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[Vex_]

I was wondering what GAF thinks about 2015 as far as how women have been portrayed this year?

Imo, there has never been a better time to see such varied roles for women in gaming:

-We have CoD allowing you to pick female soldiers. Who look kick ass, and look like they kick ass. MGSV allows you to play fem soldiers, and they kick ass too!

-We have Assassin's Creed with a kick ass.... assassin lady now.

-We have our RPG fix with fallout 4 continuing tradition by allowing you to create your own character. Fully voiced this time around.

-We have the "masterpiece" The Witcher 3 with its varied representation of women of all shapes and ages.

-We also have Linkle, which I think is pretty neat that she even exists for real now.

-We also have upcoming games like the new Mirror's Edge Catalyst/New NiER which I'm sure will do a well enough job.

But... What does gaf think of 2015? Are there any titles I missed? Were you disappointed? Were you pleasantly surprised?

I want to hear it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The OUTFUCKINGSTANDING POST:

---------------------------------------------------------------

We had a non-straight relationship portrayed in Wolfenstein The Old Blood in a very natural way that took Nazi rule under context *SPOILERS*[video]. There are some more female characters like the rambunctious agent/nurse Pippa. The ending personally made me emotional.

We had a female hero in Toren who was the only one prophecised to save the world, and she's just a kid with a sword too heavy for her. Nice subversive and pretty dark twist on Legend Of Zelda. Pretty sad game, similar to Team Ico titles, but with added surrealism.

Two of the characters in Not A Hero: Welsh ("Hey, boyo. Wales? YES IT'S A REAL PLACE!") and London chav ("oy fam wat u saying?!") female assassins representing! [video for their hilarious lines and accents]

Cibele had a dating relationship play out in a believable even if unorthodox way of a girl chatting with a guy on a MMO and finding the courage to take the next step even if not everything goes as planned. It's frankly pretty brave that the game went with live action and an autobiographical approach.

Ronin does a very Metroid thing of

Spoiler

revealing your gender at the very end

, while she's a badass stealth biker assassin. If you liked Kill Bill, check it out.

Fran Bow showed what mental illness might be like from the perspective of a girl, kinda like Alice Madness Returns. It's sometimes cute but also brutally graphic simultaneously. Although horror does tend to have more female protagonists. Seriously, has some of the most gruesome imagery in a game.

Her Story is another live-action tale from a woman's perspective, this time on a possible murder. It won Best Performance at the Game Awards.

Also, it gave us this amazing reaction GIF (Viva Seifert, the actress from Her Story excited to win while typo says she performed in Witcher 3 so Witcher developer is confused [video]).

Jotun is a Viking action game, with Thora as the hero instead of a dude. She packs a mighty punch with that axe!

Lemma is recommended if you liked Mirror's Edge and are up for a more surreal world that wants to kill you in inventive ways. You play as Joan Emerson, a physics grad student. In more relaxed times, you converse with Mark, your colleague, through your mobile phone by texting through dialogue choices. It loses steam and all the endings are unsatisfying, but still worth playing.

Beyond Eyes has you playing as a blind girl trying to find her lost cat. It's a short tale of adventure, danger, senses, illusions, and loss. It's really bittersweet, the ending had me welling up a bit.

I'm sure others have mentioned Life Is Strange by now. We haven't had a naive opinionated teen girl like Max Caulfield since maybe like The Longest Journey. Really well observed examination of school life, even if the dialogue can be a bit twee.

Dreamfall Chapters hasn't finished yet, and I haven't played all of the episodes, but that game is chock full of interesting female characters of different races and sexualities along with Zoe the protagonist. Nela the marxist street chef, Mira the hilariously sweary Indian garage owner (if you're indian/pakistani you'll recognise the insults in that video ), , Na'aine the shy but powerful mage, Ada the icy muslim scientist, and many others. I loved the relationship stuff in Episode 1. Has quite a few gay characters, like one of the playable protagonists

Spoiler

Kian

and Hanna/Abby are a couple.

