Video game protagonists are often presented as noble and good heroes, often the saviors of worlds, always willing to lend a helping hand. This is especially true for female characters, as writers and designers fall back on traditional societal expectations of women being gentle and caring.
Some female protagonists defy this classification, however, and head in the complete opposite direction. Some are ruthless assassins, riddled with dark turmoil or are indifferent to the fates of those they encounter while pursuing selfish goals. These women are out for themselves and won’t hesitate to shove aside anyone who gets in their way.
7 Rubi Malone (WET)
WET was a PS3 and Xbox 360 game that was best described as a love letter to grind-house cinema, full of gratuitous yet stylish violence, film grain effects and a rockabilly soundtrack. Its protagonist was Rubi Malone, a bounty hunter with a katana and twin guns she could fire in slow motion, along with the voice of Buffy star Eliza Duskhu.
Rubi is also aggressive, brash and uncaring, and heals herself by downing whiskey. With her profession, she is required to be a ruthless killer, and much of the game sees her mowing down anyone who crosses her path, especially when she goes into a blind rage.
6 Nina Williams (Tekken)
Nina Williams is one of few characters to appear in every Tekken game since the first game in 1994. She’s often important to the central story of the main series, and she even got her own spin-off game, Death By Degrees, for the PS2.
Nina is a ruthless assassin whose fighting technique is a cross between Aikido and brutal assassination techniques, and many of her moves in Tekken are dirty tactics designed to catch opponents off guard. Her exposure to numerous experiments throughout her life have left her with limited memories and few emotions, and she remains single-mindedly focused on her assassination work and little else.
5 Bloodrayne
Released during the sixth console generation, Bloodrayne and its sequel were action-adventure titles starring a dhampir who hunted vampires, that also received remasters late last year.
The protagonist, named Rayne, has a dark past that saw the human side of her family murdered by her vampire father, causing her to harbor a deep hatred in her heart. This leads to her taking on the role of a vampire assassin, taking great pleasure out of tearing her opponents apart with great efficiency. Despite her hatred for vampires, though, she is still happy to lean into her own vampiric nature if it serves her purposes.
4 Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)
While Heather at first seems to be a normal teenage girl, the events of Silent Hill 3 reveal a much darker side to her. Part of this comes from her past, as she is the reincarnation of Alessa Gillespie, a psychic child who the cult of Silent Hill were hoping to use to resurrect a dark god.
This darkness is still present in Heather, however, and throughout Silent Hill 3 a cult member, Claudia, is constantly pushing her to make choices to give into that darkness, forcing her to vow revenge and to kill, all to feed the supernatural god baby inside her so she can give birth to it. The player’s actions can also determine that Heather did give into these impulses, as one ending has her murdering the detective who helped her.
3 Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Lara Croft is a character with multiple variants, and yet all of them demonstrate some level of darkness. The current version, star of the reboot trilogy, is battle-hardened from her time surviving on Yamatai, leading to her often abandoning any sense of humanity in tough situations. This results in her rampaging through hordes of enemies, most notably in Shadow of the Tomb Raider where she destroys an entire oil platform in a blind rage.
But earlier versions of Lara were also coldly cruel at times too. In the original games from Core Design, she would often quip in relation to enemy deaths. For instance, when a bounty hunter sent to capture her is knocked off a tower by a swinging bell, she casually wishes him a “happy retirement” as he falls. Harsh. On top of this, her goals are often selfish, in service of her own excitement and the artifacts she takes as prizes, and rarely in service of helping others.
2 Bayonetta
Darkness is something heavily attached to Bayonetta. For starters, she’s an Umbra Witch, a clan attached to dark arts, and a name that refers to a type of shadow. The clan receives its powers from demons, Bayonetta's powers coming from Madama Butterfly, who can be seen manifesting in her Wicked Weave attacks, double jump ability and even her shadow.
Bayonetta also spends much of her two games battling against angels, the forces of light, further emphasizing her dark nature. She’s also cocky and focused on her own goals above those of others, and occasionally showing impatience in the face of some enemy monologues. However, there is a good side to her under the brash exterior, but she clearly just finds it more fun to be bad.
1 Senua (Hellblade)
Darkness can come in many forms. While in many cases on this list, the darkness shows a lack of caring, or a murderous streak, at other times the darkness can be something else entirely. Senua of Hellblade is plagued by psychosis, a bleak mental illness that causes her to hallucinate and hear voices, while a malevolent shadow stalks her at every turn.
Senua’s darkness is a kind that she is trapped in, unable to free herself. As the game is set during the time of Vikings and Picts, there is no medical diagnosis for her condition, only social ostracization as she is believed to be cursed. Senua herself sometimes seems to believe this, and even that she deserves her curse, as Hellblade powerfully represents a struggle many in the real world also go through.