Tropes vs. women and some backlash against the Auro trailer (because apparently their only female character is the 'foxy mama') motivated me to ask on Twitter and G+ : hey, what games actually get it right?
The answer seems to be very few:
Portal
Mirror's Edge
Beyond Good & Evil
And one I haven't played - Avodon - though it's not clear from their marketing materials, and I'm not ready to drop down the $20 to see if I agree.
So. Is that it? Any women or feminists out there have more answers?
I don't tend to finish playing through storylines in most adventure games so these are my-best-guess rather than anything well-thought-out.
I recently bought Magical Diary (http://www.hanakogames.com/magical_diary.shtml) but I haven't played it yet. The few reviews I've seen suggest it's probably another example (I'll let you know once I've actually played it).
There's Kate Walker from Syberia, which I got to play a bit of while my household was binging on Myst clones. (and it looks like they're making another one, whee!)
Outside of the adventure stuff "gets it right" is a high bar. "Fails to get it wrong" is achievable --
I'm four hours into X3: Terran Conflict and it "gets it right" in as much as everyone's equally personality-less.
I recommend following Border House Blog's "Characters Done Right" tag: http://borderhouseblog.com/?tag=characters-done-right for more examples & some nuance. I think it's worthwhile to look at the cases where a game succeeds with one character but not another, or gets some things right and some things less-so.
Posted by: Cheryltz | June 20, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Disclaimer: I am a dude. Here's some
April Ryan from "The Longest Journey" and "Dreamfall", Zoe Castillo from the latter game.
Alyx from HL2.
Ameratsu from Okami (ok, she's a dog. But she's a she).
Posted by: AnimationMerc | June 20, 2012 at 01:05 PM
I am also not a woman.
Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark (but NOT Perfect Dark Zero) is pretty much just a person rather than a sex symbol, and not in the man-with-boobs fashion, either.
+1 to all of AnimationMerc's suggestions.
Posted by: Jim D | June 20, 2012 at 01:11 PM
I seem to remember the Perfect Dark game being okay but, woah, their trailer was out of control. I wonder if the devs were mortified.
Posted by: Jamie Fristrom | June 20, 2012 at 02:00 PM
I confess to never having seen that trailer, so I hope it's not as bad as I'm afraid it is.
Posted by: Jim D | June 20, 2012 at 03:42 PM
Ms. Pac Man.
Oh and pretty much every video game that doesn't have a gender-identifiable human character in it, FFS. I do believe those outnumber the ones that do.
Posted by: DarkAcreJack | June 20, 2012 at 05:59 PM
HL2 had Judith Mossman too. And Zoe and Rochelle from L4D 1&2
Posted by: Joe Ludwig | June 20, 2012 at 10:23 PM
Got to second April and Zoe from the longest journey series: that was women done right. Also Aveline from Dragon Age 2. Isabela from the same game appears to be an offensive trope, but she isn't, her character is very well done.
(I am female)
Posted by: Steph | June 21, 2012 at 07:12 AM
The Silent Hill series, 3 in particular, 4 not so much.
Posted by: CavemanJoe | July 08, 2012 at 10:41 AM