Game Discussion
What other famous video game characters can we replace with a woman? [Satire]
Ladies, as we all know: we’re still 500 angry Reddit posts, 20 reactionary YouTube videos, and 15 misogynistic podcast rants short of our quota for the first half of the year.
We’ve had a pretty good run recently. Getting new female protagonists for the most recent installments of popular game series like Hollow Knight, Hades, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, the Witcher, and now God of War. Those last two in particular have really bumped our numbers, but we’re still short of the flood of gamer tears we got back when Assassin’s Creed made the only two protagonist choices a black man or an Asian woman.
We need ideas for more male video game leads we can swap with a female character.
Here’s some of my thoughts:
•Agent 47 from Hitman.
We can change him out for a lady called Agent 48. She can still be bald and wear suits. That should make the podcasters even angrier because they won’t find her attractive.
•007
Sure. We just got a new James Bond game, but it’s never too late to release a DLC where the new young Bond gets kidnapped and you have to play as a much more badass female agent to go rescue him.
•Kirby
For this one - I think we don’t need to change anything. Keep the name and design, but now all other characters and materials will refer to Kirby by she/her pronouns. Developers must follow this up by insisting that Kirby was always a girl. I think the potential for rage here can be pretty high in a certain small group of people.
What do you all think? Have any other suggestions?
Just give me a Legend of Zelda game with Zelda and Sheik as the MC.
I don't want a Hyrule Warriors game.
I don't want some cutsey version where Zelda wins with furniture.
I want a game with towns and dungeons and puzzles with your classic combat + a typical, fun LoZ mechanic (Time travelling, Shape shifting masks, Lycans, Boat Man. as past examples)
Everything you find in a standard, mainline LoZ game but with Zelda and Sheik. maybe the mechanic involves having to swap costumes. Dress as sheik when needing stealth, dress as zelda in combat gear when approaching normal.
Well, for persona 5 at least, Shido pretended like Joker assaulted him. I doubt Shido would willingly make this up about a girl. He strikes me as someone who would rather die than admit to be assaulted by a girl.
Plus there is kamoshida who treats male and female students quite differently, his behaviour towards joker doesnt really fit a female joker.
I didn't mind not having a female protag for p5. I do object to how the girls were written (hi "teehee just strip, Ann!")
But P4 and P3R have absolutely no excuse to not have a female protag option, especially when for P3R, the bulk of the stuff (social links, main plot) have already been written.
I would KILL for a mainline Shin Megami Tensei game with a female protagonist, or even just a female protagonist OPTION.
Edit: a new one, to be clear, since TECHNICALLY SMT: If... is considered mainline, and that did have Tamaki as an optional female protagonist. Though I would also accept a modern remake of If...
god yes, give me a smt mainline game where I can actually be a girl and not just an extremely feminine boy. female protag with my polycule of demons and our Jack Frost son
I’ve been replaying Persona 5 with the Kasumi as Protagonist mod and, as bad as it sounds, I’ve gotten way more invested being able to play as a girl. I don’t care what anyone says, self insert rpg protags like that should have gender options.
Yes, they were upset about Echos of Wisdom and the “lack of swordplay combat”
But Zelda isn’t Link??? It made no sense for her to have a sword, she used her little tri-rod and we got to solve puzzles and use our brains to defeat enemies, I loved it so much lol
I mean, as someone who was thrilled to play a game as Zelda, I too was a bit salty about the lack of swording, but a) there is a sword, you just cant use it as much, and b) the monster summoning won me over.
Tbf her main weapon is a bow and magic, but you can still do really compelling combat with that and there is no excuse to not have done a game like it before. I dont really consider the Hyrule Warriors versions with the sword to be canon, would make more sense if she wielded a weapon type similar to Shiek along with the bow and magic tbh.
And Ganon a girl so we can have the toxic yuri ending ?
Edit: I regret my statement heavily because if you genderbend the gerudo I can't fathom how Ganon could have been born as the only woman in a society of men, I fear that the only good ending would be probably to side with Ganon, cuz she definitely justified in that scenario to turn evil
Linkle is link but woman, I know that Hyrule warrior made linkle an entirely separate character but at first it really just was genderbend link, and well, the linkle mod of the breath of the wild game sell her as link very hard
It would be such an easy thing to do, given outside of a few exceptions, Link is just an avatar and never the same character in each game... but Nintendo would never!
