are there any non-sexualized/stereotypical female characters in games?

[Jabberwock xeno]

Samus, hilde from soul caliber.

Kat from Reach.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Jade, Samus...

Sarah Kerrigan?

How is Kerrigan not sexualised? Skin tight metal suits and a sniper rifle seem like they were going for sexual appeal there.

Yeah, dude, I dunno.

That's pretty obviously meant to get guys to pop a boner. Whatever was I thinking.

She's not sexualized. By that logic, female Shepard is sexualized because she's always in a jumpsuit.

You're just picking at straws.

I'm talking pre-zergification.

 

[Enemy Of The State]

Kathryn from Singularity. She just provides a human voice on the radio and occasionally she comes with you to shoot things.

 

[Romidude]

Actually, Alxy Vance was never supposed to be this internet porn icon she is.

 

[Mstrswrd]

Every single character in Touhou.

No, really. Not one of them is even remotely sexualized... in canon. In fanon, that's a whole 'nother story, but officially, not one character is sexualized. There are probably a few characters who come off as vaguely cliche, but only to their role (Honorable servant, arrogant Vampire, etc), and not to their gender.

By the way, almost every character in Touhou (excluding Rinnosuke, who's never in the games, Youki, who is only mentioned once in the print-works, Unzan, who's a cloud, and Genji, a turtle) is female.

 

[Flying-Emu]

I'm talking pre-zergification.

She's infested for more than 75% of the games.

Besides that, if she's sexualized because she cares a snipe rifle and wears skintight jumpsuits, female Shepard from Mass Effect is as well. And that, my friend, is silly.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I'm talking pre-zergification.

She's infested for more than 75% of the games.

Besides that, if she's sexualized because she cares a snipe rifle and wears skintight jumpsuits, female Shepard from Mass Effect is as well. And that, my friend, is silly.

Have you seen how that metal rides up her ass?

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Jade, Samus...

Sarah Kerrigan?

I disagree with Sarah Kerrigan. In the first Starcraft she was the trigger for many of Raynor's dirty thoughts, and clicking her too many times would trigger responses such as "It doesn't take a psychic to know what you're thinking of."

In both games she was given skintight outfits and put in scandalous poses for artwork. In SC2, her Ghost outfit was made more sensual.

As for Samus, she may have started off non-sexualized, but throughout the years it has changed.

 

[HT_Black]

Uh, Lemme think...Alyx Vance, April Ryan, Ashley from Mass Effect, Dr. Whatwasit in Starcraft 2, and that's all I got.

 

[Axzarious]

the C-10 is a sniper rifle of sorts. It would make no sense for a ghost to use a shotgun. In SC1 gameplay the ghosts can hit a target a lot further away than the marines can and for more damage. This couldn't happen with a shotgun. So the way I see it the C-10 is a multi-purpose high powered rifle, that can also fire a lock-down device or lase a target for a nuclear strike.

Anyhoo OT: Kerrigan certainly isn't played for sexiness in the standard sense, but she does carry a decent dose of fetish fuel. Now someone in the Starcraft universe that could be considered is Nova Terra from the canceled SC: Ghost game. I hear she has a cameo is SC2 (I still can't afford to buy that game yet grrr.) While she certainly is an attractive young women, when you hear her back-story and capabilities you quickly realize that she is absolutely fucking terrifying.

Fair enough, the Canister Rile is not a gun that shoots shot. However, it closely resembled a shotgun that fires metal slugs, in SC1. If you look at Kerrigan's portrait, you see she pumps her C-10 like a shotgun and the in game firing noise features the sound of a gun being pumped in between each shot. Also, if you look at the wire-frame of a ghost, there's no scope. In SC2 on the other hand, there's a great big fancy scope on the gun model and when using the Snipe ability you hear the stereotypically unrealistic "silenced" shooting noise that you hear in movies that feature noise suppressors.

Shotguns have a lot more range than the movies give them credit for, especially when using slugs instead of shot. Seems appropriate for the Ghosts to be using supercharged shotguns, since I imagine most zerg would shrug off a sniper round, even a high caliber one.

I disagree.


A S&W 500- which is a handgun has almost as much raw kinetic energy as a 12 gauge shotgun slug. Roughly 3,000 Foot pounds. If you use hot loaded cartridges with custom made shell casings- "John Ross" Custom loads- you can go higher.

The Springfield .30-06 sniper round is about 3500 foot pounds at max load. Which is about the utmost maximum you can squeeze out of a S&W 500 without making it explode, I think.

