I would have rather they chose to keep male homosexuality out of the game entirely instead of making the only gay male in the history of the Witcher franchise a depraved monster. Then no one would be complaining from either side of the argument. You certainly wouldn't have had your moment of panic, terror and nausea that almost ruined the game for you.

It seems to me that you do not have a problem with homosexual males in the game as long as they are portrayed as fiends and then castrated, punished and killed brutally. What you would take issue with is if one was put in the game and presented as a noble, healthy and maybe even heroic individual, right?

You say much about how gay people and "fetish freaks" should just stop taking offense to this sort of portrayal of gays, while clearly expressing your own vigorous offense and disgust that gay people would want any other kind of portrayal of gays in the game. If its so easy to turn off one's feelings of being offended, can't you just as easily turn your own off?

Also, keep in mind that this is something that wouldn't have come up at all if CDprojektRED had not themselves put the subject matter in the game in the first place. This was CDProjectRed's choice. No one else's.

You had some cruel things yourself to say about gay people. Who do you think you are going to convince to see things your way when you call them " pinky lillies and pink panthers", "fetish freaks" and make other insulting statements?

I find it amazing how you express your fears that the devs might "faq up the game" and how you nearly lost your lunch when Dethmold told his slave to take his pants off and in the VERY SAME POST tell others who feel disgusted at what THEY saw that its "just a game" and they are "edgy and paranoid" for being concerned about it. Would that line work on you if they HAD put in positive portrayal of a gay male? Would you feel better if someone just said to you "its just a game"? I doubt it. Your own words prove otherwise. So how can you expect "its just a game, quit being paranoid" to mean anything to the gays and lesbians that you are blasting and ridiculing and calling freaks?

Anyway, if gay men positively portrayed ever DO show up in the Witcher world, its JUST a game, right?

There is no contradiction in my words, which above all are clearly my own opinion, estimation, and perception of things. Never said it can please or represent others', or that it aspires to. My falsely raised in-game disgust, was due to the impression that dethmold being a gay, was a decision of CDPJ, to pay tribute to these... "different people" (i will employee polite words), just like in the other game i mentioned. I thank the god and the dev manager for this to not be the case at all. His demise, which also wasn 't the intention of CDPJ to offend these "different people" with, became the scapegoat of the negative runt.

"This is just a game", so long as it remains a game (fantasy, AVOIDANCE of real life similarities and refferences especially intented and involving individuals or certain groups). Since there was no intention of CDPRJ to either appeal to or offend those people, i thought about posting like that in a little more aggressive manner, my fault mind you, for crying out loud.

Now about "pink lilies". Good idea for a gay to be presented into a game like a hero, or brave. That would be what should be defined as "high fantasy". How can a feminine, ladylike, sick or even, its not a lie, twisted "individual" (i will ommit freak), be brave and bold? They would scream like women and act like one. But enough offtopicness and troll-likeness. To close, yes, i would still say the same thing. It 's just a game. Especially since this is one game that gives you the option to slice and dice dance with whomever pisses you off...

Hey remember old greece? man all their soldiers were a bunch of pussies. Especially the spartans.

Reality does not equal stereotypes.

Pretty much. I've known a few gay guys that might be labeled something akin to flaming. Known a few who were as manly as Chuck Norris. Yes, I said as manly as Chuck mofuggin' Norris. They'd break Duke Nukem in two and laugh at his crying ass the whole time. And then go bake a souffle.

But seriously, being gay or straight doesn't define a person, and it doesn't automatically confer any other physical or personality traits beyond sexual preference.

Hahahahaha omg this thread...

I am just going to allow TheEnigmaticT's words be enough of a response to this post. There is much that I could add, but it would be pointless.

Glad you are able to find such joy in something. We need more laughter and smiles in this world. :-D

I ... Ugh.

Exactly. I can't imagine where someone would have to live to think that all or even MOST gay men would behave like "screaming women", even the ones who are not as masculine as others (though most gay men that I know are very masculine). A lack of machismo doesn't mean you are automatically some sort of cowardly wimp.

