Best female protagonists in gaming?

EscapistAccount

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Squilookle said:
I'll stick with Jo, thanks. An equal of any other FPS protagonist, and the fact she's a woman has nothing to do with anything. She just gets on with the job, like a professional.
Good answer, she's my favourite too because she's just relentlessly professional. She gets one of my favourite parts in gaming when the other agent bumps into her in a typically secret-agentish way and she tells him off for behaving like an unprofessional jackass.
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Hawki said:
-StarCraft: Sarah Kerrigan
no, No, NO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Sarah Kerrigan is the worse thing about Starcraft II now, she want from a badass queen ***** of the universe villain, to a Mary Sue Holy Angel of Fire, Light, and Lawful Goodness because she was the Chosen One :p

Fuck Starcraft II Sarah Kerrigan :p
 

The Purple Grape

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The Boss of the 3rd Street Saints (only when voiced by Laura Bailey)Although probablyt could push Kinzie Kensington as she is a protagonist of Gat Out of Hell.

Otherwise there is Cate Archer. Funny, classy and British thief turned spy. Shame probably never going to get anoth NOLF game.

2B because of certain assets. Although A2 is better. In character not in the...assests.
 

Poetic Nova

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Adam Jensen said:
I'd also like to add a character that's not really a character, but I enjoy playing with her these days:



This is my first time playing with Gaige and she's freakin' awesome. MORE ANARCHY!
I'd second this, but A.B.A. from Guilty Gear takes the cake, if only barely.
 

Erttheking

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Well since the obvious one of Samus has already been taken, I will throw in Terra from Final Fantasy 6, along with ARID from The Fall being a pretty underrated one.

Plus we have best doggo.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/okami/images/f/fb/Amaterasu_main_artwork.png/revision/latest?cb=20171114222839
 

Hawki

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Samtemdo8 said:
Sarah Kerrigan is the worse thing about Starcraft II now, she want from a badass queen ***** of the universe villain, to a Mary Sue Holy Angel of Fire, Light, and Lawful Goodness because she was the Chosen One :p

Fuck Starcraft II Sarah Kerrigan :p
Sure man, whatever floats your boat...

Also, I said StarCraft, not StarCraft II, so that encompasses the whole franchise. You can confine Kerrigan to SC1 if you want.

And there's no "chosen one" about it, unless you believe in biological determinism.

EscapistAccount said:
Good answer, she's my favourite too because she's just relentlessly professional. She gets one of my favourite parts in gaming when the other agent bumps into her in a typically secret-agentish way and she tells him off for behaving like an unprofessional jackass.
What? It's Joanna who's being unprofessional. He shoots a guard (who appears out of nowhere, but hey, physics), which is what Joanna's been doing up to that point. Jonathan even calls her out on her "shoot everything" approach (which doesn't translate well to the next level, but hey, gameplay mechanics).

TBH, the entire sequence feels like forced drama. And while it's hardly PD's fault, considering that Jonathan and Joanna meet in Zero, and work together again in Initial Vector and Second Front, the exchange now makes even less sense in the broader context of the franchise.

dscross said:
You have to look at it in the context of the reveal in the 80s. Back in 1986, female protagonists were really scarce, which perhaps explains why Nintendo kept Samus gender ambiguous. On the one hand, it could be a statement about how women shouldn't be treated differently to men in games. On the other, it could well have been a ploy to avoid alienating a group of players accustomed to seeing leading men in games. In reality, its probably a mixture of both. But whichever is the case, she defied stereotypes for me.
To quote Wikitroid:

Originally, Samus was created solely as an alternate identity for the player to put themselves into and was given no separate personality or defining features, characteristic of the creative treatment of many video game characters of the time. Partway through the development process, one member of the team suggested: "Hey, wouldn?t it be cool if the character turned out to be a woman?? A vote was held and Samus was changed into a woman. The identity of the developer who suggested making Samus a woman is unknown, and when asked in 2017, Yoshio Sakamoto was unable to remember. He suggested that it may have someone who has since left Nintendo

TBH, I don't think one really needs to read anything into Samus's gender reveal - you can, considering she was referred to as male in the original manual, but if the game doesn't make a big deal out of it, why should we?

Course if that happened today, Nintendo would likely be accused of "pushing the feminist agenda" or some crap, so hey, what do I know?
 

Casual Shinji

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I have very, very few, if any.

