Bozja Incident NPC Question (Spoilers)

[kaynide]

Update/Edit: Myth Busted! Was an interesting rabbit hole, but the NPC is not in fact Rowena.

Original post as follows:
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So, quick question.

In the Bozja Incident, immediately after the crowd of people fighting [Bozja Forum] and just before the Antibody fight in an area called [Praetentura], you can see two Garlean soldiers harassing some townsfolk (Line starts with "It's off to the hole with you!").

One of these I believe is Rowena; the one cowering and holding her head is the same model of Rowena seen in the Geralt cutscenes prior to this quest. (She's wearing the poncho)

...So is it? Or is it just a convenient asset already loaded into the Bozja camp area? Seems fishy!

What lore do we know about Rowena?

[Vidu]

Do you have a screenshot at hand?

...and to answer your question: https://gamerescape.com/2016/02/05/t...-lore-lowdown/ - here i(s some of) the lore we know about Rowena and Gerolt.

Taking this to the lore-subforum might also yield some good answers!

Edit: We should also keep in mind that what we're seeing isnt the real thing, but Cids memories of it - so even if that model is the same as Rowenas, it doesnt mean that she was there back then (which seems extremly unlikely given her age and the distances). The technical explanation might very well be "we had that model" while a lore one could easly be "Cid just saw her and remembers her" or that we just saw her and somehow carried that memory-fragment over (I'm not sure if the lore explains wether or not thats possible, but I wouldnt rule it out either).

[Sove92]

Rowena is Ul'Dahn and was a nobody at the time, if not even a child. There's no way she could have been there.

[kaynide]

...

The outfit is very similar, albeit slightly different colors (Greenish as opposed to the orange), but it is the same face. Unless we get more somewhere in the questline, I think it might be safe to chalk it up to recycling assets that are already loaded in.

...

I don't seem to be able to replay it, so I can't give any screenshots worth anything. I DID watch a vid on youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Zwp0L9EPM] where the player got close to her, but not really good enough. Again, very similar, but it's about as good as a bigfoot photo. As I said above, it seems very likely it's just using loaded assets.

Also, read the link! Awesome read there. I never realized Gerolt and Rowena were married!

[Iscah]

I just replayed the instance on an alt, and made sure to check the NPC you're talking about - it isn't Rowena at all. The Bozjan NPC has pale skin and blue eyes, and I don't think the face looked that similar either.

If you hadn't just seen Rowena wearing the same poncho, I'm not sure you'd have any reason to link them.

[kaynide]

I just replayed the instance on an alt, and made sure to check the NPC you're talking about - it isn't Rowena at all. The Bozjan NPC has pale skin and blue eyes, and I don't think the face looked that similar either.

If you hadn't just seen Rowena wearing the same poncho, I'm not sure you'd have any reason to link them.

Yeah, even with a deep dive into the lore it just doesn’t make sense to be Rowena. I think it’s just reusing assets that are already loaded for convenience.

Myth Busted!

[Iscah]

Yeah, even with a deep dive into the lore it just doesn’t make sense to be Rowena. I think it’s just reusing assets that are already loaded for convenience.

Myth Busted!

It's not even reusing the asset unless they changed it so much they might as well have started over anyway. I didn't check what else they were wearing, but there isn't any similarity in the actual character besides having brown hair (not the same shade of brown or the same style) and maybe the same base-level female Midlander face that gets used for an awful lot of NPCs.

I'm pretty sure the only thing being reused was the poncho. We don't have a great selection of generic townsfolk gear that isn't trendy casual.