This very well could go down as my favorite blog post title ever. Finally -finally- I got to put the word "boobies" in a blog post title, and do it in context, no less. Suddenly my blogging life feels complete.If you've been reading this blog since its inception, you know I had some rather strong opinions on the "adult" content found in last year's mildly controversial CRPG, The Witcher. Those posts came about as a sort of general response to two articles penned by Corvus Elrod that I generally disagreed with. (This is not a shot at Corvus. I read his blog daily and he's a hell of a writer that puts a great deal of thought and passion into his work.)
If this is a new topic to you, The Witcher is a game in which a professional monster hunter, Geralt, hacks monsters to tiny gelatinous bits while trying to stop the nefarious schemes of various evil doers that exist in a dark, medieval game world. (See my review.) You can also spend a fair amount of time, if you so choose, bedding various female characters that appear throughout. Make no mistake, Mick Jagger has nothing on Geralt.
(Clarification: The "sex" cut scenes in this game consist of about five seconds of two extremely blurry shapes doing something in the background of the screen. We're not exactly talking Cinemax after 11pm on a Friday night.)
Personally, I thought The Witcher, despite some significant flaws, was one of the best RPGs to come down the pike in years. But there's the question of the necessity and appropriateness of its more sexual overtones and how it portrays the relationships that exist between men and women. On this blog I argued in defense of those parts of the game, despite the fact that some aspects of it -the much discussed "conquest" pin-up cards, for example- are unquestionably unnecessary and pure cheesecake. That said, I don't think I was ever quite able to reconcile why I found those more "immature" parts of the game so easy to dismiss at the same time I was talking-up the more complex social relationship that I feel added depth the game.As is often the case, the truth between two opposing viewpoints is usually somewhere in the middle and there's now an excellent voice for that middle in The Escapist's Andy Chalk, who has an article posted that's both an excellent and funny read. I'll leave you with just the conclusion, but the whole piece is well worth your time:
A lot of people don't, and won't, get it. My girlfriend, for instance, who I suspect sees it all as amusingly deviant, has made it quite clear that any attempt to explain why I'm watching a computer game character get laid will only make things worse. And there's no question we could, should and eventually must elevate the "adult" content in our games to something beyond the current "Seymour Butts" level of cleverness. But what's really wrong with indulging the little teenage idiot inside each of us now and then? It's served us pretty well this far, giving rise to a multi-billion-dollar industry that's outstripping both television and movies as an entertainment medium. They say that youth is wasted on the young; I say that I'm old enough to know better but think boob cards are pretty cool anyway. And that's precisely the point: As the great Time Lord himself once said, "There's no point being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes."Also of note, just in case you've been playing the game or thinking about picking it up, there's an enhanced version of it in the works that should address a lot of the game's remaining technical problems (more variety in NPC character types, a fixed translation of the polish dialog that is sorely needed, and a host of other stuff). The good news is that, if you already have the game, these fixes and enhancements will be available as a download. Kudos to developer CD Projekt for taking the time to really dress up a game that was already a quality product.
