Yes, Kreia is awesome ;)

I think Heather from Silent Hill 3 would fit on the list, but I don’t remember any more if she gets more “torture for sympathy” than the characters from the other games. I mean, she’s certainly less stoic than the guy from the first game. He just walks around and calmly recites his have-you-seen-a-little-girl-around-here speech at everything that doesn’t try to eat him. But I chalk that up to bad writing and voice acting. As for the other games, no clue.

My favourite female protagonist would be April Ryan, although I only played Dreamfall’s predecessor The Longest Journey. (I heard Dreamfall wasn’t that good, so I didn’t bother with it.)

I also think Samus is pretty cool, but she’s a mostly silent protagonist in the classic games. I’ve never played Other M, and after this post I’m kind of glad I didn’t.

And for non-playable characters, Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2 is a splendid example – a rare mother-figure/mentor character.

But for playable characters… yeah. Not a great range.

@ crackofdusk:

Yeah, I think the original comic was mostly about playable characters so I omitted both Alyx and Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite. If we would open this list to sidekicks and team-mates then the selection becomes better. For example I’d add Tali from Mass Effect alongside Alyx and Elizabeth to my list of favorite female characters in video games. They are all very well realized, fleshed out, interesting and designed without overt focus on making them sex objects.

Are we only talking about playable female characters? I would argue that Alyx from Half-Life 2 and its episodes is a strong female protagonist.