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A clutch of new The Witcher 4 screenshots have been released as part of CD Projekt Red's appearance at the State of Unreal showcase - and if the RPG looks as good as this at launch, it's gonna be an insta-buy for me.
CDPR and Epic shared just over a dozen new images, as they collaborated to show off the latest state of the latter's Unreal Engine - which The Witcher 4 is made in (and which its reveal trailer from 2024 was pre-rendered in). Frankly, they look astounding - Ciri looks better than ever, but the world around her is also huge, incredibly detailed, and filled with NPCs.
There are plenty of things to pick up on there, but that final picture really blows me away. The draw distance and terrain detailing are both astounding, but so is the foliage quality in that forest image. My real highlight, however, was the sheer volume of NPCs in that village scene - a density, if not quantity, that blows anything The Witcher 3 managed out of the water.
The other notable part of this demo was a look at Ciri herself. We got a good look at her in the original trailer, of course, but CDPR has offered a little extra here. Nothing much has changed, but I do enjoy the picture of her facing down a distant draconid - at this distance, it's hard to tell exactly what it is, but it has thrown me. Witchers don't hunt true dragons, of course, but it's also not obviously a Wyvern or Forktail. Perhaps it's a previously unseen type of massive, flying lizard?
Actually, I might be wrong about those lizard allegations. Some of the official images from the trailer are pretty dark, but they revolve around some unfortunate NPCs appearing to come up against a nighttime threat. In those pictures, we get up-close-and-personal with some kind of bat-like monster with big wings - that could be the flying creature from earlier, but even if it is, I can't tell what we're coming up against.
Finally, there's a closer look at Ciri's horse. One of these images is an out-of-game render, but the other seems to be an in-game shot. Sure, it's not Roach - but actually, maybe it is, who knows what Ciri's horse-naming conventions will be? Why wouldn't she borrow them from Geralt?
That's a full run-down of all the new official screenshots, but we'll have plenty more breakdowns of the new Witcher 4 information as the day goes on.
