Epic Games drops Unreal Engine 5.6 with impressive ‘The Witcher IV’ tech demo featuring Ciri

Be it the excellent Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice or omnipresent Fortnite, and even the trending BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India), they all have something in common. These famous games are all made in Unreal Engine, the industry-changing 3D computer graphics game development software “engine” from Epic Games.

For fans and developers of open-world games based on Unreal Engine, Epic Games announced its latest iteration—the Unreal Engine 5.6 on June 3. From the get-go, Unreal Engine 5.6 or UE5.6 looks like a legit game-changer for making those AAA or indie titles a smoother, more stunning reality—especially on current generation hardware.

Last year, in February, Disney injected $1.5 billion into Epic Games for a 9 per cent stake in the company. Epic Games also develops the massively popular online role-playing game, Fortnite.

With UE5.6, Epic Games promises developers the power to build massive open worlds that hit a buttery-smooth 60 FPS on current-gen consoles (Sony PlayStation 5 and its peers) and PCs.

To flex its muscles, Epic Games, along with CD Projekt Red, dropped an insane The Witcher IV tech demo running on a base PS5—with shaders, enhanced physics, and the works!

What made the insane demo of Princess Cirilla of Cintra, a.k.a Ciri, doing the most Witcher things while giving us a sneak peek at how the foliage and NPCs act and react to the open world in UE5.6 possible were the enhancements to hardware ray tracing. These include boosting Lumen Global Illumination, meaning that the light behaves more realistically, making detailed environments in-game pop without affecting the framerate. Another important improvement is how the new Unreal Engine streams geometry faster. So, no more loading stutters when you’re sprinting through a huge map (remember, Witcher 3?).

The latest game, The Witcher IV, from CD Projekt Red, is expected to get a 2026 release date and will feature Ciri, now voiced by UK-based actress Ciara Berkeley, replacing Jo Wyatt from The Witcher III. In the Netflix series, which features most of the story from The Witcher III game, Freya Allan portrays Ciri while Liam Hemsworth is set to replace Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in the upcoming season.

Apart from the major developments in UE5.6, creating in-game characters is no longer a herculean task with the new MetaHuman Creator, which is integrated right into Unreal Engine. This means developers can now create incredibly “high-fidelity digital humans” from their faces, bodies, and even their outfits directly within the engine.

The animation tools have also undergone a major revamp. The demo showed better intuitive Motion Trails for visually editing animations and more sleek Tween Tools, among others. Epic Games also showcased the new Physics Control rig for next-level realism in character movement.

There are more improvements to the UE5.6, including better asset management through the Content Browser and new real-time previews while developing.

Unlike usual incremental updates, Unreal Engine 5.6 feels more like a significant leap towards making next-gen game development using existing hardware. This means not only game development but gaming in general would be more accessible.