CD PROJEKT RED opened this year’s State of Unreal presentation with a full tech demo of The Witcher 4, built in Unreal Engine 5. The showcase, presented in partnership with Epic Games, was shown running at 60 FPS on PlayStation 5 and gave fans a first look at the new region of Kovir.
We think it looks fantastic — easily one of the most impressive next-gen tech demonstrations we’ve seen so far.
Ciri Takes the Lead in a New Saga
Set in a never-before-seen part of the Continent, the demo follows Ciri and her horse Kelpie as they travel through rugged mountain passes and dense forests before arriving in the bustling port town of Valdrest. The Witcher 4 marks the beginning of a new saga for the series, with Ciri now front and center.
The entire segment was rendered in-engine using Unreal Engine 5.6 and showcased several new features, including Nanite foliage rendering, Mass AI crowd systems, and the Unreal Animation Framework. These technologies are being developed jointly by CDPR and Epic, and are expected to benefit other UE5 developers as well.
Technology Driving Immersion
The demo highlighted a huge leap forward in tech, with features including:
- Nanite foliage allowing forests and grasslands to be filled with detail without killing performance
- FastGeo streaming for smooth, rapid asset loading
- MetaHuman tools and Mass AI scaling to populate towns and cities with realistic characters
- ML Deformer for subtle, muscle-level animation realism
- Unreal Animation Framework for lifelike movement in action scenes
Everything was captured in-engine, running at 60 FPS, and according to CDPR, is representative of the target performance across platforms.
A Partnership Built for Scale
CDPR first announced its strategic partnership with Epic Games in 2022 to co-develop new UE5 tools tailored for open-world development. This demo is the first major result of that effort — and shows exactly why CDPR moved away from its proprietary REDengine.
While there’s still a long way to go in development, the studio says The Witcher 4 will be their most ambitious open-world RPG yet, and everything we’ve seen so far points to a game built for massive scale and immersion.
For more on the game, visit our Witcher 4 game hub
