The document discusses 9 influential female characters in video games that helped change portrayals of women. It provides descriptions of each character, including Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, Bayonetta from Bayonetta, Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, Yuna from Final Fantasy X, Samus Aran from Metroid, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Clementine from The Walking Dead, and Ellie from The Last of Us. These characters moved away from the "damsel in distress" trope and established female protagonists who were the focus of their respective games and stories.

1. 9 Badass Female Game Heroes That
Changed Everything
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everything
Over the years gaming has evolved from being the shut‐in’s favourite pastime to the most
expensive and engaging medium on the planet, with a cavalcade of characters that have (mostly)
matured alongside. The Tomb Raider of 2014 is almost a completely different character – especially
aesthetically – to that of the old triangular‐chested explorer of the 90′s, and we’re all the better
off for it. Sure for every strong female lead who isn’t bouncing around like the Dead or Alive girls
there’s another who’s barely wearing more than a fragment of denim and a tissue‐bra, but for the
most part gaming’s current heroines are not looked down upon so much by the majority of players.
It’s thanks in part to moving away from the ‘damsel in distress’ trope and more towards making
female characters the focus of a particular experience – without that experience revolving around
the fact that they’re female in the first place. It’s about fairness and equality, and whilst we’re not
suddenly going to mount the Equality Horse and start raining down generalised statements about
the way women have been misused in the past, it’s still great to see that the vast majority of
modern female protagonists are a far better representation of how the gender should be shown
overall.
9. Jade (Beyond Good And Evil)

2. Sadly not enough people have played Beyond Good And Evil in 2014, and despite a very lengthy
development process we’re nowhere nearer seeing the much discussed sequel either. However
with an Xbox Live Arcade re‐release in HD and one of the most devoted cult fanbases going behind
it, Beyond’s green‐haired political activist Jade remains a character for the ages. Set in the
beautifully animated world of Hillys, it featured a cast of characters where your best friend is a
giant pig named Pey’J. Jade, Pey’J and her band of brothers then take the fight to the oppressive
DomZ; a sinister organisation whose true intentions aren’t made known until some way into the
game when you’re completely enamoured by the fantastic company you’re now keeping. The game
also featured a photography mode that complimented Jade’s photojournalist skills as you were
tasked with tracking down creatures for the sake of payment, adding a Pokemon‐style element to
the exploration. However, even though the gameplay was lightyears ahead of its time in some
respects – whilst also occasionally dabbling in an Ocarina of Time‐vibe for the combat – it’s Jade’s
steadfast approach to her often dire situations that make her an incredibly strong unique
benchmark for female character depictions.
8. Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)

3. ‘FemShep’ as she’s often referred to could have been just another custom‐character with no
defining personality, but thanks to a fantastic voice performance from Jennifer Hale there’s a
perfect amount of wit, sass, humour and bite in every mood across all three incredible instalments
in the series. It might be a strange one nominating Shepard as a defining character being that with
each person who played the game their own Shepard would have turned out differently – but
therein lies the genius of Bioware’s character design. Regardless of whether you played the
Commander as a kind‐hearted gentle soul who would do anything to help her crew, or a ruthless
gun‐toting hellion with a penchant for knocking out journalists, her stature and placement as the
cog that turns the Mass Effect gears never changes. Another great attribute about having a custom‐designed
character as your main protagonist is it gets around the accusations of sexualisation that
appear so frequently with almost every female character. If you wanted to portray your FemShep
as a angry‐faced, iron‐fisted leader you totally could, just as much as if you wanted to give them
the more cutesy blonde hair and blue eyes treatment. Both were more than acceptable, and both
ended up making the time you spent with ‘your’ Shepard all the more special.
7. Bayonetta (Bayonetta)

4. Bayonetta remains one of the most divisive characters going in terms of female empowerment,
because on the one hand you can hark back to the Lara Croft example and point out that she’s a
strong, justice‐doling hero that dual wields pistols and kicks demons’ heads off. But on the other
the sexual grunts and noises are cranked up past 11, and aside from some INCREDIBLY long body‐covering
hair, she’s almost completely naked. However when you look at the events of the game
and the actions Bayonetta gets up to, it’s clear developer Platinum wanted to put a female
character in a very powerful position. As God of War and Devil May Cry had perfected two sides of
the third‐person hack n’ slash genre‐coin, all they gave us character‐wise was one ridiculously angry
bald man who’d sooner rip your eyes out than finish a conversation and a silver‐tongued lothario
who dolls out one‐liners faster than he does bullets. In contrast, we’d never had a female action
hero who genuinely felt like she could take on or hang with the aforementioned two, and for all
the complaints of hyper‐sexualisation, Bayonetta takes on all comers and still ranks among the best.
6. Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)

5. Starting as they meant to go on (at least until part 4), Resident Evil gave players the choice of playing
as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, the latter of which actually packed more of a punch
throughout the game when it came to combat. Thanks to the two of them being trained special
agents, uniform‐wise Jill was instantly a well‐respected and regimented character, as well as a great
choice that many players chose to take on the zombie horde, thanks to a bolstered inventory that
traded damage for being able to hold more items. In the later releases Chris would turn into a
ridiculously over‐muscled meathead of a character, with Jill also donning a purple catsuit that was
far more revealing than her previous attire. Still, forgetting the current abominations of what once
was, the original Jill was a force to be reckoned with.
5. Yuna (Final Fantasy X)
Although she’s only a playable character inside the game’s battles, the real hero of Final Fantasy X
was always Yuna, being that the entire story revolves around her and come the game’s end

