„It's not The Witcher 4 yet.” CD Projekt Red talks about the challenges and innovations it is making in UE5 to make its games better
CD Projekt Red showed off the future of its games and more. The tech demo, showing the innovations the Polish company is bringing to Unreal Engine 5 for The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, made quite an impression on everyone.
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CD Projekt Red showed up at the State of Unreal event with a tech demo showcasing the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, which they plan to use in The Witcher 4. You can find the show footage in our previous news, and in this one, we're focusing on the details discussed by the developers themselves.
After reg from REDengine, the Polish studio is using Epic Games' technology as the foundation for their games - Cyberpunk 2. GameStar had the opportunity to preview the tech demo and ask a CDPR representative, Julius Girbig, for details. This resulted in a comprehensive article covering various technical aspects of the project.
As we read in the GameStar article:
[Julius] guided us through all the technical details and had a lot to say about why CD Projekt Red showed this tech demo and why it's not quite The Witcher 4 yet, but how some aspects of it are related to it.
The studio representative emphasizes that the tech demo is not a part of the actual gameplay, but a showcase of tools and systems developed in collaboration with Epic Games. The aim of the presentation is to outline the vision for future open worlds created by CDPR and to assure a commitment to achieving the highest technological quality, especially on consoles.
Tech demo on PS5, not on a powerful rig
The presentation, led by the aforementioned Julius Girbig, a senior animator at CD Projekt Red, was run on a base PlayStation 5 console, not on a PC with the latest components or a PS5 Pro. Despite all that, it runs at a stable 60 fps and in 4K resolution (even though it was internally rendered at 900p and then scaled to 1440p using Unreal Engine's TSR technology).
CD Projekt Red
The tech demo focuses on Ciri, who is carrying out a seemingly usual Witcher quest. The protagonist is tracking a manticore in the mountainous, northern region of the kingdom of Kovir. The fragment shows a monster attacking a merchant's cart, and Ciri arriving at the scene. The model of her character is consistent with the one presented in the first game trailer released in December of last year.
Julius sat with us in the editorial office with a controller in his hand and could freely move the camera and Ciri, although with many scripted processes launched at certain moments of the tech demo. Nevertheless, it's real graphics, real performance, a real open world, everything works in real time on PlayStation 5, which is already almost five years old - we read in the GameStar article.
As for the showcased location, Kovir, a kingdom located in the far north of the continent (along with the neighboring region of Poviss, under the rule of Tankred Thyssen), is known for its neutrality in the war with Nilfgaard. The region is characterized by mountainous terrain and dense forests, which is a change from the more open areas in The Witcher 3.
CD Projekt Red
Girbig mentioned that while the story of the merchant and the manticore may not necessarily make it into the final version of the game, the elements of the presented world - such as character appearance, environment, monsters (the manticore as an example of a new beast), and a section of the map - come directly from the project of The Witcher 4.
There are resources from our game there. Characters, world, appearance of things. All these elements obviously come from The Witcher 4. Just like this area on the map, all the mountains you see and the village itself, it's from The Witcher 4. Whether it will be adapted one to one, it is definitely too early to say, we cannot talk about it yet. But this area of the map is the same map from The Witcher 4.
CD Projekt Red and innovations in Unreal Engine 5
The tech demo focused on showing off the new tools and technologies that CD Projekt Red is developing with Epic Games, and also on proving that their collaboration is bringing real results. They include:
- Fastgeo Streaming - a new system designed to ensure fast and smooth loading of open-world elements, eliminating potential stuttering (i.e., trimming) and reading objects.
- Nanite technology expansion - CDPR is developing its own voxel-based system, which is intended to allow for even more detailed rendering of the environment, including the dynamic calculation of the impact of each element (e.g., needles on trees) on lighting and shadows.
- Advanced animation systems - they demonstrated, among other things, the ML Deformer technology responsible for the realistic deformation of Ciri's horse (Kelpie) muscles in real time, as well as systems for smoothly blending character animations interacting with the environment.
- AI systems for crowds - tools such as Mass System (which controls the behavior of large groups of NPCs) and Smart Objects (objects in the game world that can trigger certain animations and behaviors in characters) were demonstrated, aiming to create a more lively and dynamically responsive world that is much less script-driven. An example could be a man who gets thrown out of a tavern and lands in the mud for cheating in Gwent (the card game is supposed to distract us from quests in The Witcher 4 as well), which generates subsequent, appropriate behaviors among the residents (just like in Red Dead Redemption 2). What's important is that these systems will also affect Ciri's behavior, so she'll adjust her animations to the situation.
The tools that we are developing together with Epic, [...] the tools that we saw and presented in the tech demo, will also be introduced to the public version of Unreal Engine in the new 5.6 update and will be available to anyone who uses the engine.
Of course, this style, this direction that we are showing here, is the direction we want to follow. Otherwise, we wouldn't be creating these tools. We are doing this with the thought that they will be used in The Witcher 4.
Promises and challenges faced by The Witcher 4 developers
CD Projekt Red emphasizes that this demonstration is also a signal to players and the industry that the studio has learned from the problematic launch of Cyberpunk 2077, especially in the context of its performance on consoles.
Of course, we have drawn conclusions from Cyberpunk. We want to be transparent, we want to show that we really care about the worlds we build, their size, the quality of our games, our storytelling - we want all of this to look great on consoles.
CD Projekt Red
CDPR's goal is to create a "technological masterpiece" that will run smoothly on available hardware on the launch day. Even though the shown fragment is not the final gameplay (or even gameplay at all), and many elements may change, it can be treated as a declaration of the studio's high ambitions and desire to be more transparent with the community. The release date of The Witcher 4 remains unknown - the earliest we can expect is 2027.
Given that a member of our editorial team is also visiting Orlando, where the State of Unreal is taking place, in the coming days you can expect more materials related to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 4 and Unreal Engine 5.
- The Witcher 4 without downgrade? Game Director responds to players concerns, media predicts target platforms
- Ciri's appearance in The Witcher 4 tech demo with some explanation. It's pretty much Ciri from The Witcher 3, but with two small changes
- The Witcher 4 might let us fight a foe that Geralt never faced in The Witcher 3
