[HN Gopher] CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unr...
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CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5
Author : ibobev
Score : 173 points
Date : 2022-10-27 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com)
| efficax wrote:
| here's an idea: make Witcher 4 instead
| FractalHQ wrote:
| To be fair, they are also working on the Witcher 4 in Unreal
| Engine 5.
| generationP wrote:
| "Canis Majoris" hehe, they sure know who the main boss of the
| game is.
| Arubis wrote:
| I don't want to get my hopes up, but already know they can have
| my money.
| danschuller wrote:
| 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 do this.
|
| The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being used.
| For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in-house
| engines. Again standard tools make it easier to hire expertise
| and use existing solutions and assets, they're also far cheaper
| than running a full engine team. Supporting a custom engine is a
| massive undertaking at the high end (ignore the tech, on-boarding
| people, docs, QA, surrounding tools for artists, sound designers,
| localisation etc. And then making it work on a wide variety of
| hardware and working around any graphics bugs etc).
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I agree with you. And it is still hard to get it wright in
| order to be sold.
|
| If you want to stand up to competition, you need a cash cow. I
| don't blame any independent studio to do just that. They have
| to balance risks.
| daemin wrote:
| 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 components in order
| to ship the game. In some cases you'll end up with an
| incompatible fork which requires its own team to extend and
| enhance it, meaning that to upgrade to a newer version from
| Epic you'll need to spend months merging the codebases.
|
| Overall I see the adoption of Unreal Engine as a net negative
| for the industry, it's reducing the landscape to a monoculture.
| For all the talk that Epic does about being against monopolies,
| Unreal Engine is becoming one in a big way, and killing the
| ecosystem as it grows.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being
| used. For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in-
| house engines.
|
| This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built their
| own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top of it
| for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its very
| limits for Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of useful criticism of the
| technological pains (delays, marketplace reception issues) they
| experienced with Cyberpunk was that they were using an in-house
| game engine unprepared for that genre (jumping from a game
| series where the fastest vehicle was a horse to one with cars
| and flying cars and planes is maybe not the easiest straight
| line). CDPR responded to that criticism, especially from their
| shareholders, that they would be minimizing that risk in future
| games development and externalizing that dependency and moving
| to an out-of-the-box game engine moving forward (including in
| that announcement that it would be Unreal).
|
| This announcement for the Witcher 1 remake seems like a proper
| and interesting "full circle" for this story: CDPR's last
| engine was built entirely for Witcher 1. Using off-the-shelf
| Unreal to remake Witcher 1 sounds like a smart way on paper to
| get their feet wet and move on from the old engine to the new
| one using a project they are already familiar with and can help
| them realign from old pipelines to new ones.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built
| their own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top
| of it for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its
| very limits for Cyberpunk 2077.
|
| Close. REDEngine was created for Witcher 2: Assassins of
| Kings. Witcher 1 was built on a modified copy of Bioware's
| Aurora Engine (the Neverwinter Nights engine).
|
| REDEngine versions were:
|
| REDEngine 1: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
|
| REDEngine 2: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced
| Edition
|
| REDEngine 3: The Witcher 3
|
| REDEngine 4: Cyberpunk 2077
| daemin wrote:
| To add to that (since I'm somewhat of an expert on this),
| the engine for Cyberpunk 2077 was completely rewritten from
| scratch, and only small bits were either ported from W3 or
| inspired by what was done in W3.
| bashmelek wrote:
| I remember Neverwinter Nights 2. Decently fun game, but
| extremely buggy. It had some strange local lag where it
| wasn't that unusual to command a character to move only to
| have them freeze in place then teleport back where they
| were 10 seconds before.
| FieryTransition wrote:
| As far as I remember, the first Witcher engine was a weird
| mash of the engine from neverwinter nights 2 and their own
| modifications, and they introduced their own engine with the
| Witcher 2.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's also a really good time to get into the remake business,
| tech-wise. We have a bunch of fresh new consoles optimized for
| the latest game engines, and tons of ML-based upscaling tech to
| play with. If you make a well-designed remake of your game
| optimized for solid-state storage, you should have a version
| that lasts a couple decades into the future.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Witcher 1 wound up being an unexpected hit for me. But I have a
| thing for the game play style of that game, being a WoW player
| for a long time. I totally get how it doesn't appeal to a lot of
| people and I hope this increases the reach of a game with a good
| story with otherwise dated gameplay.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > With the game being rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, Fool's Theory
| will also have plenty of opportunity to revisit the somewhat
| clunky combat mechanics of the first game
|
| Hopefully they will revisit them just long enough to throw them
| in the trash and implement an entirely different combat system
| than the bad ones they had in Witcher 1.
