The State of Unreal 2025 showcase has simply supplied us a primary glimpse at what enjoying The Witcher 4 may appear to be, through an Unreal Engine 5 demo construct that featured Ciri exploring the wilds and a village in Kovir. Kovir was additionally confirmed to be a location you may go to within the last recreation, so begin packing your baggage.
On this tech demo, which you’ll be able to watch beneath, CD Projekt and Epic confirmed off a number of the Unreal Engine 5 tech that’ll be aiming to make The Witcher 4 really feel much more immersive than its already spectacular predecessor when it drops.
The demo kicked off with a service provider in a cart having his day fully ruined by a monster, with Ciri then swooping in to fairly actually choose up the items, as she embarks on a contract to hunt the monster that simply killed the poor peddler. Issues then correctly transitioned right into a Ciri-following construct working on a PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second with all of the raytracing bells and whistles at play.
We obtained a have a look at Ciri’s horse Kelpie, whom you may be using about and in the event that they’re something like Roach, crashing into one thing each 5 minutes. The devs even peeled again Kelpie’s pores and skin to point out the engine simulating horse muscle groups as they run, which wasn’t in any respect freaky.
Ciri then wandered from the countryside of Kovir – a mountainous area that varieties a part of the Kingdom of Kovir and Poviss situated within the northwest of The Continent – into one of many space’s villages, Valdrest. CD Projekt and Epic actually performed up all of the immersive particulars that make up the likes of bustling marketplaces, with particulars like an innkeeper dynamically lobbing a Gwent cheat out of an inn’s entrance door being highlighted.
Plainly could be what occurs to you too in case you attempt to con some cardplayers, so you’ve got been warned. After exhibiting off some various crowd density at a circus, the demo concluded by exhibiting Ciri looking on the metropolis of Lan Exeter within the distance. In line with the lore, that is Kovir’s winter capital and a Venice-style main port metropolis stuffed with canals, so attending to discover it for the primary time in a Witcher recreation will little question be prime screenshot materials.
The Witcher 3 had the very Elven and French-feeling Beauclair and Novigrad could possibly be simply as breathtaking in a extra grungy trend, so it’s going to be fascinating to see how Lan Exeter stacks up. I am actually eager to discover Kovir full-stop, because it’s one of many fringe areas we have not heard an excessive amount of about as The Witcher video games have usually concentrated extra centrally, except for journeys to Kaer Morhen. Regardless, it seems to be like we’ll be waiting until about 2027 to set foot there.
