The Witcher 3's Geralt: "The truth is, he was a relatively handsome man"
And a bit more about sailing in the game.
Two important questions for a Friday: is Geralt too handsome in The Witcher 3 - a genuine concern - and what more can we do while sailing in the game?
In The Witcher 3, Geralt is ruggedly good looking, humanised by a beard and only marked as different by his cat-like yellow eyes. In previous games he was more angular, alien.
For here is a man considered non-human - a man mutated by procedures to make him a super-human monster killer. It's a process that left Geralt with no body pigmentation, with pale skin and white hair. Is handsome what Andrzej Sapkowski, creator of The Witcher fiction, had in mind?
"The truth is, [Geralt] was a relatively handsome man," CD Projekt Red's Michal Platkow-Gillewski told me at EGX. "He could have love affairs with a lot of women - that's in the books, and the same happens in our games. Looking as a monster, you couldn't achieve that.
"Maybe we were looking for a perfect proportion of his face and in previous instalments we weren't there. This [Witcher 3 portrayal] is my favourite, and there is no canonical Geralt face. It's the first time I heard that someone doesn't like someone because he's too handsome - but if he's so handsome, I'm not so sure."
I wonder if it's a way of attracting more people to the game - newer audiences.
"Hmm, no," he pondered, "but if you think he's more handsome, maybe that will help us. But it was not like, 'Hey guys, let's make him super-handsome.' We were just looking for this look where he is strong, he looks like a predator, especially with his eyes. Maybe the beard is doing the job."
Enough of beards: what about boats? In The Witcher 3 you can sail around, and we've even seen a ruddy great whale in one of the trailers.
It sounds like you'll be able to fight on the high seas. "It's sailing but you can have a fight," nodded Platkow-Gillewski. "It's something that will happen.
"We'll see if you can fight on the boat - probably it may be possible but it's a little bit tricky because it's quite limited space."
There will be other sizes of boat you can sail besides the vessel we've seen in a trailer already. More importantly, can you fish?
"No." Oh. "There was one crazy plan, and I have no idea if that will enter the game. It was a little bit violent," and involved making something with Geralt for "fishing the fishes". "But I hope that that won't be part of the game because that was quite cruel."
Can we attack the whales?
"Yes we have whales but you should not attack them because that's against our beliefs. We leave whales safe; we kill only monsters."
What about sharks? They're monsters.
"I don't think so. The waters are too cold for sharks."
Kraken?
"Err, no... At least I'm not aware about one. Maybe one will sneak from somewhere."
Fridays, eh?