“What you have to realize is that if you were to switch engines, and I’ll say this for any game anywhere, is that it is a massive effort. You are talking about dozens of people spent doing nothing but making an engine work,” explained Nesmith in an interview with Press Box PR when asked about misconceptions about the Creation Engine.

“You are talking about putting your developers into a situation where they can’t play the game. They may not even be able to work on making the game for long stretches because the engine is not there or up to snuff yet.”

Nesmith continued, noting that Bethesda has already made several modifications to the Creation Engine since it was first developed, with one key example being the multiplayer component for Fallout 76.

“That’s an enormous thing. We ran into it with Fallout 76. The engine had to be changed dramatically to do multiplayer. It made things extremely difficult for the team,” he said.

“Also, the Creation Engine has been tweaked to serve Bethesda’s purposes for so many years, decades really, that at this point, it’s probably a wiser bet to keep working with it. The benefits that you get from switching to Unreal Engine are probably not going to materialize until two titles down the road.”

Considering all the work that has gone into it, even Nesmith would be wary of switching out of the Creation Engine. Rather than making the jump to Unreal Engine, he suggests adding any specific features that developers might need into the toolkit they are already using.

“I would fall on the side of keeping the Creation Engine, keep working on it. If there’s something you see that is only possible in Unreal, put it into the Creation Engine. That would be a place where, if it’s anything vs everything, you say, let’s do that. Let’s do that anything. If Unreal does it and Creation doesn’t, and we feel we need to do it, do it,” he said.

Interestingly, project lead on Fallout 4 overhaul mod Fallout: London, Dean Carter, has expressed his beliefs that Bethesda should move on from the Creation Engine in favour of something like Unreal Engine 5 for its future projects.

“I’m really worried that they’re gonna keep going with the Creation Engine,” said Carter when asked about what new features could show up in Fallout 5. “I understand that it is proprietary. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of pluses to it. I’m not just someone that’s going to sit there and lie and say it’s a terrible engine. It could be better, yes, but it’s not a bad engine; I do think it started to show its age. It needs to be overhauled somewhat.”

For more of Nesmith’s thoughts, check out what he thinks about Starfield and a potential remake of Morrowind.

So, without any delays, here are all the details we learned at State of Unreal 2025.

Narrative And Reactive World Design

The narrative and world design glimpses from the demo paint an intriguing setting for the upcoming sequel. Valdrest, the featured port town, is filled with gossip, shady characters, and potential quest hooks, hinting at a hub-based storytelling structure rich with depth and exploration. One quest has Ciri hunting a deadly manticore, but beneath that lies talk of smuggling and other morally grey topics and this suggests a layered, multi-threaded quest system that could weave in political intrigue and tough choices. More importantly, the world feels reactive, not just a backdrop, but an engaging sandbox where dynamic events unfold naturally, rather than relying solely on scripted sequences, something we have already seen in The Witcher 3.

Standard PS5 Footage

Now let’s shift our focus to the technical details of the demo. Right at the beginning of the presentation, it was reconfirmed that The Witcher 4 is being developed in Unreal Engine 5, with CD Projekt Red working closely alongside Epic Games. Then came the big moment, in-engine footage from a tech demo, running at 60 FPS with ray tracing on a standard PlayStation 5. And honestly? It looks good. Sure, it’s just a tech demo and not necessarily representative of the final product, we get that, but the fact that something this visually impressive is running on a base PS5? That’s borderline insane.

Joint-CEO of CD PROJEKT RED, Michał Nowakowski had the following to say on the matter, “We started our partnership with Epic Games to push open-world game technology forward. To show this early look at the work we’ve been doing using Unreal Engine running at 60 FPS on PlayStation 5, is a significant milestone — and a testament of the great cooperation between our teams. But we’re far from finished. I look forward to seeing more advancements and inspiring technology from this partnership as development of The Witcher 4 on Unreal Engine 5 continues.”

Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games added that, “CD PROJEKT RED is one of the industry’s best open-world game studios, and we’re grateful that they’re working with us to push Unreal Engine forward with The Witcher 4. They are the perfect partner to help us develop new world-building features that we can share with all Unreal Engine developers.”

