Today we have guest writer Dan Ingram of Fear the Cacti popping in to give some thoughts on women in video games who don't suck, and who make us actually want to play videogames. Take it away, Dan!
Video
Game Heroines
A lot can be said
about female video game characters; then again, a lot can be oogled
when it comes to female video game characters. A large majority of
female characters are anatomically on par with most female comic book
characters. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
![]() |
Power
Girl is not the only person with a boob window.
|
1. Samus Aran
– For years, the Metroid franchise has profited on one of the
strongest female protagonists in the history of video games. Having
arguably paved the way for female lead characters (you’re welcome
Lara Croft) Samus was kicking alien ass before most of us could
speak. I myself was fresh out of my womb apartment when Samus busted
onto the scene. In fact, I didn’t even know Samus was a girl for a
good portion of my early gaming years because I missed out on the
glorious unveiling at the end of the original Metroid.
![]() |
The
Chuck Norris of the video game world.
|
Samus spends her
time as a bounty hunter, flying around in her ship to try and take
down the generically named “Space Pirates” all the while avoiding
the energy draining parasites that give the franchise its name.
Here’s something to wrap your brain around, Samus was hired to kill
the Metroids, simple enough right? Well, Metroids are an engineered
species, thought up by the Chozo race to eradicate another parasite
that they couldn’t kill with conventional weapons. Think about that
for a second . . . Samus was hired to kill probably THE MOST
DANGEROUS organisms in the galaxy. The Metroids are created to kill
the most dangerous thing imaginable, effectively making the Metroids
the most dangerous thing imaginable, and they are captured or killed
by Samus. And she’s been doing it for 26 years.
Not to get too
carried away on the major badassery of Samus, the series has fallen
victim to the very idea first described in the article, and that has
come about with the addition of the “Zero Suit”, which is
essentially the bio suit she wears under her armor. While more
effective and practical than most female characters attire, it still
leaves little to the imagination, and I’m sure was invented on the
basis that giving a teenager something to FAP to just by hitting the
pause button was better than him walking away from the game to Google
poorly drawn fan art. However, I’m taking a different stance on
this. I find the lack of the armor MORE empowering in the sense that
Samus is still able to be a formidable bounty hunter even when
stripped to her most essential and necessary equipment. That means
she’s a more competent bounty hunter than Master Chief from Halo
and Bear Grylls combined.
![]() |
Also
this because shut-your-mouth-it’s-adorable.
|
2. Princess
Zelda – I’m going to stop you
before you even start and I’m going to throw your argument right
back in your face; “She gets kidnapped every game dummy!” Your
astute observation will not go overlooked. The flip side of this coin
is that unlike some princesses, Zelda doesn’t make your sorry ass
search through eight effing castles to find her, systematically
having one of her fungus-headed servants tell you that jumping over
pits of lava and smashing wildlife doesn’t impress anyone.
![]() |
“And
blue shell Koopa’s are now an endangered species because of your
plumber antics!”
|
First things first
on Zelda: the franchise is named after her. If it were supposed to be
about Link, they would have called it that. And the reason you’re
searching after her isn’t just because “she’s so pretty”
(which I’m pretty sure is an actual quote from several Mario
games), it’s because you NEED her. That is a two-fold scenario;
Link obviously needs her because anything without a romance in the B
plot is a waste of money. Along with Link’s desire to find the girl
he’s crushing on, Zelda wields a third of the Triforce. Bestowed
upon her by the gods, Zelda was selected to bear the piece of wisdom
because she was foreseen as a great leader. She does need Link’s
help to come rescue her, but lest we forget:
![]() |
Beam
me up Sheik!
|
Zelda wasn’t
just lying around waiting for Link to show up. She borrowed her
(presumably dead) bodyguards’ armor and went out and did something
about the shitty attitude that had fallen over Hyrule. Without Zelda,
Link wouldn’t have learned the integral magic spells to play on his
ocarina after arriving in the future. I distinctly remember learning
the Bordello of Fire from Sheik not too long after going up Goron
Mountain. Now that I’ve just nerded all over the joint, let me
clean up and wrap this.
While Link deals
the final blow to the main villain in 90% of the games, he does it
with direct assistance from Zelda more often than he does it on his
own. Windwaker is certainly a testament to this fact; without Zelda’s
arrows, Link CANNOT attack, he’s physically incapable of it. And
she doesn’t yell annoyingly obvious information at random intervals
like Link’s AI counterparts. Give me Sheik over Navi any day of the
week.
3. Cortana –
I don’t want to go on too much of a streak of “non-playable
females” but come on, it’s Cortana. Plus, she was created based
on the neural mapping of a real person, so that has to count for
something. Having originated from Dr. Catherine Halsey, Cortana comes
from the woman that developed the Spartan program. So to start, she’s
sort of Master Chief’s digital aunt that lets him do whatever he
wants.
![]() |
She
even lets him borrow the car as long as he fills the tank.
|
On top of
assisting with the destruction of the parasitic Flood, Cortana also
manages to play their centuries old hive mind like he’s some chump.
The Gravemind overbid on the car on the Price is Right and Cortana
wisely said “one dollar”. She turned herself over to the Flood
leader and managed to outsmart one of the oldest and most
intellectually comprehensive organisms in the galaxy. And she did it
without a gun. See how far you make it in Halo just by slap fighting
the Covenant; let me know how that turns out.
This theme of the
empowered female artificial intelligence constructs is actually
prevalent throughout the Halo universe. In Halo Wars the main ships
A.I. acts similarly to Cortana. To some degree, the A.I. women in the
Halo universe are the intergalactic Sacajawea’s that the United
Nations Space Corps follow in their fight against the Covenant.
