CD Projekt RED, creator of The Witcher and upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, has announced REDengine 3, the third iteration of its in-house technology.

Created for the development of vast open-world RPGs, REDengine 3 is next-gen ready and promises to begin to "blur the line between pre-rendered CGI movies and real time rendered graphics".

"If we look at RPGs nowadays we find two approaches, one which emphasizes the story but limits the game world and one that builds a vast open-world but hampers and simplifies the story. With the REDengine 3 we combine the positive aspects of both approaches for the first time, creating an open environment with a complex, multi-thread story," said Adam Badowski, head of CD Projekt RED studio.

"Together with believable characters, a captivating tale and a world where players can roam freely without loading times, we will be able to move gaming to a new level with a realistic feel and full player immersion. When working on our previous titles, I didn't dream that we would achieve something like this. Thanks to the support of all our fans, now we have the possibility to use REDengine 3 and create something many RPG fans dream of."

Cyberpunk 2077 is being developed using REDengine 3.

The studio says that the new engine will make "RPGs comparable to top-shelf shooters, both in terms of game world presentation and the epic proportions of events that the player is drawn into," and will bring us "closer to the most life-like world ever created in video games".

New face and body animation systems also promise to offer realistic expression of emotions, movie quality scenes and character interactions.

In addition the new engine uses "high dynamic range rendering with 64-bit precision that ensures superior picture quality with more realistic and precise lighting without losses derived from reduced contrast ratio. A flexible renderer prepared for deferred or forward+ rendering pipelines has a wide array of cinematic post-processing effects, including bokeh depth-of-field, colour grading and flares from many lights. A high performance terrain system allows multiple material layers to be efficiently blended and uses tessellation for the best possible detail".

The technology will be supported by a new version of the REDkit editor tools, designed for the creation of RPG games.

CD Projekt is expected to announce The Witcher 3 on February 5, but will it be using the new REDengine 3?