| hassanahmad wrote:
| Now this is a remake I can actually see as being worth it. This
| is a great news for the Witcher game fans and these fans numbers
| are in millions.
| bergenty wrote:
| It needs to be exactly the same with better graphics and sound
| design. I'm going to be very mad if they start covering up boobs,
| introduce some hamfisted woman protagonist or something along
| those lines.
| bitwize wrote:
| 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. Though the engine itself was written in C++,
| it used a lot of Scheme code to generate game data and components
| and I think they want to move off that because it's baffling to
| the new devs they want to onboard.
|
| I'm waiting for Id Software to throw in the towel and rerelease
| Unreal versions of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal.
| sylens wrote:
| Remakes are also used to train development teams on new tools.
| It takes the pressure of a team learning to grapple with a new
| engine if all of the content is already completed - there's a
| better scaffolding to build off of.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| 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.
| zeagle wrote:
| 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.
| patrickk wrote:
| Not OP but ProtonDB has you covered:
| https://www.protondb.com/app/20920
|
| Fantastic site.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| 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.
| zeagle wrote:
| Thats great. Thanks!
| Aethella wrote:
| Witcher 2 also runs perfectly fine on the Deck. You just need
| to switch to Proton-GE rather than default version.
| COGlory wrote:
| There's also a native version, right?
| cheshire_cat wrote:
| The "native" linux version of Witcher 2 does emulations.
| Since it's bundled it's very out of date and technology has
| advanced since then. Witcher 2 had really bad graphics bugs
| on my Linux playthrough, none of which appeared on Windows.
| tester756 wrote:
| Can't wait, Witcher 3 was unparalleled
| shmerl wrote:
| I'd like to see a native Linux version this time, since UE5
| supports it.
|
| That said, original game with customized Aurora engine is very
| good. No big need for a remake, but if they'll make it fully open
| world it might be adding something interesting, besides simply
| improved graphics.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| This is a smart move imo: they can gain xp and build tooling for
| unreal 5. Part of what killed their last game is their engine.
| Now they can learn how to use a real game engine with a lower
| stakes game and prepare for witcher 4 or whatever comes next.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I am so glad that there are so many avenues for independent game
| devs now, because large-ish studios seem to have dug a nice
| little rut in their old IP.
| haolez wrote:
| I've played Witcher I a lot and it's really fun, but I gave up on
| finishing it after I got stuck in a quest where I was in a cave
| fighting an infinite horde of enemies (with infinite respawn) and
| nothing happened no matter how many of them I killed.
|
| I hope they fix these kinds of glitches as well.
| plsbenice34 wrote:
| 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.
| wmichelin wrote:
| 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.
| badpun wrote:
| 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.
| bergenty wrote:
| Everything with a woman protagonist that tries to ape male
| roles is probably going to be pretty bad.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| When Cyberpunk launched it had game breaking bugs. A lot of
| people got their refund and forgot about the game (and
| rightly so).
| snuxoll wrote:
| 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.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| More and more it's looking like the future of game development is
| Unreal / Unity mods.
|
| I think we're at the point where it's virtually impossible to
| make a modern looking game from scratch. We're already there with
| browsers.
| hardware2win wrote:
| Cdpr must release something great to recover their stock which is
| kinda low now
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Now we know that it's a ground-up remake of the game that
| introduced Geralt of Rivia to Witcher fans outside of Poland.
|
| I was always of the impression that it was Witcher III that
| achieved this.
|
| I'm Polish so I genuinely don't know. Were the previous two
| installments popular outside of Poland?
| monocasa wrote:
| They were moderately popular games in the US for those that
| didn't constrain themselves to the AAA powerhouses (no
| judgement either way). I didn't play them at the time, but knew
| of their existence and that they were supposed to be good.
| avereveard wrote:
| witcher 1 spread to all dnd groups I had contact with back in
| Italy. not a large sample size, but within our niche it was
| well known and well received, jankiness notwithstanding
| IceWreck wrote:
| > Were the previous two installments popular outside of Poland?
