“Everybody has the thought of how briskly a PS5 is and what sorts of video games it might run,” he tells The Verge. “That’s why we particularly needed to go that route of: let’s begin with the consoles, let’s present how a lot we are able to optimize this engine along with Epic and make it work on present gen, as an alternative of operating it on some high-end {hardware}.”
Now, to be clear, the UE5 demo isn’t really a slice of the ultimate recreation. Girbig describes it as “an illustration of the instruments that we’re at the moment constructing that may finally energy The Witcher 4,” and one thing that “does present the fashion and course that we’re going for, and the constancy that we’re aiming at with the ultimate recreation.”
In accordance with Girbig, who didn’t work at CDPR till after the shift to Unreal, the choice was made as a result of UE5 “throughout the board, provides us what we’re searching for.” That features an elevated sense of scale essential for open-world video games, with the flexibility to render lots of of non-playable characters with extra elaborate AI guiding their actions, and in addition a greater manufacturing pipeline for managing a number of tasks. (An upcoming remake of the primary Witcher recreation can also be being made in UE5.)
However from a creative perspective, Girbig says, the transfer to Epic’s engine has a unique type of influence: getting out of the way in which to permit for extra formidable concepts. “It permits an artist to precise themselves far more simply when the engine isn’t a limitation anymore,” he says. “That’s what we’re aiming for right here. As an artist, for me, this unlocked myself to assume larger, and on larger scales.”