The 12 gauge has slightly more power

3 1/2" 1-3/8" ounce
Muzzle Velocity: 1900 fps
Muzzle Energy: 3728 ft. lbs.


The .50 Barrett fires the .50 Browning Machine Gun Round- which is 15,000 foot pounds. That is more power than a 12 *or* a 10 gauge shotgun slug. The .700 Nitro Express is roughly the same.


With that much raw power, you could get decent penetration even with hollowpoint rounds at *very* long range. And although it's true that 12 guage shotgun slugs are very high caliber (.729 caliber) and 10 guage shotguns are even bigger, they have far far less kinetic energy. Shotgun slugs have horrible long range accuracy, even the rifled ones. Shotguns with rifled barrels (For better accuracy-they are generally superior to rifled slugs) cannot fire shot and are essentially just rifles.

So while the shotgun slugs might be a very big caliber, they actually don't have a lot of kinetic energy(In comparison to high power sniper rifles), and they are horribly innaccurate at long range. The .700 Nitro Express is only slightly smaller in terms of caliber, but much more accurate at long range and much, much more powerful than any shotgun cartridge currently around.


Simply put- you could not hit the target you are you are aiming at from long range unless you use a rifled barrel, which means you are using a rifle rather than a true shotgun, even if your gun is chambered for shotgun cartridges. And there is no shotgun cartridge on the planet that comes close to the most powerful rifle cartridges in terms of kinetic energy.

Shotgun slugs have longer range than pellets, yes, but they are not long range cartridges. More like medium range. True rifle cartridges are really the only way to go for long range shooting.

EDIT: I know you said Supercharged shotguns, implying much more powerful ones than we currently use. My point was that Rifles can easily match, it not exceed, shotguns in terms of power, and that rifled slugs don't have as much long range accuracy as bullets fired from a rifled barrel. You can fit a shotgun with a rifled barrel, but this basically turns it into a rifle.

I approve of this conversation.

On a side note, I would just be repeating what others have said by saying: Terra (FF6), Samus, and some more that I cant think of right now.

 

[Elliee]

[http://ifotos.pl/zobacz/7_saqqah.jpg/]
Strong and not stereotypical female game - character - Jade (Beyond Good and Evil)

 

[Aeshi]

Jade from Beyond Good & Evil and Jen from Primal are the only two I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[yamitami]

Sigh....

Heavenly Sword: Main character, whatever the hell her name is.

Really? You think that NARIKO isn't stereotyped? Yes, she can slice and dice with her blades, but the long hair and the square inch of fabric she wears are not there to help in battle.

There is a difference between having one or two stereotypical traits and being a stereotype. She defeats entire armies single handedly. She is a highly trained warrior. She is not a stereotype. Yes, she has long hair (women are genetically inclined to grow hair faster and longer than men, although men are actually inclined to grow fingernails faster than women, wierdly enough) and she does wear a skimpy outfit. She doesn't fit into any overall female stereotype however. I will remove her from the list if you like though.

The fact that she can defeat armies single handedly is a factor of gameplay, not her character. Her requisite tragic background is generic and uninteresting; Miss Twing Twang's was FAR more compelling. If Nariko was merely generic then it wouldn't so much be a problem, but her entire character design hinges on her being a sex object, something which is not in any way necessary to anything aside from fanboys checking her out while she dips and twirls.

There's a big difference between dressed skimpily for a reason, the classic example being Leia being forced to wear her metal bikini. Even if the writers started with the idea that they wanted to get Leia in a metal bikini and then wrote the whole movie from there they still would have done their due diligence and thus Leia has an actual REASON for being skimpily clad.

There's not even a weak in-story reason for Nariko to dress like she does. Not even the infinitely weak reasoning that tight clothing means that there's nothing for the enemy to grab, given that her sleeves are plenty baggy and her tunic/dress thing flows out around her legs. As for her hair, the fact that women's hair grows faster is no excuse since that just means that trims are more frequent. Particularly when it's a matter of it touching the ground; that didn't happen in a day. Besides the problem is not so much that it's long but that it's only barely tied back and is left for everyone in the world to grab. If it was just braided up and pinned then there wouldn't be a problem. Granted in this case I think it's less a female stereotype and more the animators having way too much fun with their toys, but the point of it having no in-game reason stands.

She's good at slicing guys up because she's the main character and she has to be, not because she's a strong character. Everything else is either sexualized stereotypical fighting girl or utterly generic main character.

 

[zHellas]

Leliana, maybe.

Her obsession with shoes might count as stereotypical.