Censorship
It came to my attention last night that the version of The Witcher I played was the censored version — that is, in fact, all you can get in the United States. Apparently the original version contains actual proper nudity instead of just suggestions thereof. Now, I’m not (as I mentioned before) a snickering fourteen-year-old who will go to great lengths to see naked women. I’m an adult, and, though I do enjoy looking at naked women, it’s not a giant deal for me.
I am, however, an adult who is severely annoyed by censorship. So I installed a mod to uncensor it. And you know what? It’s not a big deal. Bruxas and dryads and things don’t have magical hair that always covers their breasts and crotches no matter how their heads move anymore. The cards now show more flesh than they used to. It’s not even that the censorship was done badly — they didn’t just slap a mosaic over the naughty bits and call it a day, they actually put some work into it. It just annoys me that it’s there at all.
I know, I know. Won’t somebody think of the children? Sure, no doubt somebody will, but it won’t be me. I’m busy thinking about how I’m too old to have the parents or legal guardians at the ESRB telling game developers to make sure they take the tits out before they release — oh, but that scene where the angry mob comes to burn Geralt to death for blasphemy and he has to slaughter an entire village in nasty ways? That’s cool. Leave that in. But absolutely no tits!
Besides, isn’t this game rated M anyhow? Steam says it is. Doesn’t that mean, you know, children already aren’t allowed to see it? So shouldn’t we be able to put the tits in there, since the children can’t look regardless? I know I’m just being difficult, but I’m pretty sure it’s not really necessary to ban them even harder like that.
Follow the jump for an example of a sex card in censored and uncensored versions. I hid it after a jump so those of you browsing from work won’t get in trouble. You know, those of you browsing from work who aren’t the sysadmin anyhow.
As you can see, not a huge difference, and the censoring is done well enough that you probably wouldn’t spot it if you didn’t know about it in advance. Other than the raised dress front, the main difference between the two cards is that the censored version is in softer focus — no doubt to conceal the edit a bit more nicely.
Also, for my money, several of the sex cards (including this one) are actually a bit sexier in the censored version than they are uncensored, since I find the suggestion a bit more alluring. But it pisses me off that they’re censored at all, and even moreso that nobody told me that it was a censored version I was purchasing.