|
| Witcher 2 was the first time I heard of the franchise.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| Heavy gamer here. I heard of the first Witcher but didn't
| think to play it until after I tried The Witcher 2: Assassins
| of Kings, which is still my favorite game in the series.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 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
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| 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.
| hbn wrote:
| 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.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >I don't know why we're only talking about the PC version
| anyway
|
| Because the post I was replying to was about the
| popularity of The Witcher in the west before The Witcher
| III, and the first Witcher game was a PC exclusive so
| there are no console sales to factor in to the
| comparison.
| fareesh wrote:
| I saw the tech demo for Witcher 1 and got the game subsequently
| afterwards. I lived in Canada at the time.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Witch 2 definitely was. Witcher 1...maybe? I thought it was a
| pretty mediocre game, so I doubt it was really that popular
| anywhere outside of Poland.
|
| What's impressive is how much better each sequel was compared
| to the previous game. It was a giant leap in both graphics and
| gameplay from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3.
| wnevets wrote:
| > I'm Polish so I genuinely don't know. Were the previous two
| installments popular outside of Poland?
|
| Not as much as the 3rd one but popular enough to get two
| sequels.
| 015a wrote:
| Its not great data, but peak Steam player counts:
|
| Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition: 12,685
|
| Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition: 12,884
|
| Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: 103,329
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Witcher 1 was pretty niche but I played it as a 15 year old rpg
| fan and liked it a lot. It wasn't as well known mainstream as
| mass effect but most gamers surely at least heard of it.
| giobox wrote:
| Witcher 1 not so much, but Witcher 2 had a pretty good 360 port
| that a lot of people played in the West, and PC version did
| well too - across all platforms 1.7 million copies sold by
| 2012, another article I saw suggests 8 million by 2014.
|
| I think thats getting towards very roughly ~1/4 the success of
| Witcher 3, volume wise. Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume
| includes a portable Switch release.
|
| > https://www.eurogamer.net/the-witcher-2-sales-
| top-1-7-millio...
|
| etc.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume includes a portable
| Switch release.
|
| I've seen the Switcher. Wasn't actually half as bad as I
| anticipated. All the more surprising that CDPR is abandoning
| their own engine in favour of UE5.
| wwilim wrote:
| I don't think they're abandoning it, they are just going to
| hire a new team to remake W1 in Unreal Engine, while the
| core team works on new games using proprietary tools
| mkl95 wrote:
| The Witcher 1 had a relatively large cult following for such an
| obscure game. The Witcher 2 took it to the next level.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I was a relatively active PC gamer in the US at the time they
| all came out...
|
| I somehow didn't know about Witcher until the third made a big
| wave! Granted, I was only playing some of the most obvious/big
| RPGs at the time
|
| At the time I was more into FPS
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Yes, they were very popular in some circles. My preferred
| Witcher games are, in order, 3 then 1 then 2. I vividly
| remember Witcher 1 for one very difficult battle in the first
| part and some yellow fields later on. In Witcher 2 the combat
| system was not that pleasant for me, so I did not play too much
| even if I bought it. For Witcher 3 I waited a couple of years
| after I bought it to play it, waiting for a new GPU that was
| good enough to play on highest detail level.
| Woeps wrote:
| The first game was rough but very enjoyable, And I actually
| liked the second one a lot as well. (even have the special
| edition with the coin/maps/booklets and all that jazz)
|
| Still haven't finished the main story of the third game
| tough...
| alasdair_ wrote:
| When I first played W1, there was no North American release. I
| only found it because metacritic listed it with fantastic
| reviews in Europe and I tracked down a place to buy it there.
|
| It was an amazing game at the time.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Witcher 2 was popular in my social circle in the USA. A lot of
| us went back to Witcher 1 afterwards to get a better idea of
| the story.
|
| So I'd say Witcher 2 was when the series started to get
| popular. Witcher 3 was riding on 2's coattails. Now that the
| Netflix show is popular, Witcher1 does deserve a remake.
| daemin wrote:
| From what I saw Witcher 1 had a following in RPG players, back
| in the day I remember seeing one guy at multiple lans play the
| game. Witcher 3 though was the big breakout where I saw people
| get excited for it and play it.
