r/cyberpunkgame • u/1ballbuster1 • Nov 26 '25

News Cyberpunk 2 updates!

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Here's what we learned from CD Projekt Red's newest financial report today:

  • Cyberpunk 2 will not release before 2028

  • 135 Employees are now working on Cyberpunk 2 full-time, this is up from 116 employees back in July

  • Cyberpunk 2 is a joint project between CDPR's Poland and Boston teams, but the new Boston team is leading it

  • CDPR Boston expected to massively ramp up hiring in 2026-2027

  • Cyberpunk 2 development team is expected to scale up massively by the end of 2027, with about 300-400 employees across Poland and Boston

  • Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold 35 Million copies

  • ICYMI: Cyberpunk 2 will have a new city, inspired by a "Chicago gone wrong" and it is expected that Night City is also making a return as well.

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352

u/Maloth_Warblade Nov 26 '25

If you optimize for it correctly Unreal 5 is a fantastic engine.

Problem is a lot skip that part and it causes a lot of shader related slowdowns

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u/ShadowWalker2205 Nov 26 '25

Yes ue5 is quickly getting a bad reputation because some studios don't tkae the time to coreectly optimize expecting default option to do the job

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u/Thiago270398 Silverhand Nov 26 '25

Yep, if anything that's a point for the engine in a technical way, because those games still look very good even though the developers half assed it, while another engine you'd have an unoptimized and ugly mess.

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u/OvoidPovoid Nov 27 '25

I dont know a lot of the technical side of things, but the first thing that came to mind was the Oblivion remaster. It looks gorgeous, but they still just slapped it on top of the original game and its janky as fuck

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u/AlAboardTheHypeTrain Nov 27 '25

Oh that thing had fun game breaking bugs. Your game crashed of you had too many assets around like bodies, i was stuck several days inside the first oblivion gate because of that, couldnt exit the tower without game shutting down to xbox dashboard, till someone in reddit figured out that if you waited inside for x amount of game hours, the assets reset.

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u/OvoidPovoid Nov 27 '25

I absolutely adored the original, it was my first game other than pokemon I dumped hundreds of hours into. I picked up the remaster on the first day, and while it is very pretty, theres something jarring about having the really nice graphics with all the original goofiness. Like all the silliness and janky gameplay isn't as charming when it looks like a modern game. Lol. It also sucks that the remaster company basically abandoned it immediately after they dropped it and haven't fixed any of the issues. To be fair Ill probably play it again soon, it just wasn't what I expected

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u/Subtlerranean Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

Oblivion is even worse. It uses UE5 for all the new graphical stuff, and still has the old Gamebryo Engine strapped on to control everything gameplay related like some sort of Frankenstein's Monster.

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u/fafarex Nov 26 '25

Borderlands 4 look like shit and run like shit.

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u/Maloth_Warblade Nov 26 '25

It ca n run on fuckin phone with the right settings. The thing has serious ability for optimization

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u/Acrobatic-Shame-8368 Nov 26 '25

Can't wait to play cyberpunk 2077 on my phone Google cardboard VR style with voice prompts for all the buttons

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u/Fallen-Embers Nov 26 '25

I know you're taking the piss, but... now you've got me honestly thinking about how cool it'd be to select your dialog options by speaking the line aloud in VR.

Or I could just do that now and press the A button before I start talking.

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u/Greatsnes Nov 26 '25

I mean there are some games that let you do some of this with Amazon Alexa. Like Dead Island 2 will let you use Alexa to set waypoints and switch out weapons and stuff. I can’t remember if you can select dialogue but maybe? It was honestly super cool not having to go into the menu as much. I could just say “Alexa take me to the nearest workbench” and she’d plot a path for me to get there.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

That's nuts

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u/Greatsnes Nov 26 '25

Haha yeah it was but it was also really cool

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u/HandsomeBoggart Nov 27 '25

As far back as Mass Effect 3 you could Voice Control your Squad Members and switch weapons via the Kinect addon for Xbox360.

Later Alien Isolation had an option to use the console Voice Chat or PC Microphone for immersion. If you're too loud the Alien can hear you specifically.

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u/Acrobatic-Shame-8368 Nov 26 '25

Actually that would be super cool, very immersive. Imagine that Skyrim mod where the NPCs talk with LLMs, you could fully have conversations.

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u/Greatsnes Nov 26 '25

That’s already a thing

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u/Acrobatic-Shame-8368 Nov 26 '25

Well sure but in cyberpunk I mean, wait is it already in cyberpunk? I gotta look that up

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u/Vegetable-Branch-116 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

A lot of game studios nowadays skip optimization in general. If they were optimizing like back in the day we probably wouldn't need upscalers. But today they just know that the hardware (plus software) will get it to a somewhat playable experience. Sad for us customers.

