CD Projekt Red treated the world to a gorgeous 4K image of The Witcher 4 found running on Unreal Engine 5 on PS5- not actual gameplay. The Game Awards’ tweet showed what appeared to be a stupendous fantasy landscape; eagle-eyed gamers noticed a fine print saying “TECHNICAL PRESENTATION-NOT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY,” and that little distinction became the firestarter to a day-long argument.
Oh? Lets talk about visuals: Breathtaking! The kind where you want to clean your glasses and be sure you truly do see it. Adarsh V M said it was magical, which, actually, is one of the best words to say about it. Lighting, textures, massive swell of foliage-there’s almost an urge in you wanting to wreck your way through these tech demos. Well, that’s the catch; they are merely tech demos. Not the game. And the gamers have opinions.
Some comments, in the words of RedMeansMain, chastised The Game Awards for not clearing up that this was a tech demo in their original tweet. “Why don’t you include ‘tech demo’ in your tweet?” they said. Good question! Another pointed out “(this) demo runs in 4K on PS5… dis demo, not a game.” Translation: “Don’t get too hyped yet.”
But then came the nay-sayers. “I promise you this game will run like absolute dog water and need about 1 year worth of patches when it launches,” said Jay N (BroDABz). Oof, that’s rude, but in all honesty, after witnessing the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, could anyone really deny that? To which Jon (aslird) then added his voice, reminding everyone that “tech demo” and “game image” are “2 very different things.”
But then again, there is an alternate lighter possibility. Gamers like BeelzeBoss (GodsNotReal420) are downright ecstatic that they’re finally getting to actually enter The Witcher world. “Never played a Witcher before. Might play a Witcher now,” they said. And honestly, ditto for me. So even if just a demo, it’s still working its magic on people.
Then, of course, there is an “An 4K” typo from the original tweet-from the grammarian’s point of view-that Cropper couldn’t resist correcting. (“A 4K in-game image 👍🏻,” they wrote.) And then there are the wild cards like from ohcomrade1: “Make Ciri trans.” Uh… sure?
At the end of the day, this teaser achieves its primary purpose of enriching the hype train. But smarter by the day, gamers now see through these shenanigans. Tech demos look spectacular whereas actual performance, the million-dollar question. So, if this is just anything near what The Witcher 4 is going to look like, we are in for a treat. Just…Don’t pre-order till the reviews hit.
