The Witcher 4's open-world already looks and sounds absolutely massive

The open world for The Witcher 4 not only looks drop-dead gorgeous, but it sounds like it’s going to be absolutely massive.

We got our first look at The Witcher 4 during The Game Awards in December 2024. However, while this trailer garnered tons of hype and looked stunning, it was important to remember that it was a CGI trailer with no actual gameplay.

Since that time, fans of CD Projekt RED’s famed RPG series have been desperate to see what The Witcher 4 looks like in action and yesterday, we were treated to its first gameplay powered by Unreal Engine 5.

We saw a more mature Ciri, the lead protagonist of The Witcher 4, explore a small part of the Kovir region with her horse, Kelpie, on a contract mission to kill a deadly monster.

Ciri makes her way through a small village called Valdrest, packed with hundreds of vibrant NPCs, going about their daily business. We also saw the gorgeous wildlife of Kovir.

I can hand on heart say that, come release, The Witcher 4 could very well be the best-looking video game to date.

What’s even more impressive is that not only did The Witcher 4 look visually striking with its 4K resolution, but it also ran at 60 frames-per-second, on a standard PlayStation 5, and not the Pro model. It’s pure wizardry.

While we don’t know for sure how large the continent map will be in The Witcher 4, it’s safe to assume that it will be considerably larger than the version featured in 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

“The Witcher 4 is confirmed to cover (at least) the region of Kovir,” explained Twitter user SynthPotato.

“If you remember, in The Witcher 3, this is where Triss smuggles all the sorcerers and sorceresses of Novigrad to, so we’ll definitely meet some of those and most likely Triss herself in this region.”

Following the initial reveal in December 2024, during an interview with CDPR's game director Sebastian Kalemba and executive producer Gosia Mitrega, they said that the map of The Witcher 4 is between 85% to 100% larger than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

There are so many reasons why we should be excited for The Witcher 4, but let’s just hope that we don't have a repeat of Cyberpunk 2077’s woeful launch.

No release date has been announced for The Witcher 4, but it will arrive on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, hopefully, within the next couple of years.

In the meantime, we might as well pass the time by getting reacquainted with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That should keep us all busy.