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It might not be all that in-depth, but all the same, fans got a brief but stunning first look at CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher IV today.
Witchay woman
Update: Apparently the Witcher IV footage that was shown by CD Projekt Red at Unreal Fest Orlando was purely a Tech Demo to showcase some of UE5’s new and upcoming features. So, in other words, it wasn’t in-engine and we still don’t know what the final game will actually look like.
Unreal Fest Orlando was the place for a first-look that’s been a while in the making. Of course we’re referring to the first appearance of The Witcher IV, from CD Projekt Red. Long known to be in the works, the follow up to the smash hit third game in the series is finally ready for fans eyes. Well, to a degree anyway.
CD Projekt Red took the main stage to lead off the mentioned event, to showcase the company’s latest work with Unreal Engine 5. And yeah, that’d be The Witcher IV, which is looking absolutely stunning from the just-released imagery.
We know stills aren’t the most exciting of things, but there’s no officially cut footage just yet, so stay tuned. In the meantime though, here’s the very first look at Ciri, as she makes her way across the new region of Kovir, as well as a slight bit of information about the aRPG.
The tech demo takes place in the region of Kovir — which will make its very first appearance in the video game series in The Witcher 4. The presentation followed main protagonist Ciri — along with her horse Kelpie — as she made her way through the rugged mountains and dense forests of Kovir to the bustling port town of Valdrest. Along the way, CD PROJEKT RED and Epic Games dove deep into how each feature is helping drive performance, visual fidelity, and shape The Witcher 4’s immersive open world.
CD Projekt Red press release
As for why CD Projekt Red was present, other than the fact that everybody wants a look at The Witcher IV, that’s easy to explain. The developer has been working with Epic Games since 2022 to develop “new tools and enhance existing features in Unreal Engine 5 to expand the engine’s open-world development capabilities and establish robust tools geared toward CD PROJEKT RED’s open-world design philosophies.”
The above images come courtesy of a PS5 (nope, not the Pro), and the video ran in a reported 60fps. In it, CDPR showed off some in-engine power, with “Unreal Animation Framework, Nanite Foliage rendering, MetaHuman technology with Mass AI crowd scaling, and more”, according to the company.
CDPR goes on to say that, using those new tools, developers will be able to “create believable and immersive open-world environments that deliver performance at 60 FPS without compromising on quality — even at vast scales.” Sounds impressive to us. Naturally too, those tools won’t be PlayStation-exclusive, as they’ll appear on additional platforms as well.
Unreal Engine 5’s new abilities are set to kick off today, with the launch of Unreal Engine 5.6. It’s just the start though, as some of those mentioned tools are still under development. They’ll eventually make their way into future Unreal Engine 5 updates, so watch for more there.
As for The Witcher IV, there’s no release date yet.