A digital
construct that goes toe to toe with two invading alien races and
helps defeat both of them? Yeah, that’s pretty badass.
4. Lara Croft
– Another situation where more of the argument leans toward the
over-sexualized character, but hear me out on this one. Besides being
the spokeswoman for porn star cosplay crossovers, Lara Croft also
laid the groundwork for a lot of female protagonists to come in the
years after her. There’s a good chance that characters like Faith
from Mirrors Edge may not have ever existed if Lara Croft hadn’t
been created before them. A couple of Ms. Croft’s features
overshadowed any semblance of intelligence or empowerment she had
when the series debuted (and floundered for a long time) but at her
core, Lara Croft is a strong and smart woman, in a lot of ways the
female equivalent of Indiana Jones. And the argument could be made
that she’s a realistic match for Samus Aran. See what I did there?
Bringing it back around.
Something else to
consider is that the incarnation of Lara that most people are
familiar with is not how she was originally envisioned. In fact, the
first designs of Ms. Croft more closely resembled Tank Girl. So
instead of an overly-busty Cindy Crawford and James Bond mash-up, it
would have been something closer to Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass. Somewhere
along the line, and I have no idea who this could have been, the ball
was dropped on being you know . . . coy about boobs, and we got this:
![]() |
No
joke about her appearance is more ridiculous than this bra stuffing.
|
The two movies
somehow managed to turn a profit and represent the franchise at it’s
most gratuitous. Hot, sweaty Angelina globe trotting with a terrible
accent looking for artifacts so ancient and mysterious they were
called things like “the Triangle of Light” . . . Okay, not the
best example. I’ve never seen the movies, but that was my half
assed attempt at summarizing them. The games are at least making an
attempt to retcon the series by rebooting it in 2012 with “Tomb
Raider”, bet you didn’t see that title coming did you? They sure
did trick us there.
The new game
promises a complete revamping of the series, rather than being a
straight up action adventure 3rd
person shooter, the upcoming release will be a survival action game
more in the vein of Resident Evil, which will surely allow the
character to be showcased in a much more positive light.
![]() |
And
by positive I mean “she has on pants”.
|
I have to admit
the game looks pretty awesome, and the anatomical reimagining of Lara
Croft is something to be applauded. Who’s to say that this is the
desire of Core (the games original developer), or of SquareEnix,
which inexplicably acquired the property recently. Apparently the
7,000th
installation of the Final Fantasy series wasn’t enough work for
Square? If Lara somehow ends up on a Chocobo however, I will recant
every bad word I ever said about the Final Fantasy games.
5. Claudia
Auditore da Firenze – There are
quite a few options I could take for this last one, but honestly,
every time I try to research the topic, I keep seeing names of
characters that I have no basis for talking about. Obviously there
are many other contenders for the list, but I wanted to be able to
speak confidently about the characters I put on here. So to round
this out, I present sister of Ezio Auditore from Assassin’s Creed
II thru Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
![]() |
In
a lot of ways the Princess Leia of hairstyles in AC.
|
I think this
characters “inciting incident” of sorts is when Claudia hears
that her fiancé may be cheating on her. In her sadness, Ezio
(eventually her only surviving brother) goes and beats the shit out
of the dude, proving that violence is a true answer to any problem.
From there,
Claudia witnesses her mother get attacked (and presumably raped) by
Pazzi guards, then learns that her eldest and youngest brother along
with her father had been hanged. She went with Ezio into hiding at
her uncle’s plaza.
Not the most
heroic move ever, but because of her accounting abilities, Claudia
helped restore the plaza to its former glory . . . until it was
completely blown to shit when the Borgia came knocking on the door.
When they made the move to Rome, Ezio and Claudia systematically took
back the city and reestablished the local Assassin’s order. Claudia
herself took control of the Rosa in Fiore: the bordello.
Brace yourselves,
because shit just got crazier from there. After proving herself to
Ezio as a capable fighter, she became the first inductee into the new
Assassin order, the first female Assassin that is seen in the series.
![]() |
Searing
flesh is symbolic of being a fucking hoss.
|
Not to waste too
much on the abridged history of Claudia, she did go on to control the
Assassin’s Order in Rome while Ezio was gone looking for the Masyaf
library.
In the face of her
family’s murder, her brother killing the fuck out of everyone he
went up against, she proved herself to be a brilliant financial mind
and eventual tactician that was worthy of keeping order over the
entire Assassin group her brother had built over the years. If this
game would have been made 10 years prior, Claudia would have been the
shop keeper you go to for the occasional refill on arrows and a place
to sleep before setting out across the Italian countryside, but
thanks to the progression in gameplay and the ability to tell a
compelling female story, she became much more.
![]() |
“Okay,
if any cops ask, I was with you not being an Assassin’s sister.”
|
The Point - The good news for future female video game characters is pretty bright.
Female protagonists are more and more prevalent every year, even female
super villains are becoming more popular to a certain degree (see Metal
Gear series' Boss). Letting players choose whether or not they want to
play as female characters is also a growing option with games like Halo:
Reach and Mass Effect. I personally think that the gaming industry is
finally opening their eyes to the growing female market and making it
more accessible to them. There's even a couple of all women Major League
Gaming teams. Once the ratio of male to female gamers equals out, the
only thing that women will have to worry about is the amount of Mountain
Dew Code Pink will be relentlessly marketed toward them, but that's a
different article altogether.
*
Dan Ingram works in television and has his Master's in Screenwriting from New York Film Academy. His blog, Fear the Cacti is hilarious and you should read it. He likes video games just a bit.
A bordello of fire does not sound like a place I would want to go.
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