Female protagonist in ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ has much to teach society.
‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ breaks with tradition — and succeeds
In “Horizon Zero Dawn,” a new open-world role-playing game for the PlayStation 4 system, women run the world.
The video game stars Aloy, a 19-year-old girl who happens to be independent, strongwilled and not a sex object — in stark contrast to how most women are featured in video games.
She lives in a matriarchal society, spends most of the game fighting corrupt men and is aided by supportive male sidekicks. She discovers that her futuristic-yetprimitive land is largely a creation of a brilliant female scientist, whose invention, GAIA, is an ode to the life-giving force of motherhood.
Aloy is, in other words, the first legitimate feminist hero in a mainstream video game.
This spring, the gaming community made clear that this is not OK. Even before “Horizon Zero Dawn” was released, gamers at the web’s most popular gaming subreddits and forums proclaimed they would never play a game with a female protagonist. In February, for instance, user TechniMyoko canceled his order because the game was described as “the feminist action game we’ve been waiting for.” Others cited the game, along with last year’s all-female reboot of the “Ghostbusters” film franchise, as unfortunate side effects of feminism and “SJW’s” — social justice warriors.
Executives at Sony, the game’s publisher, have said that they were anxious about featuring a female hero. They worried that it would alienate too many gamers.
Sadly, if you’ve spent enough time in the gaming community, none of this comes as a surprise.
The vast majority of big-budget games feature male protagonists. This has long been true, despite, according to a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center, the fact that 48 percent of women say that they play video games. Yet, that same poll showed that only 6 percent of women described themselves as “gamers,” compared to 15 percent of men.
And the 2014 “Gamergate” controversy reinforced that patriarchal perception of the videogame culture when women in the video-game industry were targeted and harassed by gamers.
All female game commentators, journalists and bloggers I know have cited some sort of harassment from men online. The most outspoken get death threats. Last year, Hafu, one of Hearthstone’s most popular — and best — professional gamers, was competing in a tournament when a display of the match had to be shut down. The organizers made the mistake of showing a live chat stream. Almost instantly, the tournament turned into a realm for trolls and sexual harassment.
“Horizon Zero Dawn” is what gamers call a “triple-A” title, the kind of console-defining game that embodies the height of both technology and artistry. The game is Sony’s big, bold answer to Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda: Call of the Wild,” as well as the company’s first attempt to establish a must-have exclusive for PS4 after the dramatic failure of “No Man’s Sky.”
Yes, “Horizon Zero Dawn” is a big deal. It’s also a fantastic game. It has the expansive, lush world of “The Witcher 3,” but also a more engaging and dynamic fight system, akin to “Destiny” and “Gears of War.” The deep quest system is reminiscent of “World of Warcraft,” but instead of grinding for loot and experience, the leveling up in “Horizon Zero Dawn” feels organic.
Then there’s the original sci-fi setting: Hundreds of years after a world-ending event has leveled civilization, humanity has resurfaced as a primitive tribal society. Among these bow-and-arrow warriors walk strange metal beasts: heavily-armed sentient robots that resemble horses, bulls, ostriches and panthers. Aloy lives among the Nora tribe, who are ruled by three matriarchs and who worship a mysterious futuristic entity called the All-Mother.
The kind of game “Horizon Zero Dawn” is, and the kind of hero Aloy represents, matters. It matters that it’s an action title whose story emphasizes social progress and empathy over violence. It matters that it’s a product made in a maledominated landscape that stars a woman who, unlike “Tomb Raider” centerpiece Lara Croft, doesn’t look like a pinup girl.
It matters that gender isn’t treated as a gimmicky selling point. (Consider the game “Bayonetta,” in which the luscious female hero literally can’t fight back against her enemies without shedding her clothes.)
To see such progress in a mainstream title excites me. It’s equally exciting that the superb story is also packaged within the most notable release of 2017.
As of this writing, the game has sold more than 2.6 million units. That success may mean a sequel and, perhaps, the start of a franchise.
But the bigger takeaway is this: Sony gambled on a story told from a non-male perspective, and it didn’t just work, it gave us a glimpse of the future.