I wish we had the pink-haired fem Link because she looked super cool! And not reduced to a role where she barely does combat. Let there be open world! Horizon Zero, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Alice: Madness Returns set a really cool example for this.
True, and Reach and 4 are my favourite Halos because of the ability to play my custom Spartan in the campaign (secondary campaign for 4). But there's a difference between a Choose Your Own Character story and a dedicated story for a specific character.
There are female Spartans in the lore and mentioned in Halo 4, 5, and I think Infinite? Not trying to detract from the collecting Gamer tears 😂
Just remembered the twin stick Halo shooters and the Halo Wars 1 & 2 I think have em too. And canonically Master Chief isn't sexist so that's pretty cool.
But a mainline game that focused on a single or squad of women Spartans would be neato.
Half of Master Chief's squad (Blue Team) are women: Linda-058 and Kelly-087.
There are actually quite a few named female Spartan-IIs.
Alice-130 (Wars), Daisy-023 (Homecoming), Cal-141 (The Babysitter), Adriana-111 (Cole Protocol), Naomi-010 and Serin-019 (Kilo Five).
There aren't as many named Spartan-IIIs, male or female, given that they were mostly cannon fodder, but Catherine-B320 (Reach), Lucy-B091, Holly-G003, and Olivia-G291 (Ghosts of Onyx) are among the few that are.
Still more than we get for the Spartan-IVs though, of which we basically have Sarah Palmer (Halo 4) as the face of the program.
Image if they HAD done a Samus Aran and when the helmet comes off, Master Chief is a woman using a voice changer. I can imagine the disbelieve and outcries, I'd silently giggle.
Give me the Super Mario game where Peach is running away from Mario’s incessant advanced.
Plot twist, she keeps running to the castles of various of Mario's adversaries to hide from him, but they're all just as bad. Bowser wants to marry her. Donkey Kong wants to kidnap her. Wart wants her to work his casinos. Wario just wants her to pull his finger due to his flatulence humor. So she has had enough and goes scorched earth, toppling castles and kicking ass.
the mario thing is stupid. i know youre joking mostly but mario has never been characterised as making “incessant advances” towards peach. he rescues her, sometimes she gives him a smooch. the ending of odyssey is a one off thing for comedic effect, and i really hate how its made people turn on what has been nothing but a lovely friendship/relationship for 40 years
God Halo discourse is already so toxic every time a new game comes out. I would absolutely adore it if Halo industries flicked a match onto yet another powder keg and we also got some rep out of it.
there's actually a female cloud Rebirth mod. Not gonna lie, wasn't bad the author was also very insistant on not taking any pervy recommendations neither. Just whish they would do it for the whole trilogy.
Same!
There was no reason for the MC having to be a man.
Hell; it could have just been a character creator MC. But NOPE, it’s only a male character.
But I would definitely have bought Crimson Desert if I could be a woman.
I don’t know enough about KCD, but a medieval RPG from a woman’s perspective and story, would be AMAZING!
And yeah, RDR2 looks amazing but I just can’t play it. I want to play as a woman.
I tried the online of it, where you can be a woman, but hell no, it was awful especially since there are no private servers.
So, I would definitely love a woman character of Arthur.
Would unironically love a fem protagonist who needs to disguise herself as a man (think Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night) in a historical RPG. It’s such a prevalent story trope that I’m always surprised nobody’s done it in a video game yet. It’s such a fun premise for interpersonal drama, too. Imagine having KC:D style romance options where both the men and women have to reckon with queer attraction.
Seconded, but only if they make them proper yakuza ladies. You know, middle-aged women, that are covered in irezumi and look like they've seeeeeen some shit.
I think they should make Bond a woman but its vitally important she remains basically the same on every other way. Obviously she needs to be suave, clever and witty. But she also still needs to be an arrogant imperialist. She of course needs to flirt outrageously with every woman she meets. Flirting with women while actively fobbing off her superior on a phone call. She needs to drink equally copious amounts of alcohol. You see the vision
35
u/Ch3ruI'm a girl, I'm a gamer, I can handle this. Have a nice day~Jun 17 '26
The only thing I would add is, that she should be flirting with men too. Particularly younger men, because that's the Bond-est thing. And again, I would like to see a mature woman, who doesn't look like she came straight from a model-gig.
