Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Witcher 4: Breaking Down The NEW Demo - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

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Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Gamescast for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. Your second Kind of Funny Gamescast for the day. I'm one of your host's blessing. Adioia Jr. joining me is the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Hey, bless. How's it going on? Good afternoon. I see you again. Good afternoon. How was your lunch? Dude, I scarf that down real quick. Yeah?

Real, real quick. I had another hand roll as I do. I've been on a run of hand rolls. And hand rolls, when you think about it, very similar to ice cream. Very similar to ice cream when you think it, because they're in like a cone shape. And then, like, you know, like the seaweed plate paper they use to wrap it is like a cone. And then like the rice and fish they have inside is like the ice cream. I think everybody has thought that once in their life. I think everybody has been saying that. They go, yeah, you know what, you're right.

Everybody's been thinking that. I'm the one who says that now. Remember, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of. kind of funny membership on patreon youtube spotify or apple podcast to get all of our shows ad free watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance for your part of the show submit your thoughts and opinions as youtube super chats as we go some housekeeping for you it's a big

old week we're throwing a switch to launch party this wednesday going into thursday morning tune in as we pick up unbox and play our switch twos for the very first time uh barely even bring up this blue sky post because it's just been announced in the previous games cast uh that Greg and Tim will be going to the Nintendo Store and streaming live from there. We're getting started. It doesn't say the time. Does it say the time? It doesn't say the time on the tweet.

I'm going to say seven something is when we're going live with that. So tune in, hang out with the folks that are going to be in the studio and then the folks that are going to be at the Nintendo Store. I want to come through. Here's the thing. Nobody wants to invite me to the nighttime stream, but I'm going to come through. All right? I invited myself on there because I'm like, I don't got anything going on.

I wasn't on the meeting. So I'm pretty sure Who's fault was that blessing? Greg's for sending me to LA. So I'm pretty sure I'll mention that anybody can come through through, but I'm just going to throw a blame. That's what it is.

But I was an invite. I'm going to come through anyway. We're all dressing up. I'm going to dress up. I'm going to wear a mask. Because surely Snowick Mike will still be fucking sick. Of course. Oh, if he's still sick, we're sending him home.

And then it'll be me. It'll be me and Roger. Play a Mario Cartworld. Well, no, I'm going to be here. The way that I planned it. Just me and Roger. Playing Mario Kart World. I'm the one who forced myself into it.

Can I be honest? Yeah. I got volleyball tomorrow, right. Oh, damn. I got volleyball tomorrow. You can't do that. But, like, I miss the last two volleyball. It's a new season.

I've not shown up once yet. You can't do that. I'm the captain. I got to show up to volleyball at least once. That's like, that's like saying I have volleyball practice, like, on Christmas Eve. You can't do that.

What's up, Roger? I just want to admit something to you, Andy, about the graphic. I changed the graphic because you bullied me. You made fun of me. So I got embarrassed, so I changed the graphic, and I got sad, and I was like,

well, I'm doing it. liked all the warped texts. That was on every single text. It wasn't enough. I think there should have been more warping. Like, just warp the fucking top, the top

text that's there, too. I mean, it wasn't the fight that he was going for. You guys are mean. It wasn't meant to bully. I was like, I like the concept of like it looks like a nightclub kind of flyer, you know. I get it. Yeah. But it also, well... I love graph design. What I read as, I read it as like he learned, he watched a YouTube tutorial and was like, let me apply this to all of the assets.

Yeah. And like, you know what? You look great. I think it looked cool too. But that's happening. Switch to launch party tomorrow. Tune in. Don't be late.

Of course, remember, we're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. You already had KFD about PlayStation's A to Play predictions and a different games cast breaking down our Xbox showcase predictions. If you're a kind of funny member, Snowmike, Mike goes big with this month. Patreon's exclusive poster made by the incredible Panda Musk

Tread the Narnar is what it says on Patreon before the month ends. It's a really cool looking art right here.

Panama's so talented. Great art style. I don't like saying Shred the Narnar out loud. Today's Gregway is Greg's review of the R-O-G-Alli-X so far.

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by X-Real, but will tell you

about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. The topic of the show is a spinoff of a KFGD story that didn't happen. So, me and Tim, right, we sit down for KFGD, we start doing

the show, we talk about our PlayStation predictions, and then we move to story number two. But before we moved to story number two, we went to ad break, and we had a conversation, a really real conversation about how big this story is, because the Witcher 4 had a big old presentation at the Unreal Engine 5 event that went down this morning.

Part of Summer Game Fest. Part of Summer Game Fest website. Which, by the way, Summer Game Fest has a weird website. I don't think I like it. Barry, pull up the Summer Game Fest website. I don't think I like it. The icons reminded me of like 2009 iOS, maybe 2011 iOS. It's just something about the Summer Games website.

