EDIT: The AAA Industry does have a habit of not writing their female leads well or have them go through a bunch of unnecessary suffering to count as character development. As he points out near the end of the video, it's usually
Western AAA games that fudge this up. Though He doesn't mention Alloy from the Horizon (I get why as she's bland to some people, but she doesn't go through a whole bunch of misery and either of her or her games) games. There's Cloe and Nadine Uncharted Lost Legacy. Both characters have their own agency and doesn't rely on them going through so much pain and misery. Rivet definitely counts too and works as leading lady, even though she shares it with Ratchet. I do appreciate Yahtzee says that he doesn't like pointless misery nor victimization of a character, no matter if they're male, female, color, lgbtq, etc. It's funny how either the smaller budget games usually get it right or the AAA Japanese games get it right. More so the ones with fan service. It be like at times.
Though big problem with Yahtzee's argument is that he's cherry picking examples. There's plenty of Western AAA games that avoid TR 2013's main issues. As I've discussed with a friend:
- Control
- Alan Wake 2
- Various Assassin's Creed games with female leads. This one is not my forte, but I give credit where it's due. Shadows counts even though it's not out yet.
- Alien Isolation
- Returnal
So it really doesn't hold much weight and is not as big issue as he's making it out to be. Even though he is right about
some of the games he mentioned.