Eastern European mentality, the spirit of Sapkowski’s books and 14 days of motion capture: CD Projekt Red talks about the creation of the first trailer for The Witcher 4

It’s been over two months since The Witcher 4’s cinematic trailer premiered at The Game Awards 2024, and CD Projekt Red has decided to share some insight into the process behind the GeForce RTX 5090-rendered trailer.

Image source: CD Projekt Red

The idea behind the trailer was to create a story that references the past but begins a new saga: the plot involves a village girl, Mione, who decides to sacrifice herself to a Bauku monster, and Ciri tries to stop it.

Mione and Ciri were conceived as mirrors of each other. In her heart, the girl knows that sacrificing herself is wrong, but she cannot go against the village traditions. The aspiring witcher understands this very well.

Mione’s story will be reflected in the game itself

CDPR tried to recreate the Slavic setting without deviating from the spirit of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, and also to reflect the Eastern European mentality: “Shades of gray everywhere, no certainty, lesser and greater evil.”

Features of trailer production:

• The video was created in collaboration with Platige Image studio;
• Filming of the motion capture scenes took 14 days;
• To convey the feeling of filming with a real camera, CDPR recorded the movements of virtual operators in the studio;
• When magic appears on screen, the camera switches from manual to artificial, and the engine’s camera tools like virtual cranes and dollies come into play;
• To create the feeling of a real film, CDPR and Platige rented filming equipment for three days and shot a lot of footage with different effects (distortion, glare, glow, bokeh);
• To imitate the bauka, a special structure was built on the set (it was controlled by four people), which depicted the joints and paws of the monster;
• Working with Unreal Engine 5 in Platige Image was described as “a dream”: the tool allowed them to experiment and immediately evaluate the results, which allowed the trailer creators to try out many more iterations.

«”You’ll have to evaluate situations and make difficult decisions. For example, what should happen after the events shown in the video. Difficult choices,” CDPR narrative director Philipp Weber shared at the end of the 10-minute video.

The Witcher 4 doesn’t have a release date or target platforms yet, but it entered active production last fall. The story follows Ciri as she passes the Trial of the Grasses and prepares to become a true witcher.