In the spirit of Women’s Month, I thought about doing a list of my favorite female lead characters in videogames that I’ve played. Now if I did this back in the late 90’s or early 2000’s when I’d started gaming on the original PlayStation, the list would consist of hypersexualized characters that would serve as eye candy to the player (which is weird considering the graphics of the time were… terrible; Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft was pretty much a polygon with legs and yet there were people who tried to get off of her).
Nowadays, though, videogame developers are more “woke” as the kids say, or rather, more aware and sensitive of what’s really going on with the world around them. This increased sensitivity has paved way for female videogame characters to have a more fleshed-out personality and interesting stories/backstories, motives, etc. as opposed to their one-dimensional predecessors.
This doesn’t mean developers haven’t taken advantage of today’s advanced videogame graphics and stopped portraying female characters like something out of a teenage boy’s daydreams (looking at you NieR: Automata), but at least these overtly… mature… characters have badass personalities, so there’s that at least.
On to the list.
5. Jill Valentine (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis)
A couple of disclaimers for Jill. She’s on this list of ~favorites~ out of nostalgia and excitement for the upcoming remake of the PSOne classic Resident Evil 3 game. I absolutely hate horror videogames, but Jill has a special place in my heart because I owned a copy of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the PlayStation as a kid. I didn’t finish the game, so I guess I see the remake as an opportunity to rectify that.
Despite my aversion to horror games, Jill is a videogame icon as she was one of the few female lead characters in the PSOne era (along with Lara Croft). Jill is a member of Raccoon City Police Department’s elite STARS team, which means Jill is automatically a badass based solely on her membership of an elite police force. Oh and the fact that she survived being stalked by the Nemesis, a zombie on steroids sent to kill every STARS operative, for most of the game is further proof of her badassery.
Resident Evil 3 Remake is set to be released on April 10, 2020 on the PS4, PC, and XBox One.
4. Kassandra (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey)
Set in classical Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey gave players the choice to play as a male or female character, a first in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. The male character is called Alexios, while the female’s name is Kassandra. The character that isn’t chosen becomes the player’s sibling during the course of the story.
Kassandra offers her services to whomever can pay her more (like any good mercenary would) — be it Sparta or Athens (please read up on the Peloponnesian War; classical Greece is such a glorious time period in world history). She unravels many secrets along the way, however, and being the granddaughter of Leonidas of Sparta, she vows to destroy the cult that tried to annihilate her family.
Kassandra is headstrong, but can also be compassionate, and this compassion led her to forge friendships with some of history’s greatest individuals such as Socrates, Hippocrates, and Herodotus.
Ancient Greece told of stories of heroes that conquered beasts and mythical creatures, but none of them were as badass as Kassandra… and her Sparta Kick. Seriously, if you play the game, I beg of you, get the Sparta Kick as your first skill. It’s as hilarious as it is helpful (hint: VERY).
3. Princess Ashe ( Final Fantasy XII)
Final Fantasy XII was one of my favorite game for the PlayStation 2 back in my teenage years and, boy, was I happy when I found out it was remastered for the PS4.
I genuinely believe now that Final Fantasy XII is the best game of the Final Fantasy series (although who can really say, I’m pretty sure very few of today’s gamers have played ALL of the O.G. games that go back to the 1980’s, but I digress) but back in 2006, I only bought the game because Princess Ashe looked hot on the cover (lol, to be fair, every single Final Fantasy character is attractive — even the non-humanoid NPC’s).
As I played the game, though, I discovered that Princess Ashe wasn’t your typical “Save me Obi Wan, you’re my only hope” type of princess. Hecc, she isn’t even your typical RPG princess where she’s the designated healer (because all princess know how to heal stuff duh). Granted, Ashe’s base stats give her a high MP yield to start with, her skillset includes Black Magick, which gives her the ability to use powerful spells to kick bad guy ass.
Also, in my PS4 play through, I incorrectly made her my Bushi (a ninja class), but this only made her even more badass as she became my tank spellcaster. Yay?
2. Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn)
Horizon Zero Dawn is my most recent videogame and I will swear on the grave of my dead hamsters that this is the greatest videogame that I’ve ever played in my life. Seriously, it’s so good. PlayStation-exclusive games have a reputation for being some of the best releases on a given year, but good lord, Horizon Zero Dawn is good good. Most aggregators on the internet give it at least a 9.0 out of 10 rating, and almost all of the gaming websites have Horizon Zero Dawn in the top 3 of their lists of the best open-world videogame of the 2010’s.
At the center of this goodness is the lead character named Aloy, a 19-year old girl who’s spent her entire life training in the wilds for a trial that would give her a chance to join the very same tribe that made her an outcast as a baby. The game is set 1000 years into the future after our society has collapsed. Throughout the game, Aloy unravels the mystery behind the collapse in order for her society to not make the same mistakes.
She uses her superb skills in stealth, combat, and archery as well as her critical thinking (which is more advanced than the general primitive populace around her) to solve the mystery of the apocalypse of 2064 A.D.
Aloy also has to take down a lot of robot dinosaurs. ROBOT FREAKIN DINOSAURS. If that doesn’t entice you to buy the game, I don’t know what will.
1. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Lara Croft needs no introduction. She is the OG femme fatale in videogames. The end.
No, seriously, Lara is already a videogame legend ever since she was introduced in the original Tomb Raider game back in 1995. Since then, she’s starred in numerous videogames (and three movies where she is played by Angelina Jolie in the first two, and Alicia Vikander in the most recent one, but we’re not talking about those) including the recent trilogy of games that started with Tomb Raider for the PS3, XBox One, and PC back in 2013. Two more sequels followed: Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018).
That trilogy showed Lara as a younger, more relatable character struggling to find herself… while also struggling to stop an ancient paramilitary force that started during the early days of the Christian Church — a version of Assassin’s Creed’s Knight Templars if you will — called Trinity.
Trinity wants to unlock the secrets of immortality. Lara wants to stop them because giving the secrets of immortality into the hands of evil people is a bad thing.
Playing as modern Lara is super fun because instead wielding her trademark dual handguns from the older games, Tomb Raider lets you freely choose (and swap) from four types of weapons (bows, hand guns, rifles, and shot guns) along with a knife to the tune of your preferred play style: stealth or full-on Leeeeeeeeeroooooy Jenkins mode. You know, typical action-adventure stuff.
Also, to round up Lara’s femme fatale-ness in the modern games, in addition to her badassery, her character design looks very, very good. There, I said it.
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