I quite liked Kat from Gravity Rush. One of the few girly girl characters in videogames. Most other female game characters are a bit too obvious in their attempt to appeal to the male demographic, either by being hot pieces of ass, or by aggressively coming across as 'so not like "those" girls', or both.

Kat is just... fun, which is a quality extremely few female game characters seem to have. Shantae is another rare example.
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Hawki said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Sarah Kerrigan is the worse thing about Starcraft II now, she want from a badass queen ***** of the universe villain, to a Mary Sue Holy Angel of Fire, Light, and Lawful Goodness because she was the Chosen One :p

Fuck Starcraft II Sarah Kerrigan :p
Sure man, whatever floats your boat...

Also, I said StarCraft, not StarCraft II, so that encompasses the whole franchise. You can confine Kerrigan to SC1 if you want.

And there's no "chosen one" about it, unless you believe in biological determinism.

EscapistAccount said:
Good answer, she's my favourite too because she's just relentlessly professional. She gets one of my favourite parts in gaming when the other agent bumps into her in a typically secret-agentish way and she tells him off for behaving like an unprofessional jackass.
What? It's Joanna who's being unprofessional. He shoots a guard (who appears out of nowhere, but hey, physics), which is what Joanna's been doing up to that point. Jonathan even calls her out on her "shoot everything" approach (which doesn't translate well to the next level, but hey, gameplay mechanics).

TBH, the entire sequence feels like forced drama. And while it's hardly PD's fault, considering that Jonathan and Joanna meet in Zero, and work together again in Initial Vector and Second Front, the exchange now makes even less sense in the broader context of the franchise.

dscross said:
You have to look at it in the context of the reveal in the 80s. Back in 1986, female protagonists were really scarce, which perhaps explains why Nintendo kept Samus gender ambiguous. On the one hand, it could be a statement about how women shouldn't be treated differently to men in games. On the other, it could well have been a ploy to avoid alienating a group of players accustomed to seeing leading men in games. In reality, its probably a mixture of both. But whichever is the case, she defied stereotypes for me.
To quote Wikitroid:

Originally, Samus was created solely as an alternate identity for the player to put themselves into and was given no separate personality or defining features, characteristic of the creative treatment of many video game characters of the time. Partway through the development process, one member of the team suggested: "Hey, wouldn?t it be cool if the character turned out to be a woman?? A vote was held and Samus was changed into a woman. The identity of the developer who suggested making Samus a woman is unknown, and when asked in 2017, Yoshio Sakamoto was unable to remember. He suggested that it may have someone who has since left Nintendo

TBH, I don't think one really needs to read anything into Samus's gender reveal - you can, considering she was referred to as male in the original manual, but if the game doesn't make a big deal out of it, why should we?

Course if that happened today, Nintendo would likely be accused of "pushing the feminist agenda" or some crap, so hey, what do I know?
Did you even play Starcraft 2?

She was the Chosen One at that point. Zeratul and the Xel'naga proclaimed it to be so.

Keriggan herself proclaims it was her destiny by the end of it.

Just, god the ending to Starcraft 2 was so dissapointing :(
 

Hawki

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Samtemdo8 said:
Did you even play Starcraft 2?

She was the Chosen One at that point. Zeratul and the Xel'naga proclaimed it to be so.

Keriggan herself proclaims it was her destiny by the end of it.
Zeratul never proclaims Kerrigan to be a "chosen one." Not in those exact words.

Ouros tells Kerrigan it's her "destiny" and Kerrigan affirms that in a fatalistic sense, but that's not much of an indication of her being a "chosen one," considering that the xel'naga have precognative abilities, and Ouros is pushing Kerrigan to do something that she might otherwise be hesitant to do - far easier to claim that someone "has" to do something rather than "I want you" to do something. And her "chosen one" status there, if it can be applied, is down to biology, being a terran-zerg hybrid, having elements of both purity of form and essence, hence able to contain Ouros's essence.

"Chosen one" narratives usually come down to an innate, often intangible quality. Kerrigan's position here is more down to biological properties.

Just, god the ending to Starcraft 2 was so dissapointing :(
Disagree, but I'm past arguing.
 

