The Witcher 3's next-gen update has added detailed vaginas to female monsters, apparently by mistake?

Geralt stands next to a naked woman, covered by simplistic clipart of a t-shirt and jeans.
(Image credit: YellowRoboCat / CDPR)

Well, here's an article that future acquaintances will find when they Google my name for the rest of my life. You remember that Witcher 3 next-gen update? The one that polished the 2015 game to a mirror-sheen, finally added a fast travel point to Crow's Nest, and integrated a bunch of popular mods into the base game? Well, it looks like one of those mods has added some searingly detailed genitals to the game's more, ah, feminine monsters (thanks[?] Kotaku).

Now, the original Witcher 3 was plenty risqué as it is. The war that ravaged Temeria may have killed thousands, but it didn't defeat anyone's Woodstock spirit. All manner of characters cheerily greeted Geralt with their delicates on parade, but what makes this update odd is the characters it applies to and how perfectly manicured it all is.

So let's drop the evasiveness, Kotaku's fearless investigation turned up exhaustively-modelled vulvae on four characters in particular: The Crones of Crookback Bog (in their human forms, praise be) and the game's bruxae, those vampiresses you occasionally find chowing down on hapless civilians in gloomy cellars and darkened woods. Hey, maybe we've found the reason for all those performance bugs the update introduced.

Unlike the (do not click this link at work unless your office is inadvisably chill) Barbie-doll situation these monsters had going on in their zones back in 2015, last year's update has equipped them with immaculately coiffured mappa tassies and all that (don't click this one either) generally accompanies them. I guess these ageless, diabolical beings are taking time out for personal grooming every now and then?

It's rather bizarre and, in a move that ought to see CDPR's executives put on trial, it only seems to apply to these few female monsters. I haven't checked personally, but it appears that the game's male vampires all remain stubbornly unadorned in their lower regions, although as far as I can remember they're all clothed anyway, of course.

It's only a theory, but I have to imagine this unexpected new addition comes courtesy of one of the many mods that CDPR integrated into The Witcher 3 as part of the next-gen update. Like every game that's ever existed, The Witcher 3 has a number of nude mods for its characters, and I'd bet that one of the beautification mods CDPR added smuggled in a pelvic payload. When Kotaku reached out, CDPR said it was "looking into it and will have more information in the coming days," which sounds to me like the devs might be as surprised by the new additions as players were.

Personally, I'm of the bold opinion that vaginas are real things that exist in the world, and I'm not especially scandalised by their featuring in a videogame. If there's a negative element to this amusing tale, it's that this kind of ribald subject matter seems to apply mostly (if not exclusively) to the game's female cast, to titillate an assumed heterosexual male audience. I say enough. Get your act together, CDPR, you've got all this processing power at your fingertips: let the hogs run free too, then we're really going next-genital.

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Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.