My favorite video game character of all time is a tie between Arthas Menethil and Terra Branford.
I played Final Fantasy VI when I was thirteen years of age and I fell in love with her. Terra was unassuming, wary of others, quiet and thoughtful and best of all perceptive. Aside from being beautiful she had all the attributes I found to be irresistible. Her strength was undeniable but it wasn't flaunted or hamfisted into every possible fucking scene.
I think in the late 80's and 90's, female characters could be good or bad, strong or weak, beautiful or ugly, but they were almost invariably
interesting. To me that is what's important.
Which brings me to modern times.
Whether it feels organic or not, I feel it's hit or miss really. I think sometimes it's very suitable to have the badass, crazy strong and confident woman protagonist that just wipes the walls with everyone.
What I don't like is that when someone opts for someone more nuanced, more defined and complicated like Terra, people lose their shit and lament that she's not crushing men's balls with five inch heels.
You don't always have to have the outlandish, omnipotent, consistently smirking woman in order to have a good or even powerful female character. Terra was not always confident, empowered or even strong. There were times when she displayed vulnerabilities and I really think that a lot of people would take issue with that today. But the fact that she came from humble beginnings, and even then much later had her own crisis in which she was laden with fear and self-doubt, and
then came out of it makes her stronger and better in my opinion than any other female character in video games.
It also makes her precious and somehow even more beautiful.
To put it as succinctly as I can, female characters in video games today, while usually presented as strong and independent, are more often than not thin as paper, poorly written and worst of all predictable, usually because creators all have a very singular, two dimensional idea of what constitutes strong and especially what constitutes good.