It is an absolutely stunning achievement of both tech and visual design. Even the always beautiful elves and the sorceresses have the sorts of imperfections we find in real world beauty. Old people with wrinkles the way my parents have wrinkles, with deep laugh lines and weathered brows. A young woman with a very natural looking overbite, barely noticeable at a glance but there nonetheless. I met a man with stray hairs on his face, the type you get when you shave a week’s growth of beard a bit too hastily. Everyone I’ve met in my adventures as Geralt has been uniquely made and accompanied by such high visual fidelity that I’ve quite honestly never experienced anything quite like it. This is where any discussion of the sprawling, messy, fascinating Witcher 3 starts for me. I’ve never seen anything quite like Witcher 3. By happenstance I’ve been revisiting Star Wars: the Old Republic and the contrast with that game’s six perfect faces, repeated over and over, was startling, even when I grant that the visual style and technical demands are very different. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from this imperfect, real-looking person on my screen.
I know that writers, myself very much included, can embellish for effect, that this is possibly our job description, but let me assure you that I’m being 100% straight. When the camera zoomed in on him, I stopped playing for a moment and just stared at the screen, entranced. Crow’s feet crinkled at the edges of his eyes when he spoke. Or, if you prefer to be an optimist, he was beautiful in the way I’m beautiful.
The man was ugly, but not in the way most ugly videogame characters are ugly.
The poor man comes out from under his cart, trembling and frightened, thanking you, Geralt of Rivia, for saving his life. The beast ate his horses and was threatening to eat him before you assure him it’s safe. There’s a moment early on in Witcher 3 in which you save a merchant from a rampaging griffin.