I don't... Is it SummerGamefest.com? SummerGamefest.com. It doesn't... Oh, that's why I... I generally put it in summer Games Fest. It feels like a website that is unofficial

that a fan made. It looks like it's optimized for mobile. When you scroll down... Well, I mean, those graphics look good, but like, I don't... It does look like an iOS thing. It's interesting, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.

But anyway, that's where I saw that the Witcher thing was going to be there, which was kind of surprising. So, I was making... I was talking to some people about this, right? about how when Summer Game Fest first hit the scene, it was Jeff Keeley making a calendar and essentially claiming every other showcase

as being part of Summer Game Fest. I didn't know he was still doing that. Any new show? Because like the place he used to day to play, they're not talking to Jeff and being like, we're part of your Summer Game Fest, right? Or are they? Am I underrating the amount of effort in like...

Yeah, I don't know. I got to assume that, you know, I mean, it's a smart call to see all these showcases and go, yeah, it's all one big festival, it's all one big thing. I mean, I do like the fact, I didn't know this calendar was here, I do like the fact that

it organizes all this, because I actually really didn't need this. Yeah, add to calendar, look at it, a little add to calendar button. So shout out to Jeff for doing this. And even better, you know, it's a mutually benefiting sort of relationship. Yeah, it's all just promotion. I'm sure these places aren't bunded, you know,

they're getting their, their image sort of shown there. Because my question is, if kind of funny announced a game showcase for Monday, like if we refresh this page, does it just show up? Without obviously

even talking to Jeff. Well, I don't think Jeff likes Snowback Mike. Maybe that sort of those are edged in it. I'm kidding. So anyway, yeah. So wait, this is on the website, The Witcher 4?

Yes, it's the first thing. Oh, state of Unreal. There you go. Okay, cool. Well, the state of Unreal happened at 630 a.m. time according to the schedule. And as part of the state of Unreal, CD Project Red showed up and they showed a lot of The Witcher 4. Um, they, I have an article that I want

to read through. But before I read through it, I want to start off with a cinematic that they showed, like two minutes cinematic that they showed for the Witcher 4 to kind of set the tone and talk about that before we get into the nitty-gritty details about the tech at work in the Witcher 4. Because that is what the topic of the show is for this show, is the tech at work going on in there. But I would love that. I haven't seen it yet. Barrett, if you can pull up the cinematic trailer so we can live react to it. Oh, sleep is he? The plough and plunkard. Break me purlie's on this blasted, pit ridden tracked.

Oh, Jesus. Oh. That's funny who's got a killed and ripped out of the car. Audio listeners, a man was ripped from the vehicle. It was ripped from the vehicle. And it looks like the vehicle there and the carriers there is being carried by him off. I'm gonna watch it on my laptop I synced it up timelines

That looks like a griffin Things don't be Things aren't working out from It's very disgusting looking monster What would you call that creature? I don't even know Is that a griff I don't think it was

It doesn't look like it had the mouth of like an ork Wyvern's the big bat looking things Looks like a big bat No Wyvern's a dragon that doesn't have Right Yeah Where it's arms or it's man that looks fantastic Everybody inside is saying Manticore

Holy cow We got Siri on screen almost have me fooled Fruent God damn Then we get a quick scene I will say unfortunate That whatever this trailer was reposted by IGN

Is a 1080P enhanced the bit rate I'm not sure if the OG stream was in 4K at all But I would hope so This longer video that we have directly From the Witcher YouTube page Does go up to 4K Nice there we go

We weren't sure where this was in that video, so we just decided to react to this. Even better. I mean, look stunning. One thing I will say, just sort of first impressions and reactions from it, is if you bring back up the footage just on these two

NPCs, Barrett, for the little of Witcher 3 I've played, it's still like my biggest gaming sin is that I only put like five or six hours into it. Which surprises me. And that was as of recently, like when it came back as, when they sort of, you know, did the port.

Like the enhanced version, yeah. That's when I sort of hopped into it. And I think initially my big worries about CD Project Red moving to Unreal and losing the Red engine was that, you know, you worry about things becoming very homogenous. You worry about things sort of looking samey. Yeah. If the whole future seems to be like it's always going to be Unreal Engine 5. and there's a lot of positives and negatives to that. I think positives, it helps out great for employees and coworkers and games to get done quicker

because you're bringing in employees that don't have to learn a new engine because the last two games they worked on were on Unreal Engine 5 as well, and that just helps speed up the process a bit more. But my worries have been calmed a little bit because still looking at the way these characters, Because, look, obviously, they're not only calm because the game looks amazing, but it still looks very Witcher. These NPCs still look like they've been kind of ripped out from the Witcher 3 game and just up-resed and made to look better with lighting and everything. There's still something about the look of it that feels right. You know, I think whenever I think of whenever indie games show off that they're working in Unreal Engine 5, it always kind of has the same sort of look.

