Your video game hot take(s) thread

[Hawki]

I am pretty sure that earlier in this thread I had said Battleborn>Overwatch and looking at Overwatch having content that Battleborn came out the gate with.

I played Battleborn this year before the servers went down. Can't say I was that impressed.

Battleborn arguably has more, but it's a less focussed more - tedious campaign, tedious MOBA gameplay, and I can't comment on its other modes because they were dead. Overwatch might arguably have less, but it's a more focused less.

In other words, Battleborn is a textbook case of jack of all trades, master of none. Probably contributed as to the confusion as to what type of game it actually was prior to and even after release.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Ironic enough, I've seen some people claim that Lost Legacy is a better Tomb Raider game than the entire reboot trilogy.

Also one of the seemingly rare examples of a strong female character in a western AAA game who isn't tormented and angry. I mean, daddy issues aside, which ugh, you have a female character who's openly commenting on a dude being handsome, which is apparently seen as poison to the male gamer, and who's got an upbeat and playful attitude.

We need more "girly" girls in action games, like Kat from Gravity Rush.

 

[BrawlMan]

We need more "girly" girls in action games, like Kat from Gravity Rush.

It's why I will always take games like Shantae and Indivisible (the same people who did Skullgirls did the right thing in this game too) over shit the TLOUS and TR reboot trilogy. I am not a fan of the former two games gameplay style, but they have at least fun characters that are not afraid of showing their feminine/"girly" traits as a bad thing nor hating on someone with tomboy qualities. River City Girls gets accomplished too. It's funny how the Western AA and indie scene can get their points across without going fetish torture porn of female protagonists, but most of the AAA industry stumbles and tries way too hard impress who don't game at all. Or those that hate video games. It's creepy how most "professional" critics (who are mostly male) help fetishize these games that go out of their way to torture the protagonist, yet will throw a biatch over fan-service (regardless of how little or big it is) or a woman who "is not as tough as the boys" just to bash on. For many claiming to be feminists, they sure as hell gotta a lot of sexists attitudes over how a girls or women should be portrayed in video games.

 

[Hawki]

Also one of the seemingly rare examples of a strong female character in a western AAA game who isn't tormented and angry. I mean, daddy issues aside, which ugh, you have a female character who's openly commenting on a dude being handsome, which is apparently seen as poison to the male gamer, and who's got an upbeat and playful attitude.

Maybe this is a "different strokes, different folks" thing, but there's not exactly a shortage of female characters who meet that criteria in my experience.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's why I will always take games like Shantae and Indivisible (the same people who did Skullgirls did the right thing in this game too) over shit the TLOUS and TR reboot trilogy. I am not a fan of the former two games gameplay style, but they have at least fun characters that are not afraid of showing their feminine/"girly" traits as a bad thing nor hating on someone with tomboy qualities. River City Girls gets accomplished too. It's funny how the Western AA and indie scene can get their points across without going fetish torture porn of female protagonists, but most of the AAA industry stumbles and tries way too hard impress who don't game at all. Or those that hate video games. It's creepy how most "professional" critics (who are mostly male) help fetishize these games that go out of their way to torture the protagonist, yet will throw a biatch over fan-service (regardless of how little or big it is) or a woman who "is not as tough as the boys" just to bash on. For many claiming to be feminists, they sure as hell gotta a lot of sexists attitudes over how a girls or women should be portrayed in video games.

I think it mostly comes from this idea that only men play (AAA action) videogames, and men don't want girly stuff, so the women in those videogames need to be "not like other girls". It also stems from this weird hatred the world seems to have toward teenage girls and their likes (Twilight, Justin Bieber). You can see this in Ellie in the first TLoU; she's a teenage girl, but don't worry fellas, she's not into things teenage girls are usually into, because we know you don't like that. This then gets dailed up to eleven in TLoU2 where she's Scowly McMean Face.