That being said, I would like to point out that I feel that using a comparison to women as an insult to males is actually an insult to women too. I personally respect women greatly and know MANY brave and even heroic women, and do not personally view women as wimpy by any stretch of the imagination. I only respond to the spirit behind what he said, what he is clearly intending to be an insulting and demeaning statement directed at homosexual males. The implication being that they are somehow "less than men" or "not real men".

Women are to be admired and respected, not thought so poorly of as to be used as insulting comparisons aimed at men that the person doing the insulting vilifies.

I wouldn't say the Witcher series is anti-gay. In fact, despite the horrible brutality of the world, the overriding message is one of tolerance. Hatred of what is different causes most of the problems in both games.

Dethmold is a character from the books I believe (I could be wrong, I've not read the books), so I think that was one of the reasons for his inclusion. And he is a monster ... who happens to be gay. He is defined by his hatreds, not his sexuality. Similarly, though she isn't evil, Philippa happens to be gay, but she too is defined by her ambition, not her sexuality.

I agree completely that it would have been good to have a more positive gay role balancing out Dethmold and they may yet include such a character in future sequels/expansions. However, to play devil's advocate, there are some potential pitfalls with doing so that should be recognized.

If a positive gay character is introduced simply to provide the appearance of balance, where the character is essentially defined by their sexual orientation and little else, then that is in many worse. The character will literally be a token towards political correctness and thus not actually provide any real, substantive balance. Balance for the sake of balance isn't actually balance. Further as it is a fantasy medieval setting, I feel it would be good to have a reason for the reveal of the character's sexual orientation as being gay is probably not something one would readily admit to being in that kind of world. Maybe that level of homophobia isn't a facet of the Witcher world, but given how many other -isms there are, I don't see why it wouldn't be. If it is so in the Witcher's world, then being gay wouldn't exactly be the first thing out of the character's mouth.

Thus the character would have to be multi-dimensional, defined by far more than his sexuality (or her sexuality, since while Philippa is far from evil, she's hardly a positive character either), and, while not quite as important as the first, a good reason for the character's sexual orientation to come up at all would be nice to have. Otherwise a character simply stuck in for some sense of balance is in many ways worse than not having one at all. The character being gay should simply be a facet of their definition rather than their defining feature and the sole reason for that character's inclusion (or even the major plot point featuring that character).

If a such a character never makes an appearance, I still wouldn't call the fact that they had one evil s.o.b. who happened to be a gay proof that series is homophobic given the rest of the content and the fact that Dethmold's evilness isn't connected to his sexual orientation - his various hatreds and instability stem from the events of his past. That said, I do totally understand someone being offended by the fact that the one gay male character in the Witcher 2 (well the one male character revealed to be gay) is such a moral vacuum.

I appreciate the reasoning behind your words, but regardless of what might have been CDProjektRED's intent, its clear that some people DO see what happened with Dethmold to be an anti-gay move, including those with homophobic attitudes, as can be seen by KiNgBrAdLeY7's contributions to this thread. It can also be seen if one visits the TV Trope website's entry on "Depraved Homosexuals" located here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DepravedHomosexual and scrolls down to their section on examples from video games. There is an entry for Dethmold there. So, its been done, CDProjektRed chose to do this, the can of worms has been opened and its now an issue that people from each side of the argument are not going to just ignore. People from one side will feel uncomfortable or even offended by what they see, people from the other side will take joy watching a gay man be castrated BECAUSE he is a gay man that dared show his face in a Witcher game (again, we just have to look at the words of KiNgBrAdLeY7 and other posters in various threads throughout this particular forum).

As I have stated in this thread and elsewhere, I would have much preferred that they had not included a gay male character at all, if the only one they felt comfortable adding was of the "Depraved Homosexual" stripe. But what's done is done and now I would like to see some balance. I do not see the problem with the extending of such a "token" as long as it was done in the manner you describe. I think this was done amazingly well in Mass Effect 3. I don't think it has to be lumped with "political correctness" either. Just human decency. The Milk of Human Kindness, rather than political correctness. A responsible act in response to what their decision has caused for some people. That's all.