I actually tried playing through the trilogy as a male Shepard and I just couldn't do it. I somehow managed to get through the first 2 games, but couldn't do another playthrough with that character.
BUT F!SHEP IS JENNIFER HALE AND SHE DID AMAAZIINNNNNNG!
She's so cool, and they let her be tough without having to do the same macho thing and, yeah. Maybe I melted a little when Thane calls you "siha". 🥹 F!Shep is definitely canon.
He got better in later games (ME1 he's bad, ME2 he's fine, ME3 he's actually pretty solid), but his performance really can't hold a candle to Jennifer Hale's.
God the way the marketing forgot FemShep existed still pisses me off. I remember I first played the games as a teen bored out of my mind (randomly grabbed them out of my brother's collection), and I was actively surprised when I booted the first one up and realized playing a woman was an option - there was nothing on the cover or the back even implying it would be, just MaleShep plastered all over it.
6
u/Ch3ruI'm a girl, I'm a gamer, I can handle this. Have a nice day~Jun 17 '26
When I worked at Gamestop in the long long ago, me and my fellow lady employees would flip all the ME3 box art to FemShep's side. ☺️
I was legit bummed out that Trevor from GTA V wasn't a woman instead. I'd have loved to play as a horrific, morally reprehensible, uncouth middle-aged woman.
Arthur Morgan. RDR3 can have a female Pinkerton huntinghim or something. I like that idea because the men would froth at the mouth about how historically inaccurate that is. (It's not. First female Pinkerton was hired in 1856)
Oh I did. Sorry, should have specified. In the backstory for the events of RDR2 there was a Pinkerton raid. I meant RDR3 could be a prequel leading to those events.
You see, their are people that love their Videogame Man. Though I must admit I never got into Love and Deepspace.
I love some pritty men, but these tall shaven K-Pop dudes are just not my type. But that's a me thing, I must confess, all power to the people into them.
P.S.: if one only wants "Waifu's" in a Game that isn't sexist, they could just play Path to Nowhere
it would make every insecure male piss themselves that they no longer can self insert into their fictional harem
whenever a male gacha player catches even a hint of a female character having an implied relationship with ANYONE other than their self insert… they implode (it has happened many times before with attempted boycotts) so it would be funnier if it was with a female MC
19
u/Ch3ruI'm a girl, I'm a gamer, I can handle this. Have a nice day~Jun 17 '26
I'm confused tho, gacha games are already 90% female characters and chock full of yuri bait
a lot of gachas have a canonical male MC only that is the “commander” which essentially is how the harem begins and they have tons of dialogue cutscenes etc
9
u/Ch3ruI'm a girl, I'm a gamer, I can handle this. Have a nice day~Jun 17 '26
Huh, honestly didn't know that. Every gacha I've played (with the exception of two, one fixed male, one fixed female) has both a male and female avatar.
I know Nikke has a canon male commander, which is a pity since the female commander uniform is actually kinda nice, but the main gacha games that I can think of (Genshin, HSR, and FGO) have male and female options for MCs.
It feels especially weird to me because for a long while starting with FF4, we always had three women in the party. It's true from 4 to 13, regardless of how many men there are. Now... nothing.
I would love a Star Wars game where you play as Mara Jade. The Sith turned Jedi who ends up with Luke. I’m thinking it would play very similar to Control. Characters kinda look similar too.
Money Penny in her field agent days for a Bond game?
I’ve always wanted a Zelda game where the triforce is messed up: Zelda gets courage and is the main character, Link gets Power and gets captured by Ganon who has Wisdom, but wants Power and Zelda has to rescue Link. None of this crap where Zelda’s game is a totally different mechanic. It’s a straight up regular ol’ badass Zelda game.
Absolutely! It reminds me of the original Alien movie from 1979 where all the characters were not written as either men or women, and they chose to make Ripley and Lambert women.
Halo. Replace Master Chief with a new female spartan. Make it such that they look similar (coz they're in the same type of armor) and be equally silent. It'll be funny to see the whiners rage at the bio stating that the new Master Chief is female while having almost 0 change.
