Thanks to the Steam holiday sale I’ve just finished playing Fallout 3 and The Witcher. I’ve been thinking about them and I find the depictions of sexuality in them to be interesting.
As anyone who has played The Witcher knows, The Witcher is overtly sexual and features Sex Cards that are given out when the player has sex with someone. Of course the player, who plays as the male Geralt, can only have sex with a woman. Moreover, the sex cards have no real impact on game play. They are just trophies or notches on the belt of the player.
On the other hand, Fallout 3 takes the opposite approach and allows you to pick your sex but doesn’t really have any sexuality at all (at least that I encountered as I played it). You can’t have sex with anyone. One could argue that sexuality wouldn’t really fit in with the kitschy 50s-influenced theme of the Fallout series but there is also the fact that the SPECIAL system and the gameplay includes other realistic elements such as having to sleep and drinking alcohol so why not include sex?
As a thought exercise it is interesting to think how each game might change with the addition of a more open and non-heteronormative sexuality in the games. In Fallout 3 you can use your charisma to try to influence people but what if you could also try to bed them?
In The Witcher, there are several female characters that you not only have sex with but also have quest-based interactions. So when you encounter a woman you can try to bed her and you can also interact with her to further the game. With men you can only interact with them to further quests. Imagine how different your interactions with the men would be if you were trying to have sex with them as well? It would be a very different game.
Another aspect of these sex cards is that they are drawings of naked women. I’ve written before about how I don’t really get the point of looking at drawings of naked women and I still don’t. (I mean besides Betty Rubble, of course…) They censored these in the initial North American release but the “enhanced edition” is uncensored. I wonder if they would have made these things with naked male characters?
Apparently there won’t be any sex cards in The Witcher 2 Maybe the eventual Fallout 4 can take a little of The Witcher‘s sex and The Witcher can take some of Fallout’s flexibility.