In case you missed it, the State of Unreal 2025 event kicked off today, and began with a keynote from CD Projekt Red and a technical demo for its upcoming game The Witcher 4.
The Witcher 4 was only revealed a few months ago, and it looks like it won’t be arriving until 2027 at the earliest, but thankfully, today’s new footage has given us just enough to get by while we wait.
There are a bunch of notable things to unpack from the almost 10-minute showcase, from a new region, fancy Unreal Engine 5 tech, and a new companion, but I’ve managed to pick out the top five things that stood out to me the most.
1. Meet Kelpie
Just like Geralt of Rivia had Roach in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it seems that in The Witcher 4, Ciri will have her own horse friend named Kelpie to keep her company along her journey.
Kelpie originates from The Witcher novels and was first owned by a man named Hotspurn before the mare came into Ciri’s care. The black mare was initially unnamed until Ciri saw her and Hotspurn crossing a river, after which Ciri named her Kelpie.
From the footage, it looks like Ciri will be able to call her horse to her by whistling, like Geralt does to Roach. Interestingly, in the books, Kelpie could be summoned by rubbing a magical bracelet, but it’s unclear if this tidbit will be added to the game.
Since Ciri and Kelpie will be exploring the world together, CD Projekt Red explained that riding needs to “feel seamless, natural, and just fun”. To support that, the studio has introduced something called “multi-character motion matching” in Unreal Engine 5, making the pair “perfectly synchronized” when mounting from any angle and speed.
Hopefully, Kelpie won’t wander off and find herself stuck on a roof like Roach.
2. A never-before-seen location
When The Witcher 4 was initially revealed, CD Projekt Red confirmed that the game will introduce new regions of the Continent, but that the map will remain “more or less the same” size as The Witcher 3″.
In the latest tech demo, we were provided with our first look at Kovir, a mountainous region filled with dense forests and snowy cliffs. The footage also showed us our first look at the region’s port town of Valdrest, which is teeming with NPCs.
In The Witcher lore, the northern region is famous for its glass industries and was once an earldom of Redania, but now forms a part of the kingdom of Kovir and Poviss.
3. It was captured all on the PS5?
According to CD Projekt Red, the latest tech demo is running on a base PlayStation 5 at 60 FPS, with ray tracing enabled. At first, I thought the footage was from a high-end PC or even a PS5 Pro, so it’s hard to believe that a game that looks this good could handle a current-gen console.
Although it wasn’t stated during the event, CD Projekt Red has since clarified (via VGC) that the footage was a tech demo set in The Witcher 4 world, and wasn’t The Witcher 4 gameplay, suggesting that what we saw won’t be connected to the narrative.
“This is a tech demo, and a first look at the cutting-edge technology powering The Witcher 4 – but not The Witcher 4 itself,” a spokesperson told VGC.
“It showcases the powerful foundation we’re building in close collaboration with Epic Games to push open-world design further than ever before and the core systems and features we’re developing using Unreal Engine 5.
“We’re really proud of this early milestone and excited to give you a sneak peek at some of the cool tech like UAF, Nanite Foliage, Smart Objects, ML Deformer and FastGeo Streaming that are helping shape the future of The Witcher.”
4. Killing monsters
Before the technical demo kicked off, the keynote started with a short cinematic showing a group of men from Korviso and their shipments of salt being attacked in the middle of the night by a monster called a Manticore.
As the scene transitions to Ciri, we see that she has been tasked with investigating the missing men and shipment by a Valdrest local, and presumably, hunt and kill the creature.
Initially, I thought this quest could be set at the beginning of the game to give players a sense of their surroundings and to get familiar with mechanics, similar to Geralt’s quest to hunt the Griffon at the start of The Witcher 3.
However, considering the footage isn’t actual Witcher 4 gameplay, and instead just a tech demo set in the world of The Witcher 4, it’s unclear if this quest and the Manticore will make an appearance in the full game.
5. Let’s get technical
Since this demo was showcased at the State of Unreal 2025 event, we were sure to get a lot of juicy technical details about what exactly is making The Witcher 4 look so good.
All features mentioned are being developed, tested, and will eventually be released to all Unreal Engine developers, starting with today’s Unreal Engine 5.6 release.
These include the new Unreal Animation Framework, Nanite Foliage rendering, and MetaHuman technology with Mass AI crowd scaling, which are being utilized to help deliver an immersive world at 60 FPS without compromising on quality.
The Unreal Animation Framework powers realistic character movements in busy scenes, which we can see in action in the port town of Valdrest, while FastGeo Streaming, developed in collaboration with Epic Games, allows environments to load quickly and smoothly.
Nanite Foliage is being used as a way to make environments look and feel more realistic, allowing developers to fill forests and fields with dense detail without sacrificing performance.
Then there’s the Mass system, which handles large, dynamic crowds easily, and ML Deformer, which adds subtle, realistic touches to character animations, “right down to muscle movement”, like was demonstrated with Kelpie.
