CD Projekt Red’s upcoming open-world RPG, The Witcher IV, received a technical deep dive during the annual State of Unreal showcase, an event held by Epic Games that focuses on big games that will be using their Unreal Engine 5, as well as outlining updates coming to the open-source engine over the year.
In this deep dive, we follow the new Witcher protagonist Ciri in the region of Kovir, which appears to be a mountainous region with snowcapped peaks. According to the dev team, this gameplay demo is running on a base PlayStation 5, at 60 fps with raytracing enabled. Similarly, Grand Theft Auto VI boasted that its second trailer was running on a base PlayStation 5 as well. In both cases, we could be seeing the start of devs being able to fully take advantage of the newest console hardware, but this remains to be seen.
Fans familiar with The Witcher will be able to follow Ciri’s goal throughout this segment as she attempts to track down a monster, with the demo picking up right after gathering the clues, following her return to a nearby village for supplies. To do so, she enlists the help of her horse Kelpie, who may or may not be able to get stuck on roofs. Emphasis is placed on the horse as riding has been grounded for a better feel when controlling the character on horseback, as well as improvements to flesh animation, as the horse has realistic muscle animations as it gallops and trots. Ninite Geometry, as well as Nanite foliage, was also implemented to create the vast and dense forests that are showcased throughout Kovir.
No release date was given for The Witcher IV, though it was announced to have entered full production during an earnings call in Q3 2024, suggesting we might have a bit of a wait before we get to join Ciri on her most recent quest. Most staff at CD Projekt Red are attached to this project, with a much smaller team currently on pre-production of the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel.
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