| AmalgatedAmoeba wrote:
| I can only speak for Czechia and here the Witcher II definitely
| made a splash.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I would say W1 was successful too. At least for me it has
| stronger story telling then W2 which is too political for me.
| dkersten wrote:
| Popular might be a stretch, but they had their audience. I
| played Witcher 1 shortly after it came out and I bought the
| collectors edition of Witcher 2 on release. So there were
| definitely fans out there. But it definitely wasn't popular in
| the way that, say, Mass Effect (which came out around about the
| same time) was popular.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Witcher 1 made a big splash among fans of PC RPGs and action
| RPGs. Didn't hurt that it landed in the middle of a relative
| doldrums for those genres--they got much healthier again a bit
| after that.
|
| 2 and 3 switched to a more console-friendly style of play and
| had good success there, though, so I expect they did more to
| spread the word than 1 did.
| importantbrian wrote:
| I can only really speak to my experience, but I don't really
| remember Witcher 1 being a thing. Witcher 2 was pretty big and
| then Witcher 3 was pretty massive.
| brunoqc wrote:
| > Were the previous two installments popular outside of Poland?
|
| I would guess so, but the third one was even more popular.
| Maybe 3 is a bit like Skyrim.
|
| I only played the third one. One of my friends was already a
| fan of the other 2 back then.
| lakomen wrote:
| 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.
| pavon wrote:
| Many other people enjoy long running series, and CD Projekt is
| perfectly capable of doing both. CP2077 was a new IP, and they
| are planning yet another new IP, code named Project Hadar to
| follow Witcher 4 and the next CP.
| dkersten wrote:
| It's a 15 year old niche game running on an old janky engine. A
| lot of people haven't played it before, so personally I think a
| remaster is actually warranted in this case, given the
| popularity of the later games in the series.
| 4pkjai wrote:
| 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.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Wasn't GTA the one where the "re-make" was done using a hot
| garbage mobile port of the games? That would be why if so.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Why? the graphics and animation did not age very well, so they
| need to be entirely redone, and the combat rethinked. But the
| last act will look quite epic on a modern engine if done well.
| Unreal use will allow faster development.
|
| Witcher 1's main quest is the most interesting of the 3 games,
| I hope they do not commit the mistake of adding a minimap to
| casualize the remake, paying attention to the dialogues,
| environmental details and exploring the maps is very much what
| made the game interesting to me. It's one of these games where
| you can get stuck if you are not paying attention to the story,
| or miss certain timed events, which increases its replay value.
| It's much more interesting that just spamming witcher senses
| all the time to complete quests.
|
| To those who didn't play the game, this is very much a
| "detective" story and most quests are shrouded in mystery, it
| can works ONLY if the player has to pay attention to the
| dialogues, lore and story. It will not work if the player is
| spoon-fed every little detail about who is whom, what potion to
| use or the devs resorts to bringing back the "witcher senses".
|
| Just like Witcher 2, one can "side" with either of 2 camps,
| unlike Witcher 2, one can decide not to side with anybody,
| although choosing the latter option might not lead to the most
| positive outcome...
| dkersten wrote:
| I was a fan of the game, but the engines limitations did hurt
| it in my opinion and the combat was its weakest aspect. The
| story, characters, world and quests were its strong points. So
| I'm greatly looking forward to this remake, if it provides all
| the original content with less jankyness and smoother combat.
| wilg wrote:
| The GTA remaster issues were hardly due to the engine. People
| over-focus on the engine. I wouldn't worry about this.
| wiseowise wrote:
| The graphics look plastic. Is it not because of an engine?
| Serious question.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It's hard to know for sure but most people believe they did
| a ton of either super rushed manual work and/or AI
| upscaling on the textures and models that would explain the
| "plastic" look to everything. It doesn't really matter what
| engine is backing it if the textures and modeling are bad.
| And if they didn't spend the time to sort out material
| properties then the engine won't treat skin any differently
| than cloth, or cloth differently than metal, etc.
|
| these are more examples of modelling issues but it shows
| how little care and QA went into the remake:
|
| they rounded out this 6-sided nut : https://old.reddit.com/
| r/GTA/comments/quutz7/definitive_lazy...
|
| hot dog fingers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQWw0hHMUoc
| moron4hire wrote:
| I don't know of any engines that dictate material
| properties. There are some where the default settings on
| the default materials are questionable _cough_ Unity3D
| _cough_. But a big studio game shouldn 't/wouldn't be using
| the defaults on just about anything.