Thanks again for your balanced response. :)

No worries - I totally understand as I too was uncomfortable with Dethmold's death scene, but I think that uncomfortability is the point of it's inclusion. Roche and Iorveth are both brutal people in a brutal world. While in the Witcher 1 Yaevinn and Siegfried were both better men than the causes they fought for, Roche and Iorveth serve better causes than they themselves are. Iorveth even admits as much if you push him. The first time you meet Roche, he goes off and tortures a priest to death and throughout he is shown to have more than a few anger issues. For instance, Roche kills Dethmold horribly because of what Dethmold did to Roche's men, though I do take the point that the manner of the death has obvious linkage with Dethmold's orientation. Roche has positive qualities of course, but there is no question that he is a ruthless s.o.b. with anger management issues. And while Iorverth never does anything as bad as Roche during the game's arc - it's clear that he's committed atrocities equal to if not far worse than anything Roche has done or does. Iorveth's also racist towards humans - while Roche may be a bastard, Roche is not actually racist towards elves. However, Iorveth is shown to be more self-aware than Roche is.

Also don't misunderstand: if a positive gay character is created as I laid out (multi-dimensional and interesting), then I wouldn't feel such a character would be a token at all. The inclusion of any positive multi-dimensional character would be beneficial and if that character happened to be gay, then even better since I completely agree that some balancing out of Dethmold is warranted. My worry is simply the creation of a uni-dimensional, disposable character made to give the appearance of balance while because of the shallowness of the character's design, not actually providing any. Does that clear up what I was trying to say about balance and correctness? It's not the intention that bothers me, but the execution, which as you essentially point out in your response to me is what matters. :)

Simply because a character is listed in a TV trope doesn't mean that's completely fair to the character. I think Dethmold is more than just the depraved homosexual trope and the game hints at a humanizing backstory to him in the character description which I assume is fuller in the Witcher books. I actually think the inclusion of the character was a good one and to change his character from what he was in the books (I assume he is gay in the books) would be to compromise the integrity of the character. That said, I understand the controversy over the character (and the manner of his death) and far from wishing to dispel debate over him, I think it is important to have it. In fact, that's why I think the inclusion of the death scene is important and why CDPR put it in there as graphically as they did - to have a debate like this and to make people uncomfortable with the brutality of Dethmold's death even though Dethmold himself was a very bad guy. This was an act of revenge, not justice. In the other storyline, when Philippa has Dethmold killed through Saskia, it is still not an act of justice (as is pointed out at the time even by those who have the most cause to hate Dethmold, the nonhumans). It is however a cold, calculated act intent on removing a threat rather than an act of passion - hence the difference in the manner of the death.

Bigots are assholes. I too am horrified by such comments, more so even than by the death scene itself which is quite a statement (I first saw those type of comments on the youtube page for the death scene since I played Iorveth's path and only watched Roche's). Unfortunately, the execution of the scene (no pun intended) was such that such people had an excuse to crow. And that is unfortunate and maybe that was a failure of CDPR's execution. Because I don't think (I certainly hope not) that was the intention - which to somewhat contradict myself, does count for something. :)

At least in the screenshots that Geralt bloke looks quite grim and stern, not gay at all. So I'd presume he is quite anti-gay. Maybe he just doesn't have much to laugh about, considering all the shit he has to go through?

This discussion itself proves it was not. I like when works of art (stories or whatever if you don't wish games to be called works of art) provoke thought, controversy even, as long as their entire point of existence doesn't revolve around that. I love that The Witcher isn't politically correct. As you have stated yourself, this actually leads to a much more actual thought given to how much evil that can cause.

Now I'm not saying that Dethmold eh... Death scene is exactly a case of thought provoking issue. But the way it's handled, the way he's killed... All that adds up to build believable characters, and even if Roche killed Dethmold how he killed him because he'd hate gays - that's just what I'd call 'giving your characters personality.' Because, hell, vast majority of real people have a lot of bad sides, and that should be integral in building a beleivable character.