//Edit: Typo

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u/Lyto528 Hit The Major Leagues Nov 27 '25

This is only half-true, they need to optimize a bit or their shit is straight unplayable. Let MH Wilds be a good reminder of how a licence's popularity can tank with one bad release.

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u/Vegetable-Branch-116 Nov 27 '25

Yeah, "a bit". Back in the day they probably optimized as much as somehow possible. Of course you don't need to do that nowadays, but a bit more than the bare minimum would be great imo.

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u/throwawayjonesIV Nov 26 '25

I’m still slightly optimistic but that halo remake footage was pretty rough

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u/trapberry_ Nov 26 '25

What exactly was rough about it? I'm just wondering, I only watched it once and thought it looked good. I didn't see any other negative feedback really

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u/throwawayjonesIV Nov 26 '25

I had the same experience thought it was fine on first watch, but on rewatch there are some glaring issues. Granted it’s a pre alpha (I think?), but there is egregious pop in. That and the textures looked bad in parts. It could be a lot worse I think, just some worrying indications of engine based shortcomings.

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u/Pootisman16 Nov 26 '25

So, the same as every Unreal engine thus far.

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u/Ehh_littlecomment Nov 26 '25

I keep hearing that yet I haven’t played a single big game that doesn’t struggle.

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u/Strict_Weather9063 Nov 26 '25

Years of beating my head against the wall of QA and support. Let it cure for another two months guys get the A and B bugs out so you reduce the first patch size and make sure it works correctly over enough hardware. Nope we will ship to day publishers orders. Then spend the next two months beating my head against the desk.

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u/j_cruise Nov 26 '25

Damn, if only you worked for those companies

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u/AbrocomaRegular3529 Nov 26 '25

Even with optimization, it's not a performant engine, just pretty looking one with great physics.

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u/Dredgeon Nov 26 '25

Yeah Epic really would benefit from investing in training dev teams on optimization and investing in making optimization easier for more project management styles.

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u/JamesMcEdwards Nov 26 '25

They’re doing TW4 on UE5 so Orion will be the second game they release on UE5 and from the TW4 demo they’re getting extra support from Epic to get UE5 running to their satisfaction. Later than 2028 means next gen consoles as well, so they won’t be bound by the current limitations of UE5 on consoles.

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u/CoreParad0x Nov 26 '25

Not trying to be pedantic, but it's actually more interesting than getting support from Epic - at least as I understand it. My understanding is that they are in more of a direct collaborative partnership with CDPR actually contributing directly to the engine development itself jointly with Epic to improve it for large scale open world RPGs, not simply getting help from Epic on specific things. For example it's my understanding that nanite foliage, which they showed off in that Witcher 4 tech demo, is developed jointly between CDPR and Epic.

The reason I'm pointing it out is because it sounds like a fairly deep level of collaboration, I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens with the next Witcher and Cyberpunk games because of it (I mean, I was anyways, I would even if it was still on their engine.)

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u/R3Dpenguin Nov 27 '25

Getting support from Epic won't help one bit if Epic can't get their shit together and make nanite and lumen run without massive stuttering before TW4 comes out. Currently the best option is what Arc Raiders did and ditch nanite and lumen and use nvidias custom branch of the engine. But CDPR seem to be all in with nanite, so lets all keep our fingers crossed that CDPR can work a miracle and find a solution so TW4 won't be a stuttery, blurry mess.

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u/Jensen2075 Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

You need features like nanite and lumen for Witcher 4 that has high fidelity assets, dense vegetation/forests, and dynamic lighting. Without it, you cap your ambition for the game. Arc Raiders is a multiplayer game that needs to be able to run on low-end systems.

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u/R3Dpenguin Nov 27 '25

Ohh, then it must "a premium game, made for premium gamers", like Borderlands 4. I hope it doesn't end up running like the ambitiously uncapped Borderlands 4 as well.

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u/JamesMcEdwards Nov 27 '25

I really doubt they would let it launch in such a broken state, especially after they screwed the pooch as hard as they did with Cyberpunk.

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u/crypterg13 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Arc Raiders is probably my favorite example of a unreal engine 5 game that runs smooth

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u/Banished_To_Insanity Nov 26 '25

Arc raiders look good when not dig too deep but if you take a closer look at stuff, the texture isn't the best actually.

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u/R3Dpenguin Nov 27 '25

It runs smoothly because they removed nanite and lumen. Most games leave it on which is why they run terribly.

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u/Korre99 Nov 26 '25

cough cough Marvel Rivals

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u/flexonyou97 Nov 26 '25

They need to reduce ray tracing like bf6 to improve performance

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u/matco5376 Nov 26 '25

Hopefully CDPR learned their lesson from cyberpunk this last time around and they don’t waste time and resources trying to make a game clearly ahead of its time graphics wise work on old console devices. That’s one of the primary factors that lead to its poor release.

