Things I've Noticed About Gender in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

In no particular order.

  • There are fat men and thin men, buff men and scrawny men, but there appears to be only one character model for women, regardless of age, station, athleticism, what have you.

  • In the same vein, I’m… not sure I can tell most of the sorceresses apart. Except for hair color.

  • There’s a quest where you find an abusive dude’s wife and daughter? And then tell him where they are?? AND THEN CAN POTENTIALLY HELP HIM GO FIND THEM?!

  • Geralt does not seem to have absorbed any of the latent or explicit gender roles espoused by the culture around him, which is… nice. But is kind of the exception that proves the rule.

  • When talking with sorceresses (and some other women), the dialogue options take a sexy turn, like… real fast.

  • I do enjoy dad-mode Geralt.

None of this is out of step with the sort of base-level gender weirdness that I’ve come to expect from video games over my lifetime of playing. But playing Witcher III is also the first time in quite a while that I’ve played an RPG with an established protagonist (rather than a game structured for a player’s customized avatar, or with a gender-neutral or unspecified MC), and I was a little surprised that we’re still… doing it like this. At least as of 2015, when Witcher III came out. (Yeah, I know, but my gameplay lag is a conversation for another time.)

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