It JUST occurred to me. They're trying to do damsel in distress stuff, but with the player being mario instead of the main character in the game being mario.

Male protagonist in action sequence: boxing match Female protagonist in action sequence: Saw film

The two extremes of video game violence in my mind are a dude getting cut in half with a fancy hat in Mortal Kombat, and Lara Croft getting impaled with a tree branch and attempting to fruitlessly claw it out of her abdomen in a state of absolute terror and panic MK while technically more gory also feels very cartoony more akin to Wile E Coyote taking an anvil to the head, whereas watching the death scenes in the Tomb Raider reboots has me convinced that someone on the dev team is absolutely wanking it to their work and should never be left alone in a room with anything more vulnerable than a potted cactus

You mention it, but original Lara's motivation is simply that she's an adrenaline junkie. No tragic backstory or responsibility, the manual for the first game says she just happened to get stranded in a plane crash, managed to survive and make it back to civilisation, was changed by the experience, then rebelled against her stuffy upper-class expectations by taking her cool auntie's mansion and money and spending it on adventures. The Tomb Raiding is just an excuse for the action. Her parents aren't even dead either; you can see them in Chronicles at her funeral, Lara just doesn't like them. I get that there are interesting stories to be told about duty and responsibility forcing you to find inner strength (Death Stranding being a recentish male-centric one), but people with strong desires are admirable and, if you into them, sexy. It would be nice for a feminist AAA game to be about a woman, physically sexy or not, who chases desires and doesn't exist in a story that assume that's a bad thing.

It always rubbed me the wrong way that Old Lara is talked about as something that had to be replaced and Reboot Lara is so much better, while Old Lara was both much more competent and was treated with much more respect by her games even with the fanservice. True, Old Lara could die horribly too, but the camera didn't zoom in on her face to watch the life leave her eyes as she twitched and slowly slid down a length of pipe.

Yatzee: "These characters hurt themselves in ways not shown to be unavoidable and comes off as stupid and driven by ill defined reason." Also Yahtzee: "Go down to the comments and discuss gender politics with other youtube commenters." Sounds like a test to see if we understood the lesson about characters putting themselves in harms way!

Bland Girl Getting Thrashed is the new Bald Space Marine.

The uncircled part of the 4:10 quote lays it bare: "When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character." The player is assumed to be male, but described as "people" making it very plain that the assumption is unexamined, and from there it is further assumed that they cannot possibly identify with a female player character.

Funnily enough, while I was growing up my mother thought OG Lara Croft was a great role model for me because "she's smart, she's resilient, she knows and works for what she wants" (and considered the sexy factor to be 'sexy for herself'). She also thought the games themselves were good because of the puzzles making me think, but that's besides the point.

This all feel like devs not wanting to make the female characters flawed but trying to make them go through challenges so they dont feel like the typical mary sue, but they miss the fact that the challenges that matter is the ones that change them as a person the fact that all throughout this i was thinking about how good celeste’s story is in contrast…

Female PC: "I'm going to do something that will directly put myself in danger." Developer: "Want to protect her." Yahtzee: "I can’t protect her from you."

I didn't much care for Control, but it is an example of a recent "AAA" game with a female protagonist that I don't recall suffering from this phenomenon.

Definitely referring to this as the Puppy Slicing Machine genre now

Studios wanting to prove how progressive they are with their female characters by overshooting drastically and making them literal punching bags is one of the most AAA things ever.

For real I started playing the Tomb Raider reboot just recently and I thought to myself "this is just a Lara Croft PTSD Simulator".

Honestly, I thought the most telling bit in that quote was the part Yahtzee didn't read: "When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character." Whether or not that's true for earlier games, if you take that as a mission statement, of course you're going to create characters-as-objects in future games. Acting like that's an immutable characteristic of Lara or any other character and something you have to "work around" is a remarkable lack of imagination in a creator.

"Hey, is that lady drowning?" *"It's just a game."* "Is it the point of the game?" *"Depends on what mood you're in."*

Re: the sexy characters having more personality - I notice as a woman that this obsession with "taking care of" or "protecting" full grown women, ie, infantilizing women, often comes with pretending they have no wants or needs so their personality doesn't exist either. Whereas having characters who are *sexy* as part of their own self expression (ie Bayonetta) rather than *sexualized* for seemingly no reason (ie Quiet) have desires and therefore personality. It's not true across the board, of course, but it'd be fun to see people explore the nuances of these portrayals and actually deconstruct them.

I think the thing is that you're supposed to imagine yourself as Joel and you're supposed to see Lara as an entity seperate from you. Which is a way of making characters where you assume the player is a guy.