And this goes both ways, because male characters often suffer the same fate (brooding, grouchy, 'look how cool I am because I hate everything'), and it's just as annoying. But seeing as most of these characters are still written by men the writers have more confidence I guess in portraying short comings or taking the piss out of these characters as opposed to when they're writing female characters.

The reason I brought up Kat from Gravity Rush is because I think she's kinda a rare example in the industry. Japan doesn't have the same issues as western AAA games in that regard, but they're on the other end up of the spectrum, where every female character needs to be a hot waifu. Kat feels in the middle of that. Sure, she's obviously a pretty girl, but she never feels framed as the hot girl. Maybe due to the artstyle and the fact that it was originally a Vita game, allowing for less visual detail, but that's just me guessing. You're ostensibly playing an open-world superhero game where the female protagonist is closer to Sailor Moon or Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. And that's so nice in an industry were a strong character typically translates to an angry character.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Maybe this is a "different strokes, different folks" thing, but there's not exactly a shortage of female characters who meet that criteria in my experience.

In the western AAA industry? I don't know, I can't think of too many besides Chloe in Lost Legacy. Maybe if you count more multiplayer focused games like Overwatch and Borderlands, but I'm not too familiar with those.

 

[Hawki]

I think it mostly comes from this idea that only men play (AAA action) videogames,

That's kind of true though.

A common statistic paddled out is that more women play games than men, or at least, there's gender parity. And yes, that's true. But when you break it down by genre, there's sharp differences. There's a chicken vs. egg question to be had, but the breakdown remains the same.

and men don't want girly stuff, so the women in those videogames need to be "not like other girls".

But again, I'm not seeing this idea that women are predominantly matching the archtype you're describing. I'm not denying the archtype exists, I'm questioning that it's dominant.

 

[Hawki]

In the western AAA industry? I don't know, I can't think of too many besides Chloe in Lost Legacy. Maybe if you count more multiplayer focused games like Overwatch and Borderlands, but I'm not too familiar with those.

Okay, I've got time.

If we apply the criteria of:

1: Female character must be playable, and cannot be player-customizable (can be player selectable though)
2: Has to be made in the West
3: Has to be a AAA game (this is going to be hard to define in some cases)
4: The character isn't "tormented" or "angry"
5: I can nominate one character per media

Then, off the top of my head, I can nominate:

-Vikki Grim (Army Men)
-Melka (Battleborn, or, if she's too angry, Deande)
-Tiny Tina (Borderlands)
-Hawk (Brute Force)
-Coco Bandicoot (Crash Bandicoot)
-Rodriguez (Fortnite)
-Anya Stroud (Gears of War)
-Alyx Vance (Half-Life)
-Ellen Anders (Halo)
-Vela (Jet Force Gemini)
-Luger (Killzone)
-Zoey (Left 4 Dead)
-Idrial (Lord of the Rings)
-Jade (Mortal Kombat)
-Tracer (Overwatch)
-Skye (Paladins)
-Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark)
-Slash (Quake)
-Samanya (Red Faction)
-Lara Croft (Tomb Raider, sans Survivour Timeline)
-Tyrande Whisperwind (Warcraft)
-Blaskowitz Twins (Wolfenstein)

Again, all I had to do was look at my media list on my homepage and limit myself to set criteria to generate this. No doubt there'll be some contestation of those entries, but the "tormented, angry female" isn't something I'd call dominant.

 

[BrawlMan]

Overwatch and Borderlands, but I'm not too familiar with those.

Those two are triple A games that actually get female characters right. Especially OverWatch. I have not played much either, but what I seen from playthroughs or the story scenes of each character in OW's case.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Okay, I've got time.

