#The witcher 2 characters series#

It is merely how the world operates, and that is what makes The Witcher 2 so insidious.īy positioning the player character – the titular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia – as apolitical, The Witcher 2 passes off misogyny as merely one side of an argument which must be heard out. That many of The Witcher 2’s convoluted political scandals dissolve into literal witch hunts goes entirely without comment by the game. Women are treacherous, manipulating, and entirely self-motivated.īy the end of The Witcher 2, every major female character has been found guilty of some form of treason, tortured, raped, or outright murdered. A continual theme throughout The Witcher 2 is that women cannot be trusted, sorceresses even more so. Sex is a currency, and one employed by women to reward or ensnare the men who exist at the top of the political pyramid. It is not merely the fact that The Witcher 2 contains sexual content, but that sex and nudity are fundamental aspects of its world. But there is more going on here.Īt the center of The Witcher 2’s praise for being adult and uncompromisingly ugly is how it portrays women. Again, The Witcher 2 is celebrated not for artistic merit but a willingness to engage in base titillation.

Once boobs are as ordinary in games as in episodes of Game of Thrones, video games will finally have escaped the puritanical tyranny that has supposedly constrained them over the years. The inclusion of sex is seen as progress towards medium parity with movies and television. But then, we do not see The Witcher 2 described as a high-fantasy porn simulation.

Far more likely the cause of The Witcher 2’s adult status is its inclusion of several soft-core sex scenes, as well as plentiful female nudity. Many games are as, if not far more violent than The Witcher 2 but in those instances, excessive violence is rightly criticized as juvenile and excessive. That The Witcher 2 is violent is entirely unimportant. It is a painful, utterly meaningless avenue by which to critique a game, but as it is so entwined with both The Witcher’s success and how the games themselves present it is worth acknowledging and deconstructing just what it means for The Witcher – and in this case, specifically The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) – to be “adult.” More so, perhaps we, those who spend so much time defending a hundred-billion-dollar industry’s legitimacy, will be vindicated. Perhaps if video games can be just as violent, sexual, and morally ambivalent as books and movies, they will finally be taken seriously within mainstream culture.

#The witcher 2 characters series#

The most common description for The Witcher series is that it is ' adult', ' mature', and, as Arthur Gies writes for Polygon, “willing to be ugly.” Underlying this praise (for it is always praise) is the notion that through The Witcher’s unapologetically graphic nature video games might be perceived as having finally elevated themselves beyond the realm of teenage novelties.