The Witcher 4 tech demo full breakdown - Everything that's worth knowing

The Witcher 4 has graced our screens once again, but this time in the form of a tech demo born out of a partnership between game developers CD Projekt Red and Epic Games.

The new footage was showcased at the State of Unreal event, and viewers should note that this is not actual gameplay, but a tech showcase, which is a specific build to demonstrate the capabilities of certain tech within the game engine. Tech demos are different from actual gameplay, but do give an idea of what players can expect in the upcoming release. However, they aren't 100% representations of what players will actually play. With that being said, let's break down what CD Projekt Red and Epic Games showcased.

Horseback Riding & Ciri

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The tech demo showcases big improvements to horseback riding compared to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which was one of the few weak points of that game, as it felt quite stiff. CD Projekt Red's improvements are demonstrated with Ciri, the main character, and her horse Kelpy. The first is Multi-character Motion Matching, which enables Ciri and Kelpy to synchronize perfectly when riding. Moreover, this new tech enables smooth mounting from any angle and speed.

Another tech being introduced is Root Motion on Kelpy, which CD Projekt Red says makes controlling Kelpy feel realistic and grounded. The last tech is the Chaos Flesh Solver and Machine Learned Deformation, which enables detailed muscle movement of Kelpy without any performance loss.

Nanite Foliage

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CD Projekt Red has introduced some big improvements to the world of The Witcher 4, and according to the tech showcase, foliage will feel more alive than ever with the new Nanite Foliage tech that frees artists from their past constraints and enables them to edit every leaf/[ine needle that is modeled using Unreal 5's Nanite.

Additionally, the old techniques are being replaced with new voxel representation that's fully 3D, volumetric, pixel-sized at a distance, and is affected by dynamic lighting and shadows. Lastly, improvements have been made to loading content faster, enabling denser environments and a smoother experience.

Character Tech & NPCs

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One of the most important aspects of any game is how a player interacts with NPCs within the world, and how responsive the world is to players. CD Projekt Red demonstrates how it has made improvements to the underlying tools that power NPCs in order to reduce the fidelity gap between Ciri and NPCs is as small as possible. Improvements have been made to MetaHuman tools, Smart Objects and Chaos Cloth.

Lastly, CD Projekt Red and Epic Games demonstrated a new Unreal animation framework that enables 300+ animated skeletal mesh NPCs to be within the same location, while maintaining a smooth 60FPS. This new tech is designed to empower developers to add rich gameplay systems.

"We're making this the most immersive and ambitious open world RPG ever. Our work with Epic is bringing a new generation of RPGs to life. We're proud of what we've built," said CD Projekt Red