The Witcher 4's Unreal Engine 5 showcase flaunted a range of graphical advancements, all running "on a standard PlayStation 5 at 60 FPS with raytracing," per game director Sebastian Kalemba.
While this was just a PS5 tech demo, it showed "in-engine capabilities," and developer CD Projekt Red said in a press release that "the features and technology will be supported across all platforms the game will launch on."
"This will help other studios create believable and immersive open-world environments that deliver performance at 60 FPS without compromising on quality — even at vast scales," CDPR said.
Kalemba reiterates that The Witcher 4 is "the most immersive and ambitious open-world Witcher game ever." The showcase runs through everything from NPC behavior and crowd density to foliage rendering and realistic horse muscles.
"No compromise means how ambitious we are when it comes to bringing our vision to life with incredible visuals," Kalemba says during the Unreal Fest presentation. "But more than that, together with Epic we've created faster ways to load the world. We can now bring in more content, more quickly for the smoothest possible experience as we fly down to catch up with Ciri."
Building on crowd density and frame rate, Epic Games' Wyeth Johnson, senior director of product strategy, adds: "An entirely new Unreal animation framework, allowing us to fit easily in our 60 FPS budget – not just in rendering, but also with room to spare on the game thread. Over 300 animated, skeletal mesh agents, all going about their business. And the whole point is to leave breathing room for developers like you to introduce the gameplay and the systems that your peers expect, empowering you to make your worlds come to life without Unreal standing in your way."
Kalemba responds, "that's the open-world RPG that we are making." Moreover, he reckons that the fruit of CDRP and Epic's partnership "is going to bring in a new generation of open-world RPGs, and I'm so proud of what we've accomplished so far."
Accompanying The Witcher 4 screenshots show Ciri in a beautiful, bustling location, and a truly horrible monster.
The Witcher 4 setting could be the never-before-seen region of Kovir, as Ciri journeys to the far north in CD Projekt's new tech demo.