but you discount the fact that larger teams can customize this shit out of Under Engine 5 and push tech further in certain areas. The game looks really damn stunning and the fact that they're saying it's PS5. That's the thing is, and we're watching the cinematic, right? And we're, after this,

Bear is going to bring up some of the actual I was going to say actual gameplay, but they did come around and say that it's, this is, it's essentially gameplay running in the same engine as the Witcher 4, but it's not straight, it's not straight up Witcher 4.

gameplay. I have a different article that I'll find and pull up in a second to kind of clarify that, right? But like, as we watch this cinematic, my first blush is, yeah, this looks fantastic, and I think to hop off of what you're saying, as far as them hopping to this new engine, I think it's very

key that they are very clearly partnered with Epic and Unreal Engine 5, and this is sort of the showcase game for the engine, because like, that means that they're talking and they're working together very closely. And I that is exactly what you want. One of the things that I'll say about

cyberpunk 2077 as far as one of my favorite things about it is how that game looks both stylistically but then also like how the technology pulls the style together when I'm walking through Night City and I see the lights and I see the way the characters move and animate and I see like how much they have going on in that world. There's a distinct style there even when I go back and play The Witcher 3 which 2015 game and so when I play it in 2024 or whatever like you know there is a sense of all right i can tell if this looks a little bit old there is still a sense of style and a sense of intention and walking through the forest and seeing how the lights come through the trees and like i think there has been something special that

cd projects being able to do and maintain with the visuals of their games within the red engine but making the shift to unreal engine five the thing that you would hope the most is that you're still getting like that top tier no we're putting everything into like how this is going to present in like how we're going to implement the technology to like make the facial animations look good, make the lighting look great, make, you know, the amount of textures going on in the backgrounds and all that stuff, you know, great, make the foliage feel full, all that stuff. And I'm happy that they're working this closely with Epic, with whatever this partnership is, right, to like make it happen. Because as we're watching the gameplay demo start here,

this looks fucking insane. And of course, it's a tech demo. You know, the game is still years out. this is a showcase and so like who knows how this is going to differ from the final thing I do love this as a presentation for what they're doing because as they go into this they talk about like how they've gotten the foliage to this level

right like what they're doing with crowds and stuff I do have an article that I want to read from Polygon to give some context to this titled The Witcher 4 has been shown running on PS5 and stunning new demo footage this is written by Isaac Rouse at Polygon At the state of Unreal 2025, CD Project Red unveiled an impressive new tech demo for The Witcher 4,

highlighting its cutting-edge graphics, immersive world design, and the debut of Nanite foliage, which dramatically enhances the realism of natural environments. We're introduced to Kelpie series horse companion, a sleek black stallion with a red saddle that matches her red and black attire. While riding, the upgraded physics engine is on full display. Kelpie's body moves with realistic weight. and individual muscles are visibly flexing as she gallops, adding an impressive layer of authenticity.

If you're watching the video version, they're about to show it in a second. It won my favorite parts where they zoom into the horse's legs and actually show the muscles as they're going to kind of show the level of detail they're putting in to make sure the horse feels real and natural. Continuing on with the article, oh, here it is. The horse is running.

Look at the muscle groups. God, dang. This shit is insane. And then they fucking, yeah, show the actual anatomical muscles. Yeah, they show like the musculature underneath the skin and that's, it's not just, it's not just artists and designers, you know, pushing pixels in certain ways. Not to, you know, discount that, but a lot of it is like, no, we want these things to be as

accurate as possible and that's why you're seeing those muscle groups flex. We have systems to simulate how this actually looks. Continuing on in the article, the camera then pulls back to showcase the surrounding wilderness, thanks to Unreal Engine 5.6's Neonite foliage. The demo features trees, grass, and plant life rendered with incredible density, life-like detail, and essentially unlimited draw distance.

Zooming back in, Siri arrives at a bustling town. Here, the game's world, the game's world responsiveness shines. In a crowded market, townsfolk gather to watch a performing bear while Siri weaves through the throng. She bumps into a nearer, she bumps into a passerby, carrying a crate of apples, prompting him to react and drop a few pieces. Even small details, like being able to seamlessly have your witcher drop a coin to a beggar,

add to the world's interactivity and depth. Andy, how do you react to what you're seeing here? I mean, it's, you know, everything, this hustling and bustling town, seeing all of the nanitech working on the foliage earlier was really, really damn cool. You know, we talked about this on the prior games cast Where You know, we were all really stunned by the cyberpunk footage Yeah

That one year and then Kind of figure out exactly what was going on there And you go, all right, we've been down this road before I've, you know, I've been lied to before I've been tricked before And I It still blows me away that this is running on a PS5 with the level of fidelity that we're getting

and I think a lot of my judges will have to be reserved for the inevitable digital found you break down to see exactly what sort of pixels are being pushed or what sort of pixel count we're actually looking at because if it's a normal PS5 that means that we're not getting any sort of upreasing technology necessarily being used a whole lot Yeah.

