Unreal

UPDATE 4:28pm UK: CD Projekt Red has confirmed to Eurogamer the demonstration in the Unreal livestream was a tech demo played live and running at 60fps on a base PS5, although this isn’t meant to represent a final version of The Witcher 4.

“This tech demo runs at 60fps on PS5, and that’s the performance we’re aiming for in The Witcher 4,” said a representative from the studio. “It’s still too early to confirm exact specs for every platform, but we’re working closely with Epic to create an open-world experience that’s both beautiful to look at and smooth to play.”

Further, when asked if this tech demo could give unrealistic expectations on how The Witcher 4 will perform at launch, given The Witcher 3’s initial performance, the studio responded: “It’s important to keep in mind that this tech demo isn’t meant to represent The Witcher 4 – it’s a showcase of the tools we’re developing together with Epic Games. That means specific visuals like character models and environments may be different to The Witcher 4.”

ORIGINAL STORY 2:59pm UK: A first look at a tech demo of The Witcher 4 has just been shown off during today’s State of Unreal stream.

During its time on the stage, we saw some in-game cinematics of a monster attacking a wagon, and Ciri coming across the scene some time later. It then transitioned into gameplay, with Kajetan Kapuscinski cinematic director at CD Projekt Red playing through it.

All this while Wyeth Johnson, senior director and project strategy at Epic Games, and Sebastian Kalemba, VP and game director at CD Projekt Red, narrated what we were seeing. This build was running on a standard PS5 at 60fps with ray tracing enabled, according to those on stage.

You can watch the full State of Unreal stream here.Watch on YouTube

We see some horse riding courtesy of Ciri’s horse Kelpie. Kelpie has realitic muscles and skin movement thanks to the Unreal Chaos Flesh Solver and machine-learned deformations, so the horse will look natural without performance issues. We also see Nanite Foliage in action, which according to senior director Wyeth Johnson allows for fast-rendering high quality shrubbery and scenery.

Ciri eventually comes to the city of Vargrest, filled with lots of NPCs rushing around and doing their own thing, be it looking at a bear or shopping at stalls. The build shows Ciri transition smoothly from gameplay to another in-game cinematic, leaning on a fence while talking to a quest giver.

From here, the trio pull away from Ciri and look around the town some more, zooming in at NPCs chatting about fish with various nifty bits of tech at work. The idea expressed by Kalemba is that the difference between Ciri and your regular old NPC isn’t too drastic.

The build then has a circus added, with its crowd ramped up with an increasing number of NPCs reacting to the show without any visual stuttering or lag. Following this, Kalemba pulls back to Ciri one final time stating, “We’re making this game to be the most immersive and ambitious open world Witcher game ever, and we’re making this a reality thanks to our work on Unreal with the team at Epic.”

Recently in a CD Projekt financial report, we learned development progress on The Witcher 4 was well underway. We also know The Witcher 4 won’t be out until 2026, so consider this an early technical peak at what’s to come.

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