If we apply the criteria of:

1: Female character must be playable, and cannot be player-customizable (can be player selectable though)
2: Has to be made in the West
3: Has to be a AAA game (this is going to be hard to define in some cases)
4: The character isn't "tormented" or "angry"
5: I can nominate one character per media

Then, off the top of my head, I can nominate:

-Vikki Grim (Army Men)
-Melka (Battleborn, or, if she's too angry, Deande)
-Tiny Tina (Borderlands)
-Hawk (Brute Force)
-Coco Bandicoot (Crash Bandicoot)
-Rodriguez (Fortnite)
-Anya Stroud (Gears of War)
-Alyx Vance (Half-Life)
-Ellen Anders (Halo)
-Vela (Jet Force Gemini)
-Luger (Killzone)
-Zoey (Left 4 Dead)
-Idrial (Lord of the Rings)
-Jade (Mortal Kombat)
-Tracer (Overwatch)
-Skye (Paladins)
-Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark)
-Slash (Quake)
-Samanya (Red Faction)
-Lara Croft (Tomb Raider, sans Survivour Timeline)
-Tyrande Whisperwind (Warcraft)
-Blaskowitz Twins (Wolfenstein)

Again, all I had to do was look at my media list on my homepage and limit myself to set criteria to generate this. No doubt there'll be some contestation of those entries, but the "tormented, angry female" isn't something I'd call dominant.

Multiplayer games that have a roster of characters tend have a lot more leeway. I know I'm being picky here, but I'm mostly refering to the story focused single player games with only one playable character. Whether it's Japanese or American, it always feels like they fall into that one archetype. I'd be pleasantly surprised if we'd get a western AAA single player game with a character like Tracer or Coco Bandicoot as the sole playable character.

It can also be the sheer exhaustion and disappointment after thinking we'd finally left the edgey protagonist shtick behind us, with even Kratos mellowing out, only to have TLoU2 come along and turn a very promising character into Super Edgelord: Pretentious Edition. It was like when we went from Sands of Time to Warrior Within.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I think the fact that so many of these examples are coming from games with big rosters highlights the "one character" problem with regards to diversity and representation. Like, if you have one girl character, then everything is riding on that one character being "good", and what a "good" character is is very subjective. So that's an advantage of the roster model.

Theoretically, if the AAA game space had a healthy amount of diversity amongst it's main characters as a whole, there'd be more single player characters that fit whatever type of "good character" being argued about.

Practically, AAA games are where the big money is and the suits get conservative. There are endless stories from developers about corporate meddling over characters, story, etc. Are we really surprised that smaller studios with smaller budgets have more flexibility in regards to diversity?

 

[Hawki]

Those two are triple A games that actually get female characters right. Especially OverWatch. I have not played much either, but what I seen from playthroughs or the story scenes of each character in OW's case.

How are we defining "right," though?

Let's start with Coco. I like Coco as a character. However, her character is an archtype, and she doesn't undergo any character development. That's the same for the entire Crash Bandicoot cast with the possible exception of Cortex, but it doesn't change that her character is static, and pretty simple. Similarly, Tracer. Tracer's my favourite character in Overwatch (in terms of characterization, if not gameplay), and she benefits from having more backstory than many other characters, but it's backstory that's entirely outside the game itself.

Ask me to make a top ten list of female characters in games, and it's unlikely that either of them would make it. Even if we're accepting that tragic backstory somehow makes a (female) character worse, I'd take that over simple characters whose backstory/character development is absent. For instance, back to that list I made - for Gears of War, I chose Anya, since she fit the criteria. If I'm picking the most compelling playable character from the IP though, it's Kait. Only reason I can't is because she simultaniously fits the angry character/tragic backstory archtype. But even then, that's still character backstory and development, not to mention that by the end of Gears 5, she's overcome both of those traits.

 

[Hawki]

Multiplayer games that have a roster of characters tend have a lot more leeway. I know I'm being picky here, but I'm mostly refering to the story focused single player games with only one playable character. Whether it's Japanese or American, it always feels like they fall into that one archetype. I'd be pleasantly surprised if we'd get a western AAA single player game with a character like Tracer or Coco Bandicoot as the sole playable character.