And they don't have the PSSR. They don't got that pisser. They don't have the pisser in there. I mean, it's stunning. It's super impressive. And I think the level of crowds that they were able to get to make these worlds feel super, like just really, really natural. And these little random events happening again, this isn't necessarily even gameplay, though, right? This is just like.

So the update that VGC got from, got from CD Project Red, VGC. writes, CD Project Red has confirmed to VGC that what was shown wasn't Witcher 4 gameplay, but a tech demo set in the Witcher 4 world. Quote, this is a tech demo and a first look at the cutting edge technology powering the Witcher 4, but not the Witcher 4

itself, a spokesperson said to VGC. It showcases powerful foundation, the powerful foundation, we're building in close collaboration with Epic Games to push open world design further than ever before, and the core systems and features were developing using Unreal Engine 5.

We're really proud of this early milestone and excited to give you a sneak peek at some of the cool tech like UAF, nanite foliage, smart objects, MLD-former, and fast geo-streaming that are helping shape the future of the Witcher. These, the facial reactions and mocapping and everything looks so freaking impressive. And I can't wait to watch and break more of a down blessing. Yes, after a word from our sponsor. This episode's brought to you by X-Real. Y'all know that a few months ago my life changed forever when I brought a pair of X-Real-1 AR glasses on a long flight to New York.

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Go to Xreal.com for more. And we're back. And I want to bring in a super chat from Guitar Hero Arrow who writes in and says, I haven't felt this way about a gameplay tease slash reveal since RER2. This looks fucking incredible. I'm going to lose myself in this game. And I think for me, I want to start there. because I think you give really, really good context

as far as where we're at around this time before Cyberpunk 277 came out. As far as like impressions that we got from footage before the game came out, promises that were made, and then the game comes out and it's a mess, right? And like, we get that all the time with

games that target a certain thing, or at least they reveal like, oh, this is the technology we're working with, this is the target that we're trying to hit and then the thing comes out and we're like, okay, well, we're not anywhere close to that. I think what I want to bring to the conversation are games like GTA6

and then also Destrating 2 which is one of the games that I got to preview recently and I talked about how good that game looks and how like even on a base PS5 there are certain things that are being hit that I'm like I'm I can't believe what I'm looking at I can't believe how good

like how detailed and good these games these environments these characters look with Unreal Engine 5 Andy like do you look at the at the footage we're seeing with the Witcher 4 and go ain't no way? Or is it more so just a thing of like trying to get ahead of the hype cycle? I only say that just because I, you know, I'm constantly kind of a pessimist when it comes to these things.

But then I get hyped and, you know, and then you get excited at what the possibilities can be. But I know that I know of several devs and have seen other devs mentioned, you know, when the PS5 Pro was sort of being released, people saying people that work in the industry and that have been there for years and years and years ago, we haven't even fully unlocked what we can do with the PS5. Like we're just kind of now getting to that point. And that does give me hope. And I also, maybe I'm putting misplaced trust where it shouldn't, where it doesn't deserve to be.

But I believe that CD Project Redd, first off, I think that they're very smart by saying, hey, this isn't, this isn't gameplay. This is a tech demo running in the world. There's a tech demo running in the world that does not represent, we're hoping this could represent what it could be, right? And that's all sort of pie in the sky if everything works out perfectly. It does, to me at least, if I were to put my money on it,

I would say that what we're seeing is all real and all possible. Because I think we're getting to that point where with enough time with development, these devs and these teams can slowly kind of unlock what the PS5 and what this generation can actually do. And then it will only look better from there, where then you talk about not only just ray trace reflections, but now we talk path tracing. Now we talk the real, real high limit of you have a $2,500 or a $3,000 PC.

This is how it's going to look on a $50.90 or whatever. I do think that what we're seeing here looks really, really damn good. And I believe that it's running on PS5. And I think that once we hopefully get whatever the next Xbox could possibly be, because this is clear that this is going to be some sort of cross-generation type game. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't be surprising. Yeah, and then we'll see it kind of running at where,

you know, at its actual full potential. But, I mean, even right now, not the best example, but when you're on console and you run into a building in Fortnite and it's using Unreal Engine 5 and it's using its Lumen system and like all of the bells and whistles that Unreal Engine kind of has right now,

it's like, Damn, this is running on console, and it's really kind of impressive looking already. And I think Unreal Engine 5 is getting better and better about making amazing things run more efficiently and lighter weight, you know. Yeah, I remember this is another one for the Decima Engine example that Destraining 2 runs on. But like playing, did you ever check out the Horizon DLC burning shores? No, I did not. So that DLC, chat, correct me from wrong, I believe was PS5 exclusive. whereas the actual game was PS4, PS5.

