I’m approaching the endgame of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3. It’s almost scary, the proposition that a game this vast, that I’ve practically lived in for the past three months, is coming to an end. I’ve loved the quests, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:locations, and even the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:limited fast travel. Put simply, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I don’t want it to end.
However, this is🥃 a game first released in 2015, and sometimes it shows. In fact, some parts feel a decade older than that. This is most notable in The Witcher 3’s treatment of women𝔍, which its sequel needs to drastically improve if it wants to be taken seriously as a mature RPG.
First, we’ve got to talk costumes. Keira Metz, a famed mage and potential ally in the game wears a low cut blouse that all but exposes her areolas. If that’s what she likes to wear, then so be it, but her whole character is introduced in a frankly baffling manner. When Geralt arrives at her hut, she retreats to a magical chamber and… takes a bath? The cutscene lingers on her nude form as she and Geralt talk, before she gets out of the bath and gets dressed. There’s no narrative reason for her to be in the bath during this scene as Geralt inquires as to his surrogate daughter’s whereabouts, so it just seems like an excuse to show൲ a naked woman. The pair aren’t even 🌼flirting in this scene, although that does come a little bit later. The cutscene ends with the camera panning down to show two rabbits shagging. Mature.
There are more strange costume choices, too. Keira keeps her favourite blouse on even when venturing up to the icy cold climes of Kaer Morhen, and Temerian soldier Ves decides not to don armour like her colleagues, instead opting for an unbuttoned shirt. Some protection that would give her. Again, context matters here. There are no male characters similarly adorned. If Temeria’s guerilla rebels all forwent armour to show their strength and honour – or poor quality equipment – then Ves’ battlefield clobber would fit in well. But Ves is the only woman in Vernon Roche’s Blue Stripes, and also the only soldier to bare their chest, so something doesn’t quite add up. In The Witcher 2, Ves even says “I’m a soldier and it pisses me off when I’m viewed as a pair✃ of tits atop an arse,” and yet the developers seem to see her in exactly that manner.
It so often seems like they were designed with the male gaze in mind rather than presenting characters in ways that fit their personality or place in the game’s narrative. Take Ciri, for instance, who is generally a well-written character but has a scene in a Skellige bathhouse where the player can choose whether or not she stays dressed. Who is that benefitting other than pervy players? Even though Geralt is usually respectful towards the women he encounters, the game takes every opportunity to tell the playeꦯr that these are not valuable allies and friends, they are women to be ogled.
Take the ‘strumpets,’ too. These scantily clad sex workers litter the streets of Novigrad just waiting for a particularly lonesome Witcher to part with a few Crowns in return for a night of passion. There’s nothing wrong with being a sex worker, but these NPCs are rarely, if ever, given any agency. They’re populating Novigrad in order to make the atmosphere feel a little seedier and if the player wants to break up all the beheading with a softcore sex scene that’s all tits, no dick. It’s very Grand Theft Auto, with sex workers here for your pleasure and your pleasure alone - a feat 🌼CDPR repeated with Cyberpunk 2077. This is a game made by a development team that’s mostly straight men, and they want to see lots of boobs and no penis in sex scenes made for their pleasure and their pleasure alone.
It wouldn’t be hard to improve on this. More quests (or even one, I didn’t come across any in my extensive playthrough) involving sex workers would go a long way to making them three dimensional characters, or on an equal footing with the game’s other NPCs. The Witcher 3’s sex workers only talk about t🥀heir work, which isn’t the case for sailors, sorcerers, or soldiers. They’re sex objects that add nothing to the story, little to the e𒀰nvironment, and aren’t even able to talk about the witch hunters taking over their city without mentioning how much they want to bed you.
What’s more, they’re all women. If it includes them at all, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 4 should rebalance the gender divide when it comes to sex workers. Men can be sex workers too, and if you think that medieval men don’t have the occasional proclivity for penis, you’d be dead wrong. Besides, this is a roleplaying game, so if people want to roleplay a gay Witcher, why should they be blocked from it? The Witcher 3 tells great stories, and allows you to craft your own fantasy adventure in so many ways, so why ensure that fantasy is exclusively straight? On this front, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077 does improve things, so there’s hope for The Witcher 🍒4 yet.
The Witcher 3 has som🦩e great female characters. The main crew of Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer is 66 percent women. That increases to 7🅠5 percent if you include Triss, but I don’t. Sorry. These characters have stories and agency, they’re not just pawns for Geralt to push around. Ciri is especially well written, considering she is Geralt’s ward, and therefore could easily have been an extension of Geralt’s thoughts and actions. Instead, she does her own thing, tries to take her destiny into her own hands, and is even playable for sections of the game.
Yen also has her own motivations, and the sex scenes between her and Geralt have narrative importance. They’re still shot for the male gaze, but she 🐈and Geralt have a past and a future. She coaxes you from your drinks and to bed in Kaer Morhen because she loves you, because sex is a normal thing that partners do together, and because she’s missed you. Sex scenes can be done well and, while there’s still room for improvement here, Yen’s should be the blueprint going forward.
Characters like Ciri and Yen are crucial to The Witcher 4’s success as 🃏a more mature RPG, but it needs to remember the small characters, too. From strumpets to soldiers, The Witcher 4 needs to give its women more agency and more to do than sit in baths and stand on street corners.