|
| One of the biggest things indie game developers can do to
| not look like an indie game is to stop using the default
| settings on the default materials. Not necessarily even
| using custom materials. Just don't use the default
| settings.
| exeldapp wrote:
| I would say yes and no. Yes, obviously the renderer is
| there but at the same time it's only doing what it was told
| to do. Taking Unity and Unreal as examples, you can make
| something look plastic, cartoony, realistic, a mixture, or
| really anything you want. Usually there will be art
| director(s) (or a someone with a similar title) that make
| sure the art/graphics stick with a certain look and feel so
| I would put the blame more on them than the engine.
| redox99 wrote:
| Of course not. Unreal Engine uses a PBR pipeline as any
| modern engine does. If your materials look plastic it's
| because that how you authored them, not because of the
| engine.
| serf wrote:
| >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 in on with regards to Unity. I think it's their
| style of specular lighting glow that gets painted onto way too
| many things by most creators.
|
| I don't use the engine myself, so I can't tell you exactly what
| it is I hone in on, but I can for most titles.
| redox99 wrote:
| Default post processing and anti aliasing are usually dead
| giveaways.
| hbn wrote:
| There's always been something about the Source engine that
| felt distinctive. The lighting and physics feel weird and
| creepy.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Starcraft Remastered was designed with the explicit goal of
| changing as little as possible. The target audience for the
| remaster is well-versed in the bugs of the original game and
| wanted them reproduced.
|
| Compare with Warcraft III Reforged. Modding with the original
| WC3 was extremely popular: DotA started as a mod for WC3, so
| Blizzard should have focused on compatibility. Not doing so led
| to the poor reception.
| superdisk wrote:
| The GTA trilogy remasters actually run on the original game
| engine under the hood, the only thing they changed was the
| renderer (Unreal Engine instead of RenderWare).
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| The modern DOOM 1/2 releases on Android/iOS/Switch/Xbox/PS
| does something similar: it is using the original renderer but
| uses Unity to handle input and output for easier portability.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a
| game.
|
| This is nice usually, but such a curse for procedural games.
| Once you start internalizing the RNG you stop thinking of
| yourself as exploring an environment, and more in terms of
| rolling dice: "oh, rolled a general shop, no mimic, one
| fountain and the Gnomish Caves entrance". At least nethack has
| enough crazy shit happening that it gives the levels
| personality regardless.
|
| Same thing with AI enemies in strategy/4X games. Deep down it's
| just some form of RNG+rules based on "personality" values and
| current situation, but there's no real strategy. Just a
| simulation of it.
|
| Which makes you think, with AlphaStar defeating pro players
| since 2019, where's the AI 4X games deserve? While 4X games
| might be crazy when good humans play multiplayer, the average
| 4X solo player does a limited set of actions and uses much less
| strategy than in StarCraft.
| dragontamer wrote:
| 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 remade so that people have
| an entry point into the story. The actual "gameplay" from the
| original will _NOT_ be missed. IMO anyway.
| verst wrote:
| 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.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I loved the game and beat it twice (maybe 3 times? not
| sure) but the engine performs like dogshit for the level of
| graphical quality it delivers.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| 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, the first Witcher game is in more of a
| niche genre with significantly less mainstream appeal in
| terms of gameplay and UI.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| 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.
| verst wrote:
| 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
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| 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.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Its not the polish that was bad.
|
| I've played many 3d action-RPG games. Zelda, Monster
| Hunter, Dynasty Warriors, etc. etc. Witcher1's combat is by
| far the worst of the series.
|
| Just... laggy, non-responsive controls. But in a bad way
| (ex: Monster Hunter is also laggy/non-responsive, but in a
| way that's "obvious" that the slowdown is purposeful and
| tactical. You need to be very careful about when you attack
| or not attack vs various monsters in that game).
|
| Witcher 1's combat in contrast, has a lot of repetition and
| not a lot of depth IMO. At least, from what I remember.
| Witcher2 onwards had much better ideas of "fun combat"
| experiences.
|
| --------
|
| I can still go back to old PS2 era Dynasty Warriors, mash
| square and have fun. Its not about "dated graphics". I
| admit dynasty warriors is a mashy-heavy game with a casual
| mindset, but I think Witcher couldn't really decide if it
| wanted to be a punishing slow game (like Monster
| Hunter/Souls series), or a faster twitch game, and just
| weirdly plays in this unfun position between the two
| extremes.