And the facial animations in Horizon Burning Shores were off the chain in a way that, again, I could not believe. Like when you mentioned, some developers even mentioned that, like, would not even unlock what we could do on PS5 yet. I feel like we're starting to see more and more of those hints of like, oh shit, yeah, no, there's a lot of potential here left for what you can do. And so when you combine that with the Unreal Engine 5 aspect of it and like it making it easier to do things, what they talk about with the foliage system that they have here. And like even the horse muscle system, which I'm sure translates to humans as well. Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like when you talk about those things and like the things that maybe an animator might not have to think about as much when it's okay, cool, I can make my horse run or I can make my humans move a bit more naturally because the systems already exist in the game to like have their muscles move in certain ways. cool now I can focus more on this other aspect and like these games are going to look better naturally and a bit easier which is really exciting for hopefully getting to this level someday and it all gets it all comes down to time and whenever we look at devs with little time making games on hardware that's maybe underpowered you think of how the constant comparisons between something like tiers of the kingdom compared to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. And one game is a game that's clearly a game that was rushed as hell.

And that's why it looks the way it does because you don't fully have the time to optimize and make the most out of what we can show people without it running at five frames per second. So you're going to get what you get right now and yes, it's running at 26 frames per second and you're kind of lucky.

It's running at 26 frames per second because we just didn't have time to fully, fully go through with it. And I think CD Project Red a lot of those I love this sort of look by the way of like exactly what's happening for Audilus

as we're seeing the trees and the Nanite tech on these individual leaves sort of breaking down to voxels and then show how they kind of then expand out to being full foliage. So damn impressive but yeah I think a lot of this comes down to time and those lessons learned with cyberpunk and how

the behind the scenes footage on or behind the scenes murmurings from people on the dev team going, when they said that we were releasing the game on this time, we all just laughed and we were like, yeah, fucking right, dude. This is not ready. We are at least a year out or whatever. And I think another great thing about this

being on Unreal Engine 5, as somebody who doesn't want everything to be on Unreal Engine 5, I still see all the positives. And one of those positives comes from the CD Project Red sort of actual write-up article on their website, which is just announcement. what they were going to show here today.

But we get a quote from joint CEO of CD Project Red, Michael Noakowski, who says, 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 frames per second

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 of Witcher 4 on Unreal Engine 5 continues. And then we get another quote from Tim Sweeney

at Epic Games who says, CD Project Great 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 partners to help us develop new world-building features that we can share with all Unreal Engine developers.

And that's the stuff that I love. And I totally still feel Like, I don't want every game to be on Unreal in the future, but then I see the benefits of look at the tech that we're building and the tech that can be shared with other developers that are making their stuff in Unreal Engine 4 and the teams of 20 that go, man, if we could afford a team 100, we could maybe do that.

All of these tools being implemented and developed can kind of make those things possible for smaller teams. Especially when you have a game that is as big as the Witcher doing it, right? Like coming off with having their own engine and having experience with like open roads and wanting to make worlds that are demanding of what they are. You want an engine that can meet that demand.

And so, yeah, having the Witcher 4 be the one to kind of lead this charge. I keep bringing up Decima, but it's just the easy example to give, right? Of like, that's a collaboration between two developers, right? That was Gorilla Games and then Kojima Productions came to them and now they have like a back and forth shared synergy of like, oh, what if we did this?

Oh, if we did this and like learning from each other and therefore both those games look fantastic. Like when you have the power and money and wealth of epic games right behind Unreal and like what what they're already trying to do in Unreal with things like Fortnite and other games. And then you have a The Witcher 4, which is this world that one has a lot of popularity, a lot of people care about what CD Project Red is working on. But then is a realistic world and one that you want the most fidelity for. You want the most like things that work for as far as, yeah, when we're talking about foliage, when we're talking about lighting, when we're talking about the natural. I guess feel of a crowd. The thing that really hits me in watching this footage

is seeing Siri walk into the town and seeing her slowly take off the hood and then the guard kind of like, try to like, you know, get at her or spit at her right there, right? And then like they come up off on the bear that's like performing for this crowd. And everything is happening so naturally. And The Witcher 4 is a game that you would want to figure

