A phrase that percolated around the release of Netflix’s The Witcher lives in my head to this day: Henry Cavill grimes up good. As Geralt, Cavill was consistently at his best with some blood and dirt and anger on him. For my money, much the same is true of The Witcher games. They’re capable of properly gorgeous views – arresting valleys and nested cities and forests that all but glitter – but so much character is found in the ugly, gross, uncomfortable bits.
So it was an immense relief to see a woman chuck the contents of a chamber pot off a bridge in the new tech demo for The Witcher 4. Oh yeah, this is gonna be gross.
It’s one thing for The Witcher 4 to launch blood and gore at the camera like a 3D film. I get it, CDPR. Gross! But the grit and gristle I’m really looking for is in the proudly unwashed realities of medieval life. The dirty, uncouth, and uncaring. Here, The Witcher 4 tech demo, which is also filled with gorgeous valleys and forests and so on, did not disappoint.
There is, of course, the chamber pot, nearly the very first thing we see as Ciri approaches an otherwise pretty city. I’d like to extend a special shoutout to the chamber pot woman and her brown cap. She doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.
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Seconds later, as Ciri strolls through the marketplace, the ground strewn with all manner of delightful filth, a guard spits just inches from her feet. Maybe he’s not fond of Witchers. Maybe he, like a concerning number of men online, is intimidated by a woman as strong as Ciri. All I know is that he put some stank on that spit, and for his contributions to this canvas of crap, I have to respect it.
Ciri’s walk continues. A live bear performs tricks before a small streetside crowd – not something that OSHA would abide, I’d wager. A man drops all his apples on the ground after bumping into Ciri. Polish those puppies right up and get ’em on the fruit stand. Pigs pass chickens as they escape their pen, perhaps lured by the apples. Behind a street beggar, an innkeeper rolls an apparent Gwent cheater out into the street. The background music to all of this is an energetic chorus of villagers hawking and gossiping and coughing.
This is the kind of atmosphere that helped make The Witcher 3, and games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, so great. I know this is just a tech demo that we shouldn’t read too much into, but the direction here seems pretty clear. The Witcher 4 grimes up good.
CDPR says Ciri’s face in the new Witcher 4 trailer is “a direct copy of The Witcher 3 model” despite “two subtle changes.”
