The Witcher 4 is revealed with Ciri and Unreal Engine 5.6

During the State of Unreal 2025 event, held in Orlando, Epic Games and CD Projekt Red presented, for the first time, a technical preview and a new cinematic trailer for The Witcher 4, a title that marks a new phase of the franchise and will be powered by Unreal Engine 5.6. The material shown confirmed the prominence of Ciri, with gameplay segments showing the character exploring forests and a city, using cutting-edge visual resources.

The technical demonstration caught attention especially for its performance: the showcased build runs at 60 FPS on base PlayStation 5, with ray tracing enabled, indicating a considerable optimization leap compared to recent titles still struggling with advanced lighting technologies. Although the full demonstration has not been made available yet, CDPR confirmed that the video will be fully published later today.

The use of Unreal Engine 5.6 was also a theme of the event, with Epic Games reinforcing that the preview of the new version of the engine is already accessible to the public for testing. The version brings significant improvements in physics systems, dynamic lighting with Lumen, large-scale landscape rendering with Nanite, and new features focused on world partition and collaborative production workflows.

Although CD Projekt Red has not yet disclosed a release window for The Witcher 4, the project is already considered the most ambitious of the developer since Cyberpunk 2077. The transition to Unreal Engine - abandoning the proprietary REDengine - signals a strategic shift to ensure greater stability and scalability, especially after the technical issues faced in the launch of the futuristic RPG in 2020.

In recent years, the company had already revealed that the new game would not be a direct continuation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and now, with the confirmation of Ciri as a playable character, it seems that the franchise is moving towards exploring new narratives, far from the figure of Geralt of Rivia.

More technical and visual details are expected to be released in the coming weeks, as CDPR opens up the development process to the public. The title will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.