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The Witcher 3 does Geralt more justice than the previous installments

• Egon Kilin
• September 26th, 2014

Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist of the Witcher series wasn’t exactly the most handsome fellow in the first two games. Actually, a lot of us might think of him as being rather ugly and some of the in-game characters were also of the opinion if I remember correctly. Luckily, our hero will be a lot more pleasant to the eye in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which begs the question: why is he handsome now and not before? According to developer CD Projekt Red, Geralt was in fact always handsome so perhaps the company just didn’t spent a lot of time working on his face in the past. They definitely addressed the ‘problem’ in The Witcher 3 and even slapped on a rugged beard on the protagonist for good measure.

“The truth is, [Geralt] was a relatively handsome man,” CD Projekt Red told Eurogamer. “He could have love affairs with a lot of women – that’s in the books, and the same happens in our games. Looking as a monster, you couldn’t achieve that. Maybe we were looking for a perfect proportion of his face and in previous instalments we weren’t there. This [Witcher 3 portrayal] is my favourite, and there is no canonical Geralt face. It’s the first time I heard that someone doesn’t like someone because he’s too handsome – but if he’s so handsome, I’m not so sure.”

One might suspect that this could be just a way of attracting more female gamers to The Witcher 3, but CD Projekt Red says that this is not the case, or at least that it’s not what they had in mind when they made Geralt easier on the eyes.  “Hmm, no, but if you think he’s more handsome, maybe that will help us. But it was not like, ‘Hey guys, let’s make him super-handsome.’ We were just looking for this look where he is strong, he looks like a predator, especially with his eyes. Maybe the beard is doing the job.”