Damn it, now I want to play more Dreamfall Chapters.

No Splatoon in the OP? .

.

There's Fiona in Tales From The Borderlands.

There's Vella from Broken Age.

If you can stomach a pretty slow game, Sunset is worth playing. You play as a house maid in 1972 during a revolution in the background.

Submerged isn't all that great, but has nice vistas and for once a brother is the one who needs to be taken care of.

 

[Sakura]

Honestly it kinda seems the same as always to me.

 

[the_batman]

year's not over yet, there's still the GTA Online Christmas dlc with the sexy mrs. santa outfits coming soon.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed having female enemies for you to fight was also quite a big thing, even some "inclusive" developers like Naughty Dog refuse to do that. Female enemies are even rarer than female protagonists.

 

[Dream_Journey]

Dreamfall Chapters one main character women and other is

Spoiler

gay.

(this is real spoiler)

Awesome game!

 

[Dragon Puncher]

Don't forget finally being able to play as female teams in FIFA!

Something is definitely happening, big publishers and developers are seeing there is a demand for this thing and reacting on it + probably don't want to seem completely unwilling to do anything to further it, when there a strong movement right now, for more equality and better female representations in games.

Still a long way to go though.

 

[cloudzack117]

loved quiet and yennifer this year, probably my favorite female characters since aqua from birth by sleep

 

[SatoAilDarko]

Two of the bigger Wii U games Xenoblade Chronicles X and Splatoon use user created avatars.

Splatoon's humanoid enemies were all female and Xenoblade has several female villains including grunts.

Mario Maker also had female costumes.

Aside from Kirby and The Rainbow Curse and Yoshi's Wooly World which don't feature humanoid characters I think every Nintendo published Wii U game has playable female characters this year. Even Captain Toad released early this year in Europe and #FE late this year in Japan.

Even Devil's Third has female avatars in multiplayer.

Edit:

Off the top of my head:

Captain Toad: Toadette
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse: None
Mario Party 10: Playable female characters
Splatoon: Female Avatars
Yoshi: None
Devil's Third: Multiplayer Female Avatars
Mario Maker: Female Character Costumes
Animal Crossing Amiibo Party: Playable female characters
Fatal Frame: Female Protagonists
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash: Playable female characters
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Female Avatars
Ibun Roku #FE: Female Party Members

10/12

This of course can partially be attributed to the number of local and online multiplayer games. Don't think Nintendo will ever beat this percentage again when it comes to a console's year of releases.

 

[FATALITY]

Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed having female enemies for you to fight was also quite a big thing, even some "inclusive" developers like Naughty Dog refuse to do that. Female enemies are even rarer than female protagonists.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

You can play a female character in the GOTG Bloodborne so it was a pretty gud year I'd say.

Also features a bunch of good female enemies!

 

[firehawk12]

I think people should be thinking about how female characters are used rather than whether or not they are represented. It puts games like Cybele or Her Story in perspective anyway, considering those games depend on a female subjectivity.

 

[Dambrosi]

That I've become weary of people complaining about it. I guess I just don't care about the subject. I think it's silly to get up in arms about fictional characters' dignity and civil rights. (Inclusiveness is another thing, though, and everyone wants more of that, surely?)

However, if you really care about the subject, as I know many of you do, know that nothing will change unless you keep complaining about it. The socialist part of me admires that, too.

So keep on rocking that boat, I guess. Don't worry about that privilege you're stepping on, that's mine. I don't use it much these days.

 

[Vex_]

I wish she was a protag tho. But yep.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

I'm already placing my bets that she will be the only woman you fight in the entire game. The trailer didn't even show the fight happening so I can see something suddenly happening that interrupts the scene.

She's also a named character so she doesn't count - I specifically mean all the nameless random goons that you gun down during the game. For some reason they're always men.