all that stuff out for. And that is then going to trickle down to the other developers that might have ideas for wanting to do these kinds of things. Guess what? Unreal Engine 5 already has maybe like, I don't know, settings or like already has tools

in place to make those things happen a bit more naturally. You have the bear dancing tool. Yeah, I want to make a bear. I was going to say it's... I want a dancing bear. There's a good portion of people that don't know why. That's fucking hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're going to be watching our content. Now the drawbacks from this, is sort of the drawbacks that we've seen with something like Watch Dogs 1 with that first sort of trailer where everything was everything is so wet in that trailer

and you're like man look at these reflections it is porn in this city Can you bring up the Watch Dogs 1 trailer? That trailer changed my life until the game came out as you're walking through the town as Siri and we see all of these lively interactions this Witcher 4 game

better have that in every goddamn town or else people are going to keep on pointing back and go yeah we know it said it was a representative of the game we know it was an actual gameplay but look at what it could have been you know what I mean and look at this shiny ass concrete man there's specularity maps on the water oh screen space reflection

how much this blew my mind in 2013 dude it was crazy 2013 I was like this is the craziest shit of all time this is directly from you Ubisoft, so this is like the best version I can find. We've come so far. Yeah, we definitely come here. This looked so much better in my head.

I was in art school when this shit dropped and all of us just like stop classic. We were like, put that shit on the screen. This is crazy. No joke, I'm watching this right now. I'm like, you're telling me the game looked worse than this. That's crazy. Supposed to look like dog shit.

But yeah, when I see this video and obviously this video is it's the most vertical slice of a vertical slice you could have, right? Because it's not even a vertical slice of the game. It's a vertical slice of a demo that we're showing you what the game could look like.

It's tough to imagine an actual open world, right? Like an actual open world, The Witcher 4 video game that is interactive and doing all these things. How many times are we going to see a guy bump in a Syrian job and apple is what I'm kind of getting at? How many times are we going to see a dancing? Turn down in one night you can see multiple

depending on the quality. the facial animations look freaking fantastic and there's also a quote that I got from somebody had asked one of the developers a question this is from Kotaku a spokesperson for City Project Red told Kotaku that the only changes were made a Siri in the new trailer or that only two changes were made to Siri in the new trailer

one of which has already been changed again it's the same character model we use at the 2024 trailer Series face has a direct copy of the Witcher 3 model adapted to work with the latest and meta-human technology. Two subtle changes were made to improve animation quality, slightly raised eyebrows, more relaxed eye area, and the latter was present in the trailer, but has since been removed. But metahuman technology being one of those key things that is a part of the Unreal Engine. Yeah. That is one of the things that they really focus on in addition to nanite, in addition to lumine lighting technology, in addition to, well I guess

Nanite was the other one I was thinking of but like metahuman being this easy amazing way for developers to get really good variety with characters and facial animation and all that stuff just it really really excites me for what

the future of gaming could look like with smaller teams taking on Unreal Engine 5 and using this suite of technology that would have otherwise been crazy expensive to develop or would have otherwise been impossible because you don't got the budget for it, you know?

Yeah. I want to bring in a super chat from Gerald of Rivia, very fitting for this episode. Great name. What mechanics do you think the tech and UE5 could inspire or improve upon for the game? What I ultimately hope to see is what they're doing over on the,

I'm blanking on the name of the engine, but it's for the Crimson Desert game. Oh, yeah. It's for their in-house. engine, what I'm hoping to see is a lot of gameplay mechanics surrounding not just levolution, but the burning of wood that eventually charred enough and it's able to be broken. That sort of level of interactivity, I think, yeah, the Black Space Engine, thank you, Barrett.

The Black Space Engine is the engine that they have for Black Desert Online and now for Crimson Desert. It's their in-house engine. And it's why you look at the tech specs for the game of Crimson Desert, and you're like, There's no way this game is real. And they go, no, all this shit can run on a 2060 or whatever GPU. You don't need the latest hardware because it's all in-house. It's all internal. And we're not using a bunch of different tools from everywhere.

Everything's being sort of made here. What I want to see Gerald of Rivia is the gameplay of interactivity, of not just cool visuals and a million billion particles on the screen. I want to see a moment where, you know, if I'm using a fire spell, I see that fabric on the top right start to slowly burn or, and that's just not for visual sake. That's for also, you know, maybe that thing falls down and now that's usable or something like that. I want to see these tangible, like how does it affect the gameplay? Yeah, these tangible in-world items be interactive. Yeah, that's the stuff that I've not seen, talked about as much.

granted, I have not watched the full video yet. We didn't have time before this, but like, yeah, that's the stuff I want to see more. Like, I don't really, from hearing how much they're putting at the forefront of this, the nanite technology, the, um, metahuman stuff. And then there was a third keyword. Lumen.

