ORLANDO, Fla. – The Witcher 4 remains to be years away from launch, however we now have a a lot better concept of what the open-world RPG will seem like.
CD Projekt Crimson confirmed off a beautiful tech demo of The Witcher 4 throughout Epic Video games’ State of Unreal keynote this morning at Unreal Fest 2025. What we noticed wasn’t precise gameplay footage — the developer labored with Epic to make this playable construct particularly for the convention — but it surely does exhibit among the new Unreal Engine 5.6 options that may energy the sport.
The tech demo opened with a vicious beast attacking an unsuspecting group of males touring on a street, choosing them off one after the other. We then see The Witcher 4 protagonist Ciri, who’s now a veteran monster-slaying witcher following the occasions of the final sport. She’s within the area of Kovir, a brand new huge space by no means earlier than seen within the collection.
Ciri is making an attempt to trace down the lacking individuals within the snow-covered mountains alongside along with her horse, Kelpi. Because of new enhancements in UE5.6, The Witcher 4 can have wealthy environmental particulars and smoother character animation. Through the demo, Epic confirmed an X-ray view of Kelpi’s physique, which revealed a sensible simulation of the horse’s musculature.
CDPR mentioned on stage that the sport may also load in content material a lot sooner within the open world with UE’s Quick Geometry Streaming Plugin. Ciri walked across the market of Valdrest, exhibiting off how reactive the world is to the participant when she bumps right into a villager, inflicting him to spill the meals he was carrying. The representatives mentioned such actions may even trigger a sequence response as these NPCs work together with different characters.
Ciri later speaks to the service provider who employed her to trace down his males, and that’s when she tells him the unhealthy information. At one level the digital camera pans to the city sq., and Epic Video games mentioned there have been over 300 skeletal mesh brokers in that scene and that it doesn’t have an effect on the efficiency of the sport in any respect. The demo ended with Ciri and her horse heading again dwelling.
Most impressively, the demo was operating on a typical PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second with ray tracing, exhibiting the effectivity of UE5.6 when constructing open-world video games.
