The "silent" protagonist of Transistor, Red is a popular songstress in the strange and sci-fi city of Cloudbank. When an accident involving the eponymous Transistor steals her voice, begins to destroy her city, and takes the life of someone important to her, she sets out on a mission to put things right... Well, at least as much as she can.
Despite her role as a silent protagonist, Red's voice is ever-present in Transistor. Her songs play in prominent parts of the game and provide insight to its often allegorical meaning, and we frequently hear her humming along to the background music. Through her actions and occasional comments on the city's intranet, we can see the shape of her character - a thoughtful, perceptive and intuitive woman intent on forging her own path forward, even at times against the expectation of the player.
Well, I just thought maybe we could fight Mog Chothra instead of feeding it.
Vella Tartine
Broken Age
Double Fine
One of the protagonists of Broken Age, Vella is a teen girl from a baking town called Sugar Bunting, and apparently the sole voice of reason the whole world over. Chosen as a candidate for the Maiden's Feast, a ceremony meant to be a great honour in which she will be fed to the eldritch horror Mog Chothra, Vella chooses to find some way to fight back instead.
Those of von Karma blood have only one fate. And that is "perfection."
Franziska von Karma
Ace Attorney series
Capcom
A prodigal prosecutor with a penchant for the word "fool", Franziska is quite at home among Ace Attorney's eccentric cast. The headstrong and highly competitive daughter of the (in)famous Manfred von Karma, Franziska was raised a domineering perfectionist, taught to win by any means necessary. Over time she was able to develop a more healthy standard for herself, but she remains a fearsome figure liable to whip any challenger into submission (literally).
I prayed to the Hero-King for a small part of the strength he used to save the world. But I need this subterfuge no longer. I choose to fight as Lucina now.
Lucina
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Intelligent Systems
In the event that an evil dragon the size of a small country raised a zombie horde and ate most of the people you cared about, what would you do? Well, if you're Lucina, apparently you rally a ragtag resistance and defy a few fundamental laws of nature in the name of putting an end to it. An incredibly driven and determined young girl, Lucina is a heroine that refuses to give up even in the face of fated defeat.
She's also afraid of really big spiders, so points for relatability.
By this point a bit of an icon, Clementine is the 9 year old companion character to Lee Everett in the original walking dead, and now one of the only characters of her type to make the transition into lead of her own game. Cute, sweet, and compassionate, Clem makes an unusual survivor for the zombie apocalypse genre, but survive she does, and with her conscience intact. She isn't always the wisest of people (did I mention she's 9?), but she's brave enough to stand up to the grown-ups whose care she's found herself in and to try to do the right thing, even with the world coming down around her.
To solve a mystery, you sometimes need to take risks. Isn't that right?
Kyouko Kirigiri
Dangan Ronpa
Spike
A super high-school level detective, the mysterious and aloof Kirigiri - whose name, incidentally, means "fog-cutter" - is apparently the only student at the bizarre Hope's Peak Academy to have kept her wits about her. Kirigiri is the perpetual voice of reason throughout each of Dangan Ronpa's aggressively weird murder mysteries. Her stoic personality belies her gutsy nature, and sometimes trusting her judgement is the only way to get yourself out of a scrape.
It's not the net worth of one's life that's important. It is the day to day concerns, the personal victories, and the celebration of life... and love!
Terra Branford
Final Fantasy VI
Squaresoft
Half human and half esper, Terra was enslaved by the empire for her ability to use magic and deployed as a military weapon. When she regains her free will, Terra remembers nothing about her person or her past, only what the Empire made her do. She's frightened of her powers and troubled by her own emotional inhibition, and in particular is preoccupied with the idea of love, seeing it as some sign of the "humanity" that eludes her. Ultimately, it's through her "adoption" of a village of orphaned children that she finds that she is able to love - and to keep fighting for a better world.
Terra's the first female protagonist of the Final Fantasy series, and probably the most iconic Final Fantasy character of her era. Besides being compelling in its own right, her character laid the groundwork for many of the more successful stories that followed.
Now, let us crush something soft and watch it fountain blood. That is a girlish thing to want to do, yes?
Shale
Dragon Age: Origins
BioWare
Once a dwarf warrior of Orzammar, Shale was turned into a violent and powerful war golem, separated from her humanity. Frankly, she quite likes it that way, given that her interests include smashing people, smashing pigeons, and attractive sparkly jewels (so long as they don't make her look broad.)