New Region

CD Projekt Red also reconfirmed that players will step into the boots of Ciri, now a fully realized Witcher and seasoned hunter. The demo showcased a brand-new region: Kovir. The aspects of a lush, serene open-world environments are something we have seen in The Witcher 3 but in The Witcher 4, everything looks super detailed. With the region’s dense forests, hills, and amazing vistas, Kovir looks breathtakingly beautiful, almost peaceful. But knowing the world of The Witcher, danger is never far behind and those silent peaks are almost certainly hiding more than just stunning views.

Meet Ciri’s companion

Missing Roach already? Well, don’t get too nostalgic, Geralt’s trusty steed isn’t making a return so far. Instead, Ciri’s horse is named Kelpie, a nod to her unique journey and a spiritual successor to Roach. But what’s truly impressive is how Unreal Engine 5 takes horse movement technology to the next level. Thanks to multi-character motion matching, Ciri can mount Kelpie from any angle or speed with seamless and realistic animations. Combine that with root motion and machine-learned deformations, and you get incredibly lifelike riding physics, complete with accurate muscle movement, all without a dip in frame rate performance and processes. This is going to be a next-gen horse, alright!

World Detail

Now let’s talk about how Unreal Engine 5 handles world-building, and it’s seriously impressive. One of the standout features is the new Nanite Foliage System, which allows artists to craft ultra-dense, fully 3D foliage with complete lighting and shadow support. This by the way isn’t just a visual boost; it replaces the good old LOD systems with adaptive voxel-based rendering, delivering both higher visual fidelity and better performance.

Instead of relying on flat 2D alpha cards, every leaf and pine is now rendered in full 3D using voxel-based adaptive representation. The result? Foliage that interacts far more naturally with lighting and shadow, adding a layer of realism to every forest in the game’s open world.

Improved NPCs

NPC behaviours in The Witcher 3 were one of the game’s few weaker aspects, understandable, given it’s a nearly decade old title. But The Witcher 4 looks set to raise the bar significantly when it comes to NPC behaviour and realism. One look at Valdrest and its clear CD Projekt Red is aiming for a far more immersive population system, NPCs now react dynamically to the player, sparking believable chain effects throughout the crowd. This leap is powered by technologies like MetaHuman, Smart Objects, and Chaos Cloth, ensuring characters not only look more real but behave naturally. The goal? To minimize the gap between main characters and background NPCs, visually and behaviourally, and make the world feel truly immersive.

Crowd System

And then there’s the crowd system, a massive leap forward from what we saw back in games like Assassin’s Creed Unity. In The Witcher 4 tech demo, CD Projekt Red showcased over 300 individually animated NPCs on screen at once, each interacting and moving with fluidity. This is powered by a brand-new Unreal Animation Framework that keeps everything running smoothly at a stable 60 FPS, with enough headroom left for core gameplay systems to operate without many issues. It’s a staggering level of technical achievement that promises cities and towns that feel genuinely alive and reactive. Whether the final game will feature this many NPCs remains to be seen, but the sheer potential on display is enough to get us excited.

Better Streaming System

Remember the occluder issues in The Witcher 3, where objects would sometimes pop into view right in front of the player? Say goodbye to that. Thanks to major improvements in world streaming, assets now load in faster. While CD Projekt Red didn’t explicitly mention loading screens, the demo’s seamless transitions make it clear, The Witcher 4 is pushing hard toward a fully immersive, uninterrupted open world.

Bonus Reveal

And right at the end, we got a brief reveal at Lan Exeter which is a major port city and Kovir’s winter capital. The demo closed with a cinematic shot of Ciri on horseback, gazing out over the horizon as she calmly says, “Onward, Kelpie. We’ve work to do.” It’s a short moment, but it feels loaded with meaning, likely hinting at the beginning of a major narrative arc and it’s the kind of tease that leaves you wanting more.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release window or platforms, but it’s likely coming to PS5, Xbox and PC.