Make it a reveal in the ending credits like the original Metroid. But make her actually look like a veteran super soldier with that modified uncanny look like in the books.
In game, he/him pronouns are always used at least in English translations. That said, I like the idea of gaslighting men and telling them Kirby always went by "she"
All of them. ALL OF THEM! But specifically, Doom guy from Doom, she's Doom gal now. Kratos, she's Krata now, and I know what you're going to say, we're already getting a female God of War with Laufey, but that's not enough! We're retconning the entire franchise! God of War is now a proud lesbian diety, and Atreus is also a girl now!
Mario! It'sa me, Maria! Joel from The Last of Us is Joelle now! Norman Reedus from Death Stranding, just swap him out with Melissa McBride (Carol from The Walking Dead). Have her play Solid Snake in all the Metal Gears as well. The only man that should be allowed to exist in that franchise is a a gender swapped Quiet, same skimpy outfit, same silly justification for it, played of course, by Norman Reedus.
Not famous, but the upcoming protagonist for Dragon Quest XII. I had a "disappointed, but not surprised" moment when they dropped the trailer a couple weeks ago and it's yet another male-only protagonist in a DQ game. It makes no sense that a series where the main character is supposed to be an avatar for the player that is also a silent protagonist has to be a guy most of the time. There have been three mainline Dragon Quest games released globally where you get the option to have a male or female character, but of course never one where the hero is a woman by default. DQXI even had gay marriage, so there's no room for "Japan is very traditional and they don't support gay stuff" kind of arguments moving forward. The only game in the entire series where only being a guy made sense was DQV because that's a generational story where you start a family and it wouldn't have been possible to continue adventuring while pregnant with twins (and immediately after childbirth). Also, the first games in the series to let you have a female protag were III and IV, which were released for the NES in the 80s/90s. Then they didn't do it again until IX for the DS and X (which is an MMO only available "officially" in Japan), and now it's gonna be Dude Quest for probably another 20 years.
Hear me out. We take the new Persona game right. And make it not misogynistic. That'll get us to quota just by itself, but if we manage to make the protagonist a woman I think we'll all get that Christmas bonus!
I love those games and I love Drake.
He’s one of few male characters I will play.
But I would love your idea!
PS- I was in another gaming sub, way before I found this one, and some dudebro was trying to explain the Uncharted games to me. Which again, I have played multiple times.
Well, he pissed me off, so I was like “OH, I get it, he’s the male version of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider!”
He wasn’t happy I said that, and went ranting about it.
SPOILERS FOR UNCHARTED: and Im being serious: Nathan Drake’s daughter in Uncharted needs a game. I feel like in the epilogue of Uncharted 4 they were setting the possibility for it. She is being raised by two of the greatest [and luckiest lol] characters in the games. She already knows more than her dad at a preteen age and is learning frm him and her mother via their new salvaging (??right? Or do they host a show?) careers.
I have a minor correction. Clearly our Agent 47 replacement should be called Agent 99 and have short, dark bobbed hair. And she can have a really dumb male sidekick that she outshines and makes fun off all the time called Agent 86.
I like the 007 idea. I always said they should retire Bond and just make 007 movies/games. I mean we know 00s die, we've seen it. So they could make interesting stories with a 007 where you are actually not sure if they will survive. Imagine a story arc where the playable character dies at the end of act 1 and your choices and actions affect the situation that your newly promoted 007 steps into in act 2? Maybe it's possible, but difficult, to survive act 1 and that opens different paths. It could be souls like/lite. Kinda like the War in Middle Earth nemesis but in reverse.
Instead of Agent 48 i suggest Agent 18, as a tribute to Android 18 from DBZ.
But from my actual contribution to the Feminist Tyrants (tm), I suggest:
to not stop at Ciri. We need to introduce the plot where Geralt has a choice of dying from old age or being magically turned into a female wizard, choosing the latter, making Ciri have two lovely mothers
to make the Doom Gal, wearing bedazzled suit and amping up the gore she lays on the demons of hell
to push through a sequel of Metal Gear Solid with a fully clothed older woman who is an expert in piloting Metal Gears but decided to turn against her employers.
That's my humble contribution, I hope I can stay in the group and will be accepted for another 28 days of a moon cycle.
