Yuffie
Yuffie
Last edited by KC; 08-19-2014 at 12:21 AM.
my junk is ugly
The Xl (08-18-2014)
1: Shaundi, from Saint's Row 2.
2. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, from Mass Effect 3
3. Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2
4. Shaundi from Saint's Row 3
5. Kerrigan from the StarCraft series.
Green Arrow (08-18-2014)
Sarah Kerrigan is a traitor.
Green Arrow:
Very interesting choices and excellent explanations! I'm not very well-informed on any of those games, so the at-length explanations were extremely helpful. Unusually diverse selection as well, ranging from heroic to what we might call villainous characters.
GrassrootsConservative:
Shattered Memories is the only Silent Hill game I've played, but I thought it was fairly good. I didn't know anything about Heather, so I had to Google her. She sounds like a thoughtful choice from the description page I found.
Alyosha:
The Dragon Age characters are cool selections from what you've shared with me before about them.
As to the Sonic characters...much as I enjoy the games, I've gotta be honest and say that I think they portray girls and women fairly poorly. The comics by Archie do a much better job than Sega's video games, which constitute an entirely separate Sonic universe. Let's start with the games (since they came first), and at the beginning: there was not a single named female characters in Sega's Sonic video game franchise for more than two years after the release of the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Amy Rose became the first in 1993's Sonic CD, wherein she was a non-playable, school-girlish damsel in distress. Here's her role in that game:
Yeesh person, just use the upper route! It's way easier, as there are no obstacles. Anyway, here's her other scene in Sonic CD (wherein her part ends within the first 15 seconds):
So that's how she was introduced. She remained the only (named) female character in the Sonic video games for almost another eight years after that. Amy did, however, undergo a notable, and permanent, transformation in 1999's Sonic Adventure: her stereotypical schoolgirl look and shyness were now gone, and she now became a highly assertive character who dresses in a somewhat more "womanly" fashion. Sonic Adventure was the game where she first got the famous Piko Piko Hammer that rendered her and action character. However, the interesting feature of Amy remains that the only thing we actually know about her is that she's infatuated with Sonic. Her entire life evidently revolves around the series' male protagonist, vis-a-vis which she has essentially been made (as of Sonic Adventure) into what we might call a Ms. Male Character (i.e. a female version of a male protagonist whose only distinguishing featuring is being female, e.g. Ms. Pac-Man, Smurfette, etc.). In contrast, we know something a little more about all the male characters in the Sonic universe. We know that Knuckles is the guardian of the Floating Island and its emeralds. We know that Sonic loves speed and chili dogs and showing off and so forth. We know not only that Tails idolizes Sonic (we might call this idolization the heterosexual male analogy to Amy's infatuation), but that he's skilled with technology and insecure. And we know Shadow and Dr. Eggman's whole background stories! Amy though seems to exist simply to be female and pursue Sonic (in vain at that).
The early 2000s saw a notable change in this pattern. Between 2001 and 2006, four new female characters were introduced to Sega's Sonic video game universe: Rouge, Cream, Blaze, and Elise. Of these, Blaze qualifies as the least stereotypical. The others I classify respectively as "hot" gold-digger, "cute" schoolgirl (perhaps a replacement one was needed after Amy's transformation; Cream is a much better character though than the original version of Amy), and new damsel in distress. Blaze is the character that most defies easy categorization and seems to be the overall favorite of the girls who write into Archie Comics anyway.
Archie's Sonic comic series has done a much better job than Sega's Sonic video games when it comes both to the quality of storytelling and the representation of girls and women, IMO. The comic series was actually the first to introduce named female characters, in fact. The first three, introduced very early on, were Princess Sally Acorn, Nicole (Sally's artificially intelligent computer and my personal favorite), and Bunnie Rabbot, all of whom are much more independent and multidimensional characters than any of the ladies in Sega's video games save for the possible exception of Blaze and all of whom were introduced previous to the release of Sonic CD (which introduced Amy Rose). Over the subsequent years, Archie has introduced more too numerous to mention, and continues to.
Now the exception here is Sonic Chronicles (the Nintendo DS RPG), but that video game wasn't actually made by Sega or Sonic Team and it basically ripped off large chunks of Archie's Sonic storyline, including spin-offs of a substantial array of the comic's original characters. Just my thoughts.
CreepyOldDude:
There are no good characters in the Saint's Row games. Just saying.
Last edited by IMPress Polly; 08-19-2014 at 07:54 AM.
GrassrootsConservative (08-21-2014)
I fear we shall have to agree to disagree, dear Polly. My favorite character in the SR games is Johnny Gat. His voice isn't even close, but what he says, and the way he says it, sounds remarkably like my best friend in my unit, during the war.
And who wouldn't like Keith David?
I also like Kinzie.
Edited to correct my Germanic spelling.
"Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most — that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least."
- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926), five-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President
IMPress Polly (08-22-2014)