Epic has described one of its key goals with the latest release of Unreal Engine as being able to maintain steady frame rates of 60 FPS in open world games that focus on high visual fidelity. According to the announcement, the engine is now capable of achieving this on all modern platforms, from PC to consoles, and even smartphones.

“With this release, one of our key goals was to empower you to build super-high-fidelity, large-scale open worlds that run smoothly at 60 FPS across current-generation hardware,” wrote Epic Games on its official website. “We’ve also made major strides toward a truly engine-first animation and rigging workflow, reducing the need for DCC round-tripping. Plus, MetaHumans can now be fully authored directly within the engine, unlocking a more streamlined and efficient creative process.”

Among the features revealed for Unreal Engine 5.6 is Hardware Ray Tracing, which allows for better performance when games make use of Lumen Global Illumination. The latest version of the engine is able to eliminate bottlenecks that might arise from the CPU when it comes to rendering large-scale open worlds.

Unreal Engine 5.6 can also make use of the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin to allow developers to get better performance out of a game when static content is streamed in and out when a game is started up. For players, this largely means that there will be less bottlenecks for a game to deal with when streaming in static objects that can’t be interacted with, but add to the scenery.

Animators can also enjoy some of the newer features of the engine, including a revamp to Tween Tools that allows animators to have greater control over selected key frames and nodes. Part of these enhancements is also the new Curve Editor toolbar that further helps animators with manipulating key frames, along with the addition of the Lattice tool and Smart Key snapping.

With Unreal Engine 5.6, the MetaHuman Creator will also now be fully integrated into the engine’s toolkits. MetaHuman allows developers to create realistic looking human characters that can then be used in the rest of Unreal Engine during the development of the game. Developers can also capture actors’ performances in real time with most webcams and smartphones to then animate in the engine in real-time.

For developers, both professional and aspiring, that might be wondering, Unreal Engine 5.6 is available right now. For more details about some of the new features of Unreal Engine 5.6, including demonstrations of things like the new Hardware Ray Tracing, check out the showcase video below. Also check out how The Witcher 4 will make use of some of these features.

The next morning, Ciri, the protagonist of the new trilogy, discovers the wreckage and seeks to learn more. Though much of the trailer is cinematics, the transition to in-engine visuals and the overarching shot of the environment is impressive. From there, Ciri ventures to Vardrest to meet her contact and discuss the fate of the wagon.

The Witcher 4’s prominence at the State of Unreal is due to utilizing Unreal Engine 5. Its tech showcase outlined the usage of Nanite Foliage, MetaHuman, Chaos Flesh, and more along with motion matching animation for Ciri and her mount, Kelpie.

Of course, it’s still a ways off from release with platforms yet to be announced. Stay tuned for further updates.

Like Geralt, she has a dedicated steed known as Kelpie. Using multi-character motion matching, Ciri and Kelpie move perfectly in sync, and you’ll see realistic muscles and skin stretching on Kelpie’s skin. The developer also highlights Unreal Engine 5.6’s Nanite Foliage for the forest.

As for Valdrest, it’s incredibly detailed, with various NPCs going about their business. The responsiveness is also noteworthy – bumping into someone carrying fruits will cause them to spill, each rendered individually. Ciri eventually meets her contact, who had some business with the destroyed coach and inquires about the Manticore.

The team discusses the use of MetaHuman and Chaos Flesh alongside the implementation of a new animation framework with over 300 skeletal mesh agents. Interestingly, there’s still some room to allow for performance. The showcase closes with Ciri overlooking another city and chasing the Manticore.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release window or platforms, so stay tuned for more details.

Taking to Twitter, CD Projekt RED announced that it will be bringing The Witcher 4 to Epic Games’ State of Unreal presentation on Tuesday, June 3. Scheduled to kick off at 9:30 AM ET, the Unreal Engine-focused presentation will see CDPR “showcasing some of the innovative technology & features that will power The Witcher 4, and beyond.”

