Female Characters: What's the Difference Between Lara Croft and Commander Shepard?

I recently read an article over at 1up.com about the process of designing video game heroines such as Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII. Reading that the initial concept for Lightning was 'strong woman' got me thinking about the state of female characters in present games and how much has changed over the last couple of decades. How far have we come, though, if 'strong woman' can still exist as an archetype?

Part of the answer to that question is definitely “a long way.” There have always been strong female characters in games just as there have been in literature and film but around 20 years ago, there was a notable trend of 'damsel in distress' type characters. One of the original iconic female characters was Princess Peach of the Super Mario games. She literally was a damsel in distress and served no purpose other than to be captured by Bowser and later saved by Mario. I highly doubt that there are any negative underlying reasons for this as Nintendo were most likely following traditional fairy tale stories where a princess is rescued by a noble prince but with more and more games including a narrative at the time, many game designers chose not to go beyond this concept. For example, when the time came to introduce a female character to the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, we got a pink hedgehog in a skirt who got captured almost instantly and was about as much use as an inflatable pincushion.

The reason for this and the reason that you could argue still influences this topic today is most likely the target gaming audience. In the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, gaming was still attempting to break into the mainstream and was a pastime mostly enjoyed by young boys. Young boys don't care whether female characters have depth or not. Just point them in the direction of the castle she's being held in (perhaps along with the 7 she's not) and they'll be on their merry way.

Heroines for Hormones

This continued into the era of the Playstation and N64 where it seemed teenage boys became the main demographic publishers were aiming at. Reading the words 'strong woman' in regards to video games makes many instantly think of Lara Croft since she was designed to be tough. She conquered dangerous tombs and killed enough ferocious beasts to be barred from any PETA social occasions. Yet, she still came off as a marketing tool to teenage boys as she was ultra-thin with huge breasts that were ridiculously out of proportion. Another example is the game Fear Effect 2, of which the advertisement campaign featured scantily clad lesbians. It doesn't matter how important or unimportant to the story the relationship was, the ad campaign's message was clearly just “look! Two girls... together! Hot.”

The problem is that it's patronising. For those of us who like to be immersed in a rich narrative and aren't just looking for some explosions and eye-candy, we want our characters to be realistic and the examples discussed so far don't fit that description.

Thankfully, while Lara Croft was jiggling her way through various caves and temples, elsewhere, change was happening. A wider audience of people started to become interested in gaming and this included female players. Developers had to react and start introducing more complex female characters. A great example in which change can be observed is in the Legend of Zelda series. As with many games of the time, the first few Zelda games had the princess captured early on and she could do nothing but wait until the hero, Link, showed up to save the day. In Ocarina of Time on the N64, Princess Zelda played a much bigger role in the story. As a child it is her that comes up with the plan to stop the villain, Ganondorf, and sends Link off to do the grunt work. Later, she disguises herself as a ninja-esque character and manages to evade Ganondorf's clutch until close to the end. The difference here is incredible as for once the damsel is doing something to stop the distress.

Nobody's Perfect

One trap that character designers could have fallen into is making female characters too 'strong'. Though not to be taken seriously, Tanya from the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series is a good example of this. She's fierce, she's fearless, she's all business and she's completely one-dimensional. There was a real danger of characters like this becoming a trend as designers attempted to make their female characters stronger. Thankfully, this generally doesn't seem to be the case.

I admit that I was worried when beginning Final Fantasy XII that Lightning was going to be one of those unrealistic female characters whose only trait was 'strong'. At first she appeared to be little else than a soldier with extreme focus on the task at hand. It was a real treat to see Lightning develop beyond this. As her personality starts to influence Hope, she sees herself in him and realises that it's not the way she wants to live her life. We later learn that she was only acting this way because of her deep resolve to protect her sister. Interestingly, Snow, a male character, is motivated by the same thing and starts out with a personality that's the complete opposite of Lightning's. Both appear to have hardly any weaknesses but as time goes on, they are revealed to us and it turns out that the two characters are very similar to each other. So, even though Lightning began as an archetype she developed into a complex, and as a result, interesting character.

Gender is Not a Personality Trait

So what makes a good female character? It's any character whose personality traits don't include 'female'. Gender isn't a personality trait at all and we should only be seeing very subtle differences between male and female characters. 'Strong' and 'weak' should be avoided also, as any realistic character is both. Bastila Shan of Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic was a powerful Jedi with abilities that could turn the tide of a battle. But she was still human. She still had weaknesses and negative personality traits just as anyone else does despite being an all powerful Jedi. Compared to Lara Croft who's good at everything she does and was designed to be perfect, Bastila comes off as much more realistic.

Also of note is Commander Shepard of the Mass Effect games. As the player character you get to choose whether Shepard is male or female. While this does affect the love interests of the main character (which is to be expected), none of the story, Shepard's abilities or other characters' attitudes towards him/her are any different. This is the perfect example of a character whose gender is irrelevant. Whether male or female, Shepard is Shepard.

To Conclude

It's great that we're at a stage where we can mostly expect video characters to be intricate and intriguing regardless of gender. We still have some way to go while games like Dead or Alive attempt to set us back a couple of decades, but we've definitely left behind the days of helpless princesses. If games are to become as respected a medium as literature and film, this sort of evolution of plot and character writing is very important.