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Old 06-12-2012, 04:10 PM   #10
Saya
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 9,548
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan View Post
I still think it's a step up. It's better to see a woman as a human being, even if she's a frail one that needs to be taken care of, than to glorify a sex symbol with absolutely no personality.
From the two sexist stereotypes today, I hate the one where a female character is a heroic figure simply because she's impossibly good at everything than the weak and empathic female that has to survive for you to complete the mission.
I prefer Mary to Alice. Silent Hill to Resident Evil.
But its not an either or situation. Like I said, she was made more conservative, in the original in the very beginning, orginally she's very flirty, but in Anniversary in the same scene she's suspicious and haughty. She's a lot more relatable in that regard and less Ms Confidence.

I haven't played too many Tomb Raider games, but Versus also pointed out to me that its not like she doesn't have a personality, she goes absolutely ballistic at the end of Legend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiFlk...eature=related

I'm not mad that she's no longer a hypersexual femme fatale, but sexual assault victim isn't the alternative, particularly when its a trope to kill off a female character (her friend makes a case for a woman in a refrigerator) and lately its become pretty popular to have the female protagonist a rrape victim, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo being the really big example, and it either becomes a rrape revenge tale or the Gary Sue (in this case the player) becomes her white knight.

And again, its super insulting that for white men to relate to a (white) woman character he has to feel she needs HIS protection. Like I said, Beyond Good And Evil didn't need to rrape Jade to make an excellent game. Okami didn't even have a human protagonist and it was still an extremely good critically acclaimed game.

And if they mean that you can only project yourself in a character of your own gender (but honestly I'd say Bioware and Elder Scroll games make it really hard to project yourself in a character you didn't create anyway), what about the women playing the game? Are they supposed to project themselves and experience virtual sexual assault? I know the answer is that they don't believe women play video games to begin with but again I think there's a reason women gravitate towards either casual games or games that at least try to keep their presence in mind, like JRPGs or Bioware games.

I also can't think of any games that had rrape in it with good taste. Duke Nukem Forever can burn in hell, Silent Hill 2 (counting the monsters rraped by Pyramid Head) was just surreal and symbolic, and most other ones I can think of is something that happens to side characters of screen that they later mention. The Path is the only one I can think of that did it to make a point about women and sexual assault.

Quote:
PoC protagonists? I think I can think of maybe 3.

Mirror's Edge

Prototype

I think maybe one of the GTAs has one.
I was a nerd and tried to think of a list on the bus ride home, and I could think of a few with east Asian characters, like Tenchu, but I think Mirror's Edge is the only one I can think of made by a Western developer. I got Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, Turok, Prototpye 2, Beyond Good And Evil, if you play certain genders/classes in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, and if you want movie tie ins or celebrity games like 50 Cent's games or Mike Tyson's Knockout there's a few more.
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