|
| Its fine to have a slow punishing game (Monster Hunter /
| Souls / etc. etc.), but you need a huge variety of bosses
| to keep interest. Witcher 1 felt pretty stale after a short
| time, since there's just not as much variety.
|
| Somehow, I don't find Dynasty Warriors gameplay stale
| (despite being a square-mash simulator). I don't fully
| understand why however. I guess DW is more about
| positioning of the player-character (the enemy army is
| always winning where you are _not_ located, so Dynasty
| Warriors feels more like a firefighter simulator, where
| you're running around the battlefield trying to fix issues
| in the army... rather than really being a combat game?)
| kuschku wrote:
| > But in a bad way (ex: Monster Hunter is also laggy/non-
| responsive, but in a way that's "obvious" that the
| slowdown is purposeful and tactical. You need to be very
| careful about when you attack or not attack vs various
| monsters in that game).
|
| That's actually why I stopped playing Monster Hunter: I
| really hate the non-responsiveness, it feels like wading
| through molasses.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think a big problem with Witcher 1 is that its vision
| for combat was relatively novel and not well presented.
| In the lore it's emphasized that fighting is supposed to
| be a sort of graceful dance and so the combat tries to
| mimic that. The combat is much more like a bemani
| (beat/music type game) game than an action RPG, even
| though it looks nothing like the former and everything
| like the latter.
|
| Once you 'get' this, everything makes way more sense, the
| game flows, and it becomes really quite fun. I played it
| when it first came out. I didn't get it, and quit before
| beating the first chapter. I later replayed it, got it,
| and ended up playing through it multiple times on max
| difficulty.
| cardanome wrote:
| My first attempt didn't go well either but I am glad I gave
| it a second chance. Once it starts winning you over, it is
| really good.
|
| The fighting system is pretty old-school but once you get
| used to it, it is quite fun. It is very authentic to how
| Geralt is fighting in the Witcher books. It is simply more
| about rhythm and tactics than one might be used to.
|
| Just because Witcher 1 is kind of hard to recommend for a
| casual gamer in 2022, does not mean it is garbage. It is just
| different. It has more of a niche appeal.
|
| I am absolutely glad I got to play the original and some of
| its charm are the things are probably going to be modernized
| away in the remake.
| User23 wrote:
| The Witcher ran on a heavily modified version of the Aurora
| engine, which was used for the Bioware Neverwinter Nights.
| agilob wrote:
| 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".
| tester756 wrote:
| If you're interested in their strategy check out this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EJmgTQ0O8k
| nomel wrote:
| And, it seems like a fantastic way to learn a new engine.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| While it's surely a constant, I think the entertainment
| industries at large have really started to milk the nostalgia
| cow hard
|
| I could say a bunch of soft science things like, go with a sure
| thing in an uncertain market, blah blah. I think it's simply
| easier
| conductr wrote:
| The start was about 20 years ago, but I do agree
| ska wrote:
| It seems the start is always ~20 years ago from when you
| talk about, regardless of when you talk about this sort of
| thing.
| conductr wrote:
| It's when it's ready for a reboot! I strongly associate
| it with the movie industry running out of new ideas after
| the 90s. Episode 1 was 1999 for example, before that most
| people thought Star Wars was over. Then the marvel stuff.
|
| But maybe that's just me being nostalgic since that's
| also around the time I began being an adult. It does seem
| convenient how it's usually timed out so that parents can
| geek out with their kids; so the industry inherits a new
| generation of fans. My recent example of that is how
| apparently Pokemon is very popular again. I was too old
| to care in the 90s but those kids now have kids of
| similar age as they were at the time.
|
| The phenomenon as a whole didn't seem to exist so
| strongly prior to that. In the 80s if my dad showed me
| something he liked as a kid I just laughed it off as some
| old toy that had no relevance to me. My 4 yo loves
| Spider-Man and has no clue he's older than me. They made
| a new show specifically targeting this age group (Spidey
| and his Amazing Friends).
| the_duke wrote:
| Not at all, they have lots of new games coming.
|
| Sibling comment has a link.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| 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...
