CD Projekt RED has abandoned its engine in favor of the modern Unreal Engine 5 — The Witcher 4 will be made on it, which worries some players.
Blogger NikTek recalled the technical demonstration and shared his thoughts. He fears that the developers showed too many elements in the technical demo. Some may not be included in the final version of the game, which will cause disappointment, as was the case with Cyberpunk 2077:
The fact that CDPR voluntarily showed this The Witcher 4 tech demo as a demonstration of Unreal Engine 5's capabilities means that they have already set the corresponding expectations for the game. If The Witcher 4 doesn't look the same at release and the gameplay is different, it will lead to the same situation with overblown promises as with Cyberpunk 2077, and I feel there will be a negative reaction. This is a "technical presentation, not real gameplay," but I find it hard to understand why they would even demonstrate the engine's capabilities if the final product won't be identical to it, except to promote the game?
Another blogger, SynthPotato, joined the discussion, sharing his vision — it seems to him that the main question now is optimization:
The main obstacle for The Witcher 4 is Unreal Engine 5. Everyone trusts CDPR to deliver a game with great gameplay, script, and open world. The problem is that no one trusts this engine. CDPR needs to focus on proving that this will be the first optimized open-world game on the UE5 engine.