 

[Tizoc]

Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed having female enemies for you to fight was also quite a big thing, even some "inclusive" developers like Naughty Dog refuse to do that. Female enemies are even rarer than female protagonists.

I miss the good ol days of 90s Arcade games where you can beat up enemy women.

 

[grimmiq]

Let's see.

We had Life is Strange with a female protagonist and sidekick
Resident Evil Revelations 2 with a female duo (plus barry and a little girl)
Tales from the Borderlands with dual protagonists, 1 female.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
Broken Age Act 2
Her Story
Until Dawn
Dangan Ronpa Ultimate Despair Girls
Dragon Quest Heroes
Fatal Frame 5
Assassin's Creed Syndicate
Rise of the Tomb Raider

Good selection of great games, obviously not anywhere near as many as there are white males.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Fallout 4 (Lmao at rpg fix though) is pretty good at having gender mean little when it comes to who is tough or badass and who isn't. Human enemies come in equal numbers and roles in this regard.

Grieving Mother from Pillars of Eternity is probably my favorite female character of the year though. Probably because of the amount of layers.

 

[Dragon Puncher]

And you know, the main villain of Uncharted 3:

 

[Boba2007]

Don't forget Splatoon! The female inkling gets even more representation than the male inkling. Plus there's the Squid Sisters.

 

[Moonkid]

Getting better but it doesn't take that much effort to go from under-par to slightly less under-par.

 

[LinLeigh]

I'm pretty satisfied.

I loved the inclusion in COD, Fifa but especially Ac: Syndicate.

I loved Ciri.

Didn't like Quiet or some of the other characters in the Witcher.

And disliked Jacob I would have preferred a more equal amount of missions but Jack the Ripper dlc looks awesome so I can't complain.

 

[halfbeast]

Bloodborne had somewhat of a mother theme, if that counts.

 

[FATALITY]

I'm already placing my bets that she will be the only woman you fight in the entire game. The trailer didn't even show the fight happening so I can see something suddenly happening that interrupts the scene.

She's also a named character so she doesn't count - I specifically mean all the nameless random goons that you gun down during the game. For some reason they're always men.

yeah i know what you you meant. but lets be honest how many woman do you think would apply for a mercenary job? :

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

OP you have to try games outside the AAA spectrum. Of course there are hundreds of examples you may have missed, why even ask that?

 

[Vex_]

OP you have to try games outside the AAA spectrum. Of course there are hundreds of examples you may have missed, why even ask that?

Well it should be a given that I've played more than those games.

Just.... Uh.. Well they uh don't belong in this thread. And I don't currently own my OWN Wii u so...

 

[SinCityAssassin]

AC Syndicate should've just been entirely about the sister, quite frankly. She was the better half.

And yeah, despite many of the playable females in Nintendo games generally being the same usual ones, it's pretty fantastic the de-facto mascot for Splatoon is the Inkling Girl.

 

[Luq]

i'm always confused by threads like that. Why we cannot we act like female protagonist/character is something normal (cuz it is normal)? Instead, we are making some specific calculations which is creating the atmosphere where it's NOT normal and deserves special praise.

There are over 1300 video games with female protagonists and yet, some people are acting like it's one-of-a-kind miracle when it happens.

And why it even matters if protagonists is male or female? This type of thinking is not better than "hur dur, im not playing as chick".

Just get over it and play the god damn game without categorizing characters.

 

[Henkka]

It's still really common to see someone, even on GAF, pushing the narrative that most female characters in games are sexualized damsels in boob-plate. There's always an undefined "long way to go".

But looking at that list, that just isn't the case anymore. The community of players is still probably quite sexist, but I think western developers have heard the message and adjusted their product to fit the shifting market.

