Poll: Best Female Non-Player Character ever?

[MatParker116]

Given the recent discussion about omen in video games I decided to conduct two polls. From the options available I want to find out who the escapist thinks are the best female player characters and non-player characters are.

Personally my vote for best non-player character ever goes to alyx Vance. She's one of the best NPC sidekicks in gaming history and if anyone else wins this I will be surprised, she's the one the greatest examples of the strong female characters in gaming.

 

[Ryotknife]

alyx vance, one of the best characters in the industry.

although The Boss receives an honorable mention.

 

[Zhukov]

Best female character thread?

Deploy canned response!

- April Ryan
Not the most complex, defined or well developed character you'll ever meet but she more than makes up for it by being extremely well humanized and supremely relatable. I challenge you to find anyone who has played The Longest Journey who doesn't like and care about Miss Ryan.

- Liara T'soni
Well defined. Well humanized (alienized?) due to wide emotional range. Undergoes a significant arc. Her change from shy researcher to pragmatic and ruthless spymaster was handled a bit clumsily though.

- Jack/Subject Zero
Well defined with several "layers" and a sprinkling of quality development. The primal nihilistic ***** who doesn't give a damn covers up the emotionally crippled victim and the guilty survivor. Gotta say though, a tank top or singlet would have done wonders for her visual design.

- Avaline Vallen
Mostly notable for managing to be a distinctly non-feminine female without resorting to cliche. Also, well characterized with multiple defining traits and all that.

- Alyx Vance
Kind of the go-to example of a female character that can be popular without swanning about in her underwear. Simple but well defined personality (to anyone keeping score, that's the fourth time I've used the word "defined".) Highly relatable and possessed of good emotional range.

 

[sextus the crazy]

I've heard that Aya Brea from Parasite Eve is pretty good, but haven't played the games.

Fire Emblem & Valkyria Chronicles have a ton of good Female Characters, both being equal opertunity in their asskicking. Personally, I'm a fan of Miledy, Eirika, and Lute from fire emblem and Lynn, Marion, Franca, and Alexis from Valkyria Chronicles.

 

[Vegosiux]

Her, any time. I mean, seriously. She's just one of those characters you have to meet.

 

[Estelindis]

- Avaline Vallen

It's possible that I've experienced a better female character is some other game, but I certainly can't think of one right now. Avelline's tough and strong, but she's not a male character with a few female physical features spliced on. She's honourable and hardworking... and, on the downside, sometimes stubborn to a fault. Like Jaheira, she lost her husband... and eventually moved on... but, unlike Jaheira, she fell in love with someone other than the male protagonist. The culmination of that plot thread was one of the most hilarious yet touching scenes that I have seen in any game.

 

[TheCommanders]

- Liara T'soni
Well defined. Well humanized (alienized?) due to wide emotional range. Undergoes a significant arc. Her change from shy researcher to pragmatic and ruthless spymaster was handled a bit clumsily though.

I quite liked Liara, she was my favorite LI from the Mass Effect series. The transition, as you mentioned, is a little rough, but reading the comic that covers a few of the events between ME and ME2 helps a bit.

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

Depends on what exactly makes them the "best". Anyway, I'll say Xion from KH: 358/2 Days. Not sure if she'd be classed as a girl though :/

I'm totally not biased.

 

[wintercoat]

Veronica Santangelo from FO:NV. I've never been so pleased to give a girl a dress before. Her and Arcade Gannon were my favorite companions. They just had great personalities.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Viconia or Avaline for me. Though I've got to say that I think Sophia Lamb from Bioshock 2 comes in a close second behind those two. Sophia Lamb might pale next to Andrew Ryan, but the game still gives her a well-executed characterization as a hard-lining utilitarian while still showing the player that she's human and has human flaws.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I like that the current front-runner of this poll, GlaDOS, is only female when the imagination makes a certain stretch to include computers with feminine voices that may or may not have been patterned on a human female long since passed away in a possibly post-apocolyptic world of testing facilities running without supervision (read: in a vacuum) populated only by other robots and a single human being (who happens to be the player-character) as far as we're aware.

I would have to go with a tie between Terra and Celes from FF III (stateside, VI otherwise, I get annoyed with the continuous need to state both numbers). Well written both, offering two sides of femininity and strength, neither dominated by a single attribute or characteristic, both moving through a clear progression of development even as part of a massive cast of characters (by today's standards). I suppose, since you do play primarily as one of them at least one time during the game (though that's true of almost every cast member of this particular title) they may not qualify as strict npc... but in the JRPG everyone was an npc basically in the olden times.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

Voted for the boss in lieu of getting to vote for Viconia or Liara/T'ali

But i can see how it's a subject response. The boss is a patriot, a soldier, a realist and a great tactician. But this doesn't necessarily make her likeable. To some she might come of as cold, strict and cruel.

 

[keiji_Maeda]

GladOs is female now? SHE'S A ROBOT. ALYX VANCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER.

She's the copied personality of a woman forcibly put into a computer. I can see the confusion.

 

[TheTim]

Elena and Chloe were both great female characters. Zelda is also a great one.

 

[Arina Love]

Tyria from Ar tonelico Qoga. She just so awesome.

Spoiler

 

[Kilo24]

Kreia. Quite an interesting character. Doesn't give a damn about anyone but the main character, and keeps manipulating people into helping him/her rather than resorting to the traditional band-of-brothers-type motivation that most RPGs default to.

She's also rather far from being a sex symbol.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

GladOs is female now? SHE'S A ROBOT. ALYX VANCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER.

She was a woman turned into a robot.

Also, I never got why people liked Alyx. She always seemed bland to me.

 

[Mordekaien]

Farah from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.... it's the only female character that I really liked.