Male: Kain (Legacy of Kain series)
Female: Tali! (Mass Effect)
Other: Xizxax or whatever, the imp from Divine Divinity
Favorite male character:Garrett
Favorite female character:Tali
Favorite other/mystery gender character:Boo! SQUEEEEEK!!
Male: Tex Murphy (Under a Killing Moon)
Female: Kate Archer (NOLF)
Other: The Guardian (Ultima 7+)
Male: Garrett
Female: April Ryan
Other: GLaDOS
Male: Kain (Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain)
Runners up: Balthier (FF XII), Vivi (FFIX)
Female: Samus Aran (and no, haven’t played Metroid M to spoil my image of her),
Runners up: Lulu (FF X), Alys from FF IV (good call SpookyKG! forgot about her)
Other: Can’t think of any…
I know there is more people in the Tali fanclub in this forum!
Male: Link
Female: Elena
Other: Amaterasu - yes, confirmed female, but also a dog. Who’s a good girl?!
This is just off the top of my head, so I can’t promise it wouldn’t change given sufficient consideration.
Male: Manuel Calivera. So what if he’s dead? I love his Bogeyesque demeanor, his pluck, his can-do spirit… And his beat poetry.
Female: Female characters are for girls. But I guess I’ve always liked Celes Chere, from Final Fantasy VI. A disillusioned general fighting the empire she once served, there’s a strong undercurrent of penitence to her character arc. She has to prove to the rest of the party that she’s no longer loyal to the empire, and prove to herself that she’s worthy of forgiveness. Plus, she gets to perform an aria prior to a barn-burner battle sequence at the opera house. Quite the showpiece for a 16-bit game.
Other: Cookie, from You Don’t Know Jack. Presumably male, but how do we know? He’s just a disembodied voice. Or possibly Seagull, from Loom. Or Murray, the Mighty Demonic Skull, from The Curse of Monkey Island.
Favorite male character: Zevran from DA:O (amoral, non-judgmental, humorous)
Favorite female character: Taki from Soul Calibur (#1 video game ninja)
Favorite other/mystery gender character: Shodan (like duh, seriously)
M: guybrush threepwood
F: lady Shepard from mass effect
O: liberty prime from fallout 3
Male: Gunther Hermann
Female: Cate Archer
Mystery: Morpheus
Male: Garrett
Female: Diziet Diziat (my Lurikeen Nightshade, from DAoC) [Mostly, female characters are just male fantasy projections. Bioware is pretty good. Almost everyone else is awful.]
Other: Planet (Alpha Centauri)
Why is femshep a well-developed character but maleshep isn’t? The only difference is better voice acting, there’s no additional character development going on. And how “developed” is the player character in Mass Effect, anyway? It’s you.
Or is this just an indication of how few female video game characters there are?
male:
Female: Viconia from baldur’s gate 2. She is an extremely strong cleric, an evil bastard and fully encourages you to take up the mantle of the God of death even if she has to pay the price for your glory, what is not to love?
Other: HK-47 from Kotor. For those who listed someone else, come on…
I don’t really get the hate for Aeria. Yeah, she cries all of the time about her wings, but sad past and all. Only reason i didn’t like using her is her crappy multiclass, and some of the other characters having more interest/enjoyable personalities.
Or how bad a lot of them are.
You generally get the most developed characters in rpgs or games with rpg elements (generally action games). Both of these genres appeal primarily to males and thus the majority of main characters are male.
That said i do think there are good female characters out there, but you have to look beyond the main characters generally. I personally don’t think a character without set gender (ie you can set the gender of the character and so it doesn’t really matter to their personality) should count though.
M: Roger Wilco (Space Quest)
F: Air Queen (Dominions)
O: Morte (Planescape Torment)
That’s the point. There’s no attempt to mark a division between the female and male; the female isn’t some coy caricature of femininity: helpless and clueless. She gets the same choices and options as the maleshep and the same tools with which to handle the games obstacles. No +1 to charisma, and -1 to strength, just for being a girl, like one ugly game I could mention.
Male: The Nameless One. (Obvious, but with good reason.)
Female: Ophelia. (I have a soft spot for goth chicks.) Cate Archer if we’re sticking to playable characters.
Other: Om Nom.
This is a tough one!
Male: I can’t decide between Mattias Nielsen from Mercenaries/Mercs 2 and the King of the Cosmos from the Katamari games.
Female: Have to go with Samus. I understand her character was gutted in the most recent game, but I didnt’ play and don’t plan to, so it’s not factoring into my decision.
Other: I like the choices of either disembodied skull starting with ‘M’ but since I imagine they were once both male, I’m disqualifying them from my choice. But I think I can get away with sticking SHODAN in this spot, because it’s a computer just with a woman’s voice. Right? Or GlaDOS, either female sounding evil AI is aces in my book.