 

[- J - D -]

You can collect cards nudie cards of all your sexual conquests in Witcher 3. They're like trophies.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

i'm always confused by threads like that. Why we cannot we act like female protagonist/character is something normal (cuz it is normal)? Instead, we are making some specific calculations which is creating the atmosphere where it's NOT normal and deserves special praise.

There are over 1300 video games with female protagonists and yet, some people are acting like it's one-of-a-kind miracle when it happens.

Because we're talking about the mainstream under the spotlight in the media type of games. The ones with the broadest appeal and make enough money to justify having a female protagonist.

 

[Calvero]

Two of the bigger Wii U games Xenoblade Chronicles X and Splatoon use user created avatars.

Splatoon's humanoid enemies were all female and Xenoblade has several female villains including grunts.

Mario Maker also had female costumes.

Aside from Kirby and The Rainbow Curse and Yoshi's Wooly World which don't feature humanoid characters I think every Nintendo published Wii U game has playable female characters this year. Even Captain Toad released early this year in Europe and #FE late this year in Japan.

Even Devil's Third has female avatars in multiplayer.

Edit:

Off the top of my head:

Captain Toad: Toadette
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse: None
Mario Party 10: Playable female characters
Splatoon: Female Avatars
Yoshi: None
Devil's Third: Multiplayer Female Avatars
Mario Maker: Female Character Costumes
Animal Crossing Amiibo Party: Playable female characters
Fatal Frame: Female Protagonists
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash: Playable female characters
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Female Avatars
Ibun Roku #FE: Female Party Members

10/12

This of course can partially be attributed to the number of local and online multiplayer games. Don't think Nintendo will ever beat this percentage again when it comes to a console's year of releases.

Yepp Nintendo is doing great with this. Also Female Corrin and Bayonetta DLC for Smash that was announced.

 

[Vex_]

i'm always confused by threads like that. Why we cannot we act like female protagonist/character is something normal (cuz it is normal)? Instead, we are making some specific calculations which is creating the atmosphere where it's NOT normal and deserves special praise.

There are over 1300 video games with female protagonists and yet, some people are acting like it's one-of-a-kind miracle when it happens.

And why it even matters if protagonists is male or female? This type of thinking is not better than "hur dur, im not playing as chick".

Just get over it and play the god damn game without categorizing characters.

Well for one. It should be normal, but unfortunately it isn't. Having a respectable design/narrative behind female characters in gaming is very unique. Which is sad.


This thread wasn't created to tally how many female characters are in games --this thread is asking about their representation in games. Two different things.

 

[Henkka]

Well for one. It should be normal, but unfortunately it isn't. Having a respectable design/narrative behind female characters in gaming is very unique. Which is sad.

...Is it, really? You realize you just listed every single biggest AAA release of the year as a positive example of female representation? When does it stop being unique??

 

[Vex_]

...Is it, really? You realize you just listed every single biggest AAA release of the year as a positive example of female representation? When does it stop being unique??

AAA aren't the only games that exist. Even then, that isn't all AAAs.

Also, keep in mind that not every year can be a 2015. I specifically highlighted positive examples in the op for a reason: this year (imo) was better than previous years... "Imo, there has never been a better time to see such varied roles for women in gaming"...

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Well it should be a given that I've played more than those games.

Just.... Uh.. Well they uh don't belong in this thread. And I don't currently own my OWN Wii u so...

gotcha

and to be fair, it kinda is in the big games where they have to give everything from voice to facial expressions (thus the work of multiple people is inherently involved) that may be one of the most interesting areas of gaming to look at it.

 

[Vex_]

Yepp Nintendo is doing great with this. Also Female Corrin and Bayonetta DLC for Smash that was announced.

Agreed positive additions. I still need to get me a wiiu.

 

[Barrylocke]

My personal GOTY, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, also has Estelle Bright, my favorite female protagonist in videogames in it. In Second Chapter we see her continuing to grow and mature from the journey she embarked on in First Chapter, and it's great to see her still assertive and energetic personality tempered to steel due to a level of maturity and experience. The game also has other enjoyable female playable characters who make up half the playable cast.

