I suppose it might offend people who know all the intricacies of armor and weapon designs but for for people who don't really know that stuff it is convincing enough. I didn't even notice all the stuff you pointed.
Even the Witcher is guilty of stuff like this like Ciri's heels, Saskia's armor and her not wearing a helmet. Maybe a helmet would have deflected Henselt's blow and she could have killed him,
It's not really about whether it is convincing enough or not, although probably whoever takes a closer look at the picture and has ever shot a bow will at least notice the bowstring being on the wrong side of her arm. It's more about what it tells us about their approach to their work.
I believe that, if it's your job to design medieval-esque weaponry and related stuff, you should do some research, get into the topic and try to deliver the best result you can. Likewise, as I presume (as @
slimgrin mentioned) this is based on a render, the animator should notice that something is off and not-quite-finished if the bowstring keeps clipping through her arm. Then there's the PR/Marketing person who decided to choose this specific render and probably did some work in Photoshop on it - that person didn't notice either, nor did he/she notice the awkwardly bent bowstring.
I get that they're on a tight schedule - even more so, since the game's release has already been pushed - but some of that stuff, like the quiver being on the wrong side, would not have taken any extra work to get right and don't take an expert on archery to notice (heck, you just have to act out the motion once and you'd see that it's awkward and/or blocks your vision to draw something with your right hand from your left shoulder).
It all just screams extreme carelessness, like they don't care at all about any quality standard, but anything that somewhat resembles the target is fine.
A couple of words on the Witcher examples you give:
I will not hesitate a second to agree with you on Ciri's heels and Saskia's armor. Although I don't think the fault lies with carelessness, but with marketing. CDPR tends to overdo their "Look, we're so mature!"-agenda with the occassional juvenile misstep - Ciri as the highheeled hot warrior princess, Saskia's armor cleavage, some of the marketing on how gritty and brutal The Witcher is, etc. It's marketing gone wrong (or, not really, because that's precisely what you need to attract the younger audience. Give them boobs, violence and claims of maturity. They will love it and not even notice that the actual maturity lies elsewhere in these games).
Saskia not wearing a helmet on the other hand, I believe is a very conscious design decision. As far as video games go, TW2 has a relatively large cast of characters with their own agendas and has a relatively complex narrative that often is centered around these characters and agendas. Therefore, it's very important to make the characters, whenever they're on stage, instantly recognizable. You don't want anyone wondering even for a split second who that character is.
Did you read the piece from, I think it was GameInformer, where they mention CDPR's flora super nerd? There's a guy there who basically knows all about plants and ecosystems and the like. So, when designing an environment they approach him with something like "Hey, we thought we might add some sunflowers to that region. How about that?" and he'd answer "That's cool. You should totally add A, B and C as well, as they are often found nearby. And there's D, isn't there? Better move that elsewhere, it wouldn't grow in the exact same climate". And that kind of stuff is just great. They might end up putting D there anyways, because they like the looks of it and they're not constricted by strict realism, but they do it as a conscious decision, not because they're ignorant of the issue.
And they use that kind of approach for many, many things. They care about what they're doing, they think stuff through and they're doing their best to get things just the way they want them.
Edit: A quick Google search revealed that contemporaries of Jeanne D'Arc - who very clearly is the model for Saskia - stated that she often went into battle bareheaded. It was not unusual for military commanders in general at the time, but (and this is just personal interpretation) it is even less surprising if you take into consideration that she has symbolic value - and seeing the symbol of your cause on the battlefield can only be good for morale.
Bioware... what happened!?
