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The June 2025 Witcher 4 showcase was an early-development Unreal Engine 5 technology demo, not gameplay from the finished game. It follows Ciri and her horse, Kelpie, through Kovir toward the port town of Valdrest, using a monster-contract setup to demonstrate five systems for animation, world streaming, foliage, crowds, and character deformation.
Is the Witcher 4 tech demo actual gameplay?
No. CD PROJEKT RED and Epic Games described the footage as a technology showcase, not gameplay from The Witcher 4. Game director Sebastian Kalemba said the team used Ciri and a monster contract to bring its technical demonstration to life. The scene shows what the teams were developing with Unreal Engine 5; it does not establish how the finished game will play or look.
Presented on June 3, 2025, during State of Unreal at Unreal Fest Orlando, the demo places Ciri in Kovir, a region making its first appearance in the video game series. She rides Kelpie through mountains and forests toward Valdrest, a busy port and trading town. The journey provides a setting for the technology rather than a gameplay reveal. CD PROJEKT RED’s announcement and its behind-the-scenes explanation make that distinction explicit.
What five technologies does the demo show?
The systems address different challenges in making a detailed open world feel active as the player moves through it. Their roles, as described by the companies, are:
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| Technology | What it is meant to handle | Example in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| Unreal Animation Framework (UAF) | Animation blending, state machines, and procedural workflows for characters | Musicians and townspeople react to activity instead of simply repeating a basic loop |
| FastGeo Streaming / Fast Geometry Streaming | Streaming static environment geometry as the scene changes | Mountains, valleys, forests, and settlements are intended to load smoothly as Ciri travels |
| Nanite Foliage | Rendering dense, detailed vegetation while aiming to preserve performance | The forests surrounding Ciri’s route |
| Mass / Mass Framework | Simulating crowds and agents | The busy market in Valdrest |
| ML Deformer | Adding detailed real-time deformation to moving characters | Kelpie’s muscles flex as the horse moves |
The names vary slightly between official explanations: CD PROJEKT RED calls its geometry system FastGeo Streaming, while PlayStation Blog spells it out as Fast Geometry Streaming. The labels refer to the same streaming feature in this showcase.
Animation: making crowds respond
The Unreal Animation Framework is intended to support complex animation behavior, including blends between movements, state machines, and procedural approaches. In the Valdrest scene, the band and crowd are examples of characters reacting within a shared environment rather than standing in place or replaying one simple animation. The goal is to make a populated scene feel less static.
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World streaming: bringing the landscape in as Ciri travels
FastGeo Streaming handles static environment geometry. The stated aim is to load large landscape elements—such as mountains, valleys, forests, and settlements—as the character moves, without conspicuous stutter or visible pop-in. That is a development goal described by the teams, not a guarantee that every open-world scene in the final game will stream without interruption.
Foliage: rendering dense vegetation
Nanite Foliage is presented as a way to render detailed, dense vegetation while keeping performance in view. Epic’s 2025 recap said the feature was slated for Unreal Engine 5.7; that was a roadmap statement at the time, not confirmation of its current release status. Epic’s State of Unreal 2025 recap also says CD PROJEKT RED used RealityScan to capture natural objects for the demo.
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- Incredibly detailed 7” scale figure based off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Video Game
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Crowds: simulating a busy town
Mass, also referred to as the Mass Framework, is the crowd and agent simulation component shown in Valdrest’s market. PlayStation Blog describes it as managing thousands of agents with minimal performance cost. That is the publisher’s technical description of the system, not an independently measured benchmark for the demo or the finished game.
Character movement: deforming Kelpie in real time
ML Deformer adds more detailed deformation to character movement. The example is Kelpie’s muscles flexing as the horse moves. The system is intended to make that motion look more lifelike while keeping its computational demands manageable.
Rank #4
- Incredibly detailed 7” scale figure based off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Video Game
- Designed with Ultra Articulation with up to 22 moving parts for full range of posing
- Geralt features his classic Viper Armor dyed teal like you can do in game
- Includes silver sword, steel sword, and base
- Showcased in The Witcher themed window box packaging
What did the demo establish about PS5 performance?
CD PROJEKT RED said the technology showcase ran at 60 frames per second on PlayStation 5. Epic’s event recap additionally says the demo ran with ray tracing. These are company descriptions of the demonstrated setup, not an independent performance test and not a frame-rate or graphics promise for The Witcher 4 when it is released. The footage does not establish performance across the full game, other hardware, or different gameplay conditions.
Why were CD PROJEKT RED and Epic showing these systems?
The companies framed the work as a collaboration to improve Unreal Engine’s support for large open worlds. CD PROJEKT RED’s June 2025 follow-up said the five showcased tools would be available to Unreal Engine 5 developers, extending the demo’s relevance beyond The Witcher 4. That describes the stated intent for the technology; it does not mean every feature was already generally available in a particular engine release.
The presentation also drew a large audience, according to the studio. In a June 13, 2025 retrospective, CD PROJEKT RED reported more than 2,500 people attended in person and more than one million watched online. Those are studio-reported figures, not independently audited totals. The studio’s retrospective and technical notes discuss the presentation and its aims.
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