Epic showed off Unreal Engine 5 with an impressive Witcher 4 tech demo

An ongoing tradition at Epic’s big keynotes is a gorgeous tech demo that shows off what its game engine is capable of. For this year’s State of Unreal, the company turned to The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red. This new demo a beautiful glimpse at its fantasy world, filled with blood, fire, and monsters — and more importantly, a new horse.

The demo was built using Unreal Engine 5.6, and shows new protagonist Ciri exploring some forested lands and a marketplace known as Valdrest. Epic says the demo is designed in part to show off how the latest iteration can handle both bustling scenes and foliage in an open-world setting. It also shows how much horse technology has improved since The Witcher 3. Epic says that the demo is running on a base model PS5 at 60 frames per second, with raytracing enabled, and the presentation included a live demonstration, with the developers playing the game on stage.

Here’s the cinematic intro:

And a look at horseback gameplay:

And a handful of images from the demo:

We’ve known that CDPR had switched to UE5 for its next Witcher game as far back as 2022, when it announced a partnership with Epic, likely as a result of the technical issues that plagued Cyberpunk 2077’s launch. Last year the developer officially revealed The Witcher 4 — with Ciri replacing Geralt in the lead — with a cinematic trailer. There’s no word yet on when the game will be launching.

The 5.6 version of Unreal Engine, meanwhile, is available to developers starting today.