Is God of War an ultra-violent, ultimately misogynistic bloodbath? Well of course it is. It's designed that way on purpose. God of War had two things going for it. One, it was intentionally trying to be a Conan story, and those are all tales from a very different time. To recapture that era while in the same breath empowering women is probably impossible.
The second was that it was clearly inspired by Hercules. Ever wonder why Kratos uses weird, snake-like chained blades? Could it have something to do with Hercules being portrayed so often dual-strangling serpents? Hercules accidentally killed his wife and children in a state of madness, leading to his repentance through the Twelve Labors, which is more or less the template for God of War.
Does that lessen the impact of the series' portrayal of women? Not in the slightest, but it could not also be any other way and remain the game it intended to be.
Now let's look at The Last of Us again. You start the game controlling Joel's teenage daughter Sarah, and since the whole premise of the game involves an older, grim Joel taking care of and teaching another young girl to survive and fight you know it's not going to end well. Sure enough, mere minutes into the game her leg is broke and she dies in your arms after being shot by soldiers determined to hold the quarantine line.
Twenty years later, Joel and a woman named Tess (Who he may or may not be dating but definitely is close to) stumble across Ellie, a equally likable and plucky teenage girl like Sarah who may hold the key to stopping the zombie infection. The three of them begin a desperate escape to leave the quarantine zone, beset by zombies and the totalitarian regime, until they finally escape.
Unfortunately, Tess has been bitten, and has only hours before she turns. Yet such is her faith in Joel and his ability to transport Ellie that she offers to commit suicide by cop to buy them time to make their final getaway. She dies in a hail of gunfire.
It's incredible stuff, brilliant storytelling, but in the end it hits every... single... one of Sarkeesian notes like a Van Halen guitar solo. Woman in a refrigerator? Check. The disposal woman? Check. Mercy killing? Check. Treating a female as a possession to be protected/obtained? Check. Check. Check.
The game, taken by itself, doesn't feel like a cog in a grand violence-against-women-centric media. It feels like a good story because it definitely is. However, the sheer number of games that use these formulas over and over and over again paints a much broader and more depressing picture. It just keeps happening because no one knows they're actually doing it.
Would the game have suffered any if Joel had lost a young son instead of a daughter? Would Tess' death have been less moving if she'd been a father figure rather than a young, hot woman? Would Ellie be worth less as a possible cure if she was a college-aged, but sheltered young man?
I don't think so, and the fact that you're equally quick to identify and aid Joel's middle-aged gay friend Bill in the third chapter proves that Naughty Dog is perfectly capable of making us care about someone even if they're overweight, paranoid, and of no relation to the protagonist. I should mention that at that point in the game Bill is the only single helper character besides Ellie who survives his encounter with Joel. And I haven't beaten the game yet so I have no idea if Ellie makes it out alive.
As Sarkeesian says, "To be clear here, the problem is not the fact that female characters die or suffer. Death touches all of our lives eventually and as such it's often an integral part of dramatic storytelling. To say that women could never die in stories would be absurd, but it's important to consider the ways that women's deaths are framed and examine how and why they're written."
To that I'll add, before the makers of games tackle the death of a female character they need to ask themselves if she's dying just because she's a woman.
The Women in Refrigerators List made our 4 Most Depressing Lists on the Internet, and we've looked into how not to be a sexist douchebag gamer before.
Jef With One F is a recovering rock star taking it one day at a time. You can read about his adventures in The Bible Spelled Backwards or connect with him on Facebook.
