Stop what you're doing: new The Witcher IV gameplay just dropped, and… wow

CD Projekt Red has just shown off new gameplay footage of its blockbuster RPG The Witcher IV at the ‘State of Unreal’ livestream, and you’ll probably want to sit down for this one.

Ready? Sure? OK, go ahead and watch the livestream footage (jump to 30mins in).

Epic’s Unreal Engine 5.6 is capable of some outlandish fidelity levels in real-time rendering, but the strikingly, almost aggressively beautiful open world of Kovir built by CD Projekt Red and Epic in collaboration really does look like a step forwards from anything we’ve seen running on console hardware before.

That’s right, console hardware. Difficult as it is to believe, the team specified onstage the demo is running on PlayStation 5 hardware at 60FPS, with ray tracing.

Since Geralt’s role of protagonist concluded after number three and he hung up his swords to become a professional Gwent hustler (we imagine), The Witcher IV sees Ciri in the lead role as she explores the region of Kovir. It’s a chilly and mountainous northern land, rich in mineral deposits according to Witcher lore, and even richer in very convincing pixels.

The demo shows off the port town of Vargrest, where an impressive number of NPCs apparently gather daily to watch jugglers, angry bears and fish sellers. We’re not afraid to go on record about this one: there’s never been a more graphically advanced medieval-fantasy fish market in the history of gaming. If all you do in The Witcher IV is buy and sell fish, we still won’t be disappointed.

Ciri’s horse, Kelpie, makes a starring appearance too, and it's a vehicle for more than just the protagonist. Numerous impressive tech feats were demonstrated through the medium of equine depiction, including what looks to our eye like multi-character motion matching and root motion movement. And by ‘what looks like’ we mean ‘that’s the baffling terminology the devs mentioned and which we subsequently wrote down’.

In any event, it makes the horse-mounting animations look fluid, and horse riding itself much more convincing than The Witcher 3’s. Don’t worry Roach, we still love you.

If you’re not sated by that horse-related tech speak, how about the machine-learned deformations happening on Kelpie’s skin and musculature while in motion? It takes a lot to make Cyberpunk 2077’s modes of transport look dated, but the fidelity of Kelpie’s movements is movie CG-grade.

Although the developer was keen to stress all the efficiencies in Unreal Engine 5.6 that make it possible for a console game to look like this and run at 60FPS, game development is an exercise in constantly moving goalposts and this footage should be taken with a few grains of the savoury stuff. It’s probably best to think of it as a reference – this is what CDP wants the game to look and run like when it launches.

There’s no release date yet for The Witcher IV. CDP indicated that they’d have more to share very soon, though.