PREVIEW – The new The Witcher 4 video is truly incredible. CD Projekt RED has shown off a tech demo of their open-world RPG that honestly leaves people speechless. This spectacular new RPG is powered by Unreal Engine 5.
The hunger for details about the new The Witcher has reached a point where we’ll take anything, even the tiniest bit of info about this highly anticipated open-world RPG. But what CD Projekt RED showed at the big Unreal Engine event blew away every expectation… and naturally, it raised a few questions, too. As they repeatedly emphasized, no matter how much it looks, sounds, and feels like The Witcher 4, it actually isn’t. This is simply what the Polish studio is aiming for.
This is a technical demo designed to come as close as possible to what we’ll eventually see in CD Projekt’s new RPG. “This is an Unreal demo with Witcher assets,” confirmed Julius Girbig, one of the game’s technical leads, to GameStar. “There are graphical elements from our game. The characters, the world, the way everything looks—this is all The Witcher 4 content.”
Unreal demo with Witcher assets
This includes a new region that players will get to explore within the The Witcher universe. “All the mountains you see, and the village as well, are all part of the The Witcher 4 map,” he continues. Of course, things can still change, “it’s too early to confirm anything, and we can’t talk about it just yet. But this area is the same map as The Witcher 4.” So, what region is it? This is Kovir, the mountainous area of the northern continent, which is both historically and visually exciting—especially judging by these stunning landscapes.
This kingdom, along with neighboring Poviss, is ruled by one of the northern lords, Tankred Thyssen—who hasn’t appeared in any The Witcher game before. This matters, because during the Nilfgaardian war, it stayed neutral, which obviously created tension with other nations. Currently, CD Projekt RED hasn’t revealed which decisions from The Witcher 3 will be considered canon in the sequel.
The Witcher’s brand new open world
The The Witcher 4 tech demo is interesting for other reasons, too, as it does a fantastic job of showing what new technology is coming to open-world games in the years ahead. Kovir is a breathtaking location, but just as striking is the way everything moves: Ciri’s animations, the horse’s movement, and the dynamism of the world’s inhabitants. The demo, for example, features mountain scenery where the main character travels with impressive ease, constantly interacting with the environment. These realistic, natural movements appear elsewhere, too, like when she tosses coins to a beggar.
The fact that we’re in a mountainous region immediately gets the imagination going—maybe some kind of climbing mechanic will be included—although CD Projekt RED hasn’t confirmed that yet. What they have emphasized is that the quest shown in the demo won’t necessarily be in the finished game; it’s more an idea of how things might work in the new open-world RPG. What’s certain is that we’ll face new monsters in this adventure, such as the Manticore that appears in the demo—but as always in the The Witcher universe, the real monsters are still the people, and that seems to remain a central theme in the story. There’s a reason we’re talking about such a resource-rich region, which of course attracts all sorts of fortune-seekers from elsewhere.
This brings us to one of the most convincing elements of the demo: the feeling of a real, living world. In The Witcher 3, NPCs would often repeat the same animations, and you’d usually find them right where you last left them. In The Witcher 4, the plan is for the game to use a library of animations and routines—since every NPC is a separate object—so each character can be busy with completely different activities. That means not everyone will follow the same patterns, which can make the world feel incredibly real. Even if some movements do repeat, the number of characters together creates a strong illusion of life. You can see this in the demo, too, when a cheater gets thrown out of the tavern, or when a band suddenly starts playing in the marketplace—these aren’t scripted events, but dynamic, spontaneous moments, and that says everything about just how alive this game world is becoming.
CD Projekt RED Speaks Out
Of everything we saw from The Witcher 4 at the State of Unreal event—whose very name hints at what the team is striving for and hopes to achieve—perhaps the most important takeaway was the Polish team’s unequivocal statement: they don’t want to repeat another Cyberpunk 2077. We all remember what happened nearly five years ago: lawsuits over the technical state of the futuristic RPG on PS4 and Xbox One; PC version bugs and performance woes delaying new content and patches; overall, a controversial launch that marked a low point in the studio’s history.
But all that is in the past. Since then, the Polish studio has restored its reputation with Cyberpunk 2077—which now boasts an 85% positive rating on Steam—and as the saying goes, “we learn from our mistakes.” That’s why the focus this time was squarely on the PS5 in the demo. The tech demo wasn’t running on some overpowered PC or a PS5 Pro, but on the standard 2020 Japanese console. “We don’t want another technical disaster on consoles,” adds Girbig. This is a clear statement of intent, but more importantly: it’s a promise.
It’s true that what we saw in the demo was nothing more than a showcase of “technical possibilities,” but it also signals much greater transparency from the European team. “We want to show that we really care about making these vast worlds, the quality of our games, our narrative… all possible on consoles too.” Of course, the release of The Witcher 4 on consoles is still a long way off; so far off, in fact, that CD Projekt RED isn’t ready to offer even an estimated date. We did get a few concrete details: the tech demo ran at a stable 60 FPS, the game’s native resolution was 900p, upscaled to 1440p using Unreal Engine’s TSR technology.
Tech Demo Possibilities, Not Final Promises
As has been repeated several times—and as Girbig also emphasized—what we saw in the demo isn’t The Witcher 4 yet, at least not quite yet, but a technological promise. A technology that, right now, can handle up to 300 active NPCs simultaneously. Sure, that’s still a distant goal, but Epic Games wants to make it a reality and has given it a name: Multi Character Motion. Thanks to this, CD Projekt is developing a believable NPC system where interactions aren’t just limited to simple quests or scripts, but create a much more authentic digital life.
But that’s not all. On YouTube, players have already put together comparison videos of The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Assassin’s Creed—open-world RPGs are constantly compared. Yet there’s one area where Geralt’s adventures have always stumbled: Roach always felt like a “plastic horse.” But now, CD Projekt RED is using the ML Deformer system, which, thanks to machine learning, can simulate muscle contractions, stretching, and even realistic clothing and body deformation.
In reality, this Polish-American collaboration isn’t just about “transferring The Witcher universe to Unreal Engine,” but rather about “shaping Unreal Engine for the needs of The Witcher 4.” One such game-changing element is eliminating stutter—micro-freezes that have haunted both PC and console players whenever an Unreal Engine logo appears. The Witcher 4 aims to finally put an end to that, and it’s almost certain that Unreal Engine will also advance thanks to the Fastgeo Streaming technology. This Polish innovation won’t completely eliminate in-game texture or shader loading, but it will drastically reduce load times. The root problem lies in the engine itself, but CD Projekt RED isn’t about to sit idly by—they’re determined to find a solution.
A Promising but Risky Development
All in all, the tech demo presentation for the new The Witcher is as promising as it is spectacular. Still—especially with memories of the Cyberpunk 2077 launch fresh in everyone’s minds—no matter how much CD Projekt RED insists this isn’t yet The Witcher 4, showing off a demo like this is a bold (or brave, depending on your perspective) move. The Polish studio is going to be under more fan scrutiny than ever before, and there’s always a chance the final game won’t be quite as stunning or identical to what we see now.
One thing’s undeniable, though: this time, the team is being remarkably transparent, making it clear this is just a demo of what they hope to achieve—and it’s especially notable that, for the first time, they showed it off on a console and not on PC. The easy path would have been to wow everyone with a slick cinematic, but instead, CD Projekt RED went all-in on this kind of tech demo—an extremely confident move. For all these reasons, and based on what we’ve seen so far, it’s almost impossible not to get excited about the future.
-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”-
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