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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Recently, a neat detail about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was revealed for the first time. CD Projekt Red has figured out how to dynamically grow Geralt’s facial hair during the game.
While this may seem like a small feature revealed by German magazine Gamestar, details like this enhance the immersion and help sell the reality of a game world. And, if you’d prefer to style Geralt’s hair yourself, CD Projekt told Eurogamer the free “Beard and Hairstyle DLC” will let you do that. Once you download it, Geralt's beard will stop growing.
We reached out to the developer to find out if this bit of immersion would be extended to other parts of the game. It turns out that Geralt’s face isn’t just good for telling time between shaves.
Click to enlarge.
“Geralt's face actually changes the higher his toxicity is,” CD Projekt’s lead quest designer Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz tells us. “As you know, Witcher elixirs are highly toxic, and could kill a human if he/she drank one. Witchers are more resistant to this toxin, but it does influence them. In game you have this ‘toxicity bar,’ which shows you how intoxicated Geralt is.”
The potions take a toll on Geralt, and you won’t need a bar on the user interface to monitor how he’s doing. “The higher the toxicity bar, the more those toxic changes show on Geralt’s face,” Tomaszkiewicz says. “His face becomes unnaturally pale, his veins become visible and seem to be black, dark circles appear under his eyes, etc.”
We're eager to see these nuanced systems come together, though I'm not sure I'd want to anger a strung-out, unkempt Geralt. You can find out more about The Witcher 3 in our recent hands-on demo from PAX East.
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
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