I've stood on my own this far, Mr. Hyde. I don't intend to stop now.
Margaret "Mags" Patrice
Last Window: The Secret of Cape West
Cing
The proud matriarch of hotel-turned-apartment building Cape West, Mags plays the details of her checkered past pretty close to her chest. She is the widow of a crime lord who she both loved and hated, and for her own complex reasons, has vowed to protect the secrets surrounding him and the crime ring that used to operate out of Cape West. It's not until the whole story is unraveled that Mags is capable of acknowledging the weight of the burden she chose to shoulder. Her questionable and morally ambiguous choices feel as real as they do frustrating, lending to a portrait of a stubborn, complicated and uncommon character that fits right in with the game's noir aesthetic.
I commend your courage, but I shall show you no mercy.
General Beatrix
Final Fantasy IX
Squaresoft
The famous commander of the Alexandrian army, Beatrix is known the world over for her military prowess. She's confident, intelligent, capable, and incredibly devoted, making her a dangerous enemy. Over time, she comes to harbor guilt for some of her actions in the name of her queen, fearing that her loyalty is being taken advantage of. When the crown princess of Alexandria is endangered by her mother, Beatrix switches sides for good, fighting her own nation so that the princess may escape. For the rest of the game she serves as a mentor and a defender of Alexandria, regularly holding the fort down while the monarch is away.
Plus, she's an amazing cameo party member and the majority of her significant relationships/interactions are with women, so that's pretty cool.
Don't you go being silly now. Come over here and give your grandma some sugar!
Lily Bowen
Fallout: New Vegas
Obsidian
A nightkin - or super mutated stealth assassin monster - who is found farming "sheep" in a super mutant refuge town, Lily takes a shine to the protagonist upon mistaking them as her apparently long-lost grandson. She is, as it turns out, quite a caring and doting grandmother, if you ignore that she struggles with auditory hallucinations of her violent alter-ego, Leo.
They can see all the other lighthouses out there, and they want to talk to them. But they can’t, because they’re all too far apart to hear what the others are saying. All they can do… is shine their lights from afar. … So that’s what they do. They shine their lights at the other lighthouses, and at me.
River
To The Moon
Freebird Games
In a way, we don’t really know River. We view her story through the memory of her dying husband, Johnny, and come to realize how little he knew about his wife despite loving her so dearly. River is on the autistic spectrum, and is most commonly thought to have Asperger’s Syndrome. Her husband confessed to her that in their youth, he saw her as kind of a manic pixie dream girl. She was hurt deeply by this revelation, not least of all because she remembers meeting him as a child, but struggles to express her emotions and desires and share her memories. When she dies of a terminal illness after choosing that money be put towards the upkeep of a lighthouse rather than her medical bills, her husband Johnny is left confused, alone, and regretful… thus setting up the framing narrative of the game.
River deconstructs the manic pixie dream girl mostly just by being her own person. We only see glimpses into her life, and we see her struggle and fight to try to express herself, refusing to give up on trying to break through to her neurotypical husband in her own way. Her story is as complicated as it is heartbreaking, and beautifully articulates the difference between loving a person and really understanding them.
Sometimes finding art for this blog is like searching for an oasis in a desert, except it's a desert made of porn that is usually drawn by people with a limited understanding of breasts.
It was all for for nothing. I couldn't be loved unless I became pretty, and now that I am, I still can't have it.
Ai Ebihara
Persona 4
Atlus
A beautiful, spoiled, new-money princess, Ai seems shallow, bratty and self-obsessed enough for reality television when you first meet her. Ultimately, though, she is not what she seems, which you discover when she undergoes a complete breakdown upon learning her crush prefers a "frumpy" girl to her. Ai grew up bullied by her peers for being fat, clumsy, and poor. When her family came into money and moved, she was hellbent on transforming herself, believing the only way she could ever be loved was to be pretty and conform to the model set by fashion and women's magazines.
Despite how long she's been buried under the weight of her issues and tethered to a desperation to be loved, Ai eventually manages to work through becoming more comfortable with herself, and mostly on her own to boot. In an unusual twist of fate for the genre, should the protagonist try to date her while she's still vulnerable and unhappy with herself, she'll eventually recognize the problems in the relationship and leave him. Hers is a story about navigating cultural ideals of how women ought to look and act, finding that she's damned either way, and learning to be comfortable with herself regardless.