Even if we limit the criteria to singleplayer, with the female character being solely playable, that still leaves us with Vikki Grimm, Alyx Vance, Joanna Dark, arguably Samanya (in that she's the sole playable character of her DLC, if not Guerilla itself), Lara Croft, and the Blazkowitz Twins (yeah, there's not one single playable character, but they're both girls). You can probably throw in Kate Archer there as well.

It can also be the sheer exhaustion and disappointment after thinking we'd finally left the edgey protagonist shtick behind us, with even Kratos mellowing out, only to have TLoU2 come along and turn a very promising character into Super Edgelord: Pretentious Edition. It was like when we went from Sands of Time to Warrior Within.

By the criteria you listed above though, wouldn't Ellie be invalidated from the start though? She definitely has the "tragic backstory" criteria in the first game as far as I can tell (per her backstory with Riley). Maybe if you consider that DLC by itself though...

That said, this is part of a wider concept that I don't buy, that somehow having a tragic backstory makes a character weaker. You mention Kratos as being an edgelord, but he's also got a tragic backstory, and as far as I'm aware, the God of War soft reboot harps on it, even if he's less 'edgy.' But most people seem to consider new!Kratos a more compelling character than old!Kratos.

 

[Casual Shinji]

By the criteria you listed above though, wouldn't Ellie be invalidated from the start though? She definitely has the "tragic backstory" criteria in the first game as far as I can tell (per her backstory with Riley). Maybe if you consider that DLC by itself though...

That said, this is part of a wider concept that I don't buy, that somehow having a tragic backstory makes a character weaker. You mention Kratos as being an edgelord, but he's also got a tragic backstory, and as far as I'm aware, the God of War soft reboot harps on it, even if he's less 'edgy.' But most people seem to consider new!Kratos a more compelling character than old!Kratos.

Well, I didn't mention tragic backstory as a criteria, but it can certainly aid in the brooding edgelord archetype. Ultimately though it depends on how it's presented. New God of War handles it well, old GoW (minus maybe GoW1) handles it poorly. TLoU1 handles it well, TLoU2 handles it poorly. But this is up for debate.

 

[Gyrobot]

Also one of the seemingly rare examples of a strong female character in a western AAA game who isn't tormented and angry. I mean, daddy issues aside, which ugh, you have a female character who's openly commenting on a dude being handsome, which is apparently seen as poison to the male gamer, and who's got an upbeat and playful attitude.

We need more "girly" girls in action games, like Kat from Gravity Rush.

I think it mostly comes from this idea that only men play (AAA action) videogames, and men don't want girly stuff, so the women in those videogames need to be "not like other girls". It also stems from this weird hatred the world seems to have toward teenage girls and their likes (Twilight, Justin Bieber). You can see this in Ellie in the first TLoU; she's a teenage girl, but don't worry fellas, she's not into things teenage girls are usually into, because we know you don't like that. This then gets dailed up to eleven in TLoU2 where she's Scowly McMean Face.

And this goes both ways, because male characters often suffer the same fate (brooding, grouchy, 'look how cool I am because I hate everything'), and it's just as annoying. But seeing as most of these characters are still written by men the writers have more confidence I guess in portraying short comings or taking the piss out of these characters as opposed to when they're writing female characters.

The reason I brought up Kat from Gravity Rush is because I think she's kinda a rare example in the industry. Japan doesn't have the same issues as western AAA games in that regard, but they're on the other end up of the spectrum, where every female character needs to be a hot waifu. Kat feels in the middle of that. Sure, she's obviously a pretty girl, but she never feels framed as the hot girl. Maybe due to the artstyle and the fact that it was originally a Vita game, allowing for less visual detail, but that's just me guessing. You're ostensibly playing an open-world superhero game where the female protagonist is closer to Sailor Moon or Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. And that's so nice in an industry were a strong character typically translates to an angry character.