Spoiler

Let's ignore the fact that this game is technically 10 years old and only got localized this year, shall we?

 

[JustAnotherOtaku]

Still a long way from being where it ideally should be, but lots of positives to take from 2015 as a whole. Having playable, non-sexualised characters in Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty, two of the biggest series in the industry, was a welcome change. Halo having women as part of the main group also.

Plenty of other examples too, such as Splatoon and plenty of indies as well.

 

[Henkka]

AAA aren't the only games that exist. Even then, that isn't all AAAs.

Also, keep in mind that not every year can be a 2015. I specifically highlighted positive examples in the op for a reason: this year (imo) was better than previous years... "Imo, there has never been a better time to see such varied roles for women in gaming"...

I suppose it's unique in a historical sense... But I doubt 2015 will be remembered as an exceptionally good year for women, but rather the beginnings of a trend that will carry into 2016, 2017, 2018 and so on. Games were always marketed to males because they were mostly played by males, but that has changed. More women are playing games than ever before, and developers are adjusting their products to the market. It's unique when compared to previous decades, but strong female characters are pretty normal and mainstream now.

 

[Luq]

Because we're talking about the mainstream under the spotlight in the media type of games. The ones with the broadest appeal and make enough money to justify having a female protagonist.

You should also point out that mainstream audience doesn't give a shit about gender of protagonist. It's strictly "our" thing

 

[KraytarJ]

My top 3 games of the year all had very positive female representation. Life is Strange was built on two excellent female characters and the relationship between them. Not only that but the supporting cast was filled with many more female characters. Undertale had a strong contingent of female characters as well all filling various roles from mother figure to a legendarily powerful knight. Finally Splatoon was marketed with the main form of the avatar being female which is rare in and of itself but then Callie and Marie also add a ton of personality to the game. Perhaps most interestingly on the year for me is that when I've thought of my top characters of the year, most of them are female. To me 2015 was a very good year for female representation in video games.

 

[SlipperyFishes]

And you know, the main villain of Uncharted 3:

Who you don't actually fight. Same goes for The Last of Us.

 

[PillarEN]

Dreamfall Chapters one main character women and other is

Spoiler

gay.

(this is real spoiler)

Awesome game!

Oh I keep forgetting about this game. How do these chapters compare to the original game? Quality-wise I mean?

As for the on topic. Yes there has been more representation. Even with just a simple eye test. It's also worth noting that we are mostly only looking at the core scene. Casual gaming is something to consider. Unless we are specifically avoiding that large amount of software.
It will also be a natural progression as more women buy certain games and more women are part of development. Everything always takes time. Check the difference in 5 years time and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[kavanf1]

I like Annika in Just Cause 3, she kicks arse.

 

[Coll1der]

IMO nothing really changed from previous years, it's just now people take note about each successful women presentation and each sexualized one.

 

[Tenebrous]

I liked Sagani in Pillars of Eternity, and Naru from Ori and the Blind Forest. Both good characters.

 

[sn00zer]

Bloodborne and Souls in general have an awesome cast of female villains and heros.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

-We have the "masterpiece" The Witcher 3 with its varied representation of women of all shapes and ages.

I don't think the left and right breast count as separate shapes and ages.

Spoiler

Witcher 3 has an incredibly poor representation of women despite how badass Ciri may be

 

[LinLeigh]

IMO nothing really changed from previous years, it's just now people take note about each successful women presentation and each sexualized one.

How can you even say that when this is the first time that female characters are included in Fifa and COD. Both are extremely popular franchises that have been running for years but never had playable women.

Or even Syndicate where we now have a women on a none handheld. Especially after last year they used the excuse of not being able to afford the extra animations.

 

[Slayven]

The way Black Ops 3 treated the female villain was embarrassing

If the story hadn't been complete shit, it would have stand out more