NPCs have same faces

[AsuraStrike]

men, women, children... I'm so tired of seeing the recycled faces over and over, especially the guy with vertical wrinkles. Every time I see him, I'm like "oh not this guy again".

[PlayboyMoney]

Yes, game could deal with some more unique faces. Kids are almost all the same

[BDK]

Lots of people sound a lot like Iorveth too, however I havent seen him around yet... hmm ...

[The DarkLight Emissary YT]

The biggest thing I noticed was the kids all kinda look the same but still. As others are saying it took alot of time and effort to make this game, especially with how big it is. Then populate it.

From what I have read, character face modelling, especially making new unique faces, can be some of the hardest work for modellers and the artists in general.

The truth of it is I am sure the guys at Projekt Red got together in a meeting around halfway through the game and were like "Well gentlemen, that time we dreaded has come, what do we need to sacrifice to get this game out anytime soon?".

We know every game has that point for the developers. They have to decide to drop alot of stuff just to get a game out, and I can only imagine the wall of ideas and polishes that were left on the cutting room floor.

[Venom Jesus]

Jesus. The steam community can be a real pain in the ass. The OP made a fair complaint for someone who doesn't understand Cd Projekt's line of thought in making the npcs few, but detailed.

He never said it was a deal breaker, and he never claimed that it was cd projekt being lazy or evil or whatever. He just said it was bad, and it's true. It is annoying to see the same npc over and over, that's just how it is.

People get so defensive about the game to the point of sounding like fanatic apologists. Sure it's "nitpicking", but is it really a bad thing to notice the small details of the game? You guys can be really whiny, sigh.

[JOKIN MADNESS]

Thats true, the faces are ♥♥♥♥♥ overused, i hope they put some patch adding more faces

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Originally posted by Regret and Redemption:

Originally posted by Beyuhz:

You should set out and model many unique faces for the next game you decide to grace with your artistic capabilities.

Both of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

[Factualious]

Originally posted by ydraig:

Basically, here's how it breaks down for games with THOUSANDS of different NPCs:

1) Poorly detailed, very homogeneous and often downright hideous faces, but every single one is at least a little bit different (see Oblivion, Fallout 3, most post-Jade Empire BioWare games)

2) Intricately detailed, very distinct, very realistic BUT a fair amount of re-use because every single unique face has a dollar value attached

Choose ONE

I believe this is what is called a "false dichotomy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma ), for the following reason.

Some games either include or have a mod based character face editor (e.g., Skyrim) which lets the user adjust pretty much every bit of minutia you can on a face, with easy to use sliders - doing the same thing programmatically shouldn't be too difficult and able to churn out 100's or 1,000's of slightly different faces an hour when given a few dozen basic models and some rules which dictate how much range each adjustment has.

The base models are most likely already in existence, so no additional cost there; the auto tweaking software is likely mostly already around, so there would be a minimal one-time cost for it. The biggest expenditure would probably be paying someone with a good eye to do quality control in the form of rejecting really bad looking faces.

I suspect that the real downside to having every face different would be the amount of disk space and (V)RAM it could potentially take to store or display them all. If the trade-off is having the same face (with perhaps a beard or mustache, different color, etc.) vs. bumping up the minimum requirements even one notch...

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

But that's not a false dichotomy; it's an actual dichotomy. If you can find a game that has the same level of facial detail and number of NPCs as Witcher 3 but has almost completely unique facial designs for each, I'll concede to you. But I rather doubt that's going to happen. The VRAM argument doesn't hold water because (at least after the most recent patches) duplicates in the same load zone are somewhat rare, and there's a huge amount of facial re-use between Skellige and Velen.

[AntiSocialAge]

Wow! look at all the bent ass fanboys getting upset over this thread. 2015, you should be ashamed of yourself.

[Ponto]

Originally posted by fdsrh:

Doesn't matter, really. Stop whining about everything in video games.

+1 a thousand times over

[Dragon]

Witcher 3 definitely has way too many recycled faces, but what about the recycled voice lines between different NPCs? That should also be getting equal attention. But I didn't see anyone mention that yet (until me in this post).

[𝙹𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Witcher 3 definitely has way too many recycled faces, but what about the recycled voice lines between different NPCs? That should also be getting equal attention. But I didn't see anyone mention that yet (until me in this post).

To be fair, the game's narrative was primarily focused on Geralt's interaction with other main characters. So modeling new faces and recording new lines for irrelevant NPCs could take more than give, and the focal narrative will be impacted. We'll see how it goes in the coming years, though.

[MAHAMA ②⓪②⓪]

I've yet to see a game that doesn't recycle a lot of characters, both in terms of physical appearance and voices. So, is it really fair to single out Witcher 3? I'm more upset by the fact there is only 1 girl in the bathhouse that's just a little plump. Where are the super fat chicks? The game needs more BBW candy.

[Zentz]

Not every NPC in the game should be different but the ones you HAVE to talk to for quests should be different

[Y Ddraig Ddu]

Of all the disastrously bad design choices in this game, it seems odd to single out one as irrelevant and minor as this.