kill the clones

[texasgoldrush]

kill the clones

One of the biggest problems with this game, as was the earlier games, is that there are too many clone characters. Too many assets are reused for characters. Its as bad as KOTOR and Jade Empire, or Deus Ex Human Revolution.

For example....the same model is used for Gretka, a girl Ciri rescues early on as is one of the girls at the Orphans of Crookback Bog, so I thought somehow Gretka went to Crookback Bog at first until I realized CDP reused her model. Now in this new DLC, this model got reused again. Many times I see a character that looks like the Chamberlain in Vizima, or the same merchant with spectacles. Same guardsmen too.

In the future CDP needs to go back and get rid of these clones and add more character models for talking NPCs. This will kill or alleviate one of Witcher 3's most significant immersion flaws.

Does CDP have face generators like Bioware? They can use that to get more diverse and less clone NPCs.

 

[Geragio]

When I first noticed this I thought I had met the same person, it was the alderman from downwarren. now that was a few hours into the game but I was so immersed I hadn't really noticed it before. After seeing that one clone however, I see it all the time now and it does kill the immersion. I remember when the first witcher had this problem, they even used clones for main characters it was kinda sorted in the enhanced edition. but all that was changed was the clothing if I remember right.

 

[WolvenGear]

One of the biggest problems with this game, as was the earlier games, is that there are too many clone characters. Too many assets are reused for characters. Its as bad as KOTOR and Jade Empire, or Deus Ex Human Revolution.

For example....the same model is used for Gretka, a girl Ciri rescues early on as is one of the girls at the Orphans of Crookback Bog, so I thought somehow Gretka went to Crookback Bog at first until I realized CDP reused her model. Now in this new DLC, this model got reused again. Many times I see a character that looks like the Chamberlain in Vizima, or the same merchant with spectacles. Same guardsmen too.

In the future CDP needs to go back and get rid of these clones and add more character models for talking NPCs. This will kill or alleviate one of Witcher 3's most significant immersion flaws.

Does CDP have face generators like Bioware? They can use that to get more diverse and less clone NPCs.

Yeah.
There's like 6 different versions of this guy

 

[jon7882]

This is fairly normal in large open world games when there are many npc's. It's a cost saving measure and to me not really a big deal.

 

[Dubya75]

This bothers me too. Surely, they can apply little changes to a particular face like giving it a different nose or different eyes. But these NPCs are IDENTICAL apart from what they wear and their facial hair.
Not to mention that every other merchant wears the exact same clothes and has the same voice and the same lines. Over and over and over again.
It would really not take that much to diversify these characters a little.
But it would make a HUGE difference and add to the immersion of an already fantastic game.

(dreading that moment when I see another Geralt...)

 

[Gvynblade]

There is another guy first seen as Emhyr's servant which asking you to choose your attires a master clone,his faces shows up at least ten times on different characters with minor changes.Agree that's really problematic coz with some other faces never encounter more than once.

 

[Faust-RSI]

The clones problem is actually bigger that in previous Witcher games. I actually didn't even notice it in part 1 or 2. Maybe there were more clones, but they were just insignificant NPCs on the streets. But in THIS game we gave the same fucking model for NPC that actually matters and that we have interactions with. Pathetic.

 

[texasgoldrush]

It was bad in The Witcher 2 as well....the model of the owner of the brothel who spied for Iorveth was the same as the woman you bribe to distract th eguard from Loredo's ballista. Thought it was the same woman, it wasn't.

 

[SgtThundercok]

Wow.

To all of you expressing dissatisfaction with repeat NPCs;

1) What game is your favorite of all time?

2) What is your favorite game of the past 3 years?

3) On a scale of 1-10, how do you rate Witcher 3?

 

[Ðarkstar]

Theres a lot of drama about this for which I don't understand. The npcs in question are designed to be forgetful, anybody who matters to the story has their own face. You're digging too deep and condemning flaws that only exist under a microscope. Either that or you're getting attached to too many side characters.

 

[Nokturnalex]

Hopefully once the new Redkit is out you'll be able to mod this problem away. I remember modding in texture variations in Skyrim, allowed you to even have much more variation in the textures for all the animals and enemies. Combining that with the Monster Mod added tons of more enemy variations. Though getting it to run required like two 3rd party programs.

 

[Brogan80]

Agreed.

This is another prime candidate for a mod. We've seen these for past games, and with the proper tools, it shouldn't be that difficult.

Condemning CDPR for this when there is so much else going on is borderline infantile.

 

[GhostofAnakin]

With how many characters are in the game, it would be quite the feat to make sure every NPC you come across looks completely different. I think as long as the main NPCs are unique, and there are different variations of the "clones", I'm fine with it.

 

[Me_HD_i]

The overcloning was bothersome but what bothered me the most was the overuse of some famous voices on NPCs. Almost the entire NPCs in Roche's camp or many of the guards in Velen/Oxenfurt/Novigrad were voiced by the same voice actor for Vernon. I could also hear Iorveth's voice here and there a lot. >

 

[soldiergeralt]

head scanning is revolutionizing the quality and efficiency of creating a high volumes of heads, paired with vertex conforming hairs and facial hair, the problem of generating hundreds of unique looking characters is not a problem. if there is a risk of encountering a character multiple times, give it a beard, a unique item or hat, or cover up distinctive features and isolate non nondescript ones. overwhelmingly strange and interesting faces are therefore perfectly suited for unique story characters.

 

[WolvenGear]

With how many characters are in the game, it would be quite the feat to make sure every NPC you come across looks completely different. I think as long as the main NPCs are unique, and there are different variations of the "clones", I'm fine with it.

The people in the main-story and the merchants shouldnt be reused. If I see the same guy in different towns thats fine, but when you have like 3 blacksmiths with the same character-skin its pretty weird.

 

[LordIsrum]

Why every body looks the same is because there inbred the girl in skellige stated she is related to every body a dozen times over in the village.

 

[GratuitousViolets]

I think there's more variety in NPC in this game than I've seen in the others. in fact, play games like Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online and you see a hell of a lot more of it in those games tha you do in this one. At least in this game NPCs have unique eyes,noses, features, etc. They don't seem like clones so much to me. And a lot of the NPCs at least open with different lines of text and different accents etc. It's betterthan some games ive seen that are just as big.

Children are always going to look like clones...in Skyrim there were only two face types and about five hair types for children. Trey all looked and sounded alike and said the same things, I think this is a huge improvement from what ive seen.

 

[Fred-Sanity]

At some point I was almost certain the merchant with rat problem in Novigrad was the Temarian agent back in the White Orchard, I thought he was on a mission or something. Cause those 2 characters didn't only look the same, their voices were identical too, such a bummer when I realized that he's just a merchant and nothing more.

 

[ARKANOiiDe]

No problems with clones NPCs that are just wondering the streets/towns, or some unimportant merchants, but when you see clones in quests, or even important story characters, it gets a bit immersion breaking, like Skjall or who**son jr.