The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt is set to be a stellar open world RPG adventure, but who cares about that? There’s nothing new there – we’ve all played RPG’s before – what really matters is the finer details, like the stubble that will blossom into a fully grown beard on Geralt’s face.
Best of all, CD Projekt Red has assured us that Geralt’s beard will dynamically evolve over the course of the game, meaning that we will get to see the transition from a chubby-cheeked young baby face Geralt to a masculine grizzly bear.
That’s smart, because it means that CD Projekt Red won’t have to answer the ever-present question in video games surrounding why/how the protagonist seemingly never shaves but consistently looks the same.
“The beard grows as time passes and when Geralt moves between locations. The beard has several ‘states’ and these states determine its length–the longest is really long but it’s not Gandalf-long.”
When you download the free Beard and Hairstyle DLC the growth of the beard will stop because we decided that when players want a predefined look, it would be weird to require from them to reapply it time after time.
That’s a fair enough assumption. All this beard talk has got me stroking my own at the importance of this news piece, and I have come to the conclusion that dynamic beard growth is probably the biggest unique selling point in the game; a feat which perhaps could not have been achieved on last-gen systems due to technical limitations. It really is a glimpse into the future.
The Witcher 3 releases on May 19th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC, by which point my attempt at a beard will almost certainly have gotten out of hand and therefore reduced to ashes. Until then, we want to see more announcements like this, because if beards don’t grow dynamically, how can we relate with our protagonists who are seemingly not human since they possess the power to halt the progress of beard growth? Think on that.