I think a big thing here is also in a key word choice: "Suffer" being confused for or used instead of "struggle". Struggle implies effort, and suffer implies things happening TO YOU.

These protagonists are just straight up in an abusive relationship with their own story. They get beaten up, starved, isolated, traumatised and when friends try telling them to get out, they just say "I have to do this".

In Alien, Ellen Ripley's character was originally written as a male, but they later changed their gender without modifying the rest of the script. The result is a character who has actual agency in the story. When they get back to the ship after the encounter with the face hugger, she refuses to let her crew on board to avoid breaking quarantine. It all goes to hell after they get into the ship anyway, but at least there's that moment of her demonstrating her authority. In Alien Isolation, it always struck me how Amanda Ripley lacks that confidence. She gets into the whole situation because she's searching for her mother, but as soon as she's on the station she's following orders till the end credits. There's no real instance where she demonstrates leadership or craftiness (besides the literal crafting system). She's an engineer, yet she has to be told what to do and where to go. One moment that really stuck with me was when the station's Marshal betrays you, leaving you for dead. You manage to get back to safety, the Marshal calls you and says that he's sorry but he had to do what he did for the greater good. I was thinking "damn, I wonder what Ripley is going to do when she sees him again. Will she kill him? Will she threaten him into giving her more control over the station?" but before that can happen, an android kills him in a radio message. Then it's back to Ripley trying to find someone who can tell her what to do next. In contrast, Dead Space Remake's version of Isaac Clarke is full of authority. Similar to Amanda, he's searching for a loved one in a dangerous space vessel full of monsters. However, when the team decided to make Isaac a voiced protagonist in the remake, they rewrote all of the game's dialogue to make him an ACTUAL expert in his field. In the original, characters tell you where to go and what to do. In the remake, Isaac thinks out loud to himself on what his options are, how he can apply his engineering experience to the dire situation, swears angrily at the monsters he fights, has disagreements with the survivors on the ship. He has agency, and the story of the game is far more engaging because of it. I'm tired of these female characters that are at once shown to be exceptionally skilled while also constantly in need of guidance and lacking in conviction.

At least Amicia has the excuse of being a literal child...and her little brother is beaten up and suffers from it just as much. Children lacking agency makes a certain amount of sense.

I just started replaying Metroid Dread yesterday and it's interesting the duality of Samus between fleeing the EMMIs until she gets a way to defeat them and the badassery she displays when fighting normal bosses. The fight against Kraid shows she's absolutely in control of the situation but in no way do I feel a disconnection with her. You don't have to get the shit beaten out of you to be a compelling character.

Another dynamic between the way men and women are written when it comes to the suffering they endure is men are more likely to get out of it through force, they endure because they're tough and manly. Women (usually) get out of those situations through some sort of oversight by the villain or through sheer dumb luck.

Honestly, changing dialogue from "I have to" to "I want to" would be a start. That way, at least Lara seems aware of her own poor decision-making when it comes to extreme mountain tourism.

That line about being made uncomfortable is so on the point, i hate most modern female protagonists because i dont wanna hear screams of pain as they brake another limb due to a poor landing a male charecter would have been written to walk off.

Basically, they took the phrase "Suffering builds Character" too literally

everybody saying the comments are going to be spicy but actually everybody is just agreeing, because its a valid point well articulated. The shitstorm comes when you defend the blatant sexism or the stupid victimization of women, but yathzee is doing neither. expertdly navigated that minefield tbh

I think the simple answer is overcompensation. "Look at these girls, doing it for themselves. Just like the men, only backwards and in high heels." In games and movies women can't just be capable, they have to be *more* capable than the men, to really ram home just how capable they are. In this case they have to really, *really* suffer so we can see them overcome and become the most capable-ist of all the protagonists. If Nathan Drake gets hit with a baseball bat Lara Croft has to have a plane dropped on her head just to show how tough she is. It's kind of sad really, like the bullied kid in high school that turns up to the reunion in a rented Ferrari with an escort on his arm.

I protected Lara from the harm that befalls her by not playing Tomb Raider.

0:24 i'd invest in giant shit proof hamster balls

What I’ve noticed with how women often get portrayed in media is that the writer, (usually but definitely not exclusively male) feel like they have to JUSTIFY the protagonist being a woman to begin with. Like they don’t see women as just the default like men are to them. So everything becomes… amplified? Because they’re writing much more intentionally for a protag they subconsciously deem abnormal to the standard.

I'm just glad Yahtzee exists. This is a great critique of story-writing in games in general, in addition to how they deal (usually not very well) with female protagonists.

