Yesterday, CD Projekt RED debuted an impressive tech demo of Unreal Engine 5 on PlayStation 5 for this year’s State of Unreal event, featuring The Witcher 4. Today, the studio has shared new statements to help steer the messaging on this demo.
It seems that CD Projekt RED felt compelled to make new statements after gamers took this to feature The Witcher 4 gameplay running on the PlayStation 5. While it’s definitely possible that they could get gameplay running at this level on the console, this seems to have also driven speculation about the PlayStation 5’s capabilities versus the Xbox Series X|S, and even Windows PC.
They started off this messaging realignment by sharing this statement to Video Games Chronicle:
This is a tech demo, and a first look at the cutting-edge technology powering The Witcher 4 – but not The Witcher 4 itself.
It showcases the powerful foundation we’re building in close collaboration with Epic Games to push open-world design further than ever before and the core systems and features we’re developing using Unreal Engine 5.
We’re really proud of this early milestone and excited to give you a sneak peek at some of the cool tech like UAF, Nanite Foliage, Smart Objects, ML Deformer and FastGeo Streaming that are helping shape the future of The Witcher.
Subsequently, CD Projekt RED’s VP Sebastian Kalemba chimed in on Twitter. Kalemba is also game director for The Witcher 4, so he isn’t just talking as an executive in the company, but as someone deep in the weeds in development. Kalemba said this:
While the presentation was running on a PlayStation console, the technology we’re developing with the @UnrealEngine team works across all platforms the game will launch on. #PlayStation #Xbox #PC
Now, we do think that CD Projekt RED didn’t just speak up because of seeming console wars discourse. If you may remember, Warhorse Studios co-founder Daniel Vávra, who was director and writer for Kingdom Come Deliverance and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, criticized CD Projekt RED’s decision to drop their proprietary REDEngine in favor of Unreal.
Vávra said this about Unreal in an interview last February of this year:
I talked with guys who are making The Witcher or from studios that are just trying to make some open-world games on Unreal because there aren’t really any open-world games on Unreal. Assassin’s Creed, everything like that, is on their own engine.”
CD Projekt just switched to Unreal. Even though, in my opinion, they had a good proprietary engine. I talked to someone whose name I obviously can’t say, and I said to him, ‘So how about Unreal?’ ‘Great, we already have pieces done, like some landscapes.’ And I said, well, what about the open world? ‘Not yet.’ When did they announce it? A year or two ago, and it still doesn’t work?
Now, we can’t say that a Polish game studio rushed to react to a Czech game studio in a matter of months. But it’s clear that Epic Games and CD Projekt RED had a mission to prove that Unreal 5 was going to become a great open world game engine. They just convinced the general public with this tech preview, and they may clinch the argument when they finally release The Witcher 4.
