The Witcher 4 Tech Demo vs Actual Game: Insights from CD Projekt

The Witcher 4 tech demo gave us a breathtaking glimpse into what CD Projekt insists is purely that—a technical showcase. As IGN reported, this is not a direct reflection of The Witcher 4's actual gameplay. Yet, witnessing the Unreal Engine 5 demo set in The Witcher universe, it's difficult not to speculate whether it hints at what’s to come in a game still several years from launch.

Captured on PlayStation 5 and running at a smooth 60 frames per second, the tech demo follows Ciri as she ventures into the previously unseen region of Kovir while undertaking a monster-hunting contract (CD Projekt confirmed Kovir will be a playable area in The Witcher 4).

The demo is incredibly detailed, featuring fluid animations that surpass what's currently achievable on this generation of consoles. The movements of Ciri and her horse Kelpie are particularly impressive, as they interact seamlessly with each other, NPCs, and the environment while traveling through the Kovir mountains to the lively port town of Valdrest. At one point, CD Projekt increased the NPC count in a market scene to 300 individually animated characters. The presentation concluded with a first look at Lan Exeter, Kovir's winter capital and a major port city.

CD Projekt is no stranger to setting high expectations for an upcoming game and then failing to meet them—just recall the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, which took the studio years to fully address. This leads to an inevitable question: will The Witcher 4 actually look like its tech demo?

We posed this exact question to Kajetan Kapuściński, Cinematic Director at CD Projekt, during Epic's State of Unreal 2025 event. His reply was as measured as one would expect from a developer working on a title not due until 2027 at the earliest, though he did emphasize that the tech demo "reveals our ambition."

Here is Kapuściński’s complete statement:

“What you saw today is a tech demo powered by Unreal Engine 5, a collaborative project with the Epic team. We designed this demo so both companies could work on technology that will ultimately drive Witcher 4.

“So, it isn't direct gameplay from The Witcher 4. Rather, it showcases our ambition, the advanced technology we co-developed to make the game feasible, and it reflects our artistic vision and intended approach.

“However, everything you saw is subject to change. This is just a snapshot of our current progress. We wanted to share it with the public and highlight our joint efforts. Now, equipped with these tools and possibilities, we are actively working on the game itself.”

In the same interview, we asked Wyeth Johnson, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Epic Games, whether the demo's performance—60fps with ray tracing on a base PS5—represents what players can realistically expect from a final product on the same hardware.

“Absolutely. We can't mislead here,” he responded. “The technology we're building must align directly with player expectations, and gamers across all hardware tiers are asking for superb 60 frames-per-second gameplay.”

Hitting 60fps with ray tracing in a sprawling open world like The Witcher 4 on a base PS5 exceeds the performance typically associated with current-generation consoles. But Johnson explained that collaborating with CD Projekt on the tech demo “enabled us to push rapidly and aggressively for much higher performance without compromising visual fidelity.”

This clearly goes beyond what we anticipate from the five-year-old PS5. Players have grown accustomed to the trade-off that enabling ray tracing on PlayStation or Xbox means settling for 30 frames per second. Johnson, however, insisted the console hardware “is remarkable” and that more performance can still be extracted.

“You have to be smart about leveraging that hardware,” he noted. “If I had to summarize our approach, it’s about taking processes that normally happen sequentially and making them parallel. That way, you harness significantly more of the hardware's potential.

“When you look at features like our new Unreal animation framework and fast geometry streaming—which lets you traverse the environment at any speed—all these innovations are designed to scale horizontally, making it easier to fully utilize the hardware. These improvements are now core components of Unreal Engine moving forward.

“It takes time to understand how to unlock all the incredible capabilities built into the hardware by manufacturers. You work with it, identify bottlenecks, and optimize.

“It’s quite remarkable; compared to some of our earlier demos, we’re seeing two, three, even tenfold performance gains while maintaining nearly identical visuals. You identify the edge cases, find ways to improve, and then integrate those solutions deeply into Unreal’s foundation. Then, talented developers like CD Projekt Red can build on top of that.”

The Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo Screenshots

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Expectations for The Witcher 4 are immense, and fans are eager for definitive details right now. Kapuściński remained guarded on this point, though he did offer a small hint:

“If you analyze the demo's structure, you can pick out elements that indicate our intended direction and the potential unlocked by our collaboration. For example, look at the forest—there's a vista moment where you see an enormous forest now rendered with Nanite foliage. The ability to display that volume of trees and foliage at such high fidelity is a game-changer.

“Similarly, the Unreal animation framework and optimizations for handling numerous on-screen NPCs are critical. We had another vista scene with a massive crowd of over 300 animated characters. This is something we need, and if you connect the dots, it reveals the path we're taking.”

So, we can confirm that The Witcher 4 will feature vast, intricately detailed forests and densely populated, highly detailed crowds!

A major question surrounding The Witcher 4 is its target platforms. With this PS5 tech demo, it seems likely the game will be cross-gen, also launching on next-gen consoles (PS6 and the next Xbox). But if it's coming to current-gen hardware, does that include the less powerful Xbox Series S? It’s worth remembering that Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI is also slated for current-gen consoles, including the Series S. If GTA VI can run on Microsoft's more affordable console, maybe The Witcher 4 can, too.

CD Projekt has suggested The Witcher 4 won't launch before 2027, so it could be a while before we have a definitive answer.