I’ll never forget playing the first game in the Tomb Raider reboot when Lara uses a lighter and an arrow to cauterize a wound and there’s this extended scene where she’s just screaming and crying afterwards. I’m sitting on my couch thinking ‘why am I watching this woman suffer?’ What’s the point of this scene other than to make me feel uncomfortable watching it? I didn’t feel any sense of connection to Lara or determination to keep playing, I just felt bad

I always found Samus to be a great example to talk about this topic, with "Other M" sticking out as the sore one that doesn't fit her general characterization, whereas otherwise we see her very briefly react to things in some in-game cutscenes, yet after the game we can get several clips of her enjoying herself in her everyday life, and I think that speaks about her so much better.

Interestingly enough, this concept goes back almost as far back as female protagonists have been a thing. Sierra's iconic King's Quest series had loads of over the top, unfair, and often even cartoonish deaths for King Graham and Prince Alexander. But in King's Quest IV, even Roberta Williams herself said it always felt extra weird and wrong to watch bad things happen to Princess Rosella as a protagonist.

I think Lea from Crosscode is another pretty great example of a indie female protagonist done well, especially since her partial mutism and how she cleverly works around it sometimes makes her interesting to watch. That and how she has her own goals and stories, of which involves gaining control of her own life and agency, especially after a few pretty big reveals. Maybe Yahtz might like it cause of the puzzles, or maybe it might be too much cause some of those puzzles are insane with the amount of parts involved in them.

I do think this comes from the want to look more progressive, but then trying so hard at it that it eventually becomes regressive. It's like really wanting gay representation, and then using the worst gay stereotypes you can imagine

Man, the first Tomb Raider rebooth felt borderline pornographic in it's depiction of violence against Lara, some of the quick time events that led to death, all full of moaning and grunting, honestly made me want to take a shower afterwards.

A good case-study on this is the Hades games. Zagreus could not possibly have less of a case of the have-tos because his only motivation for leaving the underworld is the pure stubborn hubris of wanting to get back at his disaffected father and general ennui of being down their all the time. He changes as a character because he efforts actually manage to get him somewhere even though he himself isn't entirely convinced he can make a difference until he actually does and others chose to support him in his struggle. And with this new difference-making capacity aquired, he fixes his family's interpersonal problems. Meliinoe, however, has practically the limit case of the have-tos practically from the day she was born. She has the intrinsic motivation of saving her family and exacting revenge from the old-man-who-constantly-needs-to-be-told-the-same-lesson form Spongebob, bu tit's grossly overshadowed by the fact that reality itself turns into a totalitarian hellscape or may evne come apart altogether if she doesn't do it. But the game still doesn't frame her conflict as something that just happens to her by one simple nod throughout the plot: nobody, even most of the people who support her, is convinced she can actually accomplish the one thing she was born to do (I.E the universal experiance of being an artist.) So the whole thing goes full circle and goes from being about what everyone else would impose on Melinoe and what Melinoe actually wants. She wants to prove everyone wrong the same way Zagreus did. Zagreus proving everyone wrong is the _real_ reason she was born -- not killing Time -- because his quest brought Persephone back to the underworld where she had another child with Hades. So that's another way of getting it right. I don't think the problem is rooted in misogyny, but it is very misogyny ajacent in that it's clearly rooted in gender norms of female passivity. Existing AAA female protagonists a step in the right direction in some ways because it shows we're aware of and grappling with a new understanding femininity on the collective level, but at the same time it reveals how much further we can go if we choose to: before we though the problem was sexualization when the _real_ problem is infantlization. Women in AAA games aren't beign treated as sex objects so much as hapless children. Put it like that, and suddenly Lara's imbecility makes sense. She's wandering around like an infant determined to jam a fork into an electrical outlet.

I think the key word here is "vulnerability". It's one thing to depict a character going through danger, it's another matter entirely to depict them as uniquely vulnerable to that danger. The only two games I can think of that frame violence in this way on a male character would be Resident Evil 7 and 8. And that's really the rub, isn't it? Ethan is a survival horror protagonist. With the exception of maybe Senua, none of the games listed are really meant to be full on horror games. Especially something like Tomb Raider. So why is the violence inflicted on him so unique even within his own genre, yet so common in non-horror games when it comes to women? It's just weird, man. I do think you're right that it's mostly ignorance rather than willful distaste.

Bayonetta QTE: *She deals the finishing blow to a big mean angel.* Splatterhouse QTE: *Masked man navigates ruined environment to reach different map.* Laura Croft QTE: *Pries off a collapsed cave structure on her calf.* I know BJ and Croft absorb injuries like sponges, but why does it feel like BJ’s luck is public execution and trading bodies amidst thwarting fascists, while Laura’s luck is just Mother Nature’s against her 12 minutes after you hit “New Game.”?

