(Okay, maybe not protagonist, necessarily...)
Games
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
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Related communities
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Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
Help and suggestions
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By type
- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
- !LifeSimulation@lemmy.world
- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
- !CozyGames@Lemmy.world
- !CRPG@lemmy.world
- !OtomeGames@ani.social
- !Shmups@lemmus.org
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By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
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- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
She was the best part. It can slide
Madeline from Celeste
Samus from Metroid
I played Metroid Prime for the first time recently and Samus Aran is an absolute badass. She crash lands on a planet and kills every single thing she encounters. If you read the logs of the space pirates you find scattered around they basically say "oh fuck the hunter is here, she's coming for us next".
The atmosphere is almost a little survival-horror-esque, but the experience is more like doom: you're not locked in here with all these monsters, all these monsters are locked in here with you.
Laverne from Day of the Tentacle:
She looks like she really knows how to use a microwave... >.>
Alyx
Can I say female V from CP2077?
Okay, V is what you make of her, but damn the story bites hard. The voicing is superb, and customisations permissive.
V as female felt more apt for me than V as male
I was so surprised how weirdly cast male V was, he always sounded like someone doing a kinda cringy 1930's mobster impression.
Switched to female V, and it was night and day.
I’m playing Cyberpunk now for the first time but knew who the voice actress was for female V - Cherami Leigh. She always does a wonderful job and can communicate emotion eloquently in her work. Instantly picked her for my first playthrough.
Here’s her characters in some of my favorite media:
- Makoto Nijima, Persona 5
- A2, NieR:Automata
- Sonia, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Asuna Yuuki, Sword Art Online
- Sailor Venus in Sailor Moon Viz dub
Protagonist has got to be Bayonetta (though it's based only on the first game). Her character growth in the first game was so good, even if the plot was a little convoluted. Never finished the second one since I didn't like playing on the Switch and never played the third one. Hope her character is still good though.
Honorable mentions are Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite, and Stelle from Honkai Star Rail (though this one is mostly for the absolutely ridiculous dialogue options we get to choose).
Favorite female antagonist is hands down GLaDOS. Such a fun, sarcastic, and likeable villain.
"Oh. It's you."
Such a loveable heap of junk.
She has to be the most quotable video game character ever.
How are you holding up? BECAUSE I’M A POTATO. clap clap clap Oh good. My slow clap processor made it into this thing. So we have that
If you become light headed from thirst, feel free to pass out.
Here come the test results: You are a horrible person. We weren't even testing for that
Some of my favorites have already been mentioned.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice by Ninja Theory
This lady is a standout from recent games I played in the past several years. Senua is an incredible character, complex, driven, and felt very human. I and probably a million other gamers connected with her deeply. Won’t say any more to avoid spoilers, but she was in one of the greatest games I ever played. Her actress, Melina Juergens, was perfect for the role in many ways (which I won’t say why here to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t played this game). Haven’t played the sequel yet, but I remember Melina won an award at the recent Game Awards for her performance in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.
Honestly? Aloy from the Horizon games. She's maybe not the most rounded character, but she is a very strong, determined, stubborn, and intelligent person. She knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get it. I think it also helps that the games don't really have many choices or multiple endings, which I think was a good design choice. The story belongs to Aloy, not the player.
Also she's not a protag (sorta, you can play as her) but I would like to give a shoutout to Lae'zel from BG3. I suspect a lot of players haven't explored her character questline much because of how prickly she is at the beginning, but her character development is extensive and, at times, heart-wrenching. A story of someone getting the entire fabric of their life and soul torn out from under them.
My issue with Aloy is that she was such a Mary Sue in the first game. I can give some benefit of doubt to her on the account of the spoilers, but my god literally the only time she failed was at the beginning of the game during the trial and even then it was more a force majeure than anything she did wrong. She could thrust herself into any situation and come out on top with nothing dragging her down.
I'm found her more relatable in the second game because in the second get we at least get some hints of her mission being a burden on her and when she is caught off guard by a superior opponent she doesn't magically beat them. But even in the second game she doesn't have a lot of depth. There's so much more depth Aloy could have but the writers never gave her the depth she deserves. And I don't want people to think I'm dunking on Aloy, I think she could be a very interesting character if she had been properly fleshed out as a person. It's an issue all Horizon series characters suffer, they all lack depth. Some of them are flatter than the Bonneville Salt Flats.
