Child of Light

 
Child of Light and it is the most beautiful and refreshing game. ever. I am having all of the feelings. I love that the protagonist is a badass little girl, especially in light of what some of my friends have been facing this week, re: sexism. I love that in the game her identity is just accepted, never questioned or looked down upon. Her courage and might is never doubted, and never needs to be proven – even to her male companions. No one says you’re a little girl, I don’t think you can do anything. She just does things, and saves the world, and it’s beautiful. All the people who made this need to win every award. In an industry where protagonists are dominantly male by default, females are over-sexualized, wallpaper, meant-to-be-rescued, or otherwise (at least initially) portrayed as weak (obviously there are exceptions to this rule), having that not be the case – having a wide cast of characters with different and unique skill-sets – is just… awesome. I remember one time, I was trying to introduce my sister-in-laws to a game (don’t remember which), one of them started with a female character and later switched to a male because she felt playing the female was too hard because the female was too weak – and that’s sad to me (in reality it had more to do with how she played the race/class than the gender of the character, but, it’s so ingrained – even in non-gamers).
Child of Light is wonderful and feels groundbreaking because it flies in the face of conventional game industry wisdom. Everyone needs to go play this and support the shit out of it. I want to see more games like this, where characters are awesome and a female protagonist is no big deal.