Yeah, stuff like that has always come across as a little fetishistic to me. Some artist slaved over their desktop for hundreds of hours drawing women in various states of getting beaten to death and they almost seem to revel in it. It reminds me of stuff like Terrifyer in a way. At what point does it stop being edgy and start being borderline pornagraphic in nature?

I have complex opinions here. The first is that there's no specific reason we shouldn't have action oriented female protagonists and we shouldn't necessarily shield them from harm as an abstract way to "show concern for women" and that kind of feminism seems to have gone to the opposite extreme where video games saw that note and took it to mean "OK, we won't do that, we'll put them in constant torture porn scenes instead" as if there's no middle ground. This also plays off of a base "need to protect women" which also still undermines female agency, as does the "I have to do this for the male protagonist" or "I'm not physically capable of withstanding punishment the way male protagonists are" and that's kind of... suspect at best. It's like they understood the bit about not overly shielding women protagonists and missed the feminist point entirely because the inherent sexism is still present. I'd agree strongly they are still just wank dolls of a different variety, and a lot of this comes in from lacking female perspective in the industry. I'm not saying that there should be no gritty torture porn (for example WH40K comes to mind as a franchise that thrives on this and predominantly features male protagonists though also features women as well), but that the sudden reversal from buxom fuck doll to torture porn addicted heroine is definitely a mark that they got the note but didn't understand the point, and yes, a lot of that is just down to plain ignorance and lack of writing ability to understand a character arc because so many writers are shit, or alternatively, that they would produce better stories if not for meddling C-Suite Execs who want to cash in on that sweet sweet torture porn demographic. It's not weird to say that there's still a dollar to be made by exploiting male sexual power fantasies involving women, this is just a new way to milk that dollar rather than getting a hint and creating three dimensional characters with story arcs. One of the reasons as you mentioned was that this is a AAA problem, ie, places where they usually aren't noted for having senior female personel, where as when we see indie games with female writers we tend not to see this problem repeated over and over. It's just code talk for male power fantasy again, it's the code talk of saying "I have christian values" rather than saying "I hate trans people" because the latter is unpopular to say. So we stopped putting women in bikinis and started putting them in torture porn. It's the same shit, and frankly I'm not sure how much this isn't on purpose as I'm generally suspect of rich dickhead CEOs as any smart person should be. They don't really care about ethics they care about shareholders, and if this is the "new and improved" version of sexualizing women in an acceptable way, and that moves copies and earns the shareholders more in the short term, then that's what they are going to do. I honestly think though the problem is bigger than the execs because it's reflective of culture. If there wasn't a demographic for women in torture porn video games suffering constant sexualized violence, the CEOs wouldn't do that, they do whatever else made them the most money. As such it's also dependent upon the consumer not to just willingly lap up all consumerist bullshit produced by the AAA industry and have some thoughtful restraint and demand better writing, but let see how that goes. Doesn't seem to have worked so far.

I legitimately tried so hard to think of a male main character that scores high on the "Eat Shit 'o' Meter" and frankly there's barely any that comes to mind, or at least in terms of actual characters. Harry from Disco Elysium, any of the main cast of Baldur's Gate 3 and the various Fallout protagonists get a lot of their shit kicked in, but it's not really in cinematic titles. Kratos, Nathan Drake and Peter Quill usually shrug it off, the various protagonists of the GTA and RDR series have varying luck but dodge their issues nine out of ten times, and that's of characters that legitimately do struggle. Resident Evil 2 Remake and Alan Wake 2 both have protagonists of both male and female archetypes but it seldom ever feels like they struggle except for like... one moment in Resi 2 Remake where Ada had a rod through her thigh... and that was at the end of a brief side character sequence. Okay. It's such an odd failure of writing. Depicting the lead character as a comedic fuck-up works well for setting a tone (see: Deathloop's Colt and Hi-Fi Rush's Chai), but they're intentional. Having a character get their shit kicked in is fine, but female protagonists shouldn't be the only ones having this happen 24/7. It's worse because it feels like so much detail is put into, let's be honest, incredibly off-putting moments. It at least makes sense in Hellblade, TLoU2 and A Plague Tale because they're clearly games designed around the tone of "shit getting kicked in", but what's Tomb Raider's excuse other than making Laura Croft a punching bag for the writers to make the players sympathize with her? Just as a general writing note, a character going through traumatic experiences is not a substitute for having actual writing. It's like trying to get an audience invested in a puppy after driving a railroad spike through it's paw, that's just abusing the audience instead of getting them invested in the story.

