CD PROJEKT RED Announces New Witcher Trilogy, Two Additional Witcher Games, a Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel, and Entirely New IP

Latest Generation games also seem to take a lot longer to develop -

First it was just sprites and a story
Then we went to fully 3D rendered scenes
Then we went to fully orchestrated music
Then full voiceovers
Physics engines are now standard
We shifted from baked animations to fully jointed models on physics
Shaders got added in there somewhere
Online stuff - be it multiplayer or whatever
Now we have dynamic lighting and raytracing and other crap to throw in there
And don't forget platform optimization, delivery optimization, DLC, Spinoffs, in-game shopping, metrics, etc

Yeah, game engines take care of a lot of that, but with a AAA game, the expectation is that you exceed the engine in some way; otherwise every single indy developer could throw out graphics equal to whatever you are doing, and that won't sell well. It's just stacking levels of complexity that take time and money to implement.
 
xGryfter said:
They've made 3 Witcher games, I'm sure they can handle 3 more without much issue. They've made one Cyberpunk game which was nothing like The Witcher, there is going to be a learning curve for them, just like with The Witcher, that's how great games are made. The PC version wasn't broken, just buggy. I don't play PC games on consoles so I don't really care all that much about that and I doubt CDPR did that intentionally but I think they were dumb for trying to release it on previous gen systems.
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Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't just buggy. I wish people would stop saying that. Yes, it was buggy. The issues with Cyberpunk 2077 go well beyond being buggy. Arkham Knight was a buggy piece of ****. Cyberpunk was a buggy piece of **** and it was unfinished. The game still isn't finished today and falls well short of what CD Projekt Red promised to deliver.

All of that being said, I think it's a fantastic game with an amazing atmosphere and fun gameplay. Gameplay that wasn't right at launch due to balance issues and certain items in the game doing nothing because they were literally unfinished. (Optical Camo being one example of this.)

I do agree that releasing it on previous generation consoles was a dumb idea. They cannot handle the game. Period.
 
Denpepe said:
Those were not all made by the same people, not to mention that for instance dragon age 2 while having a decent story reused soo many assets it almost killed the franchise.

It just proved that making a lot of games in a short time is a bad idea.
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And why do you assume all projects at CDPR would be made by the exact same people?

Dragon Age 2 re-used about as many assets as Mass Effect 1, but it was the beginning of the "EA bad" era. Also very few of the actual dogpilers played the game enough to encounter the re-used assets. Most of the criticism at the time was that EA made it too action oriented and reduced the strategy aspect of the encounters. Which might be a negative to some, but DA2 is still my favorite Dragon Age game, so you are not convincing me that it should not have been made.
 
Brian_B said:
Latest Generation games also seem to take a lot longer to develop -

First it was just sprites and a story
Then we went to fully 3D rendered scenes
Then we went to fully orchestrated music
Then full voiceovers
Physics engines are now standard
Click to expand...
All of those things existed by the early 2000s.
Brian_B said:
We shifted from baked animations to fully jointed models on physics
Click to expand...
Which makes animating characters much easier, not harder.
Brian_B said:
Shaders got added in there somewhere
Click to expand...
Also in the early 2000s.
Brian_B said:
Online stuff - be it multiplayer or whatever
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Which I'd happily forego, as it doesn't benefit single player games in any way.
Brian_B said:
Now we have dynamic lighting and raytracing and other crap to throw in there
Click to expand...
Which is also easier than baked in light, which to be fair is still used heavily in combination with dynamic to conserve resources.
Brian_B said:
And don't forget platform optimization, delivery optimization, DLC, Spinoffs, in-game shopping, metrics, etc
Click to expand...
Those are the types of excuses "corporate man" would use. You shouldn't even think about DLCs before the game is out. In game shops is also a nightmare I'd never use.
Brian_B said:
Yeah, game engines take care of a lot of that, but with a AAA game, the expectation is that you exceed the engine in some way; otherwise every single indy developer could throw out graphics equal to whatever you are doing, and that won't sell well. It's just stacking levels of complexity that take time and money to implement.
Click to expand...
It seems more like a lot of BS features that do not benefit the player or the game at all, and politics that's bogging down development. You could still make an AAA game in 2 years, if you don't screw around aimlessly, and have competent and focused people working on it.

The fact is that tools have become so hilariously simple that 90% of a game can be built by people with zero prior coding skills. Map and level designers can make a complex map in hours using just the inbuilt tools of UE5. So it is my firm opinion that any insider who says it is harder to make a game now than it was 10 years ago is either incompetent or gaslighting.
 
MadMummy76 said:
Which might be a negative to some, but DA2 is still my favorite Dragon Age game, so you are not convincing me that it should not have been made.
Click to expand...
I never said it should not have been made, they should have taken their time so they did not have to reuse the same couple of smallish maps over and over again with some slight changes.
 
Denpepe said:
I never said it should not have been made, they should have taken their time so they did not have to reuse the same couple of smallish maps over and over again with some slight changes.
Click to expand...
The same exact thing can be said about Mass Effect, why was it not bothering people that much in 2008 but suddenly became this game breaking issue by 2011?

I'm so tired of the mantra of "just take their time" when they take their time it usually means feature creep and headless chicken development. Sure there is a minimum time required to develop a game, but what matters is how the time is used, not how much is used. You can't say CPPR didn't take their time with CP2077, and it still didn't result in a fully completed and bug free game. So what does take their time mean in this context? Absolutely nothing.

If the leadership or the techs are incompetent, or there is no clear creative direction more time won't help at all.

Should we tell Star Citizen, to take their time? No, they already took twice the time it should take to develop even a massive project. Had they clear goals set out from the start, we weren't looking at a perpetual alpha of a meager tech demo.
 