Lumen, thank you. The lighting stuff there, right? Like, none of that really for me has effects on gameplay. That stuff all has effect on visuals and how the world looks and how alive the world feels, which I think is very important for the Witcher for, right? Or for the Witcher as a, the kind of game that it is. But yeah, I would love to see them talk about that stuff more

as far as what you're mentioning with the Black Space engine because that's the stuff that really gets me excited, even though I don't see The Witcher as the kind of game that might be as, I don't say, I don't want to say as interactive because it's the most interactive you can get, but like I don't see it being as, I guess, systems heavy in the gameplay as far as like what I think about when I think about what Crimson Desert

is presenting itself as being. Or even something like, you know, tears of the kingdom. Yeah, Breath of Wild was going to be the reference I made also as far as like how physics interact. racked for you to get these unique and interesting situations. A lightning spell allowing water to use that lightning.

You know what I mean? Like, if you throw a lightning bowl at a lake and see enemies in there get shot, you know, that's sort of level of... There's a clip that I remember taking from Breath of the Wild that I think is lost now when I lost my switch. It was saved to that switch. Oh, the one of the airplane. The one in the airplane, yeah, it's fucked up. Did you replace with an OLED?

Yeah. Well, I think the one that I lost was an OLED. and then I bought another OLED. I know. But yeah, in there, I had a clip of, like, myself doing, like, one of those, like, challenge rooms that they added in DLC, and when I was fighting some enemies,

and then I used, like, a heat or, like, a fire arrow, and then the grass, like, the tall grass caught on fire, and then created an updraft, and so I got, like, I used my glider to, like, get height off of the updraft, and then busted on my arrow, and then it went to slow motion. I took out an enemy,

and I was like, this is the coolest shit I've ever done in any video game, and it is thanks to the physics system, that are available in tiers. I want more video games to do that kind of shit. That's that shit that that shit that I love. If you were able to look back at the game that came out,

I think earlier in the year, I can't believe I'm already here with the year 2025, or this happens everywhere you're like, wait, that came out this year. Eternal Strands was a game by Mike Laidlaw's team, and that was very breath of the wild light and what it was trying to do with being a primarily physics-based video game, I want, like, a very physics-based systems-heavy witcher game.

You know, I don't want it to be one-for-one with just only just slash, hash and slash, but freeze... Ash and slap. But, like, the fact that in this game, you can use your ice power to not only just freeze enemies, but if I'm between two parts, shooting out... out ice and then using that as a bridge to cross two areas. Like, that's a type of, of, like, magic that I see. It's like, wow, I can't believe that's possible.

And I guess that circles back into an answer for Gerald of Rivia, which is, like, a big part of Witcher is hunting down creatures and tracking them and, like, taking them down. And I think there is potential, right, of, like, you have so much detail. What are the things that you can do a bit more naturally in the world to make hunting, to make this almost see like a hunting sim in some ways of like, okay, I am tracking these Griffin, I'll say Griffin footsteps, but I guess the Griffin would fly. We'll do a cyclops.

They do land and walk around sometimes. I'm chasing a cyclops. I'll say a cyclops because they have to walk. This is the pidgy conversation in our Pokemon Nuzlock of going like the pigeon is on the ground. It's got to be a ground type. Jesus Christ. He doesn't use a fucking earthquake. Ground flying. But yeah, like if I can follow the actual steps of a thing

and like if you can use the detail available in the game to make that stuff feel a bit more like permanent and like I guess exaggerated a bit so I can like actually feel like I'm really hunting a thing down instead of like the highlight button to then like follow like the Batman Scan Vision type thing that you get in most games I love the idea of not preplaced footprints or footsteps but in the similar way to when you when there's foot deformation and snow

that first time you saw it in Red Dead Redemption 2 and you're like, whoa, look at, you know, if you were to actually see real-time displacement in the ground, in mud, where you see the footprint of something, and it isn't just a, you know, an icon that pops up with a little exclamation point. It says, oh, there's probably footsteps right here. If you could see that shit in real time and it lead to these, you know, these sort of moments in gaming that you have in Red Dead 2 where suddenly you're being attacked by a legendary beast. and it catches you super off guard, that would be really, really damn awesome.

And like stuff that we're talking about with like fire and how that interacts with colder things. Now like, I think there are ways you can use that for the world of the Witcher 4 for hunting specifically because that feels a bit more appropriate. But at the end of the day, right,

the Witcher has to be with the Witcher for, the Witcher is as a video game, which is narrative based, get into combat. You're like, you know, completing quests and all that stuff. Like, I don't necessarily want them to force in physics systems that don't really make the game what it is. But

that's what this shit is for, right? These tools are to make the best game that you want to make. Make the best which are game that you can make here. It's not even necessarily that I wanted to be a core component. I want it to be a result.