Oh god thank you! I never understood how many people felt the reboot Lara Croft was more progressive/endeering/interesting/active. I mean, read the backstory of the original one. A girl who lived a survival experience, felt it was her calling, had a family who disowned her for this decision (yes, her parents were still alive and even showed up at her funeral) and she started off becaming rich by finding/stealing precious artifacts...cause she needed the money and because she loved to do so! A grey antiheroine with great skills, a peculiar job that she likes...and who just happens to have big tits. There was never really a need to "fix" such character. With some big hindsight she still is the more interesting version of Lara Croft (to this day at least).

5:07 "Why am I the only voice in your head you don't listen to?"

The last games I played with female protagonists were Princess Peach Showtime and Freedom Planet 2...I don't think I have much to contribute here...uh...isn't it nice how you can have a nice colorful mascot platformer that's fun to play without all that gratuitous violence?

Welp, I trust Yahtzee way more than Id trust any other middle aged men trying to tell me about the portrayal of my own gender in media

Treating the protagonist as "someone to be protected" instead of "the character we inhabit" is such a bonkers approach but it sure does explain a lot

Thats it. Im going to make my own game, with a female protagonist, a female antagonist, and you the player are just along for the ride as the protagonist *wants* to kick the ass of the antagonist. There will be Blackjack, and Hookers.

We need more fun female protagonists, games industry. Ones who own the moment, love doing so, and *don't* break down under pressure. Right now, we have The Boss from Saints Row and LEGO Aloy and... uhhhhh... Samus? I guess?

Yahtzee makes a good point about it being uncomfortable to watch a protagonist (or other character) of either gender suffering through a helpless abuse type sequence. Example: The initial bit of The Surge, where a guy in a wheelchair is going through the recruitment process at his friendly globalized cybertech company and they just _happen_ to have a malfunction that stops the sedative/painkillers, and only that, just before a big machine drills his helplessly strapped-down body full of holes and metal bits. Eugh...

I feel the difference here is it's a deep-seeded human instinct to see any adversity faced by a woman as tragic, while a male character suffering the same fate is far less sympathetic and therefore more 'normal'.

I think it's an overreaction to the "what have YOU done to deserve your victory?" stance of masculine adventurers. For many male protagonists there's an assumed or explicit backstory of pain and suffering to explain why they are the abject badass deities of violence which they are. Combat vets, hardened criminals, growing up in a violent patriarchal society. Often some combination of all three. So from a masculine perspective the rich white girl needs to go through a whole prior lifetime of violence to "catch up" to the justification for why Master Chief can wake up from cryosleep and proceed straight to genociding every Covenant within the surrounding light-year.

I'm glad you brought up agency in the context of TLOU, because I've always felt that Ellie has spent basically ALL of her life having none. Yes, she COULD turn around and go home at any time, but she believes she'll regret it if she doesn't get closure in her own way, and it's basically the first time she's ever had that kind of agency (that we the audience know of). The ending was frustrating and I'm in the camp that believes that was the point, the protagonist not getting a happy ending has always been an unpopular move but I think in this case it adds a particular weight the story would otherwise be missing - for the first time in your life you're able to make decisions for yourself, and those choices cost you not only the loved ones you still had, but also severed the last ties you had to one you've lost - in this case, severed being her literal fingers Edits for spelling / omissions

As far as I understand it, any harm that comes to the original Lara Croft was a failstate that never canonically happened. Storywise she's competent to not get a single scratch in those tombs.

Good video! And a good "gamer's first feminist critique of media" for those not already familiar with these issues. I hope even the most uncritical media consumers can agree why these issues are actually problems! The "either them or baby them" attitude in these games feels like an extension of the Madonna-Whore Complex, that being that a woman or female character must be _either_ sexy and competent _or_ innocent and fragile, nothing in between. Either way, the woman is being objectified, it's just a matter of if said object is a Real Doll or a puppy dog. It's unfortunately a common trope, especially in teams without many women behind the camera to point out "you know women are just people too, right?" It's also unfortunately a trope certain figures try to apply to real life, which, just, yikes 😬 Especially when some of said figures hold political office! Am not at all surprised the indie space is doing a lot better, at least with the titles that rise to the top of the heap! I imagine people generally gravitate towards games with good protagonists, which naturally floats up the ones who actually treat their female protagonists as, well, _people_ , and sinks the ones who... don't. As a side note: Look, I'd be happy to keep having sexy female protagonists if they just included more lesbians in the design team! Straight men are just so _incredibly_ unoriginal with what they find sexy in women 😜 Might also have a higher chance of these action women being allowed access to a good, supportive sports bra so you're not wincing in second-hand pain!

