What I don’t like about new Lara: She is a tiny teen. It is great to reboot the series, making it more cineastic, more atmosphere, more personality and all but I really hope they let her grew up to a women and won’t stay with a teenager. And I also think it was a bad idea to shrink her down. She was 1,80 m back than and now she’s 1,65 m. Is it really that bad if a woman is not a dwarf?

Regarding Rockstars: I have to say, my GTA is Saints Row. It has more of the old GTA spirit as the successors. I still like them but not so much and you can play as a female in Saints Row, yeah you even have a character editor and they managed to have six voices (8 with zombies). It was an awesome experience and it proved that it is possible to make one game and have to genders to choose from.

Oh and to Mass Effect: I still dislike that I wasn’t able to be badass lesbian. Yeah, there was Liara but she wasn’t my type. It wasn’t a problem to do but they weren’t able to promote FemShep for years and to compare with CD Projekt. I love FemShep, she is great, Hale is awesome, together they merged to a diamond but EA is garbage and I won’t buy an RPG from them ever again. I am looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077, hopefully I am able to play as an equal great female heroine.

@trashcanman Hahahaha, yeah that was a silly thing I wrote. I just fixed it to better convey what I meant. Thanks for being my defacto content editor. I’m with you on the fantasy, believe me. Bayonetta really rides the border of female empowerment fantasy and stripper cliche, so she’ll be awesome one minute, then hurt my soul the next. It’s a complex relationship we have, Bayonetta and I. But seriously, I will probably buy a Wii U just for Bayonetta 2.

@Jess I can relate. I’m quite the tomboy myself. I think keeping the male motion capture for FemShep does create a way, way interesting juxtaposition that could be the subject of an entire article (and is the subject of many articles). I also think that interesting juxtaposition was a happy accident for Bioware, as a result of not providing the same resources for the development of the female version.

@Dragonchild Thanks for coming back. I’ll admit to being defensive about the gamer comment. In these days of the “fake geek girl” meme, it’s hard to read a “I guess you don’t game much” comment when I’ve been at it for 24 years.
You also bring up some excellent points, especially regarding Peach vs. Samus. I wanted to reach the broadest possible audience, so I culled a list of five fav characters that skewed towards a “two classic, two wildly popular, one wildcard” format. It’s definitely not ranked; Samus was merely the first time I (and many, probably) played as a female character. But you’re totally right about her lack of complexity in Metroid! Though she certainly grows more interesting throughout the rest of her franchise. And poor Peach. I fear I’ve been too hard on her. Her game for the DS is actually a decent platformer, and you’re also right on about Super Mario Bros. 2.
And I am glad you brought up JRPGs that feature strong women, in all seriousness. You’ve left me a nice list to explore. I haven’t friendzoned them at all, but they tend to be deep and I’ve got limited hours in a day to play. Being an adult with bills is lame. I’m currently playing Xenoblade Chronicles, and I just picked up The Last Story for a song. Final Fantasy VI is an absolute classic, so we can certainly agree there.
And why not lament a little about Rockstar? I am disappoint. Bonnie MacFarlane, some damsel-in-distressing aside, was a good female character on the whole, so it’s not like they need to turn into a bunch of militant feminists before they can write a believable female protagonist. Something else I didn’t get into here is the worry that three main characters in GTA V will end up exponentially diluting Rockstar’s usually great writing. I hope I’m wrong about that, obviously, but if that does turn out to be the case I have to admit it would be nice to be able to say, “well, at least I get to play as a girl!”

In general, the Mass Effect games have a lot of strong, diverse female characters. And I think all of them are more overtly feminine than Shep–which is not a complaint, I love those ladies and think they’re all badasses. But as a woman who is not particularly feminine, I like that yeah, Shep probably doesn’t necessarily know how to carry herself in a dress. Because I certainly don’t.

As for Princess Peach, I only included her because of Super Mario Bros. 2, where she is arguably the best character with which to defeat the final boss. Besides, Samus Aran is really just a space suit that happens to contain a woman inside, which is awesome, but her presence at the top of the list severely challenges the notion that complexity is the theme. If Samus Aran qualifies as complex, then Peach is fair game — even if she was “strong” for exactly one game.

Have you met gamers? We goddamn LOVE sexy vixens! Yes, I love my irl ladies strong, intelligent, sweet, cute, independent, vivacious, or any combination of the above but there is not a damn thing wrong with a fictional girl being over-the-top sexy and badass just because they can be any more than it’s wrong for the dudes to have muscles in places there aren’t normally muscles and talk like Duke Nukem. It’s fantasy….so fantasize! Oh, and FemShep > MaleShep. Score that one for the ladies.

This is an article listing my favorite female protagonists and the issues I have with them. There isn’t much room for “misses” since I said “here’s my five favorite female video game protagonists” and then listed my five favorite female video game protagonists.

Alex Roivos (also voiced by the great Jennifer Hale) would definitely be a contender for sixth place. I also love Eternal Darkness and have written about it elsewhere on this site.

I’m glad to know there are apparently many complex female leads in JRPGs (a genre with which I’m admittedly not as familiar), though I can’t help be somewhat dubious since you’ve listed Princess Peach as a complex female protagonist with a straight face. She’s no more complex than Mario is a complex male protagonist.

I also think it’s a fallacy to suggest I “don’t game much” simply because my gaming experience doesn’t match up with yours. I’d hazard a guess I’ve played far more Infocom games and text-based MUDs than you have, but I would never suggest you were less of a gamer because you weren’t familiar with the medium.