As the developer of one of the largest, most prestigious, and highly anticipated Unreal Engine 5 games currently in the works, CD Projekt Red was invited to the stage of the latest edition of State of Unreal to deliver an updated look at The Witcher 4.
The event’s main focus was on the engine’s 5.6 iteration, and CDPR brought a demo running on the latest version of the engine to showcase a number of technical innovations – and some gameplay.
It’s important to note that while the build was being played live with a controller, this is still a tech demo meant to highlight how CD Projekt Red is utilising the tools and features of Unreal Engine 5.6. This is the studio’s first game on Epic’s engine, too, so it’s not a stretch to say the final game may not look like that.
All that being said, the demo was running on a standard PS5, at 60fps with raytracing. It’s a pretty impressive showcase of what a next-gen Witcher could look like, even if it’s hard to belive final code will look that good.
The footage does not feature any monster hunting, or really any combat whatsoever. But, it does show crowd interactions, facial animations, animation motion-matching for multiple characters, and how quickly the game can load complex geometry to deliver a dense and incredibly detailed world.
We’re not likely to see much more of the game for a while, so better crank the video all the way up to 4K60 to enjoy it as artifact-less as possible. The Witcher 4 does not have a release date, but the game is in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.