Today’sState of Unrealshowcase provided us with a new look atThe Witcher 4, withCDPRtaking to the stage to provide us with a glimpse at graphics technology, characters, and clever representations of how we can expect the finished game to look and play. It was stunning to witness, and more than I ever expected to see from this open-world RPG so far from launch.
But I’ve also been working alongside this industry long enough to know when showcases like these years ahead of release aren’t exactly representative of the final experience. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to get excited about Unreal Engine 5 demos like this, which show off parts of a game that may or may not exist a few years down the line, but it does mean you should be keeping your expectations in check. We don’t want a repeat ofCyberpunk 2077.
The Witcher 4 Already Looks Incredible On Unreal Engine 5
As for the demo itself, it follows Ciri as she arrives in the region of Kovir, blanketed in snow with the horizon populated by a towering selection of pine trees. There are beautifully detailed brown rocks, wild animals going about their business, and NPCs living their lives within a fully responsive world. CD Projekt Red promises it will be its finest open-world title to date and set a new benchmark for fantasy RPGs. If it can bestBaldur’s Gate 3, I’ll be floored.
CDPR confirmed that the demo played during State of Unreal was running on a basePS5at 60 frames per second. It will be veryimpressive if this translates into the full release.
Ciri quickly comes across Kelpie - a new horse who fulfills the same role as Roach - and without delay they ride into a sprawling port town as dense as it is detailed. I found myself pausing the presentation constantly to notice small details like the scales of fish at a random marketplace and how NPC animations flow into one another to create something that is far less stilted thanThe Witcher 3. It feels like the sort of world you could get lost in, but I hope the studio doesn’t get carried away with a desire to push visual fidelity over characters and storytelling.
Lifelike animations for jumping onto your horse from every single angle and transitioning into a cutscene without a noticeable break in animation quality is incredibly important to immerse players without reminding them they’re playing a video game. But any technical foibles are easy to forgive if the narrative and characters are impressive. Just look at Baldur’s Gate 3, which had its fair share of jank on release.
But Can These Technical Promises Actually Be Fulfilled In The Witcher 4?
Novigrad felt alive as you walked through crowds of sex workers vying for Geralt’s attention or as guards eyed you with bigoted suspicion. If you stuck around long enough, you would soon see these cycles repeat themselves, while walking the wrong way or bumping into another character would often see our hero react awkwardly in ways that easily broke immersion.
By this point, though, you were already invested, even if performance wasn’t up to par. The Witcher 3, even a decade later, is still a gorgeous and technically impressive experience. So I’m curious if a sequel runs the risk of pushing things too far and falling on its own sword while taking too big a swing at a perfect recreation of a thousand griffin feathers.
Even in the small town glimpsed as part of The Witcher 4’s technical showcase, particular attention was paid to how large crowds could be scaled up to, the intricate detail for even small, inconsequential animations, and how Ciri reacts dynamically and realistically to the surrounding environment. Unreal Engine 5 is excellent at giving developers tools which are intended to make complicated features much easier to fold into a development pipeline, in turn allowing for games that look and feel better to play.
Ultimately though, so long as the writing and characters are the same level of high quality I expect from CD Projekt Red, I’d still be willing to lose myself in The Witcher 4 for hours even if it occupies the same visual watermark as its predecessor. We’re already pushing the envelope of photorealism in video games and now find ourselves looking for things to improve, when we should be stumbling upon these stepping stones naturally. The Witcher 4 looks incredible, but time will tell whether the storytelling will be good enough to make those visuals worth looking at.
