It might seem like Geralt spends most of his time passed out in taverns or touring brothels, but actually he’s meant to be out fighting monsters. Because the world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is chock-full of hideous abominations that would bite your head off and spit out the teeth as soon as they look at you.
In an interview with Gamespot, The Witcher 3’s lead character artist Pawel Mielniczuk discusses the creation of these nasty critters, and the way that the latest graphics technology allows for even more realistic creations.
”Back during the Witcher 1,” Mielniczuk explains, ”we started with low polycount models and then just baked some normal maps in Photoshop. One character could be done in a week or something like that. Right now, we’re sculpting every detail on the character with a high polycount version, and using Z-brush. We sculpt every seam, every button, and every buckle on the character.”
”It’s even more complex with the monsters because for the characters, we have the one skeleton for each character type: for male, female, child, and so on. This whole range of characters is done on the same skeleton with the same animations. For the monsters, each one of them is custom. We go through the whole process of creating the skeletons, animations, behaviors, and artificial intelligence for every monster from beginning to end. That’s way more complex and time consuming.
It does, however, make for some cool challenges. CD Projekt doesn’t want you to simply be battering the same kind of creatures all game, so they’ve had to come up with increasingly varied and dangerous creatures. Some will fly away from you, then come back for a killing strike, while others, like the Sirens, are deadly both in water and in the sky.
”We also have monsters that spread fire,” Mielniczuk continues. We have monsters that hypnotize you. We have monsters that can run away or go underground. Every monster requires different tactics. When you fight a Noonwraith, you’re not actually able to kill it without using Signs. You create a special region to capture her when she materializes, and only then can you fight her.”
You’ll also bump into some old favourites from the first two games, redesigned and remodeled. Should keep you busy slaying into the early hours of the morning when The Witcher 3 drops this May 19.