CD Projekt RED is currently working on several projects in addition to The Witcher 4, including Cyberpunk 2, which are being developed on Unreal Engine 5, so it should be interesting to see what kind of tech the studio has been developing to build a foundation for those experiences. 

Stay tuned for more details from the presentation imminently. 

In the interview, Sweeney spoke about how Epic Games is working on quite a few things simultaneously. Unreal Engine 5 itself, for instance, currently has split into two versions: Unreal Engine 5, and Unreal Editor for Fortnite.

“The idea is that the shipping version gains more and more features over time, but maintaining backwards compatibility with old versions and continuing to improve and approach the ultimate version of it as we go,” said Sweeney. “And we’ve been doing this experiment entirely within the world of Unreal Editor for Fortnite for now. We want to test this and iterate with Fortnite creators in just the metaverse usage case before we make it available to all of our partners using Unreal Engine for all of their projects.”

Sweeney describes Unreal Engine 6 as being the nexus point for all of Epic Games’ work on developing the two different forks of Unreal Engine 5. According to him, all of the features from the main Unreal Engine, including the use of C++ as its main programming language of choice, as well as all of the new features coming to the engine through Unreal Editor for Fortnite, will ultimately come together in Unreal Engine 6.

“And so the place where all these different threads of development come together is Unreal Engine 6,” he said. “It’s a few years away, we don’t have an exact time frame, but we could be seeing preview versions of it perhaps 2 to 3 years from now. And we’re making continuous progress towards it.”

“The aim for UE6 is to bring the best of both worlds together,” he continued. “Much easier gameplay programming for the Fortnite community and for licensees, but more scalability to large-scale simulations of all sorts, greater use of use, meaning it will be easier to hire programmers who are familiar with and experienced with the thing. But also ensure that every game developer has the full deployment capabilities. So they can build a game once and then ship it anywhere.”

“The ultimate version of this enables a game developer to build a game of any sort, and ship it to both Fortnite as a Fortnite Island that players can go into… or ship as a standalone game, or both. If they ship as a standalone game, they shouldn’t be missing out on the open economy either because in this time frame, we’ll have opened up the Fortnite item economy to third-party developers of all sorts.”

Ultimately, this likely means that Unreal Engine 6, when it is released, will act as more of a refinement over its predecessor rather than being a whole new engine altogether with game-changing new features. In contrast, with Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games had emphasised the engine’s new capabilities when it comes to visual fidelity with technologies like Lumen and Nanite. Unreal Engine 4 in the past was also a big step forward from its predecessor, making multiplatform game development even easier with a host of (at the time) new features.

Considering the success of Fortnite, we will likely see the first signs of Unreal Engine 6 through the popular free-to-play game.

A representative from NEOWIZ said it’s “too early” to discuss the project’s progress, but Round8 is aiming for a “higher level of perfection.” On top of hiring level designers, scenario planners and other employees, it’s brought on Jin Seung-ho (of Verdant Stars fame) as hiring director and Lee Sang-gyun (Mabinogi Heroes/Vindictus) as director. Given how successful Lies of P turned out, there are a lot of expectations from this next title.

It may be a while before it’s revealed, so stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, Lies of P will receive its first DLC in Q1 2025. We’ve yet to know the official title, setting, or story, but you can check out some of the latest artwork and listen to a track here.

As explained by Elizabeth van Wyck, COO at Halo Studios, continuing to work with Slipspace wouldn’t allow the studio to work in the manner that it wishes to going forward. “The way we made Halo games before doesn’t necessarily work as well for the way we want to make games for the future,” she said. “So part of the conversation we had was about how we help the team focus on making games, versus making the tools and the engines.”

“It’s not just about how long it takes to bring a game to market, but how long it takes for us to update the game, bring new content to players, adapt to what we’re seeing our players want,” she added. “Part of that is [in how we build the game], but another part is the recruiting. How long does it take to ramp somebody up to be able to actually create assets that show up in your game?” (Note: Halo Studios – then known as 343 Industries – was one of several Xbox studios to be affected by mass layoffs in January 2023 that saw over 10,000 job cuts across all of Microsoft.)

