Overview
Valdrest is a port town in Kovir, first shown in The Witcher IV's Unreal Engine 5 tech demo at the State of Unreal on June 3, 2025. It is the largest populated area revealed so far.
The tech demo
The demo's story begins with men from a nearby settlement called Korviso transporting salt shipments at night. They are attacked by an Imperial Manticore, which lifts a full wagon into the air. Ciri is later tasked by a Valdrest local with investigating the missing men and hunting the creature.
Ciri and Kelpie traveled through mountain passes and forests before arriving in Valdrest. The demo ran approximately 14 minutes and was played live by cinematic director Kajetan Kapuscinski, with narration from game director Sebastian Kalemba and Epic Games' Wyeth Johnson.
The demo ran on a base PlayStation 5 (not a PS5 Pro) at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled, using Unreal Engine 5.6. CDPR explicitly clarified that this was "a first look at the cutting-edge technology powering The Witcher 4, but not The Witcher 4 itself."
NPC population
Valdrest's streets showcased over 300 individually animated NPCs on screen simultaneously. Each NPC interacted and moved independently using MetaHuman with the Mass AI crowd system. Game director Kalemba has stated he wants "every single NPC" to look like "they're living with their own story." The NPCs react dynamically to the player, creating what CDPR described as "believable chain effects throughout the crowd."
Architecture
Valdrest has Slavic architectural details rather than the generic medieval European look common in many fantasy games. The tech demo showed wooden market pavilion beams painted in cerulean with rusty red accents. Stone buildings with tiled roofs line the harbor. Armored dwarves were visible in the marketplace alongside human troops, suggesting a diverse population.
Ciri's face in the Valdrest sequence used the ML Deformer technology for facial animation fidelity. Kalemba pointed out that she "actually looks tired after a long journey."