The Witcher 2 gets sex and sexy right

Every woman in The Witcher 2 has breasts the size and shape of bowling balls. So you might think it’s another videogame with no idea how to do effective female characters. LA Noire with implants. And elfs.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If you can accept the Frank Frazetta aesthetic — and, really, there’s no reason not to, given the venerable tradition of horny fantasy art — you’ll find a world in which women aren’t just objects. They are power brokers and pawns, whores and warriors, villains and victims. A female character is literally turned into a toy for much of the game. Another female character is the strongest opponent you will face. Yet another female character has a shockingly abrupt and grisly fall from power. Strangely enough, they’re never mothers, since this is a game mostly without children. The mother of a grown child, who you meet early in the game, isn’t exactly maternal. But overall, there’s a welcome multi-faceted portrayal of women in The Witcher 2.

Furthermore, The Witcher 2 has a mature approach to sexuality. Unlike Bioware’s skeezy salad bar romance subgames, The Witcher 2 comes with a hardcoded and meaningful relationship. As befits a choice-and-consequence RPG like this, you can ignore the romance and whore it up if you want. But you’ll miss an erotic and surprisingly effective love scene. This is still just puppet theatre, often awkward in a post-LA Noire world, but it’s as good as I’ve ever seen it. And it puts to shame anything Bioware has done.

Plus, The Witcher 2 is a really good game.

Thumbs way up. Read the review here.