One thing Witcher 3 deserves the highest praise for is the consistently high quality of its motion capture and eye capture over the course of an absolutely massive game. It really makes Rockstar’s and Bethesda’s efforts look like relics of another era. (And I honestly don’t know how they were able to afford it.)
BTW, since she appears in this thread and to prove I’m not on the CDPR payroll, I think the, uh, costume design on Keira Metz is one of the biggest tone-deaf missteps in the entire game. It’s as if they put the guy who suggested Sex Cards to collect for Witcher 1 back in an office in the basement of CDPR, and gave him one job to do to justify him staying around, and he decided to come up with Keira’s outfit.
Well, in the books, some sorceresses use outfits WAY more revealing than Keira’s one. Just saying.
robc04
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The DLC reference was pretty funny.
Bateau
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Are they even doing that? I vaguely remember reading some article where they talked about doing the facial animations manually, something about the game being too big to justify the mocap costs.
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The “cards” were actually beautiful erotic art intended as a low budget alternative to cutscenes since in TW1 days CDP’s budget (and tech) wasn’t quite there. They served as a nice mementos for any erotic encounter the player had (which were all optional; during my first playthrough I only slept with Triss and Lady of the Lake - couldn’t resist there :p), and there was never any intention of pokemonizing them in the “gotta catch them all” style. These complaints were mostly leveled by western gaming journalists for some reason. Can we stop with the complaining nonsense ?
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Keira Metz’s description from the books:
“Before the Witcher had regained the power of speech, a short, slim sorceress, with long, straight, straw-coloured hair came over to him. He recognized her at once - she was the one in the horned amalgam skin slippers and the green tulle top, which didn’t even cover a minor detail like the small mole above her left breast.”
Oh and Eurogamer has shiny 4K ultra footage from Blood and Wine. God damn it looks beautiful. Shame about some enduring LoD issues though.
If you pay attention, you’ll see that CDPR made sure Keira has that small mole in Witcher 3, pretty much like the book describes.
I didn’t notice her mole.
However they were intended, they came off as crass and puerile to a lot of players who aren’t critics. Sorry, that’s just how it goes sometimes. And you don’t get to be Feelings Police about it either.
I hear ya, trig, but personally I don’t mind Keira’s wide open neckline, mainly because she has a natural body shape. It doesn’t strike me as puerile because she’s not sporting excessive cleavage and Dead-or-Alive-style inflated D-cups.
Mole spotted!
The sex memento cards were weird. I get why CDPR thought they should use the nudie cards instead of animating sex scenes, but they came off as super immature. Whatever the intent, a lot of people saw them as no better than reducing women to sexual collectible objects - no better than the call girl promo cards you get handed on the sidewalks of Las Vegas.
Like anything else in a game that you can collect, I’d collect them all and not think about any deeper meaning behind it. I.e. Game.
Those erotic cards seemed pretty dumb to me at the time. Just reinforcing the notion that gaming was only for teen boys, and not at all inclusive for female gamers. Now Geralt is the one naked in the tub at the start of the prologue and again before he meets the emperor. This series has come a long way!
This. I get the intent. The execution, however…yeesh. Someone at CDPR should’ve tapped the brakes and said “Wait a sec here.”
And I don’t mean that to mean I’m anti pixellated nudity!
In fact, in both The Witcher 2 and Witcher 3, nudity is used very effectively in the very first intro cut scenes to establish character and relationship. I think it’s especially necessary in TW3, because the game has to make you want to care as much as Geralt does about a character we as players have never met in the game, and may not know from the books. So…first they show Yen being vulnerable–she’s trapped in the middle of a battle. Then they show her getting vengeance, and then they show her kicking ass nine ways to Sunday, blasting a whole in an entire cavalry charge…
…and then they show her in playful, casual nudity. And it works. Even if as a hypothetical player–whoever I am, regardless of sexual preference–if I don’t like girls or girls and boys together or pixel characters as sexy, at the bottom line (ahem) hypothetical asexual me (hypothetical, he said) can appreciate the bond she and Geralt has, and now the choice that G-man has to make later on in the game for his romantic interest has some real weight and consequence in the player’s mind.
I may have thought way too much about this game. ;)
The mole is over her left breast, not her right, so that picture is certainly mirrored.
Whoo, I’m at level 4 and I just took out a level 15 Bilge Hag that I stumbled upon who was guarding a chest in a swamp. Took me about 10 minutes chipping away at her, alternating between Quen and Axii. Got me a nice relic sword called Carabella… I figured I wouldn’t be able to equip it but, lo and behold, I could! Three rune slots on that bad boy.
Here’s me posing for a screenshot with Carabella while in the background, some poor, hapless villager is getting attacked by rabid dogs. (Click the pic for full-size.) He’s probably wishing I was using Carabella to help him out but he’ll have to wait 'til tomorrow.
Oh I know, but maybe we in central europe are “less developed” about being offended since nobody I talked to about the game here (male or female) found them neither crass nor puerile. Probably because most people who played the game didn’t try to “collect them all” and didn’t actually look at them as collectible cards, but as simple pictures (I didn’t even see them as “cards” until RPS started bitching about them, in every. single. witcher related. post).
I would argue that’s a problem of those people and they should work on it. All the same, I do obviously prefer how this stuff is handled in TW2/3 - animated tasteful cutscene trumps static picture :p
Keira is not a character I would complain about. But Ves…Ves could use some better clothing, at least when in combat situations :p
Well, there’s bitching about erotic cards and then there’s bitching about cultural differences. :)
Hmm I’ve never found any cool swords like that. I need to get off the beaten path more I guess.
