#5: April Ryan (The Longest Journey)
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| "Don't say 'Enter the light!', it sounds too ominous." |
An obvious choice! April Ryan is not only a female protaganist, she magages to avoid most of the horrible cliches we associate with female protaganists.
April is hot, but in a very clean, non-sexual way, and indeed sex is far from her mind most of the way through this game! April is strong, but she is not a physically powerful or imposing woman. Her extraordinary feature as a human being is that she can withstand huge amounts of pressure mentally and get by solely on her wits, whatever bizarre situation she is thrown into.
I know a lot of people will feel her strength as a character is undermined by the 'daddy issues' she is portrayed as having. This is certainly a hero for vulnerable female protaganists, and yet April is not so much vulnerable physically as emotionally unsettled. Whether metaphorically or literally, April succeeds in exorcising her memories of her father and his abuse. This is a powerful moment for the game and the character, as the abuser turns from an inhuman monster to his true form, a flawed and pathetic human.
The Longest Journey also features lesbian characters who are, you know, middle-aged, and look like regular women, and have sex and relationships with other women. So bonus points!
#4. Grace Nakimura (Gabriel Knight)
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| "So help me I'll be doing more than just research this time around." |
Grace is definitely my most beloved character on this list, but I really dislike her OOC and boring portrayal in the third Gabriel Knight title, compared to the first two.
Grace is Japanese, not just nominally, which isn't particularly well represented. Her race is kinda ambiguous in the first picture, and the FMV game obviously used an Asian actress, but look at the similarities and differences between the three. The first two Graces wear kinda frumpy clothes, while the third is wearing a tight top and jeans.
Her personality and what I personally like about her character also changes in the third game. Grace is likeable, she is funny and attractive and highly intelligent, but she is flawed in a very human way. Her flaws are much more stereotypically 'masculine' than feminine: she is often cold and sarcastic; she refuses to accept or deal with her feelings and personal problems; she is attracted to her womanising boss and can't stand this fact, to the point of actively pushing him away from her.
Of course, in the third game the characters have sex, destroying the romantic tension that was their relationship and replacing it with the boring sexual tension that all employee relationships have post sex. She also dresses up in sexy clothes to seduce information out of a man. I'm not saying these things make a bad female character, but they make her a bad character in context. Grace is not this good at manipulating people, she is clumsy and abrasive and pisses people off. She just would not dream of using 'sex as a weapon'.
I definitely would choose the Grace from the second game as my favourite. She is easy to dislike in this game at first, due to her brashness and willingness to hurt others, but as she discovers these faults about herself and second-guesses herself, so we respect her. She lashes out brutally at a love-rival, but then regrets this and actually apologises. A female friendship ensues! In a game!
#3 Faith (Mirror's Edge)
I haven't actually played through Mirror's Edge yet and I hear the plot and characters are pretty badly lacking, but I wanted to include Faith as a really awesome character design.
A question I always get asked about this is: "So do you want game characters to be ugly?" First of all, yes, and I also want them to be super hot and every level inbetween. I understand that both male and female characters are often idealised to look more attractive, but there are SO many representations of men outside of the 'hot, grizzled, muscular soldier' stereotype compared to the meagre amount of women outside of 'hot, flawless lady with big tits'.
Secondly, notice how Faith (and none of the other women I chose) are ugly in the first place? They are all attractive and idealised to an extent. An attractive character does not make a weak character, but one that is attractive in a bland way is just not interesting.
Faith looks both very attractive and very original and fresh. Her image was famously criticised on a message board in Korea and adjusted to look more like an 'attractive' character (gone were the tattoo, flat chest and any indication of maturity). The designers were upset by this, and I don't blame them. Faith looks strong and capable, and this is the job of character design: to inform us about the character.
#2 Olivia Offrenda (Grim Fandango)
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| "No, I have a taste for really bad men. There's a difference.' |
I love Grim Fandango's female characters, they are all rounded and imperfect and funny. In particular, I love Meche's transformation from soft to hard depending on her situation. It's also pretty hard to sexualise lady skeletons, there's a great scene where Meche removes her stockings from her legs (bones) and Manny looks uncomfortable, playing off our expectation of sexiness in a female game character.
On the whole, though, Olivia is my favourite. She's the only 'evil' character I've included, because she does evil so well. She manipulates people around her with little regard to the consequences, and engages in risky behaviour just because she can. Despite the fact she uses men's attraction to her against them, she often does this out of self-interest and greed rather than her own sexual desire, but she openly demands what she wants sexually as well.
She's also just really cool, backstabbing and talking down even to the protaganist. She falls due to her own vices, like any other proper villain.
#1 Bayonetta
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| "Don't fuck with a witch." |
Bayonetta is kinda hotly debated about in terms of her portrayal of a woman in a video game. It's easy to see why by just glancing at her: her body is incredibly out-of-proportion, her outfit is either skintight leather, her own hair or nothing at all, she uses BDSM techniques as special attacks...
I love Bayonetta as a bit of obviously performative femininity. There is more than a touch of drag about Bayonetta, her sexuality oozes out of her as she performs it. She swaggers instead of walking, she blows kisses to close portals, butterflies surround her at a double-jump. She's like a really fantastic drag act or camp female performance.
Another important point is Bayonetta's sexual agency. She is entirely in control of her sexuality, and it never makes her vulnerable. She openly mocks her enemies by pretend-flaunting herself, never does she appear to realistically offer herself sexually to anyone.
She's unashamedly sexual in a really lovely, lighthearted and camp way, the female version of Devil May Cry's Dante, another ridiculous and fun sexual character. Dante is a great example of a sexualised man, and how we can have fun with sexuality in characters and make them unrealistically attractive without creating damaging stereotypes:
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| He's a rockstar... |
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