The Nilfgaardian armor in Netflix's The Witcher series is disturbingly wrinkly

With the release of Netflix's The Witcher series slowly but surely approaching, leaked footage of what is purportedly actors wearing Nilfgaardian armor has appeared on the Redanian Intelligence YouTube channel. The video doesn't reveal anything about the story or surprise cameo appearances—it's mainly just actors goofing around off-camera—but the armor is really something to see.

But cooler heads pointed out that what you see in these clips is almost certainly not what you'll see on film: Between post-production effects and the inherent changes wrought by the camera, what you see in the Netflix series probably isn't going to look quite like this.

Even so, the armor is interesting to see because it's so completely different from Nilfgaardian armor in The Witcher games, particularly The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, in which the powerful Empire of Nilfgaard invades the Northern Kingdoms. The color is correct—Nilfgaardians are colloquially known as the Black Ones—and the insignia fits, but otherwise it's not even remotely similar.

It's possible that this armor is being worn by some faction of the Nilfgaardian military that we haven't run into yet, or that the weird design is intended to facilitate some weird, post-production CGI effect, although I don't think that seems very likely. Whatever it turns out to be (and yes, it's also possible that they'll just look cheap and terrible), I imagine that we'll get a proper look at them fairly soon: The Witcher on Netflix is expected to debut late this year, and there will surely be no small amount of pre-release hype leading into it.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.