CD Projekt and Epic Games have unveiled a stunning tech demo of the long-awaited RPG sequel The Witcher 4 running on Unreal Engine 5, showcasing a gorgeous open world with ray tracing running on a base PS5 at 60fps. The catch? It’s not actually gameplay footage.
Revealed during Epic’s State of Unreal 2025 event, the tech demo follows the game’s protagonist Ciri as she explores the brand new region of Kovir while in the process of a monster contract. The demo showcases the latest open-world features of Unreal Engine 5.6, including the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin to enhance load times, and its character rendering innovations, able to generate 300 individually animated NPCs shown off towards the tail end of the segment.
“As Ciri explores the bustling market of Valdrest, we see how [Unreal Engine] 5.6 handles busy scenes full of high-fidelity characters and visual effects like ML Deformer. The tech demo also showcases Nanite Foliage — which provides a fast and memory-efficient way to achieve gorgeous foliage density and fidelity, slated for release in UE 5.7,” read the official blurb from Epic.
As breathtaking as the tech demo might have been, CD Projekt was quick to issue a statement insisting that it was not an official gameplay showcase, and was rather a “standalone” tech demo built to showcase Unreal Engine 5’s features.
“[The tech demo] reflects the direction we’re taking with The Witcher 4 — but it doesn’t fully represent the final game.” CD Projekt explained, “Production is still underway, and we have a great deal of work ahead. That said, our goal is ambitious: to create one of the most visually advanced role-playing games to date.”
CD Projekt also explained why it chose to feature the tech demo on a base PS5 over a high-end gaming PC, saying that “optimising for consoles early helps [to] future-proof performance across all platforms”, and that “consoles come with tighter constraints, and meeting them pushes [the studio] to make smarter, more efficient tech choices — the kind that benefit every version of the game”.
With the tech demo not showcasing actual gameplay footage, it further emphasises how far The Witcher 4 is from launch. And with CD Project previously indicating that the game won’t be out until 2027 at the earliest, the suggestion is that the game will probably run on next-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles alongside the PS5 and Xbox Series X, although its ability to run on the weaker Xbox Series S still remains a mystery.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
