CD Projekt Red recently unveiled a breathtaking tech demo built in Unreal Engine 5, giving fans an early peek at what The Witcher 4 might look like. While the studio is quick to clarify this isn’t actual gameplay, it’s hard not to imagine this being a glimpse of what’s coming — especially with how detailed and alive the world feels.
The demo, which runs at 60 frames per second on a PlayStation 5, follows Ciri as she traverses the never-before-seen region of Kovir, a snowy mountainous locale confirmed to be a playable area in The Witcher 4. We see her and her horse, Kelpie, interacting with the environment, NPCs, and each other with a level of animation polish not yet seen on today’s consoles. One standout moment shows a vibrant marketplace teeming with 300 individually animated characters, culminating in a cinematic reveal of Lan Exeter, Kovir’s massive port capital.
That level of scale and technical prowess has left fans wondering: Is this what the final game will actually look like?
According to CD Projekt’s Cinematic Director Kajetan Kapuściński, not exactly — but it’s close. He explained the demo was a collaborative project with Epic Games meant to test and demonstrate the technology that will eventually power The Witcher 4. He emphasized that while this isn’t real gameplay, it does reflect the team’s ambitions and artistic direction:
“What you’ve seen today is a tech demo… It shows our ambition, our cutting-edge technology… and our artistic direction… But everything you saw is subject to change.”
Still, Kapuściński teased that eagle-eyed fans might pick up hints of what’s to come — like the use of Nanite foliage, which allows them to render dense forests and detailed landscapes with incredible fidelity. That means bigger, more immersive environments could be on the horizon.
As for which platforms The Witcher 4 will launch on? The demo’s performance on PS5 suggests the game will straddle the line between current-gen and next-gen. Whether or not it will land on Xbox Series S — the least powerful of the current consoles — is still up in the air. But with GTA 6 targeting that same system, there’s reason to believe CD Projekt might pull it off as well.
The tech demo may not represent the finished game, but it does raise the bar for what’s possible in the world of The Witcher. One thing’s for sure — fans are watching closely.