I wonder if it's a case of them pivoting too hard away from the bland "Strong Female Protagonist" archetype that caught lots of flack in the past? The criticism I often heard was, "They're too perfect. They don't have flaws. They don't struggle enough." So in a way, this more vulnerable portrayal of them feels like a director going, "Okay, got it. I hear you loud and clear. Get the trauma dump truck, everyone!" But, as Yahtzee put it, it seems to be about the framing of the situation. Nathan Drake got the crap beat out of him, making me wince in Uncharted 2, when he had to climb a collapsing frozen train hanging halfway off of a cliff, with a deep, bleeding bullet wound in his gut. Still, he always brushed it off as just another little bump on the journey, often with either an "Oh crap" or some sarcastic quip. I'm trying to imagine what a game that is simply Uncharted, in mechanics and framing, but with Lara Croft would look like. It would probably be the classic Tomb Raider games, minus the fanservice, and maybe with a bit more nuanced focus on her motivations.

Thank you for revisiting this in a Semi-Ramblomatic. I never forget the first time on Zero Punctuation when you mentioned that new Lara had no agency and it really nailed it on the head as to why I never enjoyed that reboot.

Two shit proof umbrellas might still be too little. A whole shit submarine might be necessary.

I mean, in Last of Us 2’s case…the first game beat the everliving shit out of Joel pretty regularly. The biggest time being when he got the spike through his side. Also, getting his face ripped in half by bloaters, nearly having glass rammed through his neck…and let’s not forget the second game where get gets bludgeoned to death with a golf club. The game isn’t necessarily relishing in violence against women, it’s just a very violent game

Modern AAA female protagonists are like the Beer Grylls-type of "survival" tv shows where the "survivors" do extremely ill-adviced and questionable stunts in the wilderness to make their "surviving" and the nature look more brutal than it needs to be. My favorite where they intentionally soak themselves in springs or swamps with clothes on when thats the one thing real survivalists tell you NOT to do.

Lara didn't just get weirdly graphic deaths in the reboot. There's interviews with animators from the first games who talk about their mental health when all they did was animate different ways for her to die.

Interesting question. Some thoughts: - Male devs assume it's "unnatural" to see women do extreme physical things - at least in a high-fidelity setting (not Celeste or Bayonetta) - so they have to make it seem like as much of a struggle as possible (and granted that's true of winning a fist fight against a man twice her size but otherwise it isn't). - Male protagonists are typically depicted as the biggest, toughest, most physically capable men, which makes sense given the situations depicted. That's NOT true of female protagonists. Despite being in the same situations, they're still depicted like a college party girl stereotype (compare the builds of female pro athletes or extreme sportswomen to Lara Croft). Then I think male devs and gamers instinctively feel like they should be struggling physically, which is semi-justified but only on the back of an unjustified character design. Also note we don't have this reaction when a male protagonist does things they obviously couldn't (e.g. Gordon Freeman), I think because on some level all men feel like "yeah I could do all the action man stuff". - As pointed out, the whole protective angle is serving a different male fantasy (the knight in shining armour fantasy). - I think we're used to thinking of women as victims in the context of domestic and sexual violence (which obviously are disproportionately directed at women and non-binary people) and, intentionally or not, violence against women in games evokes that to some degree. And I'm sure there are many other reasons you could give.

Very good points, but I'd like to emphasize what was alluded to: Laura and Ellie's "have to" motivations are in service to men.

I think it's telling that games like Wolfenstein and The Last of Us get sigma male phonk edit clips rather than getting videos like "All Death Scenes Tomb Raider 2013 Compilation 4K (Uncensored)" There is a significant amount of people who seem to treat it as torture porn. Regardless of dev intention, the fact that it happens for one but not for the other is indicative of a massive issue.

The exploitative framing of Laura Croft's suffering in the Tomb Raider's reboot reached a point where I began to wonder if one of the higher ups just really wanted to make a story about a woman character being tortured throughout the narrative. And this is coming from someone who doesn't like to speculate on creators' inner thoughts, lest she accidentally do what the narrator in The Beginner's Guide did. I was reminded of the Suffering chapter of the Mad Max Fury Road video essay series by KZfaqr Innuendo Studios (titled, Bringing Back What Was Stolen) and how Fury Road went out of its way to make a violent action film (with several women as the main characters) that didn't exploit on-screen violence against women, making its narrative stronger in the process. It's a good essay I can recommend. But the Tomb Raider reboot felt like it did the opposite of what Fury Road did.

