I’m torn as to whether sex belongs in games. I’ve followed the debate for years, between the folks who feel that sexuality proves maturity – that if games can show relations between consenting adults, we can finally call them “art” – and the folks who think games can’t handle it, because they don’t understand relationships and they can’t capture nuance and anyway, kids play these things, so we should all keep our pants on. Set aside the theory, and in practice, you can see that games are conflicted. A few tackle sex, and some – like God of War and Dark Room Sex Game - even hook it to the gameplay, but by and large, there’s no industry-wide practice around it.

But every so often a game gets it right. And right now, Overlord II’s “foursome” scene is the best of the year. Yes, it’s a scene where you, the hero, have a foursome. And yes, it’s juvie wish fulfillment. But it’s also a smartly done and properly incentivised scene that in two minutes, gets everything right.

First, some context. (And yes, there will be light spoilers.) In Overlord II, you play the faceless, voiceless evil overlord who storms around the countryside, enslaving or murdering innocents and stealing all their stuff. But when you’re not out raising hell, you can come back to your fortress in hell, aka the Netherworld, where you’re greeted home by up to three different mistresses. See, as you adventure through the game, certain women you meet decide to move in with you.  And they’ll even come on to you. If you buy them stuff.

Which is lame. It’s hard to buy a story where the beautiful woman just falls in the hero’s – sorry, anti-hero’s – arms for no good reason, let alone for gifts. Character development is easily Overlord II’s biggest weakness, along with plotting, combat, and the control scheme.

But if the female characters are just types, at least they cover three different types. Red-haired Kelda comes from the provincial backwater of Nordberg, and she’s known – and crushed on – you since you were kids. She’s more tough than evil, although (in a possible homage to Sarah Palin) she flirts with the idea of hunting animals with a boulder-chucking catapult. Kelda’s your first love - but then you meet Juno, who you rescue from a life of scandal and high society. More malicious and self-centered than Kelda, Juno paves the way to the third mistress, Queen Fay, who starts out as the protector of all that’s good and natural – until you twist and corrupt her.

Only one woman can be the main mistress, so do you stick with the no-nonsense Kelda, who stood by you when you were just a vile wee stump back in Nordberg? Or are you a materialist, who trades up trophy wives until you’ve gone from a commoner to a lady to a queen? This decision offers more role-playing than anything else in the game, where you really only have a choice between torturing people and murdering them.

After you pick a main mistress, the other two sulk around and heckle her. Unless you talk all three of them into “getting along splendidly”. As the Internet quickly discovered, there is a way – and I won’t tell you what; you can look it up yourself – to get all three women to hit the hay with you at once. (You’ll even get a gameplay prize: a piece of the totem pole that gives you control over more minions.) The scene starts with coy flirting, the curtains are drawn, and the action moves off-screen.

And that’s the best part. Because even though games need sexuality, I don’t want to watch sex in a game. That man (or woman) on-screen – that’s me. I don’t want to just sit there watching myself have intercourse if I can’t control it. And I definitely don’t want to control it, because trying to steer a sex act using a game controller is as ludicrous as ludicrous gets. Human intercourse already breaks down if you focus too much on the plumbing – and in a gameplay context, that’s all there is. I don’t want to sit there pumping the Wii MotionPlus or banging away on the D-pad. Gamewide, Overlord II goes off the tracks many times, but they got that one thing right: sex in an interactive context is better left to the imagination. We don’t need to see the details.

Let’s just say we were amazing, and leave it at that.