So I think we were all expecting that some characters from The Last Of Us would make it to this blog. It's a huge, story-driven game, where the developer fought to prominently feature a female character, keep her on the front cover, and ensure they had women in the focus group to get an adequate response to her.
And that's great.
But when I think about Ellie, and I ask the litmus test question I use for this blog - "Do I want more characters like this?" - I can't honestly answer "Yes."
Opinions and spoilers follow under the cut.
There's been at least three prominent games recently using a surrogate father-daughter relationship as their emotional center. In all of them, you take the role of a troubled older man, defending a young, bright-eyed girl. This trope leans pretty heavily on gender roles to work its magic, putting the player in the male role and capitalizing on the audience's strong patriarchal impulses to protect vulnerable young women.
Ellie's father-figure is Joel, a gruff, violent, and selfish man who lost his daughter when the zombies first appeared. He's who you play as, and as much as the game purports to be about him and Ellie equally, it is not. Their relationship is certainly important, and they have a similar amount of screen time, but Ellie's purpose in the game is to soften Joel's heart of stone. That is the story, and it comes at her expense.
Perhaps I wouldn't feel this way if it weren't for the game's ending, but I don't think it's unfair to argue that the ending demonstrates the game's priorities. Meant to be a morally ambiguous situation that you have to decide on for yourself, the climax of the game features the infection-immune Ellie unconscious from anesthesia, while Joel and another character argue over whether or not she ought to give her life to produce a vaccine against the infection that has ruined the world. Joel kills the opposition and escapes with Ellie, and when she questions him about what happened, heavily implying that it would have been her choice to go through with the vaccination procedure, he lies to her.
You aren't meant to side with Joel as you witness this all go down, but you are meant to experience the situation through his eyes - through the eyes of a man who has already lost his daughter once and who, against all odds, has found this little girl that might make him a better man. In order for the entire scenario to work, the player has to be in the position of somebody who cares about Ellie, not Ellie herself, who spends the entire scene unconscious and is never once asked by any character what she'd like to do with her own body. It's a morally ambiguous, emotional, "artful" ending that can only be born of completely sidelining a character who is purportedly the game's heroine.
Some more of the inequalities in how the audience is meant to feel about Joel and Ellie come out during the only chapter in which she is playable. To this point, you have been playing as Joel, fighting your way through zombies and generic bandit enemies. When you play as Ellie, the enemies that were previously bandits are now also cannibals, their leader a potential pedophile whose threats and body language against her strongly invoke the threat of rape. To her credit, Ellie gets herself out of the situation, mostly through the judicious application of knives to the face. Joel shows up as soon as she has, comforting her as she is upset over what happened to her, and calling her "baby girl" - a nickname he once used for his daughter.
In other words, playing as Ellie means contending with threats far beyond what Joel has had to deal with the rest of the game, most probably as a method of invoking greater sympathy now that the danger of a typical enemy has worn off. Moreover, by the end of it, Ellie's ordeal is used as a character development moment for Joel, and something else to prop up the strength of their relationship. It doesn't really tell us anything new about Ellie, who has responded capably and mercilessly to threats to her person since we first met her. The timeskip that follows shows us a Joel who has really opened up - the only difference to Ellie is that she is temporarily preoccupied with a decision she'll never have the chance to make.
I don't mean to say that Ellie herself is badly written. She is a charming, consistent, believable 14 year old with identifiable wants, goals, and feelings. It's just that none of them actually matter when I as the player am meant to empathize with Joel and care about Ellie, usually as a means to empathize further with Joel.
I'm sure that others will disagree with my interpretation of events, but I have to stand by my initial statement nonetheless.
1st of a series of video game ladies that are personally significant to me, as a woman who plays video games.
So of course the first one I did had to be Ashe. Ashe is the fine line between righteous vengeance and power-driven vigilante… in a pink mini-skirt. She’s a contrast to a lot of other characters from the Ivalice games - someone who builds their own happy ending, on their own terms, without selling their soul to do it. But never does that seem like it’s a given, either.
FFXII has a lot of important dudes, but one thing about it that always stood out to me is that Ashe’s choice is really the fundamental choice of the whole game. Her decision in the end is the climax and the crux of the entire story.
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