The "Witcher" series briefly replaced Geralt's appearance and then urgently changed back to its original

2025-06-02 21:49:43|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Geralt, the protagonist of the "Witcher" series, almost has a completely different face.In fact, he did change his face briefly, but the gaming community hated it so much that CD Projekt Red hurriedly changed it back to its original state.

What is the problem? The answer is "anatomically accurate" - the community believes that Geralt is not "outlier" or "ugly" enough.

It was 2010, and CD Projekt Red was preparing to launch the new "Witcher" game "Witcher 2: King Assassin" to the world.Several leaked videos were leaked before the official announcement, but when the first screenshots were finally released, players found that Geralt's image was very different from the familiar appearance in "The Witcher 1".

In "The Witcher 1", Geralt's facial proportions are roughly triangular, with a sharp nose that almost no chin; in the new screenshot, his facial proportions are more in line with ordinary aesthetics, and can even be said to be "handsome".But players obviously don't buy it.

This change stems from technical iteration in part: from "The Witcher 1" to "The Witcher 2", the game engine has been replaced from BioWare's "Aurora Engine" (formerly used in "No Winter Night") to CD Projekt Red's self-developed Red engine.Facial designs that work in old engines may not be suitable for new engines.

“The problem is that the style of The Witcher 1 is highly stylized,” explains Pavel Mirnichuk, artistic director of CD Projekt Red. “It’s much simpler from an artistic point of view than the Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3. Based on the Aurora engine of No Winter Night—the low poly, you know—so the characters look good in the old engine, but Geralt’s face is not anatomically accurate, it just impresses.”

"Words 2, we have a better engine—more polygon budgets, more artists crafting delicate faces, and as studios that have released a game, our ability to shape characters has improved. But Geralt's original face is completely out of tune with the styles of other characters," he said, "not in line with the proportions of real humans."

The solution is clear: Redesign Geralt's face."We thought to myself, 'Make a Geralt from scratch - no one will notice'," Mirnichuk recalled with a smile. "So we completed the new design in the early stages of the development of "The Witcher 2" and released it with the first batch of screenshots. I wanted to see how the response was, but the response was terrible! The community scolded us on the forum, almost causing a 'riot'."

Geralt in the screenshot of "The Witcher 2"

Unfortunately, the traces of the "riots" on the forum that year can no longer be found - the 15-year-old post has long buried old stories.But Mirnicchuk told me that the player's comment was roughly: "The real Geralt should be ugly and not like a human being!" Under pressure, CD Projekt Red had to give in. After two years of tinkering, repeated testing and re-evaluation, it was time to finalize Geralt's final image for the game."That's a mixture of Geralt and real humans in The Witcher 1," Mirnicchuk said.

By the time the Witcher 3 was developed from 2011 to 2012, the team was once again facing the opportunity to adjust Geralt's face, but this time they held back."In "The Witcher 3", we directly followed the model of "The Witcher 2", increasing the number of polygons, updating the texture, but not changing the structure at all," said Mirnicchuk.

Geralt in the Witcher 2 game

This doesn't mean he doesn't want to adjust.As the chief character artist of The Witcher 3, he carved the faces of Cialis and Yennefa with his own hands, and also knew the obvious flaws of Geralt's face: "If you look at the sides of Geralt, his nose bridge is almost a straight line from his forehead to the tip of his nose, similar to the proportions of ancient Greek statues, which are not in harmony with the rest of the face, we wanted to correct this, but we didn't do it in the end. We decided: 'Well, this is Geralt, the player recognizes him and loves the character. We can't make the same mistake again.'"

Now "The Witcher 4" has been fully put into development and it is confirmed that Geralt will appear in some form.The new work will be switched to Unreal Engine 5, which means Geralt's face may face adjustments again.Will CD Projekt Red do this?

Even the box cover image has been adjusted many times

"This character is now deeply rooted in people's hearts, and I really don't dare to change it easily," said Mirnichuk. "Overall, he succeeded because his face is recognizable, and perhaps because of the non-human proportional characteristics of the upper body. So I will not change the structure, but only optimize the texture and normal maps, increase facial details, and enhance the realism through the surface texture, rather than changing the anatomical proportions."

However, there is one factor that may tempt Mirnychuk to adjust Geralt's face—or, there is one person—that is Henry Cavill, the former starring of The Witcher Netflix.Mirnicchuk is a big fan of him."Henry is perfect," he said, then added with a smile: "If I had to change my face, it would be better to scan Henry's face and put it in "The Witcher 4"!"

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