Halo Studios’ art director Chris Matthews added, “Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old. Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate.

“One of the primary things we’re interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience. Nanite and Lumen [Unreal’s rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn’t seen before. As artists, it’s incredibly exciting to do that work.”

Interestingly, Halo Studios’ shift to Unreal doesn’t come out of the blue. The studio has spent the last couple of years on Project Foundry, which is an expansive tech demo built on Unreal Engine 5 that it describes as “a true reflection of what would be required for a new Halo game using Unreal, and a training tool for how to get there”. Apparently, the tech demo has been “made with the same rigor, process, and fidelity as a shipped game would be.”

Project Foundry entails three entire biomes built by Halo Studios. One is inspired by the Pacific Northwest, the other is dubbed Coldlands and is described as “a region locked in a deep freeze”, while the third, the Blightlands, is “a world consumed by the parasitic Flood”. You can see screenshots of Project Foundry below. 

Interestingly enough, Halo Studios says the work done on Project Foundry may very well wind up in future games. 

“Where this type of work’s been done historically, across the industry, it can contain a lot of smoke and mirrors,” said art director Chris Matthews. “

It sometimes leads players down paths where they believe it’s going to be one thing, and then something else happens. The ethos of Foundry is vigorously the opposite of that.

“Everything we’ve made is built to the kind of standards that we need to build for the future of our games. We were very intentional about not stepping into tech demo territory. We built things that we truly believe in, and the content that we’ve built – or at least a good percentage of it – could travel anywhere inside our games in the future if we so desire it.”

Studio president Pierre Hintze added, “It’s fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects.”

Speaking of which, Halo Studios has confirmed that it is currently working on multiple new Halo games.

The Age of Coal is Over

Set 30 years after Frostpunk 1, the expansive sequel replaces coal with oil as a more powerful heating resource. Frostpunk 2’s opening hours are spent using coal, but as demonstrated in the beta, this primitive resource fails to keep the generator going for long. As such, one of the beta’s multiple endings involves the discovery of an oil colony. Oil’s role in gameplay terms is getting the city to thrive instead of just surviving the cold, resulting in a city that can expand far beyond its generator. It’s clear that the dev team is saving the finer details of oil’s role for release.

Build and Manage Entire Districts Instead of Just Buildings

With oil comes great responsibility, and that means a bigger city. Frostpunk 1 focused more on the intimate hub surrounding the all-important generator. Things were much smaller in scale in the coal days, with a single building marking a substantial addition. Now, players can expand their city into different districts. Each district in Frostpunk 2 fulfills a unique production role. A housing district will require different resources than a food district, supplying you with distinct advantages. Supply and demand fuel the economics of Frostpunk 2, a change from the brutal ‘scraping to survive’ economics that the first game necessitated.

You’re No Longer the Sole Dictator

Frostpunk 2 has you negotiating with leaders to pass laws through a democratic Council Hall. The Council Hall adds a deep new diplomatic layer to the game, tying together the new faction system with it. Proposing a new law is often met with stern resistance from committee members, forcing the player to negotiate with them and pressure delegates. Your relationships with factions will be strained if you negotiate too forcefully with them. Factions are a complex new wrinkle deserving of their own entry on this list.

Different Competing Factions

Upon starting up a new game, you’re met with the option to choose between different Communities to populate your city. Worker communities prioritize different values and resources than thinker communities, with each eventually developing into full-fledged factions. Factions come into play through the Council Hall negotiations and the research of new buildings and technologies. For example, faction-exclusive research comes at a discount if you are on good terms with that particular faction. Get on bad terms with workers or the technocrat faction and they could work against you in Council Hall sessions and make it harder to research certain buildings.

Time Is Measured in Weeks Instead of Days

Frostpunk 2 moves along at a brisker pace than its predecessor, literally. The in-game clock now includes week, month, and year indicators. Days pass by in literal minutes, and the visuals indicate as much. Roads between the connected districts are lit by the blurred outline of swift-moving citizens, reminiscent of time-lapse car lights. This zoomed-out perspective of in-game time is just one manifestation of Frostpunk 2’s expanded scope.