MadMummy76 said:
I'm so tired of the mantra of "just take their time" when they take their time it usually means feature creep and headless chicken development. Sure there is a minimum time required to develop a game, but what matters is how the time is used, not how much is used. You can't say CPPR didn't take their time with CP2077, and it still didn't result in a fully completed and bug free game. So what does take their time mean in this context? Absolutely nothing.
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https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/dr...r-developer-da2-was-a-one-year-produc-487429/
https://www.fanbyte.com/games/news/...er-that-dragon-age-2-was-made-in-nine-months/

Think this should make it clearer that some more time might not have been a bad thing
 
MadMummy76 said:
So it is my firm opinion that any insider who says it is harder to make a game now than it was 10 years ago is either incompetent or gaslighting.
Click to expand...
Harder to make any game? No, you are right. The tools have become very powerful.

But folks expect a AAA to push boundaries and do more than what you can do with drag and drop in Unity
 
Brian_B said:
But folks expect a AAA to push boundaries and do more than what you can do with drag and drop in Unity
Click to expand...
I don't think most folks would know the difference. I'm not being hyperbolic. When 3rd parties can throw together concept demos to wow those folks with little to no programming experience, I think "folks expect it" is not a valid justification for feature creep.
 
DrezKill said:
www.destructoid.com

CD Projekt RED co-founder steps down ahead of studio's new dawn

CD Projekt RED co-founder Marcin Iwinski announced that they are stepping down from their role at the company after a near 30-year tenure.
www.destructoid.com www.destructoid.com
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Yep, but it's an almost sideways move for him. He's not trying to leave the company but change roles within it.

“I am beginning a brand new personal chapter at CD Projekt, as I will submit my candidacy for the role of Chairman to the Supervisory Board, leaving behind my joint CEO role,”
 
MadMummy76 said:
I don't think most folks would know the difference. I'm not being hyperbolic. When 3rd parties can throw together concept demos to wow those folks with little to no programming experience, I think "folks expect it" is not a valid justification for feature creep.
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I agree entirely with this statement.
 
Yeah, I was expecting some closer ties to Epic once it was announced they'd switched over to using the Unreal Engine. As long as GOG doesn't suffer and we can still get these games through GOG, I'm fine with it. What worries me though is that I thought I remembered stories about GOG's revenue dropping a while back. I hope we're not in the early stages of a buyout. Tencent has been making statements recently about wanting to buy out a lot more studios.
 
MadMummy76 said:
Dragon Age 2 re-used about as many assets as Mass Effect 1, but it was the beginning of the "EA bad" era. Also very few of the actual dogpilers played the game enough to encounter the re-used assets. Most of the criticism at the time was that EA made it too action oriented and reduced the strategy aspect of the encounters. Which might be a negative to some, but DA2 is still my favorite Dragon Age game, so you are not convincing me that it should not have been made.
Click to expand...
Though it wasn't my favorite of the series, I quite enjoyed DA2. I didn't play it until a few years or so after its release, and by that time it felt as though even EA wanted to pretend it didn't exist. I was glad that I chose to ignore the critics. It was underrated in my opinion.
Peter_Brosdahl said:
What worries me though is that I thought I remembered stories about GOG's revenue dropping a while back. I hope we're not in the early stages of a buyout. Tencent has been making statements recently about wanting to buy out a lot more studios.
Click to expand...
Now that is a scary thought. I wish more people would purchase games from GOG when available.

I just revisited the initial announcement of the new Witcher saga from CDPR's news archive, dated March 21, 2022. In case anyone cares, here's the link:
www.cdprojekt.com

New Witcher Saga Announced. CD PROJEKT RED Begins Development on Unreal Engine 5 as Part of a Strategic Partnership with Epic Games - CD PROJEKT

CD PROJEKT RED today revealed that the next installment in The Witcher series of video games is currently in development with Unreal Engine 5, kicking off a new saga for the franchise and a new
www.cdprojekt.com www.cdprojekt.com
 
Tempest said:
Though it wasn't my favorite of the series, I quite enjoyed DA2. I didn't play it until a few years or so after its release, and by that time it felt as though even EA wanted to pretend it didn't exist. I was glad that I chose to ignore the critics. It was underrated in my opinion.
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I only liked awakenings more.

1. Awakenings
2. DA2
3. Origins
5. Inquisition - because it can't even be mentioned near the others.
 
Dragon's Age is another EA franchise I tend to barely get into. I remember trying the first one and getting bored after feeling like I had to read a 2000-page novel just to get past the intro parts. I liked the graphics and mechanics but just way too much text. I was done with text adventures back in 82. I did a playthrough of Inquisition for free through Origin Access and thought it was o.k. but seemed way too short and, for me, had an unusual amount of graphical issues. I admit I was biased because I'd already become hooked on the Witcher franchise and was looking for something else but it wasn't bad just not great.
 
MadMummy76 said:
They also recently put out a video on their youtube channel announcing the full embracing of ESG score. It seems like CDPR is heading to an early grave instead of a return to form.
Click to expand...

What a shame.

ESG will never be installed on any machine of mine.

I presume they will still maintain GoG at least? GoG I have no problem with.
 
hubaduba said:
Did you assume xir's gender, or did Destructoid?
Click to expand...
If he has gone to they then they should update their own page.

Board of Directors - CD PROJEKT

The Board of CD PROJEKT S.A. operates in accordance with the Polish Corporate Law, the Company Articles of Associations and the Board Regulations. The prerogatives of the Board include representing the Company in all matters not
www.cdprojekt.com www.cdprojekt.com

1665310214156.png
 
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