The Witcher 1 had a pretty peculiar take on RPG romances back in 2007, rewarding players with collectible, salacious cards for having sex with various women. But if you've ever taken a moment to really analyze the cards (for what I assume are research purposes), then you might just notice the romance cards rarely ever match up with the characters' portraits or in-game models, and there's a very good reason why.
The Witcher's original lead story designer, Artur Ganszyniec, is playing through the game for the first time in 18 years or so, and he's actually streaming the entire thing for our viewing pleasure in a series of lovely videos posted to his YouTube channel. And his second episode is the one where Geralt begins a card collection impressive enough to make a Pokemon scalper blush.
Ganszyniec admits that some of Geralt's courting tactics, like asking a woman he's only just met to follow him into a "nook" somewhere, are a bit off. "That doesn't sound creepy at all, Geralt."
"I wasn't responsible for the sex cards," he quickly adds, "but I overheard the designing of this particular one and that's when I learned the term, uh, MILF. And I'm sorry you had to hear that, but there's another funny story with it."
The former CDPR developer then scrolls through the game's menus to find the 'Characters' tab, which lists all the people Geralt's encountered on his adventure alongside a portrait of them. Romance cards can also be viewed here. Ganszyniec spends some time showing how some characters' cards are out of whack with their menu portraits, which are also sometimes out of sync with their in-game models. Oddly enough, hair colors, skin tones and more can all differ quite drastically.
"What we later learned was that the person who was responsible for making sure the colors matched [were] colorblind, like, totally," Ganszyniec explains. "But they were too shy to talk about it. So how do you approach the task? Well, you can copy the RGB numbers or casually ask fellow designers [...] 'Do you think this hair is more auburn or?'"
The Witcher 1 is now being remade in a joint effort from CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory as the former also hammers away at the much-hyped The Witcher 4.
