by Richard Winterton

Created on: December 10, 2009

Strength, in both games and life, can not only be measured in physical or military prowess but intelligence and cunning as well. When we consider what constitutes a “strong” female character, we cannot only consider strength and beauty, but other heroic attributes as well. We will start with perhaps the most recognizable image of the gaming heroine: Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.

Lara Croft has become the archetypal video game vixen. Equal parts adventurer and beauty, she has often been labeled as a male fantasy. While that label may have some truth to it, it would be unfair to simply gloss over Croft as “eye-candy” for male gamers. As an individual, she holds a rich history. Educated in the finest English private schools, she is an obviously intelligent heroine. This becomes even more evident by the puzzles she is constantly faced with solving. While it is the gamer that is tasked with solving them, the fact that he or she does this through the heroine suggests what kinds of tasks Croft is akin to solving. Furthermore, her being a “disinherited” aristocrat who still manages to live in a mansion suggests self-reliance. She is a woman who does not need the strength of a family name or of a rich husband to stand on her own two feet.

A further model for feminine power within video games would be Metroid’s Samus Aran, a gaming heroine whose legacy predates Lara Croft. While players play as Samus for the entirety of Metroid games, they rarely see her outside of her armor. There are many reasons for this, aside from practicality. For one, Nintendo appears to be attempting to de-sexualize her as woman. On the one hand, this is a problem as it refuses Samus any form of sexual identity or expression. On the positive side, it does grant her protection from simply being labeled a male fantasy and also gives her the ability to become a gender-neutral image of fantasy.

While both, Lara Croft and Samus Aran represent strong and capable female gaming heroes, there still remains the possibility a woman having classical “feminine” agency within the realm of a traditional action/adventure game. This, sadly, is not a theme often explored in games simply for the reason it might be construed as sexist.

One example, however, does present itself not in a heroine, but in a villain. Locust Queen from the Gears of War franchise could be seen as a strong female character not for her prowess in battle but for her skill at manipulation. For the entirety of the first game, we never see her but our aware of her existence through several scenes of voice-over. In the multi-player segments specifically, she makes her passive aggressive nature manifest in the way she mocks her locust underlings. With hostility, she chides them with questions such as “are the human stronger than you after all?”

It is not until the 4th act of Gears of War 2 that her form is finally revealed. In her image, we see slight elements of Fairy Tale imagery mixed with Science Fiction horror. The reason for this pastiche is that on top of being the matriarch of the Locust Horde, she is also the “Evil Stepmother” taken from the pages of a fairy tale. The reason for this allusion appears to play as a balance to the masculinity of the game’s heroes. While Marcus Fenix and the other members of Delta Squad represent the masculine forces of aggression and physicality, the Queen represents female dominance and the anxiety of castration.

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