In the latest tech demo of The Witcher 4, the developers showcased a visually stunning preview on a PlayStation 5 instead of a PC. This was a deliberate decision, mainly a response to a previous disaster.
What did the developers show? In a recently shown UE5 tech demo of The Witcher 4, the creators of the game present the claims they make on themselves and how they have been able to implement them so far. Beautiful environments, smooth animations, and a deeper insight into the optimization and performance within Unreal Engine 5.
Unlike typical demos, they showcased this on a PS5 instead of a PC. But this was no random decision; it was proof that the team could learn from its mistakes.
Here you can watch the full tech demo, in case you became curious:
Ambitions that consider past mistakes
What role does Cyberpunk 2077 play in development? The release of Cyberpunk 2077 was so marked by performance issues that it was, in that state, considered unplayable especially on consoles. It was completely removed from sale on the PS4 and refunded to disappointed players. While PC players had at least a slightly better time, Cyberpunk 2077 was still far from what players were promised.
As for The Witcher 4, however, it seems the team has learned from its mistakes:
We have super high ambitions for this project, we always push ourselves for the PC and then try to scale down. But in the past, we had so many problems that we decided this time to really focus more on the console. […] We worked with Unreal and recognized that it will take a lot of work to realize our ambitions with 60 FPS on the PS5. That’s why we started talking about what needs to be done with the technology. What comes next is hard to say, but for now we really want to focus on the question: “What does it mean to realize these ambitions on a console?”
Charles Tremblay, VP of Technology, CD Projekt RED via YouTube)
How do the creators assess the current state? Tremblay notes that the team is aware that there is still a lot of work ahead. The tech demo is, as you might suspect, just a demo. So far, no combat or gameplay loops have been implemented and there are many things that still don’t work.
However, he does state that he is particularly proud of the forest that can be seen in the demo: “It was quite stressful figuring out how to make this forest, and the guys from Epic worked extremely hard to solve these problems. When I saw it in full bloom for the first time, I thought: ‘Oh, we made it.’ The forest is super important for this game, you want the player to want to explore the forest while hunting monsters. My stress level decreased when I saw that.”
The Witcher 4 is still deep in development, but it is nice to see a developer team being transparent through demos and interviews. MMO editor Sophia Weiß was able to see the tech demo a little earlier and also ask some questions. You can learn more about her first impressions here: If The Witcher 4 really becomes as awesome as the tech demo looks, I have found my home
