The Witcher 4 devs are still fighting the good fight about what exactly a tech demo means when compared to the final game, which means they're "not guaranteeing that this will appear unchanged" and that the full RPG will look like what we've seen so far.
Speaking with GamesRadar+, engineering production manager Jan Hermanowicz explains that what we saw during The Witcher 4's big State of Unreal unveiling "is a technological demo and not an actual game, or gameplay." The region that The Witcher 4 is set in – the northerly nation of Kovir – "will appear in the game," and the tech demo is based on "actual assets from CD Projekt Red," but that doesn't mean that the finished game will necessarily use those same assets.
One thing Hermanowicz does point out, however, is that "the art style and the visual direction" remains distinct. Referring to The Witcher 4 reveal trailer from The Game Awards 2024, he suggests that eagle-eyed players should have noticed "some resemblance" with the Unreal demo. There's a slight difference, "but they are sharing the same character and the same style and direction." That direction is CDPR's "current approach," but since Hermanowicz also notes that The Witcher 4 is still very early in development, that approach could still change.
Part of the reason CD Projekt has been so keen to make sure the tech demo is seen as just that, is that "we took a lot of lessons from the Cyberpunk launch." The studio is trying to be "extremely transparent," Hermanowicz says – "we're not calling this gameplay, we're not pretending that this is the actual game. It is a technological demo."
Unfortunately, getting that message out can be tricky. "Could this be recognized as gameplay?" Hermanowicz asks. "A lot of people might see it like that." CD Projekt didn't necessarily help itself on that front by regularly iterating that the demo was played on-stage by a real person on a real PS5, but Hermanowicz says "we want to remain stalwart that this is a showcase of technology" rather than a finished product.
It's a trap that plenty of games have fallen foul of. Marvel's Spider-Man suffered from claims of a graphical downgrade, and as CD Projekt grappled with the message over The Witcher 4, fans of The Witcher 3 came crawling from the woodwork to remind players that it also looked very different to its trailers. At the end of the day, there's not much more that CDPR can do to get the message out there, but I fear it'll spend much of the next few years having to try anyway.
Check out our full list of upcoming CD Projekt Red games.