And I completely agree with Lae'zel. She's my favorite characters from the BG3 party of character. She's literally how you described Aloy: determined, stubborn and intelligent. If we ignore the zealotry (which stems from her upbringing) Lae'zel is very similar to Aloy because she thinks she exists solely for the sake of her mission, she is indominably determined to fulfill her mission and she will step on anyone who gets between her and her mission. I find it pretty weird how Aloy is almost universally liked while Lae'zel is one of the least liked companions. I guess it's the difference of seeing the world through the eyes of the person vs seeing the person as they are within the world.
Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Fantastic voice acting, awesome gameplay, beautiful world. 10/10 I love her.
photojournalist/caretaker Jade from Beyond Good & Evil.
Great character. Great game.
Hi!!!
Lea.
Even though she's not one of many words, Lea still manages to be expressive and have a fantastic story.
Nice choice, but personally I always found Terra a bit hard to relate to, very fey and even sort of creepy in her half-Esper form.
Celes, on the other hand, is a bonafide badass, and her storyline was among the better developed ones and more humanizing than most of the other characters in the game. Although romantically I think she could probably do better than Locke. That boy needs some help.
Jesse Faden, hands down the best.
Control is a very fun game, and Jesse was an intriguing character with an unusual backstory. Enjoyed my time with it. I’m optimistic for Control 2 and hope we’ll get more lore! And of course, something that hits as hard as the Ash tray maze!
Rivet from the latest Ratchet and Clank game.
Why? Two words:
Big Hammer!
I swear it looks bigger in game, but I haven't played in a long while, so I could be misremembering.
Max Caulfield in Life is strange 1
Mae from Night in the Woods
Kara, Detroit Become Human.
Commander Shepard.
Probably April Ryan from the Longest Journey. She was clever, empathetic, funny, and grounded. She certainly had more than enough opportunity to get annoying over the many, many hours it takes to play that game but I found myself reading the journal that served as a story tracker just to see what she had to say about events. I genuinely missed her during Dreamfall. Though I had a few other favorite games with female protagonists that I loved (like Rynn from Drakan, Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever), it says something that decades later I still remember April's name, and her major character traits.
Mara Jade from Mysteries of the Sith (and Star Wars extended universe)
Zero, from Drakengard 3. The perfect amount of crude and the dryest delivery of humor imagineable.
I'm gonna cheat and give 3 I don't see mentioned
Red from Transistor
Miriam from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Ajna from Indivisible
Lilith “the Firehawk” (Borderlands)
Aya Brea, from Parasite Eve
The perfect mix of unsuspecting hero, chosen one, and bad ass. The sequel also gives her an Ellen Riply in Aliens vibe as well. Shame about 3rd Birthday and the fact we will never get another one. For those who don't know, the owner of the original IP didn't want to renew the license for the games, which means the games can no longer use anything from the novel which includes all references to mitochondria and Eve. That's why 3rd Birthday was seemingly a totally different game; they tried to make a sequel that couldn't reference any of the main plot points of the previous games or novel.
Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.
She's beautiful.. and mean with a Banuk Powershot or Gravesinger's Lament bow.
Traff (the Princess of Cursing) from Ink Inside (a cartoon action RPG)
Two occur to me: Chell from the Portal games, and Lufia from Lufia and the Fortress of Doom. And both of those almost don't count.
I almost don't want to count Chell because she's almost not a character, but I've had quite a bit of fun playing as her.
Lufia is one of the rare SNES JRPGs not made by Squaresoft or Enix, it was published by Taito. Gameplay is similar to classic Final Fantasy, the story manages to be quite tragic. Lufia, the title character, is not the player character, Enter Your Name is the player character, and Lufia is a playable party member/his love interest/...well, play the game to find out. So there's reasons why I hesitate to call her a "protagonist."
I have to mention a fun thing that series did: Lufia 1 starts with a playable prologue/tutorial section where you play as some legendary heroes fighting an ultimate battle. Lufia 2 is a prequel, and it's the story of those legendary heroes, which ends with that same ultimate battle as the final boss. In Lufia 1, the heroes speak very formally. They sound stalwart and brave and a bit old fashioned, as legendary heroes should. In Lufia 2, we know these characters more as real people, and the dialog treads the exact same ground but it's much less formal, makes them sound less hypercompetent.