Bears. Necrophages. Dragons. The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs on PC and so is accordingly jam-packed with some of the biggest, baddest monster foes to fight. Though they don’t really feature in The Witcher Netflix series trailer, it’s probably a safe bet that Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia will have to take on his fair share of monsters in the show. However, it looks like the series has got quite an unusual approach to this – it will largely steer away from CGI.
As reported by CBR, The Witcher series’ production designer, Andrew Laws, and showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, recently spoke to French language magazine Première about special effects in the show. According to the site, Laws said (roughly translated from French), “I don’t want to see the actor play in front of a green screen, talking to a green ball.”
“We wanted something real, even during fight sequences,” he explained, adding that these days viewers are easily able to identify CGI when it’s used on-screen, and that it can result in a sense of immersion being lost. He continued, “If you create excellent CGI in one scene, you have to keep the same level of quality for all the others.”
Hissrich reportedly also touched upon this topic, saying (again, translated) that, “It was important for the show to have an authentic style,” adding that she didn’t want to just recreate the look of the “superb” videogame that already exists with the show.
Given that monsters and fantasy environments that would likely need some CGI treatment to bring them to life on-screen are a big part of The Witcher universe, as is also true of other big fantasy shows like Game of Thrones and Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings series, this might sound a little surprising. However, it sounds like The Witcher will certainly deliver: “We are not the poor cousin of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Netflix has given us quite a lot to work with! We have filmed gigantic scenes, and we have given our series a production value worthy of the big screen.”
There’s no news of an exact The Witcher Netflix release date just yet, but hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for Geralt and his adventures to arrive. Sadly, there’s also no news of a The Witcher 4 release date either – but with CD Projekt Red moving to a dual-franchise model part-focussed on The Witcher, we can always hold out hope one will be on the way.