Frostpunk 2 Uses Unreal Engine 5 While Frostpunk 1 Used Liquid Engine

Frostpunk 1 doesn’t look ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but wow does the sequel outshine it in the graphics department. Lighting in particular really pops due to the high contrast Lumen tech facilitated by UE5. The team does a good job differentiating terrain to make everything look organic and rugged in Frostpunk 2, which is just further helped by the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5.

Hexagonal Grid Tiles

Surprisingly enough, Frostpunk 1 didn’t have grid-based building placement. It didn’t need it due to the micro-scale it was operating on. But now with comprehensive districts connected by long roads, grids are a necessity. Empty land spaces are divvied up by hexagonal tiles, but once you build on the land, a wider grid outline surrounds your property. This is a small, yet vital addition that accommodates Frostpunk 2’s larger scope.

Frostbreaking

Extracting coal and ore deposits in the frozen wastes beyond the city is no simple feat. Unlike the first game, you must send Frostbreaker teams to break the ice before building on the tiles and extracting materials. Frostbreaking may seem like unnecessary busywork, but it allows you to expand the city limits far beyond anything dreamt of in the first game. You can stretch the city out far into the distance … if you can keep up with the resource demand, that is.

Relations, Tension, and Trust Replace Discontent and Hope Social Resources

Frostpunk 2 builds upon the first game’s social resources with Relations, Tension, and Trust. All three of these resources tie into the substantial role that factions and communities play. How other faction groups perceive you replace the brutal survival-oriented problems faced in the first game.

New Crime and Squalor Resource Tabs

Crime increases as goods become more scarce, as you’d expect. You can mitigate increased crime by posting Guard Squads around the districts, but a general population increase leads to a rise in crime. Likewise, Squalor worsens as the population increases, resulting in a dirtier, more disease-addled city. Making sure you balance city expansion with resources to counterbalance the increased population looks to be a fun challenge in Frostpunk 2.

A Population of Thousands Rather Than Hundreds

And of course, the reason we have new Squalor and Crime resources is due to Frostpunk 2’s much larger population. Micromanaging a sub-hundred population in Frostpunk 1 required sophisticated micromanagement skills, while the sequel requires you to multitask across multiple social vectors and resources to satiate the masses.

From Micro to Macro

This shift from micro to macro is a pretty substantial one. I can’t help but think that there’s an element of intimacy and familiarity that is lost when managing a multi-district city. This macro-scale approach will undoubtedly rope in new players averse to the first game’s micromanagement. But the broader scale also makes Frostpunk 2 a little bit less niche and more akin to other city-builder games. While there are still micromanagement elements present in Frostpunk 2, the zoomed-out perspective emphasizes the macro far more.

Far Different Moral Dilemmas

Moral dilemmas in Frostpunk 2 mostly show themselves when deciding which Faction you want to partner with and what suggestions to prioritize. Getting a law passed that bans food additives isn’t as black and white of a moral decision as boosting labor for a couple of weeks to stave off the cold. The moral dilemmas presented in Frostpunk 2 may be less dramatic than in the first game, but they’re more nuanced and politically driven.

Shift From Survival Management to Social Management

Frostpunk 2’s creative director perfectly summed up the game’s premise with the question, “What happens when you survive the un-survivable?” Every system in the game reflects this shift from basic survival to societal evolution. From the laws passed at Council Hall to all the different Factions at play, Frostpunk 2 focuses more on social management than survival management.

You Play as the Steward, Replacing the Deceased Captain

Finally, there’s us, the player. We played the role of the Captain back in the first game. We held the responsibility as a lone dictator, in a sense, with little to no opposition but the deathly cold and riotous populace. Your role in Frostpunk 2 is still a major one, though there’s a lot more teamwork and negotiations with other leaders this time around. The Steward is still a big fish, but the pond is much bigger than the first game, making it a more diplomatic affair overall. We’ll see just how much we, as the Steward, can get away with when Frostpunk 2 releases on September 20th.