CD Projekt Addresses The Witcher 4 Tech Demo Accuracy

The stunning Witcher 4 tech demo serves as exactly what CD Projekt calls it: a technology demonstration. As IGN has clarified, this footage does not represent the final Witcher 4 gameplay. Yet, watching this Unreal Engine 5 demo set in The Witcher universe, it's hard not to speculate if it provides a genuine glimpse of what's to come in a game still years away from launch.

The demo, recorded on PlayStation 5 at a smooth 60 frames per second, follows Ciri exploring the previously unseen region of Kovir during a monster-hunting contract. CD Projekt confirmed Kovir will be a playable area in The Witcher 4.

The level of detail in the demo is remarkable, featuring fluid animations that surpass what we typically see on current-generation consoles. Ciri and her horse Kelpie demonstrate exceptionally lifelike movements and interactions with each other, NPCs, and the environment as they travel through Kovir's mountains to the bustling port of Valdrest. In one market scene, CD Projekt showcased 300 individually animated NPCs simultaneously. The presentation concluded with a first look at Lan Exeter, the frosty winter capital and a major harbor city in Kovir.

CD Projekt understands the consequences of setting high expectations for a game and failing to meet them, as demonstrated by the troubled 2020 launch of Cyberpunk 2077, which took the company years to rectify. This history inevitably raises a question: does the Witcher 4 tech demo accurately reflect the final game's visual quality?

We asked Kajetan Kapuściński, Cinematic Director at CD Projekt, this very question at Epic's State of Unreal 2025 event. His reply was understandably cautious for a game not due until 2027 at the earliest, but he confirmed the tech demo "shows our ambition."

Here is Kapuściński's full response:

“What you saw today is a tech demo powered by Unreal Engine 5. It was a collaborative project with the team at Epic Games. We created this demo so both companies could develop technology that will ultimately power The Witcher 4.

“It is not direct gameplay from The Witcher 4. Instead, it represents our ambition, the cutting-edge technology we co-developed to make the game feasible. It also signals our artistic vision and our intended approach to various elements.

“However, everything shown is subject to change. This is a snippet of our current progress. We wanted to share it with the public and display the results of our partnership. Now, equipped with these tools and capabilities, we are actively developing the game itself.”

In the same discussion, we asked Wyeth Johnson, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Epic Games, if the demo's performance—60fps with ray tracing on a standard PS5—is indicative of the final player experience on that hardware.

“Absolutely. We have to be honest here," he responded. “The technology we're building must directly align with player expectations. Gamers across all hardware tiers demand incredible 60 frame-per-second gameplay.”

Delivering 60fps with ray tracing in a vast open-world game like The Witcher 4 on a base PS5 exceeds current console performance norms. However, Johnson stated that the collaboration with CD Projekt on this tech demo “enabled us to advance rapidly and aggressively toward achieving much higher performance without compromising visual fidelity.”

This goal surpasses what many expect from the five-year-old PS5. Gamers have grown accustomed to the trade-off of 30fps when ray tracing is enabled on PlayStation or Xbox. But Johnson maintained that the console hardware “is incredible” and that further performance can still be extracted.

“The key is to be intelligent about how you leverage that hardware,” he explained. “To summarize our methods, we took processes that normally occur sequentially and made them parallel. This approach utilizes significantly more of the hardware's potential.

“Our new Unreal animation framework and the fast geometry streaming, which allows seamless traversal through environments at high speeds, are designed to function on a wider, more parallel scale. This makes it easier to unlock the hardware's capabilities, and these features are now core components of Unreal Engine.

“It takes time to discover how to unlock all the amazing capabilities designed by the hardware manufacturers. You identify the bottlenecks and you optimize relentlessly.

“The progress is significant; comparing our early demos to now, we see performance improvements of two, three, even ten times with nearly identical visuals. This comes from identifying edge cases, finding optimizations, and then building those improvements directly into Unreal Engine's core. This provides a powerful foundation for amazing developers like CD Projekt Red to build upon.”

The Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo Screenshots

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Expectations for The Witcher 4 are immense, and fans are eager for concrete details. Kapuściński remained guarded but offered some hints:

“By analyzing the demo's flow, you can identify elements that indicate our intended direction and the possibilities unlocked by our partnership. For instance, the forest vista showcasing a vast woodland now utilizes Nanite foliage. The ability to render such a dense, high-fidelity forest unlocks new creative opportunities.

"Similarly, the Unreal animation framework and optimizations for handling numerous on-screen characters are crucial. We showcased another vista with a massive crowd of over 300 animated actors—this is something we need and points toward the scale we are aiming for.”

So, we can confirm The Witcher 4 will feature expansive, highly detailed forests and massive, intricately animated crowds.

A major question surrounding The Witcher 4 involves its target platforms. This PS5 demo suggests it will be a cross-generation title, also launching on next-gen consoles (PS6 and the next Xbox). If it targets current-gen hardware, does that include the less powerful Xbox Series S? It's worth noting that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI is also scheduled for current-gen consoles, including the Series S. If GTA VI can run on Microsoft's budget console, perhaps The Witcher 4 can as well.

CD Projekt has stated that The Witcher 4 will not release before 2027, so a definitive answer may be a long time coming.