Creative Bloq is in Orlando for Epic Games' Unreal Fest. Today, we got the lowdown on everything that's new in the best game development software in the State of Unreal 2025.
Highlights included the launch of Unreal Engine 5.6. And the update's new graphics and animation capabilities were shown off in spectacular style in a truly beautiful The Witcher 4 tech demo.
The Unreal Engine 5.6 tech demo from The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red offers a peek at the upcoming game's vast fantasy open world. Developers played live on stage on a base PS5 at 60 frames per second with raytracing on (see from the 4 minute mark in the video above).
With new protagonist Ciri replacing Geralt, they took us through lush forest landscapes and then to a busy port market town called Valdrest and a breath view of the kingdom of Kovir, showing the breadth of Unreal Engine 5.6's capabilities, from complex vegetation to bustling crowd scenes.
For the former, Unreal Engine 5.6's new Nanite Foliage geometry system allows every leaf to be modelled for incredible density. In the latter, we see improvements in the responsiveness of character actions, including complex chain reactions.
For the marketplace scenes, character tech including MetaHuman tools and the new Unreal animation framework come to the fore, closing the gap in quality between the game's protagonist and NPCs. At one point, we see over 300 animated skeletal mesh agents on screen, while improved Smart Objects also enhance responsiveness.
But I think what I wound most impressive of all – and most illustrative of how much game graphics tech has improved – is the earlier appearance of Kelpie, a new horse. Making use of the new multi-character motion matching in Unreal Engine, Ciri and Kelpie appear to move synchronised during mounting at any angle and speed.
Root motion makes the horse's movement feels realistic and grounded and machine-learned deformations create the impression of photorealistic muscles moving and flexing under Kelpie's skin. I could watch it all day!
Unreal Engine 5.6 is available to developers today. As for The Witcher 4, there's still no news on the release date. CD Projekt Red launched the trailer at the Game Awards 2024 in December but we already knew as far back as 2022 that it had switched to UE5 for the game after the issues with the Cyberpunk 2077 launch.
For more of today's software news, see the launch of Photoshop for Android.