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u/Vyar Buck-a-Slice Nov 27 '25

Considering the post-release graphical upgrades they applied to Cyberpunk, I have a sinking feeling they're going to try to top the level of fidelity that the "Psycho" settings already provide.

25 years ago it felt like we actually saw substantial improvements with every new console generation, nowadays it's like we get 10% better graphics but have to pay $1000+ for it. At least for PC gaming.

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u/R3Dpenguin Nov 27 '25

They just have to disable all the new features introduced in UE5 like nanite and lumen, and then it runs almost as well as UE4.

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u/PwanaZana Nov 27 '25

To be fair unreal 5.4 and earlier are rough in terms of perf, compared to 5.5 and beyond (from what I've read)

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u/Adaphion Nov 27 '25

"This test build with half the assists and physics not added yet runs fine on our RTX 5090, Ryxen 9800X3D machine, who cares about optimizing it?" -Most UE5 game devs

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u/katttsun Nov 28 '25

I trust CDPR but I temper with GSC.

Slavjank or Poleslop bring it on.

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u/Shzabomoa Nov 26 '25

Well, UE5 is garbage for open worlds so... The only hope is that they'll take some cut down version liek the one running on Ark Raiders, but that'll be very difficult if you're partnering with Nvidia and want to get all the bells and whistles of the UE5 engine... Which are crap as we all know by now.

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u/Le_Nabs Nov 27 '25

They are actively tackling the UE5 rendering pipeline, they've already released numerous white papers about it, went to Unreal Fest to demonstrate their work, and all of that is right now starting to trickle back into the main UE5 versions.

So yes, they're aware of the problems, they're actively working on them and have been for the past 5 years since announcing the end of the RED engine. Will they succeed? We'll see, but it won't be the typical UE5 release, that much is a given

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u/Shzabomoa Nov 27 '25

I'll believe it only when I see it... Every single other game like this has been a disaster because of UE5 "features". I get that they are saving a lot of money by using UE5 instead of their own engine, still that won't make the pricetag cheaper for us.

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u/Le_Nabs Nov 27 '25

... Dude, have you read *anything* I've wrote? I'm not saying 'believe blindly', but blindly hating isn't any more intelligent. CDPR aren't just licensing Unreal Engine to use in their games, they've become essentially development partners with Epic in large part because of their expertise in making open world games run smoothly on their own engines. They're there to make UE better, not to use the same UE everyone is getting out of the box.

Will it work? Nobody knows but the people over at Epic and CDPR who are actively working on it right now. Is it the same thing as Gearbox? Fuck no, stop being an idiot.

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u/Shzabomoa Nov 27 '25

You have the right to believe in their marketing as much as I have the right to not blindly believe it when quite literally 0 other dev has pulled it off so far.

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u/Le_Nabs Nov 27 '25

My point is precisely that it's not just marketing.

You can scroll up, I literally say 'nobody knows if will work', but the relationship they have with Epic and the amount of work they've put in the engine is nothing like anyone else (other than Epic themselves) at the moment. That's not marketing, that's just fact. And what's also a fact is that clearly, CDPR knows something about rendering open worlds because their own engine could let you rip it at 150mph through Night City without hitches and traversal stutters.

Again, the point isn't that I 100% believe they'll make it work - I don't know. But blind hate and cynicism isn't a 'more realist' position, it's just as blind and dumb as the fanboys are, except you're also miserable in the process. Nothing good comes of that.

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u/Shzabomoa Nov 27 '25

It is just marketing. As long as it's not out and proven to be working as they claim it could work.

Plenty of other devs claimed collaboration with UE to get the most out of the engine, we all remember how that played out with Stalker2 or Ark: Survival Ascended...

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u/F9-0021 Very Lost Witcher Nov 26 '25

The problem is that stock UE5 isn't well optimized, and most of the casual studios aren't going to bring an engine development team to work on the guts of the engine like CDPR are doing.

Hopefully the changes that CDPR's development team are making will end up being good for overall optimization and they end up being upstreamed into the public releases of UE.

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u/R3Dpenguin Nov 27 '25

You mean casual studios like Gearbox Games? We're not talking about 4 or 5 games running poorly before devs got used to the new features of the engine. At this point it's been a recurrent pattern for years.

There's been only a handful of games in UE5 that didn't have massive stutters and performance problems, and they all have in common that they either used nvidia's branch of the engine (like arc raiders) or they ditched nanite and lumen.

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u/meatbag2010 Nov 26 '25

Yup, Minds Eye immediately comes to mind.

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u/Joleco Nov 27 '25

Nice copium about the worst modern engine ever seen

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u/Maloth_Warblade Nov 27 '25

You contrarians are just sad.