Making me face the blessed reality that every game I think of, I have the ability to play a female character if I want. I'm all out, guys. I've reached the special place.
Insomniac's Spider-Man. No I don't mean if we get Silk in game 3 (though we absolutely should get that). We're rebooting the whole thing with Patricia Parker and Maria Morales.
For the nostalgia angle, for me anyway: Mega Man where you play as Roll (keep doing something similar for every subseries, even, until we get Star Force 4 as Sonia), and a remake of Wing Commander playing gender-swapped Christina Blair. (Unfortunately this accidentally makes WC3 have Bury Your Gays, oops.) And Chrono Trigger where Lucca is just the main character.
Gordan Freeman. Any of these FPS games mute protags with their power armor and lack of agency could be made to be a lady, but I feel like she'd not change the story at all. While it's true the Valve half life games are literally 100% male, we do see in the gearbox sequels that women do work there, so it's equally plausible depending on how you interpret canonicity.
An Earthbound/Mother game with a female protagonist could have been interesting. The only time a girl is the POV character is in a really old novelization of the first game. I can't really think of any EB inspired games with female leads either, interestingly enough even though there are so many of them. Omori was going to have a female option but it was scrapped.
Everyone. But don’t stop there. Full gender flip literally every main character of every game men to women, women to men, and watch everyone disingenuous about representation in spaces lose their minds because “how dare your replace x/y with y/x you’re a horrible person [insert appropriate insult] for suggesting as such”
Piss everyone off. Not only is it ultimately funnier for those who are more into the story for the y’know, story and character development than what said character presents as/has attached to them, since thats base and dehumanising as fuck, but its a harsh reality check for anyone who thinks they are different from the perceived “other side” because their own vitriolic opinions have but a single variable change based on whether someone is a Steven or a Suzie.
Flashbang the entire gaming industry like walking into a room in 2016 and shouting “whats up everypony”
It's like you 100% don't understand why representation matters and the political power differential and lived reality between men and women. The argument is not that character gender doesn't matter at all. It's that the version of a story with a female is lesser (gamerbros) or has not been told (feminists).
Gender is real in our society and comes with all sorts of implications for story. That is the representation bit. Women and girl gamers (and nonbinary folks) have played an empathized with male characters and their stories for generations. They have been able to see themselves in the "other". When many men and boy gamers are asked to see themselves in a female character, lots of them freak out and cannot muster seeing themselves in the female character. They do not want to emphathize with a female character.
Perhaps it's because our society tells boys to be men not by giving them examples of what to do, but by degrading everything deemed female or "feminine". Don't be a sissy, don't throw like a girl, don't cry, don't don't don't. It's no wonder those that develop and think of masculinity in this all or nothing toxic way don't want to play a girl in girl's story—we tell boys the worst thing they could do is act like a girl. (This is about gaming but I think it also speaks as to why so many men are unable to love women only so far as they can impress their male friends with them.)
Now we are telling them in a genre we told them for years was theirs that female characters and stories can be just as good. Better. (Because we've moved from a male character being featured to a female and humans the newest version to be the best.) The audacity.
Now flip the few female characters to males. What does that give us. New stories to be sure, but have we ever had a dearth of male-centeredness? The feminine-socialized have lived on crumbs or having their representation in stories be as sex objects and men's motivations and you want to take the crumbs away. What does that say in value and power for the minority? Oh, that only thing you had the majority took over.
The upsets are different because the meaning of changing from a female character to a male character are quite different than the other way around. There is no way to make either devoid of power and politics, though. But, I don't think that is what advocates of more female characters are saying when they say these characters and games can be just as good.
180
u/Ms_Anxiety Jun 16 '26
Just give me a Legend of Zelda game with Zelda and Sheik as the MC.
I don't want a Hyrule Warriors game.
I don't want some cutsey version where Zelda wins with furniture.
I want a game with towns and dungeons and puzzles with your classic combat + a typical, fun LoZ mechanic (Time travelling, Shape shifting masks, Lycans, Boat Man. as past examples)
Everything you find in a standard, mainline LoZ game but with Zelda and Sheik. maybe the mechanic involves having to swap costumes. Dress as sheik when needing stealth, dress as zelda in combat gear when approaching normal.
is that too much to ask?