Unreal Fest 2025: all of the news from Epic’s show

AI Darth Vader was a huge hit in Fortnite, and now Epic plans to let creators make AI-powered NPCs for their own in-game experiences. But a senior Epic exec says that creators should expect a “learning curve” when using them — something Epic had to figure out on its own.

The AI Vader that Epic made lets users talk to the character using their voice and hear an AI-generated version of James Earl Jones’s Vader voice talk back. It was the “culmination of a very intense effort for a character everybody understands,” Saxs Persson, Epic’s EVP of the Fortnite ecosystem, tells The Verge.

Arguably the highlight of Epic’s State of Unreal keynote was the opening: a sprawling technical demo that showed just how good The Witcher 4 looks in Unreal Engine 5. It showcased a bustling market in a port city, a beautiful forest landscape, and a horse that looked and acted like, well, a horse. Even more impressive was the fact that the demo was running at 60 frames per second on a base model PlayStation 5. According to Julius Girbig, a senior technical animator at Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, the choice of hardware for the demo was very intentional.

“Everyone has the idea of how fast a PS5 is and what kinds of games it can run,” he tells The Verge. “That’s why we specifically wanted to go that route of: let’s start with the consoles, let’s show how much we can optimize this engine together with Epic and make it work on current gen, instead of running it on some high-end hardware.”

Fortnite was missing from the iOS App Store for nearly five years before returning to the US last month. Apple kicked the game off in 2020 after Epic snuck in an in-app payment mechanism that violated App Store rules at the time. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney knew that the choice would result in “fireworks,” but he initially expected the app would return quite a bit sooner.

“I had actually hoped that we would get an injunction against Apple blocking Fortnite and that we’d only be off for a few weeks,” Sweeney tells The Verge. “But the court process dragged out, and we were off for five years.”

Epic Games is going to allow Fortnite creators to make AI-powered NPCs that work similar to the recently-launched AI Darth Vader. The company showed off the tech at its State of Unreal show on Tuesday.

Using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), creators can make characters with personalities that they can voice chat with. Creators will be able to set the type of voice, their delivery, and the AI NPC’s characteristics when the feature is available later this year.

Epic Games’ hyperrealistic MetaHuman characters are seriously impressive, and now the company is making it easier for developers to incorporate them into their projects. At its State of Unreal show on Tuesday, Epic announced that the MetaHuman Creator is now embedded within Unreal Engine as part of Unreal Engine 5.6.

The company is also bringing its face-authoring tools for MetaHumans’ faces to bodies, meaning developers will be able to create faces and bodies with fine-tuned parameters for their games or applications. Developers will be able to sell their MetaHumans on Epic’s Fab marketplace for digital assets, too, so they can be used in other games or projects.

An ongoing tradition at Epic’s big keynotes is a gorgeous tech demo that shows off what its game engine is capable of. For this year’s State of Unreal, the company turned to The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red. This new demo a beautiful glimpse at its fantasy world, filled with blood, fire, and monsters — and more importantly, a new horse.

The demo was built using Unreal Engine 5.6, and shows new protagonist Ciri exploring some forested lands and a marketplace known as Valdrest. Epic says the demo is designed in part to show off how the latest iteration can handle both bustling scenes and foliage in an open-world setting. It also shows how much horse technology has improved since The Witcher 3. Epic says that the demo is running on a base model PS5 at 60 frames per second, with raytracing enabled, and the presentation included a live demonstration, with the developers playing the game on stage. You can check out the full keynote here, just scroll back to the beginning to watch the Witcher 4 segment.

There’s a lot going on in gaming this week: Summer Game Fest, an Xbox showcase, and a little console launch from Nintendo. But before it all begins, Fortnite maker Epic Games is hosting its annual State of Unreal event.

Last year, Epic spread a lot of news across two events in San Francisco and Seattle. This year, the focus will be on a keynote in Orlando. While we don’t know exactly what will be shown, you can expect the latest on the company’s major products: Fortnite, the Unreal Engine, and the Epic Game Store. And given Fortnite’s recent return to iPhones, there will probably be some discussion of app stores, as well.