CD Projekt Red poured an immense amount of hard work into ensuring the world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was lavish with detail and depth. Containing hundreds of hours of content, Geralt’s horse, Roach, is invaluable when it comes to exploring the vast reaches of The Witcher 3, transporting players swiftly across the expansive land to their next objective.
Roach is a fan favorite among players and, when Geralt isn’t talking to her, she serves as a reliable mount for journeying across Velen, the game’s starting area. While The Witcher 3 is an admittedly bizarre game, in which Roach is just as likely to talk back to Geralt, what players may not expect is a trippy bug causing the four-legged animal to run on her hind legs.
User Breaded_butter_ posted a video to The Witcher subreddit of their experience playing the game for the first time. As they ride across a Velen hillock looking out towards the windswept forest before them, they make a sudden turn left down a steep slope making Roach rear upwards and begin running on her back legs with Geralt clinging on for dear life.
Towards the end of the video, Breaded_butter_ swings the camera around for a better view as they realize the absurdity of the situation. Geralt’s head is thoroughly merged into Roach’s who, belly up to the wind and forelimbs flying about in panic, is clearly not used to the sensation of being bipedal.
As many Witcher 3 players can attest, Roach performing wheelies when heading down slopes is a fairly common bug, and some Witcher players can even experience Roach tilting forward instead of back. Her weird behavior is so well cataloged that CD Projekt Red featured it in a video back in 2016.
As an April Fools' prank, the studio uploaded a mockumentary to YouTube detailing the creative process behind Roach’s character. In the video, which starts out like an ordinary behind-the-scenes short, members of the CD Projekt Red team jokingly make Roach’s bugs out to be intentional. They proceed to show clips of the horse positioned at awkward angles in-game intercut with videos of mocap actors in a cheap horse mask and blanket acting out the buggy motions, which may not even be the weirdest thing to happen on a mocap stage.
In a turn of cosmic humor, it’s fitting that this bug be rediscovered on April 1st, 6 years later and nearly 7 years since the game was first released. After Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous bug-ridden release, it’s refreshing to look back on the charming glitches of The Witcher 3, remembering that even attentively polished games can feature some jarring faults.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.