Trunkage

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Adam Jensen said:
trunkage said:
Adam Jensen said:
I have a thing for badass ladies. I like her intelligence, skills, confidence, education etc. That's also why I'm one of the few people who doesn't consider Yennifer from The Witcher 3 to be a *****.
Yennefer isn't a *****. She a homicidal maniac. Geralt is sometimes forced into situations where he has to kill people. Yennefer seeks out killing people and like to experiment, sending people in to get killed by spells to see how it works. She a villain and not in the good Dijkstra or Bloody Baron way. In the Whoreson Junior way
I was talking about the game version. If you wanna talk about the book, then we don't even have to go past the very first chapter of the first book. Geralt totally didn't have to kill the guys at the inn. He was within his rights, sure. But he didn't have to exercise that right. He just wanted to show off.

And in all honesty, if I had her powers, I'd probably be the same. Who cares about a few nobodies that will probably die of starvation or plague when there's so much to learn.
That was in the game. She hires people to go into an area so she can figure how a spell works. It kills them all.
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Hawki said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Did you even play Starcraft 2?

She was the Chosen One at that point. Zeratul and the Xel'naga proclaimed it to be so.

Keriggan herself proclaims it was her destiny by the end of it.
Zeratul never proclaims Kerrigan to be a "chosen one." Not in those exact words.

Ouros tells Kerrigan it's her "destiny" and Kerrigan affirms that in a fatalistic sense, but that's not much of an indication of her being a "chosen one," considering that the xel'naga have precognative abilities, and Ouros is pushing Kerrigan to do something that she might otherwise be hesitant to do - far easier to claim that someone "has" to do something rather than "I want you" to do something. And her "chosen one" status there, if it can be applied, is down to biology, being a terran-zerg hybrid, having elements of both purity of form and essence, hence able to contain Ouros's essence.

"Chosen one" narratives usually come down to an innate, often intangible quality. Kerrigan's position here is more down to biological properties.

Just, god the ending to Starcraft 2 was so dissapointing :(
Disagree, but I'm past arguing.
But here's the core of my problem with this, WHY did it have to be Kerrigan? A person that became such a despicable villain by the end of Brood War.

Jim proclaims that he will kill her at that point.

If it was just having her on their side so the Zerg can contribute to the fight against the forces of Amon, fine.

But was the ascension to becoming a Xel'naga really necessary?
 

Thaluikhain

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Elsa, from Black Closet


In that it's a great game, but the obvious ones were taken.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Well it's finally happened, a best female protagonist thread and Jade from Beyond Good & Evil barely gets a mention.
I like Jade. She's a well balanced character - cool yet understated, a badass without being rude or snarky, tough but definitely vulnerable and is motivated out of love and kindness rather than anger or outrage but without feeling sappy. So she's essentially Wonder Woman without being a sex symbol and having a more grungy look/zen lifestyle. Or female Steve McQueen, take your pick.
 

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Aya Brea, from Parasite Eve.
https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_medium/9/90625/1744847-288a88ce058073691c7219051a04854a.jpg

She was one of the first female protags in 3D gaming to have a developed personality. She was an average cop with fears, strengths, and wanted to be just a normal person like anyone else. She's kind, competent, improvises, and keeps a cool head in most tough situations. Even then, she has her weak moments where she doubts herself, and you as the player understand where Aya is coming from. Nobody mention the 3rd game. That wasn't the "real" Aya, and ti never happend.
 

dscross

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Hawki said:
TBH, I don't think one really needs to read anything into Samus's gender reveal - you can, considering she was referred to as male in the original manual, but if the game doesn't make a big deal out of it, why should we?

Course if that happened today, Nintendo would likely be accused of "pushing the feminist agenda" or some crap, so hey, what do I know?
I wasn't making a big deal of it really, I was just saying it was quite a big thing to do in 86 and, to some extent, it probably helped pave the way for future female protagonists in games. That alone makes her a good female character to me.
 

CaitSeith

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I second Samus.

Also Celes from Final Fantasy VI and Chie from Persona 4.
 

CritialGaming

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A few of my favorites:

The NEW Lara Croft
Tifa Lockheart - FFVII
Aya Braya - Parasite Eve
Makoto - Persona 5
Aloy - Horizon: Zero Dawn
 

MonsterCrit

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dscross said:
Because there are fewer of them I thought it would be fun to see who everyone's favourite heroines are, in gaming.

I'll kick off with Samus from Metroid. Despite any controversies, in Samus, Nintendo created a character that is widely held as a hero by female and male gamers alike. She's a hero that should be celebrated for defying gender stereotypes.

Who are yours and why?
It's not as small a number as you'd think.

I'd have to say. Alis Landale from Phantasy STar.