Thoughts On ‘The Witcher 4’ Tech Demo Shown At The State Of Unreal
by Sage Ashford
After an appearance at The Game Awards 2024, most people expected CDProjekt to go heads down with The Witcher 4 for at least the next year. Even when they announced they would be making an appearance at Epic’s The State of Unreal show, it seemed like a way to show off a two-minute cinematic. Instead, the developer revealed a nearly fourteen minute tech demo of the game operating in Unreal Engine 5.
While there’s a ton of tech talk that’s going to fly over some gamers’ heads, there’s also still plenty of eye candy for viewers to feast on. The entire trailer is based on Ciri’s latest mission: tracking down a vicious Manticore after it mauled a caravan of smugglers in Kovir. Within the video, we get a glimpse not only at the beautiful forests, but a detailed look at one of the country’s smaller cities, before teasing the massive Lan Exeter at the end.
Though CDProjekt is claiming this is running on a base PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second, there’s already been skepticism regarding their claims. It’s not entirely unreasonable, given what happened with Cyberpunk 2077, their last project. Though they eventually turned it around, it will take some time before people are convinced of the developer’s lofty claims before launch.
Setting that aside, there’s no question the game looks glorious. If they can pull off even the background stuff they’re currently talking about, this will be another generation-defining project for fans. The NPC interactions look like they’re on another level, similar to the kind of things shown in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto games. The more important concern to me is just how large they’re planning to make this world and its cities. Oxenfurt and Novigrad in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were stunning. But outside of that, the Northern Realms felt barren. There was a story reason for it, but it also felt like a limitation for the sake of the PS4. Will The Witcher 4 have to deal with the same limitations, especially when NPC behavior has taken another massive leap?
