The 13 most inspirational female characters in games

A more modern world view

It’s easy to point the sexist finger at video games. After all, games are still populated by plenty of lazy female stereotypes, and women who merely exist to further the plot for the central, male protagonist. We’ve come a long way in the past 30 years, but modern video games--being still largely skewed towards a male audience--often struggle to create convincing female characters.

However, I’m here to celebrate the best, most inspirational female characters in games. These women aren’t just male character-models with long hair and lipstick; they’re designed to be proper women who might actually exist outside the imagination of a game designer or marketing man. Similarly, they don’t just exist to compliment or define male characters, nor are they tough-talking stereotypes with guns, designed to fulfil ‘dominant women’ fantasies.