“Zombine,” get it?

Meet Alyx Vance. She’s one of the main characters in Valve Studios’ Half-Life series. She’s also something of a rarity in videogames in that she’s an actual character, as opposed to the 2-dimensional caricatures of women that dominate the genre.

If you haven’t played the series, shame on you. What’s more, you might want to stop reading, as there are spoilers ahead.

Alyx comes into things during Half-Life 2, after the Combine have conquered Earth in the Seven Hours’ War. You play as Gordon Freeman, a research-scientist-turned-action-hero who’s been out of it in the twenty years since the events of the first game. Gordon wakes into a mess of a world that’s become an Orwellian police state, in which human reproduction has been stalled and order is maintained by Combine strongmen and worse.

Alyx is the daughter of scientist Eli Vance, who now leads the human resistance. She’s sent to act as guide and partner to Gordon, who is, of course, the last great hope for humanity.

The Citadel, oops.
Notice that Alyx is clothed. In practical, non-sexualized garb, no less. She stays that way for the entire game. She doesn’t hail from either of the traditional poles of damsel-in-distress or half-naked-bitch-warrior. She’s normal and has her failings, but she’s smart and quick on the draw.

The game doesn’t expect you to protect her, and she often finds ways out of tight situations that are otherwise not noticed. As is typical with the franchise, there are no cutscenes or voiceovers to tell the player what’s going on. You find out gradually, through dialogue, much of which is with Alyx. She knows her way around this unfamiliar world, and you don’t.

Alyx, with the gnome.

In an otherwise grim setting, Alyx provides a sense of humanity and humor that would be otherwise missing. Upon discovering a new Combine/zombie hybrid, she jokes, “it’s a ‘Zombine,’ get it?” She pokes fun at Gordon for not being much of a talker, and she shows genuine affection for both Gordon and her father.

In short, you can’t help but like her, and by the end of the game, you really care what happens to her.

Eli cracks a painful joke.

The game sets it up so you need Alyx to survive, and over time, your bond with her becomes quite believable. After the Citadel blows at the end of Half-Life 2, my first thought was, “oh [expletive], not Alyx, too!” The cliffhanger wasn’t whether the portal blew, but whether or not Alyx would survive.

By Episodes One and Two, the Resistance is in full swing, and the Combine are vulnerable. While you’re still new to this, Alyx has been fighting it her entire life, and it’s through the in-game dialogue with her that the urgency of the whole thing is conveyed.

Viva la Resistance.

Neither is she a cut-out love interest for Gordon. She cares about him, and she’s a bit flirtatious, and although the swooning, all-too-predictable love story would seem to be just around the next bend, it never happens. It would certainly be the easy way out from a narrative standpoint, but this isn’t a series that trades on that sort of thing, and thank goodness.

Dog, Alyx’s pet killer robot.

The Half-Life series has had praise heaped on it from every quarter, and it’s all quite justified. The graphics and sound design are phenomenal. It has a great physics mechanic that allows objects in the environment to react in a realistic manner, and it has one of the greatest weapons ever in the Gravity Gun.

Since all of the narrative information is gathered from the in-game engine, a great deal of attention was paid to the dialogue scripting and facial modeling. Characters in the series look human when they talk. Their lips are synced to the words they speak, and they’re capable of very realistic facial expressions (something that was Halo 3‘s greatest failing). More than any other special effect, the believable mannerisms of the characters help to suspend disbelief. The game needs Alyx to work, and without such a vivid portrayal, she would have been just another annoying sidekick.

So, having established the greatness that is Alyx Vance, why is she so important in the grand scheme of things?

The answer lies in the general portrayal of women elsewhere in videogames. Before you say, “well, what about Lara Croft,” let’s look at what she is. Sure, she’s a badass, but she also spends all her time in a baby-t shirt and cutoff shorts. Croft trades on sex appeal, first and foremost. She may be quite savvy (they call it “empowered” these days), but take away the toned physical attributes, and she’d be quite boring. You could easily substitute a male character without changing the game a bit.

The same goes for Seamus in Metroid. It doesn’t really matter what gender she is, since she almost never talks, but remember the big reveal? I was surprised to discover that she was female, but nonplussed that they chose to show her in a skimpy bikini.

Perhaps it had to be revealed in such a way due to the crude graphics available at the time. I doubt it, however.

Of course, this is the 21st century, and we now have the technology to render the human likeness in shockingly accurate detail. Of course, where does this get the perception of women?

Where’s the holster?

That’s from the Dead or Alive series, in which a great deal of the processing horsepower of the Xbox 360 is put to the task of (I kid you not) “breast physics.”

I’m sure women feel great about playing such games. Oh wait, perhaps that’s why more women aren’t playing videogames. Sure, horny 13-year-old boys make up a huge percentage of the demographic (just play any online shooter and feel your IQ plummet), but they’re not the only market. In fact, women have both the disposable income and inclination, but I’m guessing very few take to games like this.

In fact, most female gamers I talk to play in spite of crap like this. There are basically three types of female characters in videogames: the randy harlot (as shown above), the generic love interest, and of course, the princess-who-must-be-rescued-because-she-can’t-do-crap-herself:

Sometimes, the companies that produce videogames over-compensate. They assume that women must like “girly” videogames, and we end up with the condescending genre of “pink” games, things like “Paris Hilton’s Fantasy Island.”

Yeah, I’d be offended, too.

What the industry needs are more folks like Alyx, and not just as secondary characters. Sure, we had Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, but that’s just a start (and sadly, the game didn’t sell too well). In fact, something as simple as letting players choose a female avatar for the main character would go a long way towards making things more friendly. Would Gears of War really play any differently if, instead of ridiculously musclebound Marcus Fenix, gamers could choose to play as a female solder?

Seriously, imagine if you had to play as this guy in every game:

Now, I think, you get it. Hopefully, the industry will follow.