Cyberpunk 2077 recreated in UE5 showcases what Night City could have been

It has been a year and a half since Cyberpunk 2077’s release and the game has gained a bit of breathing room due to consistent patches.

After The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, fans were hyped for CD Projekt’s next title. Partly due to the standards set by The Witcher 3 and partly due to the promises made by CDPR during Cyberpunk 2077’s marketing campaigns and events, the title had a lot of expectations from gamers to live up to.

Unfortunately, it failed terribly. With terrible optimization for old consoles, a plethora of game-breaking bugs, glitches, and missing gameplay features that were promised by the marketing campaign, it was a big mess. Consequently, much of the studio's reputation, which The Witcher 3 built up, disintegrated in just a few weeks.

However, as the patches have rolled out, with the latest being 1.52, Cyberpunk 2077 is surely in a much better state now, compared to its launch. It would be a stretch to compare CP2077 to Final Fantasy XIV or No Man’s Sky, but CDPR is clearly putting in a lot of effort to turn the tide and take Cyberpunk 2077 to its full potential.

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Game development artist creates Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City inside Unreal Engine 5

Cyberpunk 2077 was developed on REDengine 4, and the visuals seem to be on par with the biggest AAA games of current times on PC and next-gen consoles. However, one has to wonder if CD Projekt Red had to compromise on their original vision for Night City due to the hardware limitations of the older generation of consoles.

With Unreal Engine 5 and all the technological innovations it has to offer, fans have pondered how Night City could have turned out if CDPR could utilize it to create Cyberpunk 2077. Saher Tarek, a senior lighting and look development artist from Egypt, has demonstrated just that through a 17-second clip of a part of Night City that they created inside Unreal Engine 5.

They used assets from Unreal marketplace, CG Trader, and Kitbash 3D to create the scene. Without going into too many technical details, the real-time footage rendered inside Unreal Engine 5 gives fans a glimpse of what video game graphics will look like in the near future.

Considering that the next Witcher game is being made on Unreal Engine 5, the expectations regarding the graphical details of the same will surely be through the roof. Fans have already started imagining what is possible based on the breathtaking render from Tarek.