| agilob wrote:
| 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 they afford it?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Cyberpunk sold 20 million copies. The game was a critical
| disaster, to a certain extent, but was financially
| successful for the studio in the long run. The Witcher 3 in
| 2020 alone sold 30 million copies, so they're hardly
| hurting for cash.
|
| Also "currently in development" does not mean every game is
| getting equal resources, or that each game is in the same
| stage of development.
| tester756 wrote:
| >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
| 988747 wrote:
| > Their stock price is near 5 year low, how can they afford
| it?
|
| Stock price has nothing to do with how much money CDPR has
| in their bank accounts. Stock trading is basically a public
| opinion poll on the future of the company, but not a penny
| from those trades actually goes to company accounts.
| agilob wrote:
| and if a company is trading low, their trust is also low,
| am I wrong? They would will need to trick people into
| giving them money upfront (preorders?) or borrow from 3rd
| party to cover a product that will sell and bring cash.
|
| nevertheless, I didn't mean they can't fund it because of
| low stock price, they got lots of free money from Polish
| government development fund, but CDPR delivered only 4
| big games and only 2 were big hits, The Witcher and The
| Witcher 3. CP77 sold in many copies, I have one too, but
| I'm not buying them unless they prove it's worth the
| price. They completely lost my trust and employees with
| internal knowledge, who were committed to make Witchers a
| success story.
|
| Previously delivering 2 (or 3) good games, having stock
| prices high during that time, getting free money from
| development fund vs now stock price low, trust in company
| and their quality dropped, 5 projects in progress? Aren't
| they shooting too high?
| airstrike wrote:
| "Trust" is a broad term, so not the one I would use. It's
| more about expectations of future dividends (and
| expectations of other market participants' expectations
| of future dividends, and that goes on until some Nth
| derivative of the stock's underlying value, also because
| "growth" is a derivative of "future dividends")
|
| Nearly every stock in Tech is down a lot this year. High
| growth, low profitability stocks are generally
| underwater. You'd have to compare their stock to similar
| companies to see if they are down _more_ or _less_ than
| those comparable peers.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Not entirely true. An equity price in the toilet means
| you might have to borrow money if you need a big chunk.
| It also weakens your ability to use stocks to pay
| employees which in turn requires additional cash outlays.
|
| TL;DR: Companies still depend on equities as a funding
| mechanism.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| >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.
| badpun wrote:
| Have you heard of Elon Musk?
| viraptor wrote:
| I don't have much info any their organisation and teams,
| but it may not be a bad idea. Adding people to IT projects
| beyond some threshold doesn't really make them faster and
| spreading the risk across 5 projects may be better than
| going all-in with one.
| [deleted]
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| On the other hand Geralt waves his sword above his head like an
| idiot in Witcher 1. I hate remakes but if I had to have one
| this would be one.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/rkdbnv/started_play...
|
| But yeah I want new stories more.
| sylens wrote:
| Yes, this is actually a game that would be well served by a
| remake that makes it more accessible.
| hbn wrote:
| The top comment in that thread you linked explains that sword
| movement is something from the books. No one's to say that'll
| be removed in a remake.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I don't remember him doing that in the books haha. He was a
| beautiful swordsman not a goofball.
| zepppotemkin wrote:
| GAMERS RISE UP!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I couldn't get myself to play the first 2 Witcher games due to
| the dated mechanics but I watched other people stream their play
| throughs at the time.
|
| > [removed] the playing cards players can earn that depict pinup
| art of Geralt's various sexual partners. The system has been
| criticized over the years for treating women's bodies as a reward
| for player progression.
|
| This pin-up card collection of your sex partners was edgy in 2007
| and 2011 as well. Its not like it was an especially unenlightened
| age of days bygone. The Pin-Up card system is definitely what put
| it on the map. Its really funny that CD Project [may] opt to
| launder its reputation now to reach a broader audience after only
| getting on the map for being absurd and over the top. I'm not
| advocating for anything, only observing.
|
| The lesson broadcasted is that you have to do "degrading" and
| shocking things like that to stand out at all. Kind of like how
| many individuals get started in many industries to support
| themselves.
| wilg wrote:
| I'm not sure "laundering reputation" is how I would frame "re-
| evaluating including potentially objectionable content in a
| remake".
