box configuration and so far have been thoroughly impressed.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#116

Post by verst »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #69
entropicdrifter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you're replying to, but the original Witcher felt fine to me too, but I'm a lifelong PC gamer and the interface/controls reminded me of older PC-only CRPGs like Summoner or even Neverwinter Nights. I love those games, but in terms of their control schemes they do feel clunky compared to the more visceral controller-optimized and streamlined Action RPG controls of The Witcher 2 and 3. In other words, th…

It was based on the Neverwinter Nights 2 engine, so the similarities to NWN are expected. Actually, from my perspective, combat in W1 was a big improvement over the turn based click and pray combat of NWN.

I liked Neverwinter Nights 2 -- so no wonder I liked playing The Witcher 1. I think I played on a very underpowered laptop back then (as a college student), so if the engine was sluggish I probably attributed that to gaming on a laptop :D

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#117

Post by badpun »

wmichelin wrote: post #63
plsbenice34 wrote: post #61

I already played it, so I'm unexcited. Remakes these days generally seem like lazier ways to try to make money compared to making new art from scratch. I thought Cyberpunk was abysmal (though i loved the witcher games) so I wouldn't expect much from them anymore in any case.

What about Cyberpunk was abysmal to you? I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the gun-play. NPC animations left some to be desired, but overall I thought the graphics were super engaging and Night City was super fun to run around in.

I watched some footage of cyberpunk and the characters in it seemed so offputting that I never bought the game. Everyone in the game seemed to be some sort off money-grubbing primitive sociopath or a selfish asshole otherwise. I never bought GTA4/GTA5 for the same reason - I don't want to spend many hours in a game where I interact with characters I detest.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#118

Post by whack24 »

nvrspyx wrote: post #94
impulser_ wrote: post #82

People complaining about this being a remake, but I'm assuming they made the remake as a way for their developers to get use to Unreal 5 before making Witcher 4 which is also built using Unreal 5. Easier to build a game you already know in a new game engine than to create a completely new game. Especially if you don't want the game to be filled with bugs. CD has always used in an house game engine for their games.

I don't think that holds if you read the first paragraph of the article. Fool's Theory, a separate studio, is doing the remake in UE5; not CDPR. With that said, this will allow Fool's Theory to help as a support studio for Witcher 4 after the remake since they'll be using the same toolset.

This reminds me of how Game Freak sent their recent Pokemon remake out to another studio to work on with different technology while Game Freak makes new franchise IP. 2 examples doesn't make a pattern but is this a known business strategy within game development?

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#119

Post by AdrianB1 »

verst wrote: post #14
dragontamer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who played a few hours of the 1st Witcher Game... Good. No one seems to care about Witcher 1's engine, because it was hot garbage. Any engine (even an off-the-shelf one like Unreal5) will be grossly superior to the trash that the original game was. This remake can have slow, barely workable controls and pretty bad graphics and still be far better than the original game. They really just need the Witcher 1…

I played the Witcher 1 when it came out and thought it was a brilliant game. I haven't tried going back to it ever. It felt quite polished to me then. I'm curious what people feel isn't approachable for today's audiences. Is is merely that we are used to different visuals now? What are these engine issues in Witcher 1 you speak of? As a player I did not notice them back in the day.

It was very good for the time the game was launched, but it is quite outdated. I loved the game, but it is in the category of games I would love to play again, I install it, then the graphics looks so bad it turns me down. Believe me, I started playing computer games ~ 1986, so I know what bad graphics is, but Witcher 1 is a lot more recent than that and the expectations are a lot higher.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#120

Post by tester756 »

agilob wrote: post #71
enragedcacti wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a third party studio doing the remake, CDPR probably won't be diverting many internal resources away from their existing in-house projects for this. also this is just follow-up to a previous announcement where they announced 5 projects in various stages of development on top of info about the CP2077 expansion: https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/10/cd-projekt-red-witcher-cybe...

They couldn't deliver 1 good project CP77, but now committing to 5 at around the same time? You said: >Its a third party studio doing the remake, CDPR probably won't be diverting many internal resources away from their existing in-house projects for this. but the link claims: >On Tuesday, CD Projekt Red announced five all-new games currently in development at the studio Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can t…

>Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford it?

It recently went up almost 50%.

Like 2 months ago their price was around 77-80

Now it is around 120~

I expect (I bet my money on) it to be around 150 around december/january

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