The Uncanny Valley: The Witcher 1

The Witcher is a highly regarded video game series developed by CD Projekt for the PC. The main character of the series is named Geralt, a traveling monster hunter for hire. The reason I'm targeting this video game for my first post about the uncanny valley is because the first game, released in 2007, is one such where technology wasn't good enough at the time for them to fix many of the problems they had. When it was first released the witcher was considered decent at the time, they don't hold up very well now.

Starting off with the facial animation, sadly I noticed most of the characters being shaded with black and they had suffered from major still face syndrome. Being as it came out in 2007, thats not too bad for the time but I was playing the game and someone had just died but their faces were almost emotionless. That broke my immersion somewhat and didn't help create a convincing atmosphere.

While it was an interesting game mechanic, the 3 different fighting styles seemed odd animation wise. The strong fight style had this odd over the head sword grip that he ran around with and it just seemed a bit strange. People usually shift around while holding swords but he stayed very static while walking with his sword drawn. His upper body moved very little and he stayed in a crouch-like position the entire time he was in combat mode.

Although this game was released in 2007, some of these types of problems had been solved in other games like Mass Effect. Still, I wouldn't judge the game on animation alone. Overall this game is still very fun and I would recommend it to people who like fantasy RPGS.