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The reason I would frame it that way is because CD Projekt
| has subsequently had a fall from grace and are on thin ice
| regarding PR attack vectors
| renonn wrote:
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Meh. Steam's got a billion games now that do that exact thing.
| Tons and tons of games did before it, too. The only notable
| thing about it was having that kind of thing in a game that was
| otherwise good enough and had enough else going on not to be
| categorized _primarily_ as a porn game.
|
| I'll just wait for it to be modded back in.
|
| [EDIT] Actually a few other mainstream non-porn games have done
| almost the same thing, since, too. The Saboteur comes to mind.
| Some whole series are all about that sort of thing, like DOA.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I played the Witcher when it was released back in the day; I
| had heard some vaguely good things about it, and it seemed like
| something I would enjoy. I had no idea the card thing existed
| until I actually received one. I remember laughing at how silly
| it was. I felt it kinda fit within the kind of semi-serious
| adult theme of the game; "your mother sucks dwarven cock" etc.
| From what I recall, the second game was a bit more serious;
| never played the third one.
|
| I think the cards had basically nothing to do with the game
| success, and judging from the comments here, it seems the first
| game wasn't even all _that_ successful in the first place.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| They just replaced it with 3D sex scenes in the later ones,
| AFAIK. But for some reason that was OK, while fade-to-black
| and a pinup wasn't? It's weird.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The 3D scenes show a collaboration with women
|
| The cards show a "notch on your belt", which is something a
| lot of people are sensitive to and don't want to
| perpetuate, when given the choice
|
| So that's what people are reacting to, not the mere
| presence of sexual encounters and explicitness at all
|
| Said another way: Of the subset of people that are fine
| with explicit depictions in this medium, a broader subset
| of them want to depict more women as collaborators as
| opposed to prizes and collectibles. They found that
| depiction detracted from this particular series.
| vexatus wrote:
| Remember: no preorders!
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Sometimes remakes can actually improve accessibility to an older
| game with a dated engine/mechanics and make it more enjoyable for
| newcomers to experience the earlier entries. See: Yakuza Kiwami
| and Yakuza Kiwami 2 (remade using the excellent _Yakuza 0_ engine
| /mechanics).
|
| I do own Witcher 1/Witcher 2 (bought no-doubt during some Steam
| sale for like $5-$15, tops), and I vaguely recall playing W1 for
| like a half hour, then put it down and never touched it again.
| But somehow I then put 90+ hours into Witcher 3.
|
| So yes, the idea of Witcher 1's story remade into a modern engine
| sounds great. Heck, I would've settled for just Witcher 3's
| engine. I don't think I'd plop $60 for it--especially considering
| I waited until I could grab W3 GOTY Edition for like $20 before
| buying--but it's definitely something I'd eventually want to
| check out.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I played W1 when it came out and it was great. But couldn't
| imagine playing it after Witcher 3 because W3 is in a different
| universe of quality and polish. A remake is fantastic news.
| jdaw0 wrote:
| 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.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I really wanted to play the games in order, but I found the
| gameplay in 1 un-fun and quit.
|
| I almost regret how long it put me off 3
| tvb12 wrote:
| I started to play, but never finished, both the first and
| second Witcher games after also purchasing them on sale at
| massive discounts. I gained an appreciation for advances made
| in character movement and player input, including UI elements
| like menus and pop-ups for quick actions. Old games play very
| clunky.
| ramosu wrote:
| sounds like bad news for their internal engineering team
| Tade0 wrote:
| Provided there's any of it left after Cyberpunk.
| fazfq wrote:
| Or they can do like Rockstar and many others and outsource
| the port.
| impulser_ wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| nvrspyx wrote:
| 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.
| whack24 wrote:
| 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?
| peruvian wrote:
| Not only is this common but it's how some companies have
| built their reputation and money, see Bluepoint: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluepoint_Games#Games_develope...
| daemin wrote:
| That's true, although Fool's Theory is full of former CDPR
| people that worked on W3 and CP. I'm assuming it will be a
| similar situation to that of Spokko where eventually it might
| be brought under the CDP umbrella. (That's just speculation
| though, I don't have any insider knowledge on this).
| [deleted]
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Exactly; while CDPR and Fool's Theory will be working on
| different games, they'll be able to share resources
| extensively given the common platform. I wouldn't be
| surprised if they divide up work on a lot of the Witcher-
| specific extensions to Unreal's scripting, AI, and so on.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Ohhhhhh totally gonna play this!
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