So long as the alt right weebs like these peoplef etishize or sexualize them, we cannot have girly girl action games as they reek completely of Entitlement. They always scream hard about how social justice and progressive woke types have be targetting their final bastion of escapism and make shit takes with support from a vocal minority


They will never show a single bit of respect for characters like Ellie so why should devs show a single bit of respect for their misguided tastes for female characters. Look at how ballistic they get when a female character is introduced for games, unless she has bouncing cleavage, an outfit that plays with boundaries of the ratings board they will never show an ounce of respect.

It can also be the sheer exhaustion and disappointment after thinking we'd finally left the edgey protagonist shtick behind us, with even Kratos mellowing out, only to have TLoU2 come along and turn a very promising character into Super Edgelord: Pretentious Edition. It was like when we went from Sands of Time to Warrior Within.

Honestly I like Ellie because of that fact is she represent the "innocence lost" of 2020, when people's hopes for the happiest year of their lives became one of the most angriest, depressing and mentally crushing years known to the living. I wouldn't have it any other way since to look for escapism in trying times is putting your head in the sand. Even if she hits all the red flags of things Yahtzee hates about indie game design, being the ultimate avatar of "Small Child in a Scary World in a walking simulator/horror game"

 

[Dreiko]

Also one of the seemingly rare examples of a strong female character in a western AAA game who isn't tormented and angry. I mean, daddy issues aside, which ugh, you have a female character who's openly commenting on a dude being handsome, which is apparently seen as poison to the male gamer, and who's got an upbeat and playful attitude.

We need more "girly" girls in action games, like Kat from Gravity Rush.

There's Little Witch Nobeta which is a souls clone with a cute witch character protagonist. Surprisingly fun game.

Highly recommended.


Also the Atelier series is full of girly girls, but that's an RPG and not an action game.


If you want something explicitly western, there were these older Alice in wonderland action horror games, I think she was pretty girly.

 

[Gordon_4]

Also one of the seemingly rare examples of a strong female character in a western AAA game who isn't tormented and angry. I mean, daddy issues aside, which ugh, you have a female character who's openly commenting on a dude being handsome, which is apparently seen as poison to the male gamer, and who's got an upbeat and playful attitude.

We need more "girly" girls in action games, like Kat from Gravity Rush.

It’s probably a dictate by genre or setting though; Uncharted is an action adventure and so it’s characters are all rough and tumble. Gravity Rush is fantasy adventure in a steampunk city so there’s a greater amount of whimsy going around.

 

[Dreiko]

It’s probably a dictate by genre or setting though; Uncharted is an action adventure and so it’s characters are all rough and tumble. Gravity Rush is fantasy adventure in a steampunk city so there’s a greater amount of whimsy going around.

You definitely can have girly chars in those rough and tumble settings. Berserk has a ton of them and it's about as dark as it gets. I think the issue is more with the western action flick tropes that these things are trying to emulate. The girl is either the dumb bimbo who needs saving or the manly chick who is just one of the boys but also has tits, no in-between. It's why Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite was such a breath of fresh air.

 

[Hawki]

I think the issue is more with the western action flick tropes that these things are trying to emulate. The girl is either the dumb bimbo who needs saving or the manly chick who is just one of the boys but also has tits, no in-between.

[/QUOTE]

Um, not really. I mean, I know the trope exists, but there's no shortage of female characters who don't fit the paradigm you're mentioning.

Also, it's not as if Japan hasn't done the helpless damsel trope. Mario has Peach (and Pauline, Daisy), Link has Zelda, Sonic has Amy, etc. In the case of Mario, Peach is still being kidnapped and not doing much else.

 

[Dreiko]

Um, not really. I mean, I know the trope exists, but there's no shortage of female characters who don't fit the paradigm you're mentioning.

Also, it's not as if Japan hasn't done the helpless damsel trope. Mario has Peach (and Pauline, Daisy), Link has Zelda, Sonic has Amy, etc. In the case of Mario, Peach is still being kidnapped and not doing much else.

Thing is Japan also does the thing where the feminine char uses her girliness to thwart evil through the power of cuteness and love and everything sweet. They don't have this requirement that to be capable you gotta be manlike.