Spicy take: I hope they dump 2077's engine and go Unreal.

I recently followed this guide to try and set up "optimized" path tracing (no raster lighting, with everything raytraced) in 2077, and on my lowly RTX 3090 it runs like cold molasses. Not a chance. Raster + RT reflections is all I can manage, and it looks... good.

Meanwhile, I've also been playing Satisfactory (an Unreal Engine game from a comparatively microscopic studio), and holy moly. Unreal Engine's dynamic lighting looks scary good. Like, I get light bounces and reflections and everything, and it runs at like quadruple the FPS in hilariously complex areas, again, with a fraction of the dev effort.

Cryengine in KCD2 is rather sick as well, though probably less tuned for urban landscapes.

...So why don't they save a few years and many millions, and just go with one of those instead of poorly reinventing the wheel?

Let's hope they learned how to properly pace development and to handle a launch this time around.

Just looking up what 'preproduction' actually means : They are in the planning stages, but they haven't started 'making' the game yet. Cyberpunk (1) development took four years.

Good. We need more dicks in video games.