I look at shows like Arcane that are just over here batting 20 out of 10 on exceedingly well-written characters (may of whom happen to be female), and it's fucking baffling how this is still such a challenge for some people.

I think the main error Yahtzee makes near the end is thinking misogyny and ignorance are mutually exclusive. In reality, it's most likely ignorance *driven by* misogyny, even if unconscious misogyny.

This is funny because just last night I was playing Cyberpunk 2077, and I got to a bit where you're supposed to fist fight this person named Rhino. And you get to the location and it's this giant woman who just loves to fight and that's all she wants from you (and she's not drooly or dopey or anything, amazing!). I fell in love with Rhino instantly and would 200% play a game that starred her just running around punching people's teeth in.

The original Hellblade was an "indie" game, It atempted to be a AA game. The first game was all about what Senua wanted, how she fights against accepting loss.

The "you want to protect her" bit is so telling. There's definitely misogyny to unpack with the damsel in distress trope but at least with something like Resident Evil 4 the reason we want to protect Ashley is at least, in part, because she's a hapless civilian who was kidnapped and shouldn't be expected to fight back on her own regardless of gender. When female characters are written into similar roles as their male peers are made to suffer and struggle to a much greater degree, especially by writing teams that feel fine not doing the same to those male peers like at Naughty Dog, it really just paints a picture that their suffering is necessary to care about them at best or they're just inherently worse at worst. And that's just plain-old misogyny.

I think any story that tries to have an *action*-focused plot with a *reactive* protagonist is going to have problems like this. It's the other side of the coin from the over-protected Mary Sue; everyone has to hold them up, or the universe has to constantly beat the shit out of them, because they don't have any drive to be the hero when left to themselves.

This isn’t just a flaw of writing female characters, but of male as well. Writing males to just shrug off any pain/suffering is just as dumb as using torture to give female characters depth. We need to write both better and avoid reinforcing gender stereotypes.

The whole “you want to protect her” is a bit daft because all you need to do is make a character likeable and/or their motivations understandable and it will generate that response naturally. We want to protect Nathan Drake because he’s likable and we want to see him get the treasure first. We want to protect Kat from Gravity Rush because she’s fun, likable and wants to help others using her powers in both small and big ways. We want to protect Kratos because we also want to protect his son. We want to protect Spider-man because Marvel won’t stop hurting him and we just want to see him happy. Even if we have a character completely lacking any personality, for example Gordon Freeman, we still want to protect him because he’s just a guy who is having a really bad day at work and is trying hard to prevent it getting any worse. Constantly beating up your characters during cut scenes/set pieces in dramatic fashion and no way for them to fight back may make a player feel sorry for them to start with. However if you keep doing it over and over again eventually that sense of feeling sorry will drain away because the character is going to get right back up and move around as normal again once the scene is over anyways, so why get too invested?

It certainly seems that, very often, the only plot device writers can think of to make a female character appear strong and tough is to put her through a meat grinder and have her emerge miraculously in one piece, hoping you'll say "wow, she survived all that, look how hardcore she is". Usually the actual impression is that she survived through sheer luck; in the case of the Tomb Raider prequels, this was true to the point that I often found myself laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing, like I was watching an inexplicably gritty Buster Keaton film.

At the end of the day if the most interesting thing about a character is the number of X chromosomes they have, they’re a failed character. I actually felt worse when I let original Lara Croft died under my watch because she was cool and capable and if I killed her by flubbing an easy jump, I was clearly playing the game wrong.

It's so telling and disgusting how the intent behind creating these female protagonists is not fostering any sense of empowerment or empathy in a male audience, but a protective instinct. AAA studios really haven't evolved past the Hollywood instinct to make women an object.

I enjoyed Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer videos on the new Tomb Raider, in which he perved out on reboot Lara's ass and then was completely horrified by all of her disturbingly lengthy death scenes.

This series is quickly becoming my favorite on the channel. No idea if it's just the way Yahtzee yaps about random gaming industry stuff, or if it's just the banging soundtrack.

Avatar: the Legend of Kora, also very distinctly has this problem. The main character is a strong independent woman who spends the first three seasons, demanding to be taken seriously and then having the ever living snot beaten out of her for the privilege. Sure every time she is the one saying she wants to be involved, but it's never made clear that she fully understands the threats she's going up against, and worse yet by all of the shows logic she should be capable of dealing with those threats without suffering so much. In the fourth season they don't torcher her physically, but instead ask the question "have you ever stopped to wonder if your abusers had a point" which is just the final cherry on top. It beat the tomb raider reboot by a year, releasing in 2012, so maybe something was just in the water. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a pretty good example of how to do helpless and tortured well, as it's mad max, everyone's existence is tortuer, and the sheer willpower of our protagonist is inherently compelling. She's never under the impression that any of this was ever fair, and is just ready to roll with the punches as they come. It isn't until the film's finale that any of her life actually gets to her, and even then we know she can pull through, because we spent the whole film watching her survive.

