Ergh, ‘genitalia’ – the most incredibly drab way of referring to the most fun part of our bodies. How did that title come to this? Well, I tried alternatives, I really did. Initially I went for ‘junk,’ but given that The Witcher 3 already has a surplus of junk items you can pick up and break down into wood chips or whatever, I figured that calling for more of it could’ve enraged people more than mentioning the word ‘diversity.’ ‘Private parts’ sounds too quaint, and me calling to ‘just give Geralt a damn dick, already’ could’ve fallen foul of either HR here at the DualShockers or the Google algorithms in a way that sneaking it into the first paragraph might not.
But that’s the long and short of it (hehe). See, just last week CD Projekt RED said it would be patching out a little bit of nudity that they say “accidentally” slipped into The Witcher 3’s Next-Gen edition. Because the next-gen update bundles in various community mods for which CDPR credited and reimbursed various authors, apparently the devs failed to notice that one of the mods they left in endowed the Crones of Crookback Bog (in their sexy seductive form, not their haggard croney form, sadly) with detailed vaginas and landing strip pubeys.
The removal is likely not a matter of censorship, but rather the fact that these particular textures weren’t part of CDPR’s vision for the game. Indeed, when we reached out for comment, they told us: “We want to also add that the removal of these elements is not intended as a statement against nudity or mature themes, but rather an attempt to maintain visual coherence across all character models — including these textures in the game was not something we planned from the start.”
I’m with them to a point. CDPR didn’t plan for these particular vaginas with those particular public patterns to be in the game, so why should they keep them in? I can’t possibly comment on historical accuracy (especially as it’s, well, not really history), but I do imagine that medieval folkloric crones weren’t the types to subject their body hair down below to decidedly modern-day maintenance…
But it does tap into a wider discussion around nudity and what is and isn’t sacred in the realm of games. The Witcher series has always been brimming with nudity–you could argue it’s been a veritable trailblazer in the field, in fact. While the series has certainly matured from its early days of ludicrous cleavages, wanton sexual partners, and immortalising women you hook up with as collectable ‘romance cards’, right up to its most recent outings it hasn’t shied away from sex scenes, nipples, and what very much sound like orgasms.
With all that going on, these games are in the perfect position to take the next step by demystifying vaginas and, while they’re at it, Geralt’s dick.
Then there’s the fact that there are frankly way more disturbing and morally dubious things in The Witcher 3 than a bit of full frontal. Just look at the very scene where we see the three Crones’ bits; we see the three women standing naked around a cauldron bubbling with human body bits, feeding each other blood, and prancing around with a decapitated human head. Are we going to censor the cannibalism? The gore? No, we’re going to put fig leaves between their legs.
It’s a strange world we live in where all the aforementioned stuff is totally fine in a video game, yet any details of human anatomy are strictly forbidden. The Witcher 3 series feels perfectly designed to just ‘let it all hang out,’ and this little mod mishap could’ve been an opportunity to dispel the strange and enduring prudishness that games–and media at large–have around fully frontal nudity. Again, I can understand CDPR’s desire not to include work that they never intended to have in the game, but then since the cat’s out of the bag, as it were, why not just replace the offending textures with their own ones?
But this would need to be balanced, because the goal here isn’t to appease the gaze of sweaty hetero male gamers, but to normalise nudity, and part of that process is being more comfortable with male as well as female nudity. Ergo, Geralt needs a dick.
If we’re going to have these characters strutting around in the nude, then scrap the constant coy camera angles and innuendo-like imagery worthy of an Austin Powers movie, and just show us Geralt in his full frontal glory; we don’t need to linger on it or focus on it, nor does it need to compete with Roach in terms of size, it should simply just be there, because in a series like The Witcher it’s frankly weirder to constantly skirt around this stuff–be it woman- or man-stuff.
CDPR have already taken some tentative steps towards dispelling full frontal nudity in their games, though they’ve stumbled a bit along the way. In Cyberpunk 2077, both male and female characters have visible privates if you go prying, but even here there’s a bit of a misbalance, as the character creator gives you six different dick options and only one rather blurry-looking quim.
Now, as someone who’s never been interested in twiddling with the minutiae (HAH! Oh God, last one, promise) of character creation like brow depth and nose angle, let alone junk size and shape, I don’t personally have much interest in how my character’s not-so-privates look, but the point is that if you’re going to go there as a game, don’t be shy and just do it. We’re all adults here (or at least, the games have adult age ratings), we can handle it.