6. developer’s Square Enix decided it was hers that was worth continuing into X‐2. Of course in doing
so they would end up putting thousands of fans off due to a complete change in her aesthetic,
going from a religious, conservatively‐dressed sorceress into a twin pistol‐toting, backflipping
combat specialist. It remains a very strange move all round, and possibly signifies the start of
Square losing their grip on the Final Fantasy ball, as from here on out there wasn’t another truly
great game in the series. Yuna’s character is wonderfully warm and memorable not only for her
spells and tactics on the field, but also in the game’s cutscenes, her relationship with the main
playable character Tidus was one of the most touching in the franchise. With this being the first
Final Fantasy on the newer generation of consoles at the time, putting Yuna at the forefront of the
narrative was a bold and memorable choice.
4. Samus Aran (Metroid)
One of the most important moments in gender portrayals within gaming history belongs to Samus,
although it was always something of a double‐edged sword in the way it was handled. Featuring
five different endings in the original game, you had to finish the entire thing in under different
amounts of hours to unlock the true identity of Samus, as up until that final shot, every single
player thought they were playing as a burly space marine. The positive side of things is that on the
game’s third ending, only her space helmet is removed to reveal a big head of hair, which being
you were not playing as Jon Bon Jovi meant all along you’d actually been playing as… a girl! Score
one for female gamers, right? Wrong. Well, half wrong.

7. Another two of the games endings end up showing Samus in more revealing clothing, with the
most hilarious in retrospect being a little pixellated bikini version that appears if you can finish the
game in under an hour. Apparently in development the switch to Samus being a female was
something of an afterthought, but even so this remains one of the biggest bait n’ switches in
gaming, for (mostly) the best reasons.
3. Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Of course Lara had to make an appearance, as regardless of how much we cast aspersions on the
way she was handled in the 90′s and early 00′s, ever since Rihanna Pratchett took over on
scriptwriting duties it’s been a far better, more realistic character all round. Sure the amount Lara
gets beaten throughout the game by characters and the environment is a problem, as it often
labours the point made in the previews by the development team about “wanting to protect Lara”,
but in the end the take away is that this new version is a character who doesn’t need watching over.

8. Going back to those initial character models though and the balloon‐chested artwork that adorned
everything from posters to Lucozade ad campaigns, Official Xbox writer Aoife Wilson has since
remarked that her 10 year‐old self didn’t see the ridiculous body proportions or hear the sexual
noises – she only noticed there was a woman, where before there had been a man. Although we’re
yet to see much footage of Rise of the Tomb Raider, along with the rest of this list it seems the new
more realistic Lara will serve more positively as inspiration to an entire new generation of gamers.
2. Clementine (The Walking Dead)
There was always that encroaching feeling that Clementine was going to play a far larger role
following the events of the first season of the Walking Dead games, and come the end of said
season, we were right. The WD games remain some of the most nerve‐wracking and genuinely
harrowing experiences you’ll ever have with interactive entertainment, especially being they
deliberately deal in moral grey areas, dishing out scenarios that nearly always come down to
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Clem though – following all the training she received
from Lee in season one – has evolved into a young girl who will do whatever’s necessary to survive
in the zombie‐infested wastelands. Although you do have some control over how she’s perceived
by the other characters in terms of dialogue options and actions, many secondary characters have
come to rely and somewhat depend on her. She’s still the youngest female protagonist ever seen
in a mainstream game, and the fact that she can hold her own against a horde of zombies means
Clem is easily one of the strongest female protagonists in games. Here’s to the season two finale
and hoping she makes it out alive!
1. Ellie (The Last Of Us)

9. Ending on one of the biggest game‐changing titles in recent memory – if not of all time – The Last
Of Us’ Ellie elevated not only the medium of video games into a higher echelon of appreciation on
par with that of films, but it brought to life one of the best casts of characters in gaming history
too. Alongside Troy Baker’s fantastically gruff father Joel was Ashley Johnson’s curse‐word‐flinging
Ellie, a girl who after growing up in an apocalyptic world had an attitude of reckless abandon and
an emerging sense of purpose within it. For those who are still yet to play LoU, let’s just say Ellie is
more important to Joel than she thinks – as well as the entire world’s populace – but the game
manages to create a wonderful bond between you playing as Joel and your time with Ellie. Mostly
down to her saving your hide in a number of spots and leaping in to tackle someone who’s trying
to take you out, there’s a section where you get to play as Ellie that reverses the protector role
between her and Joel, tasking you with taking on a certain murderous adult character all by
yourself. Ellie’s take‐no‐prisoners attitude and overall bombastic personality hide a really strong
dedicated heart, and her portrayal is one of the main reasons the game topped nearly every critics’
list imaginable next year. If Naughty Dog can ever deliver another character on her level in
Uncharted 4, we’re in for something special indeed.
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