Recently replayed the first TR reboot and damn. Laura really does go through some torture p0rn. It was egregious to the point where I was shaking my head and realized: This isnt because its Laura Croft certified badass. Its was because someone wanted to see her suffer to "build character". Female protags shouldnt need torture p0rn to prove they are strong.

The closing argument can be summarized as; A woman confident enough in her own gender identity to dress sexy as she kicks ass and takes names, is also confident enough to be in control of her own life and take ownership of her own goals.

I've heard people (Yahtzee included) complain about Aloy, but at least she has agency and looks after herself pretty damned well.

It's like that one arc in Scrubs where Turk gets a new boss who is a woman who is a capable and skilled surgeon, but naturally with surgery being a boys club, she's used to all the guys drooling over her and making inappropriate comments. So much so that she actually finds Turk's attitude of "Don't worry, I've got your back" to be far more insulting because of the implications that she can't handle it herself.

Ok after watching this video I have reached a very important conclusion: Ethan Winters from RE8 suffers from female protagonist in a triple A game syndrome. Not in terms of lack of agency, more as in "gets the absolute shit kicked out of them every 10 seconds in very graphic detail" kind of female protagonist

Alloy from the Horizon series is, arguably, an exception to this rule. Her characters direction can be a little all over the place at time but overall she's competent, usually in charge of her situation and watching her get beaten up doesn't feel like torture porn. She does have a bad case of the "Havetos" but that issue isn't exclusive to female protags.

Woman gamer here, and I distinctly remember being pissed off at Lara during my playthrough of the reboot (only played the first one) the WHOLE game. I was frequently yelling at the screen over her "choices" most of the game. I absolutely remember og Lara much more fondly.

And this is why Bayonetta is one of my favourite protagonists.

As others have commented, this feels like writers wanting female protagonists who face adversity without it being related to their own flaws, because having any means they aren't truly strong for some reason. What's ironic about this trend is how it accidentally tracks with most men having a stronger internal locus of control and most women having a stronger external one. It could be interesting to turn an examination of that dynamic into a game, where the female protagonist has to learn to develop her internal locus of control and overcome the odds by her own merits. The problem is that taking away any agency from the player to simulate an external locus inherently creates situations that cannot be overcome. The challenge then would be in designing a gameplay system that gives the impression of strong external forces while actually allowing the player full agency in overcoming them.

Oh boy the comments and twitter are gonna be fun

Genuinely I think the reason Sexy Characters get it right is because to be sexy they need to be to some degree competent and in control. Massive Rack, Competent but not in control? Vapid fan service Massive Rack, In control but completely incompetent? Ditzy/silly/cute To be properly sexy, they need to have the massive rack, the genuine competence and genuine authority. It's why I think a lot of women who can overlook the obvious fanservice nature of such characters find them appealing.

"Name a character that suffered more than this one. Go on, I'll wait." Feels like these games tried to compete for this quote.

Lara Croft having more agency in her more 'sexist' incarnation is exactly what many have complained about for years in regards to reboot Lara. But this always gets brushed aside for the obvious reason. It's almost like the answer isn't to just 'desexualize' her.

I'm sure the discussion surrounding this topic will be perfectly civil and nuanced and totally NOT devolve into hapless shit-slinging...

We have a few examples of this before Tomb Raider:See basically everything David Cage has ever made. Basically every game he made includes a woman being in a situation that is too dire to be described in this comment's section

I was going to mention JRPG female protagonists, but they have a different fetishization problem and even get the fridging experience, so, yeah, this isn't a good situation.

I also noticed this trend very blatantly when the Tomb Raider reboots came out. The failed QTE death cutscenes were borderline torture porn. The simplest explanation is that, culturally speaking, people are much more comfortable with seeing a man suffer physical violence than a woman. Therefore a writer will think they're eliciting deeply emotional reactions from the audience by showing, in excruciating detail, a woman suffering that physical violence. That scene where Lara Croft falls down a cliff, slams into the ground, lays there in agony for 10 seconds, groans to her feet, then stumbles away, will make someone say "Oh my god, that was brutal, how is she standing?". Replace her with a man in the exact same sequence and most people would be impatiently holding W trying to take control of the character 1.5 seconds after they hit the ground while muttering "Dude hurry up, enough cutscenes already".