In case you miss it, State of Unreal 2025 began today and began with a speech with CD Projekt RED and technical demo to the upcoming game Witcher 4.
Witcher 4 It was only disclosed a few months ago and it looks like it would not come until 2027 at the earliest, but fortunately today’s modern material gave us enough to survive.
There are many noteworthy things to unpack from a almost 10-minute presentation, from the modern region, Fancy Unreal Engine 5 Tech and a modern companion, but I managed to choose the five best things that distinguished me the most.
1. Meet Kelpie
Like Geralt of Rivia, he had The Witcher 3: Wild HuntIt seems to be in The Witcher 4, Ciri will have her own friend of horses named Kelpie to keep the company while traveling.
Kelpie comes from the novel of Witches and for the first time she was the property of a man named Hotspurn, before the mare came to the care of Ciri. The black mare was initially nameless until Ciri saw her and Hotspurn, then Ciri called her Kelpie.
From the material of the material, it looks like Ciri will be able to call her a horse by whistling, just like Geralt to do it. Interestingly, in Kelpie’s books it can be called by rubbing a magic bracelet, but it is not clear if this treat will be added to the game.
Because Ciri and Kelpie will study the world, CD Projekt Red explained that driving must “feel trouble -free, natural and simply fun.” To support this, the studio introduced something called “Multi -artic Movement” in Unreal Engine 5, thanks to which the pair is “perfectly synchronized” during installation at any angle and speed.
We hope Kelpie will not go away and stuck on the roof like Roach.
2. Never seen before the location
When the Witcher 4 was initially disclosed, CD Projekt Red confirmed that the game would introduce modern regions of the continent, but the map will remain “more or less the same” as the Witcher 3 “.
In the latest technological demo we received the first look at Kovir, a mountainous region full of dense forests and snowy cliffs. The film material also showed us our first look at the port city in the Valdrest region, which is full of NPC.
In the Witcher knowledgeThe northern region is famous for its glass industries and was once tugging Redania, but now it is part of the Kovir and Poviss kingdom.
3. He was captured on PS5?
According to CD Projekt RED, the latest technology demo operates on the basic PlayStation 5 at 60 FPS, with Ray Training on. Initially, I thought that the recording comes from a high -class computer or even PS5 Pro, so it’s hard to believe that a game that looks so good can cope with the current generation console.
Although this was not given during this event, CD Projekt Red has explained since then (via via VGC) that the film material was a technology supplier Witcher 4 world and it wasn’t Witcher 4 The gameplay, suggesting that what we saw will not be related to the narrative.
“This is a technological demo and the first look at the latest technology Witcher 4 – But not Witcher 4 Sam, “the spokesman said VGC.
“It presents a powerful foundation that we build in close cooperation with Epic Games to augment the design of the open world more than ever before, and the basic systems and functions that we develop using Unreal Engine 5.
“We are really proud of this early milestone and excited that I can take a look at cool technologies such as UAF, nanite leaves, intelligent objects, ML Deformer and Fastgeo Streaming, which help shape the future of the witch.”
4. Killing monsters
Before starting a technical demo, the speech began with a brief cinema showing a group of men from Korviso and their salt shipment attacked in the middle of the night by a monster called Manticore.
When the stage goes to Ciri, we see that she was supposed to examine the missing people and sending by local Valdrest and probably hunt and kill the creation.
Initially, I thought that this mission could be set at the beginning of the game to give players a sense of surroundings and get acquainted with the mechanics, just like in search of Geralt to hunt a grifa at the beginning The Witcher 3.
However, considering that the film material is not real Witcher 4 gameplay, instead, just a technological demo in the world Witcher 4It is not clear whether this task and manticore will appear in the full game.
5. Let’s get technical
Because this demo was presented at the Unreal 2025 event, we certainly received many juicy technical details about what exactly he does Witcher 4 look so good.
All these functions are developed, tested and will eventually be issued to all Unreal Engine programmers, starting from today’s Unreal Engine 5.6 edition.
These include the modern UNREAL animation framework, nanite leaves and metahuman technology with mass scaling of the AI crowd, which are used to aid supply the addictive world at 60 fps without violation of quality.
The unreal animation framework supply realistic movements of the characters in busy scenes, which we can see in action in the port town of Valdrest, while streaming fastgeo, developed in cooperation with Epic Games, allows you to charge the environment rapid and polished.
Nanite leaves are used as a way for the environments to look and feel more realistic, enabling programmers to fill forests and fields with dense details without dedication.
Then there is a mass system that easily supports vast, vigorous crowds, and ML Deformer, which adds subtle, realistic touching of character animation, “from the very beginning to muscle movement”, as shown with Kelpie.