I'm not, yeah. I still want Witcher combat to feel good and be using your sword and your pairing and stuff, but if I knock an enemy into a tree, I would love to see the enemy kind of like staggered against that tree and be fucked up. And then the tree eventually breaks down. Oh, yeah.

Or, and then falls and hits something else. You know, like, that's one reason why I just love physics gameplay. And that's probably just me, you know, only talking about the things I love and what I love seeing. But like, Dragon's Dogma 2 was so much fun because of the random moments of drop kicking a little orc and him falling back and hitting his orc friend. and they both fall down. I just love that sort of level of interactivity. Just when the world feels reactive.

Yeah. Man, I got some ways I can take this conversation. Also, we're running, I mean, we're not running long, but like, hour longer than I thought we were going to go on this.

I'll bring in a super chat real quick from CJ Splitsyn, who says, Which are Four, Fable Four, Elder Scroll 6, most hopeful for. I'm hopeful for all three, if I'm being honest.

Yeah, of course. I think all three are going to be great. Which are four, Fable 4. An Elder Scroll 6? Elder Scroll 6. I, you know, part of me feels like

Elder Scroll 6 may have the largest room for improvement because we're coming off of Starfield. Sure. And I, you know, you want to hope that there are lessons learned. You want to hope that there is a larger level of

interactivity and maybe we can shoot any MPC and we're not barred from, like, shooting that one villain because he said something assholeish to you and you shoot him and the bullet goes through his head and nothing happens. Like, you hope that there have been lessons learned to where they go, man, we really need this writing to be so top tier and top notch. And we need these NPCs to be so lifelike with how they interact with you. That's the one that I am maybe most hopeful for.

Where the other ones, I feel like I'm going to be pretty stoked with them. because I kind of know what to expect. Yeah. Yeah. I think if we're talking about Metacritic-wise, like I think Witcher 4 probably has like the highest.

I think Witcher 4 would be the one I would bet on. Even though we are coming off of cyberpunk, but cyberpunk got there in the end as far as being a really incredible game. We're also kind of like predicting NBA finals winner for 2026. Yeah. Like this season isn't even over yet.

So it's also. kind of hard to get there. Yeah. As far as which one I'm most excited for, between Witcher and Alder Scrolls. I'll say Witcher because we're here. It's a Witcher video. Yeah.

I'm excited for Witcher today. Ask me tomorrow. It's going to be Oldish Girls. My last question for you, Andy. We know that The Witcher 4 is firmly in the production stage. Because CD Project Red, very transparent as far as where they're at working on all their games. They moved from pre-production to production for Richard 4.

After seeing some of the tools we've seen here and what they have in this tech demo, When do you think we actually see this game come out? Do you have any guesses? I'll say, well, the recently going into production thing, was that not Cyberpunk? Or was that them entering pre-production? I think they enter, I think they just announced Cyberpunk 2. But I think Witcher 4 went into production like seven months ago or something. Okay, Cympunk 2 entered pre-production phase.

My bad. Yeah. I would see this game coming out in 2029. Wow. Damn. I would have said 2028, maybe 2027.

2027 feels like quick. But it's also, but Cyberpunk came on like 2020. And then they spent a lot of time trying to fix CyberPont. Yeah. And doing DLC and doing all that stuff.

Yeah. It just depends on the mobility of their teams and who's working on what and how they are allocating their people to be working on certain projects, you know? I also do wonder like the scope of some of these things because they do have like a billion games in production right now it feels like.

Because yeah, they have Cyrupunct 2, but then also they have a Witcher remake that they're working on, I believe still, unless they can't see. Is that in-house or is that a port house? That's a really good question. That's a really good question. I'm not positive.

The Witcher remake? Looked that up as I closed down this episode. because ladies gentlemen, MBs, that brings us to the end of your second games cast for the day. That's right,

you got a KHD and two games cast. You guys are spoiled today. All right. Don't ask me for anything ever again. I need y'all to stay out my mentions and my DMs or you ask me for anything. We didn't get to play

the Sension Pest today. Yeah. But we got to see some cool tech. We got to see some cool tech. I'm getting really... Man, I made myself sad by saying 2029. You made me sad.

I was like, damn. I'm sorry, man. I mean, I get that you're being, like, you're being safe about it. I'm gonna say, 2028. I mean, it was eight years between the first cyberpunk review and the game coming out. It wasn't seven years. But it was still, like, from Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk,

it was like five years. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. I'm sorry, I bummed everybody out. Yeah, you bummed me out. Anyway, that's it. That's her games cast.

I've been blessing. That's been Andy. Support us on Patreon. Until next time. It's been our pleasure to serve you. And there's no stream after this.