The Witcher 2: Geralt Gets a Haircut Blog Post

The folks at CD Projekt RED set some time aside to write a blog post on the ponytail Geralt of Rivia dons in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the unexpected feedback it solicited from the passionate fans of the original title, and how they set out to solve the conundrum eventually with a free barber DLC. Here’s a snippet:

Making the hairstyle optional meant many problems and was a rather low priority, because it didn’t influence the game quality directly. But we made a promise, so we had to work it in somehow.

Unfortunately we didn’t keep that promise when the game launched the players only had the ponytail. We couldn’t keep it that way and since we already had some basic things done, we decided to release the new hair changing system in the next patch. The idea to change it from the inventory seemed too awkward for the team. The proper inventory icons should have to be among Geralt’s stuff we could not imagine him buying or crafting those. Furthermore, a collection of scalps would look strange amongst potions, swords etc.

That’s why we decided to introduce barbers into the game. We added a dialog option to a NPC in each location, which allowed players to change Geralt’s hair for a small fee. To lead the players to this person we added a special chair in the vicinity of the barber.