The tweet says "We are not planning on making the game exclusive to one storefront.". Keyword there being "one storefront". I totally can see this upcoming game being a GOG + EGS exclusive (Two (2) Storefronts), and I think it should be. I just don't see the point of them announcing this partnership if it's not a GOG + EGS exclusive.

And yes, I did actually play Cyberpunk 2077 and have spent a significant amount of time with the game since it released. However, that doesn't change what might be in store for future releases. I just don't want to see a situation where we have CD Projekt going "woke", because like you, CD Projekt Red is probably my favorite developer and they're that are that way because they don't shy away from certain things.

I wouldn't be here on GOG right now, or buying their games for that matter if they were "woke", and if they go that way in the future they'll lose my business. Simple as that.

I guess it depends on how far certain themes are pushed. I just don't want a game that feels like it's preaching at me, that's all. I don't care otherwise. As for the partnership, I agree but it could be that they're only partnering with Epic for the sake of the engine, as that does seem to be what they focused on talking about in the announcement.

Yeah, and you could be totally right on that. It just seems a little strange for them to have this announcement of a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games if it's really only about the engine here.

Why even announce an engine change at all, you know what I'm saying? When they're talking multi-year partnerships that covers licensing and technical development, I think exclusives coming with GOG + EGS. I think even more future partnerships and mergers potentially down the line.

But again, you could be totally right here. We'll just have to wait and see. If it means bigger games coming to GOG down the road that are still DRM-free then I'm totally behind any partnership CD Projekt has with Epic Games.

I would agree but they really hyped up how they're going to work with Epic for the engine. Maybe CDPR will be helping them design more advanced open world and RPG systems in exchange for not having to develop the engine themselves? I hope that's it, I don't want to see these guys get any more hate than they have.

You're probably right but I'm hoping it's more about the engine instead of store exclusivities. I think store exclusivity is nearly as scummy as console exclusivity (which is the worst sort of exclusivity).

As for your last comment, I agree with that entirely. I'll be a lot more open to this if it means GOG and DRM-free gaming get a bigger boost. Considering how Epic bought Bandcamp (one of the only DRM-free music stores), maybe that's showing a shift in Epic's philosophies? After all, most games currently on EGS are able to be played without the client; maybe not quite DRM-free but hey, it's something.

what about the hipster gotod engine?:O
imho this is better than they write their own shitty engine , that takes so huge amount of time and money and ends up with a slow buggy garbage with few features all the time
yeah high chance it will be a wokey one, like this time you play a woman main ...

You mean Godot? I've been planning to get back into development soon and I plan to use Godot. Honestly, I'm shocked more people aren't using it. Sure, it doesn't quite have the power that Unreal and Unity have but it's extremely powerful for being an engine that is 100% free and open source. I heard the most recent Sonic game used it so maybe larger devs will start using it more.

People used to believe you'd play as Ciri in whatever the next main Witcher game was but I think that's less likely now given the Cat School medallion... unless, say, the remaining Cat witchers found a way to create a new sort of witcher-style mutation and Ciri has to hunt them down to prevent the brutality of past Cat School witchers? Probably not, but you never know.

There's speculation (mostly blind speculation) that this may be a more traditional roleplaying experience in that you may be able to create your own witcher. Following the Geralt saga, that'd only make sense: what fan of this franchise WOULDN'T want to make their own witcher? And considering the fact that the School of the Cat was the only school known to train women and some nonhumans, that'd make even more sense.

isnt that because Frostbite was not generic enough? Unreal looks good enough for everything

Personally I don’t know as I don’t use the client. There was an announcement some time back which went into details, as always you can’t find anything with the search here so here is a third party news item on it:
https://www.thefpsreview.com/2020/10/01/gog-will-begin-selling-epic-games-store-exclusives-through-its-galaxy-app/
So anyone using galaxy should be able to buy games direct from epic through galaxy, for for most galaxy who care nothing about drm or ownership, epic store is also on GOG. Hence an exclusive to epic is “also available on gog”.

sounds good
epic is a nice store anyway

Better than the bad old days when studios spent a quarter of their budget just on developing their own in-house engine. Why reinvent the wheel for every game?

I think they should've stuck with their own engine as the RED Engine was already on the forefront of graphical fidelity and building on the foundation they already have would help them make an eventual UE competitor, achieve things in their vision that's not possible in UE and encourage other engines to be competitive. It would also make probably make development cheaper and help them fix CP2077 as they go along, and just maybe, make the TW3 Linux port.

IMO both Epic and UE are in favor of closed-down gaming and the less a developer associates with them, the better. EA and Microsoft are terrible companies but Tencent crosses the level into being a dangerous one.

Personaly i dont like the this UEX Engins games as thy are not hardware neutral and favor nvidia and intel.
Personaly i think Epic is also an very unetical company with doubel standarts.. Sad to see this development..

The Witcher series never had that much of traditional RPG mechanics and systems going on in the first place, so there'd be nothing lost in any case. Unfortunately most people seem to only care about the size of the open world or achieving 100% in completion more than anything else these days. We're at a point where immersive gameplay (having to rely on your own faculties and wits rather than staring at a minimap or quest markers, for instance) or true choice&consequence (resulting in completely different game/story progression like the Iorveth/Roche branches in Chapter 2 of the Witcher 2) are now seen as tedious nuisances.

In regards to appealing to the modern audience's expectations I can't help but expect the worst to happen here as well.
As in turning the whole thing into the same agenda/quota/checklist-driven bastardisation of the source material that is the Netflix series. Or Amazon's "The Rings of Power".

For me it's not really game exclusivity, it's DRM-exclusivity. Epic Fail Store is a DRMed platform, Scheme is a DRMed platform, EA, Rockstar, et al. all DRMed platforms. I couldn't care less which specific store a game is DRMed within; i.e. there is no difference between something being DRMed and only available on Epic, or something being DRMed and only available on Scheme. That is the primary of the "worry[ing]" about the partnership with Epic.

GOG has already admitted they are okay selling DRMed games from Epic!! as long as they are purchased within the app of GOG Galaxy 2.0. The implications of that are enormous and indicate nothing good for the future of DRM-free gaming. Also the direction taken with Cyberpunk where content is locked behind Galaxy (and staff has repeatedly defended this!) means any new Witcher is an insta-boycotted game that I will never purchase.