Speaking with DBLTAP, CD Projekt's engineering director Przemysław Czatrowski was quizzed on this recent demo, and the state of The Witcher 4 itself right now. To kick things off, the interviewer asks whether the demo "is indicative of what you hope to achieve with the game". Here's the dev response to that:
"This is definitely the direction that we want to go. The demo we presented is basically showcasing the technology that we use for building the game. So we're just super proud and super happy to share the toys that we have to build the entire thing. And yeah, the demo is basically [a showcase of the] visuals and the overall direction that we want to go, but it doesn't represent the game itself."
Fair enough, we understand that these sorts of demos exist and it can be tough to showcase a game this early - but not being representative of the final product does make the whole thing feel a bit pointless. Still, Czatrowski does go on to back up prior statements that this demo was indeed being played on a base PS5 in real time, so there is that.
"It was a 100% live presentation being played on a base PS5.
Parts of the demo were designed in order to showcase more technology, but it was still running fully on the PS5. None of the parts that were shown were pre recorded.
This was a PS5 plugged into a huge screen with a real controller and a real person playing the game."
Towards the end of the chat though, things do take a bit of a turn. When pressed further on the demo and how it was built, a PR spokesperson cuts the interview short; just after the developer spilled that the showcase took "roughly a year" to make over at the Polish studio.
In a recent reaction to this week's TW4 developments, we talked about CDPR needing to be careful with future The Witcher 4 showcases - and we're only further sure of that take after this interview. Here's hoping that the game does indeed look this impressive whenever it comes to Xbox, but it's probably best to employ a degree of caution until we see the actual game in action further down the line.
