Only a short time after the third installment's tenth anniversary, yesterday was a great day for The Witcher fans as CD Projekt RED took the stage during the State of Unreal presentation in Orlando, Florida. The footage included a live demo of sorts, but a CD Projekt RED spokesperson clarified to VideoGamesChronicle that it should not be confused with The Witcher 4 gameplay.
This is a tech demo, and a first look at the cutting-edge technology powering The Witcher 4 – but not The Witcher 4 itself. It showcases the powerful foundation we’re building in close collaboration with Epic Games to push open-world design further than ever before and the core systems and features we’re developing using Unreal Engine 5. We’re really proud of this early milestone and excited to give you a sneak peek at some of the cool tech, like UAF, Nanite Foliage, Smart Objects, ML Deformer, and FastGeo Streaming, that are helping shape the future of The Witcher.
This is perhaps unsurprising, given that the studio previously confirmed that The Witcher 4 won't be released before 2027. As such, it's a little too early to see actual gameplay.
The Polish developer had announced its decision to switch from their proprietary RED Engine to Unreal Engine 5 back in 2022. Since the beginning, the claim was that CDPR would help improve the open world game development experience even for other developers. Indeed, what we saw yesterday was impressive, especially considering that the footage was captured on a base PlayStation 5 console that ran the demo at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled.
On another note, some fans thought that Ciri looked a bit different in the new video compared to the previous trailer that aired during The Game Awards 2024. Again, a CDPR spokesperson addressed this feedback in a quote provided to Kotaku:
It’s the same character model used in the 2024 trailer. Ciri’s face is a direct copy of The Witcher 3 model, adapted to work with the latest MetaHuman technology. Two subtle changes were made to improve animation quality: slightly raised eyebrows, and a more relaxed eye area—the latter was present in the trailer but has since been removed.
During the State of Unreal presentation, Epic Games also announced the public availability of Unreal Engine 5.6, which brings several enhancements for developers.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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