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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

#171

Post by Gigachad »

danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

I think remakes also work out well for consumers. Gaming isn't always about novel experiences. Sometimes you just find a satisfactory loop and want to stay in it. People have enjoyed chess for decades. For video games you can reuse the same gameplay elements and just apply the latest tech each time and people will enjoy it.

Personally I check the steam store regularly and buy new games often but I rarely end up playing them much because I prefer to just jump back in to Skyrim or some other game I have been playing for years.

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

#172

Post by imbnwa »

agilob wrote: post #44

Has CDPR run out of ideas, but still had a bag of promises to make? They promised CP77 extensions and multiplayer, The Witcher 3 in 4k, now remaking Witcher 1? I'm kindof disappointed with this news and not hearing updates about previous "updates".

There's no way multiplayer would've made sense in CP77 with how OP the netrunner build was, nevermind how the Sandevistan is supposed to work across the wire. The game is completely unbalanced in the player's favor by early mid-game, another artifact of their hastened release process, I can't imagine what they'd have to do to push out a multiplayer mode.

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

#173

Post by jpgvm »

duped wrote: post #166
jdaw0 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think yours is a pretty common experience considering that Witcher 3 was a huge mass-market success and Witcher 1 was a niche product made both by and for insane people. I say this as a shameless Witcher 1 apologist.

Witcher 1 has a decent story and world (in no small part due to the source material). But the gameplay itself is some of the worst that you experience. They could have redone it as a Carmen San Diego style dialog game and it would have been better than the turd they shipped. It's really quite bad.

This is true.

The story carried Witcher 1. Gameplay was vastly improved in 2 and I have mixed feelings about 3, the game was definitely more successful and I think you can partially attribute that to changes that made it easier to play and thus much more console friendly.

I for one welcome a UE5 remake of Witcher 1 and will purchase it for sure, if only for nostalgia sake.

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

#174

Post by joseda-hg »

sorenjan wrote: post #156
danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

I don't follow game development closely anymore, but my feeling is that UE5 with features like Nanite, Lumen, etc is so advanced that you can't expect an inhouse engine to come close. Or are there other engines that's at the same level? Frostbite used to be cutting edge years ago, but some of the developers left EA and I haven't seen any excitement about it since. Add to that things like huge install base that should…

You're pretty much on point, unless you're making something really specific/that needs every bit of performance that it can get, you're better served by an existing engine

A good example of something that was better served by inhouse engine is Factorio, but that' uncommon

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

#175

Post by KVFinn »

daemin wrote: post #147
danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

You'd think using Unreal Engine makes it easier to hire but that's not the case, it just means there's more competition for the people knowledgable in it, and it drives the people that want to work on something different to other studios. It also doesn't cut down on development time or the needed number of engine programmers since studios pretty much have to modify and enhance the engine, often replacing several comp…

Yeah. If a game isn't well suited to Unreal, that game may well just not get made. But then again Factorio is one of the best selling PC games of all time. Maybe gameplay finds a way.

On CDPR specifically, I hope didn't make the decision to drop Red Engine because they happened to be at their lowest/weakest point in the last couple years after Cyberpunk came out and before Cyberpunk had a comeback -- and that's why they didn't feel strong enough to maintain their own engine.

Before that moment they were on top, and very recently Cyberpunk has had a sort of public redemption and a surprisingly strong long-term player base, so it feels like a shame. I still haven't seen a game in Unreal that matches Cyberpunk on high end PC hardware overall. The only game other than Cyberpunk that justifies raytracing is Minecraft RTX IMO.

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

#176

Post by KVFinn »

duped wrote: post #166
jdaw0 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think yours is a pretty common experience considering that Witcher 3 was a huge mass-market success and Witcher 1 was a niche product made both by and for insane people. I say this as a shameless Witcher 1 apologist.

Witcher 1 has a decent story and world (in no small part due to the source material). But the gameplay itself is some of the worst that you experience. They could have redone it as a Carmen San Diego style dialog game and it would have been better than the turd they shipped. It's really quite bad.

>Witcher 1 has a decent story and world (in no small part due to the source material). But the gameplay itself is some of the worst that you experience.

The Witcher 1 combat is secretly not bad. It looks like an action game though and the game does a terrible job explaining why this is wrong. So it feels absolutely horrible. You have to understand it's more of a rhythm game. It's closer to Assassin's creed or Batman combat systems. There's a lot happening on screen but you are mostly waiting for the right moment and choosing tactics.

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

#177

Post by ffhhj »

daemin wrote: post #164
profile53 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh that’s super interesting — full rewrites aren’t super common. Do you know why they elected to rewrite the engine completely?

I have to be careful here, but the simple reason is that the previous engine was not designed to handle the density nor the verticality of the CP77 world. Not that Unreal Engine 5 can handle a world like CP77 either, despite what people may think with the Matrix demo.

Do they license their engine? Building it just for CP77 would be a shame.

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

#178

Post by jlouis »

bitwize wrote: post #53

I get the feeling that a lot of these game remakes are sort of IP normalization moves. Get all the studio's IP onto standard modern tools so that new game devs won't be surprised by custom engines to make maintenance and rerelease easier, especially as the studio transitions from a small boutique studio to a bog-standard AAA sweatshop. I also think this is the reason for Naughty Dog rereleasing The Last of Us on PS5.…

FWIW, Id Tech 7 is built to support a game like Doom:Eternal, and nothing more. And the game itself is shaped around the capabilities of the engine. That's why it works.

Note Id had a texture streaming system in Rage in order to support a large seamless game world, but they cut that large open world for Doom:2016 and Eternal. In contrast, CDPR's games just grew with each new Witcher release.

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

#179

Post by ranger207 »

lakomen wrote: post #75

I, for one, am tired of consuming warmed up content I've played through before. Be it Diablo 2 Resurrected or Mass Effect or or or. Create something new, don't refurbish old stuff. Such a waste.

I haven't played it, and 3 was pretty great, so I kinda want to, but I've heard the original is garbage, so I'm excited for a modern release

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

#180

Post by jlouis »

Witcher 1 is a game in a number of acts, where each act is a relatively small closed space. It would be a really great way to get some UE5 knowledge to transplant into other games. By keeping those parts static in development, you get to use all the interesting new UE5 tech such as Lumen and Nanite.
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