CD Projekt Red shows impressive tech demo of "The Witcher IV"

Domagoj Belancic

3.6.2025

Translation: machine translated

As part of an Unreal Engine presentation, developer studio CD Projekt Red is showing scenes from a tech demo of "The Witcher IV" for the first time.

Epic Games reveals the future of the Unreal Engine at the Summer Game Fest. The Polish development studio CD Projekt Red will also be doing the honours at the «State of Unreal» presentation - it is currently developing «The Witcher IV» with Unreal Engine 5.

Instead of being satisfied with meaningless technical demonstrations of the game, the studio even brought along the first in-engine scenes from the upcoming open-world blockbuster. And they are quite something. Although the clips do not show any «real» gameplay, they do give an impression of the visual quality of the game. What is particularly impressive about the footage shown is that it runs on a PS5 - not PS5 Pro - with 60 FPS and ray tracing.

In «The Witcher IV», the main character is no longer Geralt, but Ciri. It is the beginning of a new «Witcher» saga with several games. The region in which Ciri is travelling is called Kovir. She will explore the mountainous terrain with her faithful horse Kelpie, among others. CD Projekt Red worked together with Epic Games to enable the most realistic animations possible when riding - including impressive muscle simulations.

The game world should impress with its particularly dense vegetation. This is now rendered using Epic's Nanite technology. This allows the studio to display more trees and bushes at the same time without visible pop-in effects in the distance.

Ciri also visits the town of Valdrest in the demo. The marketplace is full of NPCs with detailed animations and character models that react to Ciri's presence. In one scene, CD Projekt Red shows 300 (!) NPCs in the square - all at a stable 60 frames per second.

The short «gameplay» presentation ends with a teaser for the city of Lan Exeter, a large harbour city in the region.

You'll have to be patient a little longer before you can immerse yourself in this incredibly beautiful world. «The Witcher IV» does not yet have a release date. You can watch the entire Unreal presentation here.

You can find all other livestreams from the Summer Game Fest in this overview article:

Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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