Directly from Chris Hunt, Lo-Fi Games CEO and the man behind Kenshi:

"Good news everyone! There has been a change of plans with development, and we have switched to the Unreal engine!

Now, what does that mean?

GOOD SIDE:

Amazing graphics with little effort
Better performance
Less work for us long-term, as we don't have to worry about engine bugs and features. We can focus more on gameplay.
Fancy features, like maybe cloth physics for example
Better stability probably?
New pathfinding system


BAD SIDE:

More work for us short-term, porting is a huge job
We have less control over the engine
Modding support will be more complicated, Unreal is a difficult engine to work with and has limitations in this respect. I don't know the engine well enough to say how exactly. The likely scenario is "more powerful but more difficult". The FCS will remain the same, but will control less stuff. Mod support will be a high priority for us though, so don't worry.
Kenshi 1 update now uncertain:
Here's the kicker: Porting Kenshi 1 to Unreal engine is now way more work than making Kenshi 2, because we have to port assets and make the old stuff work, where for Kenshi 2 we are making the assets from scratch in the Unreal-compatible way. We have started porting Kenshi 1, but I'm not sure whether to finish it because it is a lot of extra work and will delay Kenshi 2


So I'd like some feedback from people. Personally I feel like it would be better to focus on Kenshi 2, which will have exciting new features, new content and world to explore and mechanics to play with, rather than remaking kenshi 1, which would be essentially the same game."

To get some more definitive feedback we've also put up a poll here: https://www.strawpoll.me/18697532

P.S. This does not mean Epic Exclusive, it's just a game engine choice. Don't panic.

The most important part for me :D

About the other stuff. No new stuff for K1 then. Well... kind of sucks but then again I think its in a good place and have a good modding community from what I saw on Nexus.

Looking forward for K2 then (but a tiny tad less enthusiastic since I initially assumed it was set in the first era and probably really high on SciFi; showing all that happened which results in where Kenshi starts).

My opinion will be good news if the team does not spend time on Kenshi 1. This is a great game, but the more hours play it, then more understand how many ideas have not been implemented (city ownership, slavery, different type of shops, NPC dialogs and a lot other). This is not a "stone in the garden" of the author, there probably were objective reasons for this. I hope that Kenshi 2 will not only be more beautiful, but also much more detailed world and mechanics.

I would like to wish good luck and patience.

My thoughts are : Yes,redoing Kenshi 1 may not be very thrilling ,but you may learn a thing or two about the new engine,while doing.This would (maybe) help you guys with developing Kenshi 2.
I think,1 is still a good game after all,so why rush it with 2? So,unlike most people (considering the poll) , i think : port 1 to the new engine first.Helps you in the long run and may help you with 2.But i see Chris`s point : Doing it all over again might be a huge,boring pain in the... !!!

any news about version 2.0 or rework game?

[url=https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Kenshi_2[/url]https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Kenshi_2[/url]