Digital Foundry: Unreal Fest 2025 kicked off with a spectacular State of Unreal showcasing a demonstration of UE 5.6 technology based on assets from The Witcher 4. Highly impressive stuff, all running on a standard PlayStation 5 - and yes, we fully believe those claims. Rich and Alex share some initial thoughts on the presentation.
This week CD Projekt Red teased its next project, The Witcher 4, with a tech demo in Unreal Engine 5, showing off some of the technology powering the Polish com
CD Projekt Red showcasing The Witcher 4 might be a tech demo, but it shows the potential of what Unreal Engine 5.6 can do for the game.
"Potential" as in the same potential every major UE upgrade tech demo shows with insane visuals and fluid FPS?
Still waiting on a game with the scope & size as that demo back in 2020 🤣 smooth 60fps with raytracing.
That's what I said. Not buying into tech demo hype and marketing.
Where's the flying desert girl type of technology we were promised 5 years ago?
As somebody who has worked with one of these. I can tell you that the tech IS there in the engine when we work on that stuff; but only if a developer chooses to use it.
Hence why we call it a tech demonstration. And when that demo comes out it takes a while for people to adapt to the new stuff, and sometimes has to be built up from the ground with all the new additions in mind (such as the World Partitions, Lumen and Nanite that launched with UE5)
Gotta question the devs moreso as to why they can't do a thing shown in a tech demo.
I just can’t fathom why they tossed out a stable, performant and beautiful engine to move to Unreal. I get there’s a greater talent pool immediately available for it, but god damn.
While it may not have been The Witcher 4 gameplay, the Unreal Fest 2025 tech demo for CD Projekt Red's latest gave us a good idea of how the finished game might look. We talked to the developers, as well as Epic Games' Unreal Engine team, to find out exactly how the upcoming open-world RPG looks so incredible.
So a tech demo…..figures. A lot of smoke and mirrors, don’t expect the game to look as good.